John Kain's Articles on Lions Roar

John Daido Loori is an imaginative modernizer yet fierce upholder of the old ways of Zen. John Kain reports from Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York. The mind- what can we say of it? Forms, created by rock shadows. -John Daido Loori Roshi When asked how he came to Zen, Daido Roshi pauses, takes off his sage-green fedora and rubs his clean-shaven head. There's a blue, sun-faded anchor tattoo on each of his forearms—remnants of his navy days—and he moves his fingers across one of them as if tracing the map of his past. "That's easy," he says in a deep, resonant voice, "photography." John Daido Loori Roshi was introduced to Zen techniques in the early sixties studying with the renowned photographer Minor White. "I was attracted to the way he integrated Eastern religious methods into his photography workshops," says Daido Roshi. "He taught us many things—meditation, chanting, breathing exercises. It was a very transforming thing in my life. I had an opening experience in one of his classes and eventually found my way into Zen." Nearly forty years later, Daido Roshi—as a respected Zen teacher, accomplished photographer, writer, and avid environmentalist—continues the work of integrating Eastern and Western traditions. His signature talent is bringing ancient Buddhist forms and methods into a contemporary context, without compromising the vitality and veracity of the teachings. Daido Roshi describes his approach at Zen Mountain Monastery, in Mt. Tremper, New York, as "radical conservatism." And says, "It goes back to the traditional principles of both Tang Dynasty and Sung Dynasty China, and brings them into play in the context of the twenty-first century." He has a healthy distrust of our consumer society and is in no hurry to exchange traditional Buddhist values for passing fads. "I think that while there's no question Daido Roshi is engaged in the Americanization of Buddhism, he's doing it in a cautious, very protective way," says Richard Seager, associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College and author of Buddhism In America. "He's been quietly doing what he does for many years now and I think people are finally beginning to recognize the validity of it, the necessity of it." Though there is a strongly traditional and deliberate side to Daido Roshi, there is also a sense of playful openness. Sensei Jan Chozen Bays considers Daido Roshi "something of a genius when it comes to integrating Buddhism into the American context." Bays, who is Daido Roshi's dharma sister and spiritual leader of the Zen Community of Oregon, goes on to say, "What he has done in just one generation is amazing. Yet he has never lost his grand sense of humor—which I think is essential—or his playful irreverence. Daido is very careful to keep things in balance, yet he's not afraid to adjust, to experiment with the form." Sensei Pat Enkyo O'Hara, a former student of Daido Roshi's who heads the Village Zendo in New York, agrees. According to her, Daido Roshi is "often seen as a standard bearer for the 'old ways,' yet he's also a cowboy—he's very independent and experimental in both his actions and his teachings. He's very positive about women, about connecting with the environment, and he's completely open to gays." Central to his work is Daido Roshi's strong belief in using art as a skillful tool for teaching the dharma. "Daido Roshi understands that Zen training and creative exploration complement each other," says Kaz Tanahashi, who has been teaching Zen brush workshops at the monastery since 1986 and is the author of The Brush Mind. "The creative process is a way of uncovering our consciousness. Daido Roshi uses art as a doorway into Buddhism." For Daido Roshi, that "doorway" is nothing but the intimacy of our own life. His writings and teachings continually dismantle the illusion of separateness—for him the worlds of art, Zen and nature are an intimate realm of seamless movement. "We must first set down 'the pack'—the notions and positions that separate us from reality. We must take off the blinders that limit our vision and see for ourselves that originally there are no seams, flaws, organs between us and the whole phenomenal universe," Daido Roshi writes in the introduction to his book of photographs, Making Love With Light. Daido Roshi's childhood was a difficult one; at age eight he lost his father and had to navigate the rough streets of Jersey City, New Jersey. These difficulties planted seeds of introspection and spiritual inquiry that would blossom in later years. As well, being born and raised an Italian Roman Catholic gave him a sense of tight-knit community and tradition that have served him well in his role as abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery. At the age of sixteen he forged a birth certificate and joined the navy, returning five years later to enter college on the GI Bill. Trained as a chemist, he worked in the food industry synthesizing natural food flavors into additives, but after 17 years he became "disillusioned by the slippery ethics of his employers" and returned to his first love, photography. Over the years his photographs have appeared in numerous magazines and more than thirty one-man shows. From the late sixties through the early seventies Daido Roshi studied with Soen Roshi, a seminal figure in early American Zen. But it wasn't until he met Maezumi Roshi—the influential Japanese Zen master who established Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1967—that Daido Roshi found his true teacher. He soon moved to California with his wife and son, immersing himself in the day-to-day duties and practice at Zen Center, eventually receiving dharma transmission (shiho) from Maezumi Roshi in 1986. But he never thought of himself as a natural. "I trust zazen because I was probably the most deluded, confused, angry, anti-religious person you could ever meet. There is no reason in heaven or hell why I should be a Zen teacher, sitting here, talking like this. All I know is I found out about zazen," he writes in The Heart of Being, his book on the Buddhist precepts. Central to Zen is the "mind-to-mind" transmission of dharma from teacher to student. This intimacy is what keeps the teachings fresh and alive. The lineage of these mind-to-mind encounters can be traced back through successive generations to the Buddha. Daido Roshi likens this process to his own family bloodlines. He elaborated on this when we spoke. "Many of the things Maezumi Roshi passed on live in his disciples. I can say the same thing about the qualities of my father. I hardly knew him, but I believe it when people tell me that I'm like my father. With my teacher it's not a genetic thing, it's mind to mind. Yet what passed between us, between Maezumi and myself, has, I think, an as-yet-undiscovered genetics all its own." Maezumi Roshi, having trained in three Zen lineages (including Rinzai and Soto), brought a sense of experimentation and integration that meshed well with American culture. Daido Roshi continued that spirit when he moved back to the East Coast in 1980 to start Zen Mountain Monastery, borrowing forms and teaching methods from the major schools of Japanese and Chinese Zen—as well as from Christianity—to sew an eclectic fabric of monastic practice. Much of Daido Roshi's inspiration can be traced back to Dogen, the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master and philosopher who founded the Soto school. Daido Roshi has incorporated many of Dogen's monastic training methods into the daily schedule at Zen Mountain, and, like Maezumi Roshi, he has continually used Dogen's teachings as a model. In fact, the Mountains and Rivers Order (Daido Roshi's umbrella organization) borrows its name from the title of one of Dogen's sutras. "The reason I identify so closely with Dogen," Daido Roshi says, "is that I have a sense that what we're trying to do here as first generation American Zen Buddhists is similar to what Dogen was trying to do as a first generation Japanese Zen Buddhist. He was bringing the dharma from a Chinese master and establishing it in Japan, making it Japanese. Basically, Dogen established the prototype of Zen monasticism in Japan." Daido Roshi's interest in Dogen underscores his scholarly approach to Buddhism. He is working with Kaz Tanahashi to translate Dogen's classic Three Hundred Koan Shobogenzo, adding contemporary commentary. "It is a landmark in American Zen, what Daido Roshi is doing—bringing forward these thirteenth-century writings and integrating them into a twenty-first century context," says Tanahashi. Nothing exemplifies Daido Roshi's vision and personality more than Zen Mountain Monastery itself. What was started as a Zen arts center on borrowed money has grown into a large, thriving community of both monastic and lay practitioners, with affiliated centers in the United States, Europe and New Zealand. The 260-acre monastery is in the heart of the Catskill Mountains, on a site that seems plucked from a twelfth-century Chinese scroll painting. The large, stone main building sits on a bluff above the confluence of two rivers. Tremper Mountain rises behind in a curve of hardwoods and pine, a large garden overflows with flowers and vegetables, and the surface of a pond ripples in the wind. But any sense that Zen Mountain is held in antiquity is dispelled as soon as the doors open. The question is not, "What do they do?" but rather, "What don't they do?" Besides the daily monastic schedule there are numerous (nearly every weekend) art, body, academic and wilderness retreats, as well as week-long sesshins (meditation intensives) held every month. Zen Mountain's prison outreach program, started in 1984, was the first of its kind, and its Zen Environmental Studies Center has been a model for other organizations for many years. "The monastery offers a very wide mouth, a wide funnel of introduction to Zen," says Sensei Jan Chozen Bays. "There are many access points where people can enter. Once they connect, they can make a...

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