Smiling Zen: In Search of the Profound Secret of Life

By Toru Matsui

Smiling Zen - In Search for Profound Significance of Living was written by Toru Matsui and published by Chobunsha, Inc, Tokyo on April 30, 1998. It was based on his lecture series broadcast by NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation, Japans national public broadcasting organization). He tells how to live with smiles (taken from Zen koan of Mahakashyapas smile at the Buddhas holding up a lotus flower) through Zen practice. He explains why and how to practice Zen following Tendas Shshikan (Abridged Version of Calming and Visioning) with his profound experience and explications about questions arising from it so that anyone can understand and actualize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9781503552937

Toru Matsui

Toru Matsui (1910~1994) was social activist and essayst. His father (1870~1933) was a playwright named Shôyô Matsui. During the last war he was required by the Government General of Taiwan to take on the job of dramatic supervision in the whole island. In post-war days he formed Ari-no Machi (Town of Ants) with those who shared the same aspiration and contributed to town-building for poor people (mostly garbage collectors) in Sumida Park in Tokyo, becoming the leader there with Reiko Kitahara. His book was made into the movie with the same title of his book, Arino Machino Maria (Mary in Ants Town), featuring her, became famous. His other writings include Binbo Tsuihô – Arino Machino Keizaigaku (Expelling Poverty – Economics of Ants Town), Tengoku-wa Hadaka (Naked in Heaven, Shi-ni Katsu-madeno 30-nichi – Shôshikan Monogatari (30 Days until Conquring Death – Story of Shôshikan), Inochi Kiwami-nashi – Hokekyô Gensô (Limitless is Life – Imagery of Lotus Sutra), Zen-no Genryû-wo Tazunete – Tendai Shôshikan Kôwa (In Pursuit of the Source of Zen – Lectures on Tendai’s Shôshikan), and many others.

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Copyright © 2017 by Toru Matsui.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015904031

ISBN:      Hardcover             978-1-5035-5291-3

               Softcover             978-1-5035-5292-0

               eBook                  978-1-5035-5293-7

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Rev. date: 02/03/2017

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Contents

1st Lecture Fighting against the fear of death

2nd Lecture There is no such thing as Sin

3rd Lecture What to eat and what to wear

4th Lecture Practice discarding desires

5th Lecture How you look to other people

6th Lecture Breathing slowly

7th Lecture What is the Self?

8th Lecture Unification with the universe

9th Lecture Aiming whole-heartedly at the Buddha’s state of awakening

10th Lecture Watch out for the devil’s tricks!

11th Lecture The salvation of all beings

12th Lecture A profound meaning among profound meanings

Appendix

1. The time of Tendai Daishi

2. About Dengyo Daishi

3. The religious world after Eshin Sozu

4. Connections to Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam

5. Religion as integrated science in the future

Postscript

Colophone

@Toru Matsui

1ST LECTURE

Fighting against the fear of death

No tangible substance in happiness itself.

Only physiological phenomena by which we can feel happy at this moment.

This is the best guidebook available

T he story goes back about 1,400 years. There lived a great Buddhist monk named Tendai Daishi (Great Teacher Tientai) in China. He came to be called so because he led a long, secluded life on Mount Tendai. Over the course of twelve lectures I am going to talk about a variety of topics that will show how great this monk was. At any rate his way of thinking was fabulously logical, or it could be said scientific.

But, surprisingly, this monk didn’t write even a single book himself. How, then, can we know that his ideas were great? Because many disciples left behind detailed notes of his lectures, which were handed down through the generations. The most famous collection of notes on his lectures is a book titled Tendai’s Maka-shikan (Great Version of Cessation and Insight), which I think is familiar to the masters in the field.

On the other hand, Tendai’s Shô-shikan, which means the Small Version of Shikan ( 51554.png : Cessation and Insight) and about which I am going to give twelve lectures, is not so well known. So you may well think the book is of less importance, but I assure you it is an excellent book.

Well, both the Makashikan and the Shôshikan are, in a word, books explaining how to sit in Zen meditation. I would like to introduce Dr. Shindai Sekiguchi, who is said to be the best scholar-priest in Japan, or perhaps in the world, on the study of these two books.

Dr. Sekiguchi says at every opportunity that Tendai’s Shôshikan is the best book for those who wish to learn how to sit in Zen meditation. In addition, he says that this book was written in the earliest age of books introducing Zen mediation. It was also written in such minute detail that all the books written thereafter are said to be extracted directly or indirectly or rehashed from this book.

In spite of this, Tendai’s Shôshikan was almost unknown to the public until quite recently. Though written from the notes of Tendai Daishi’s lectures in just the same way as the Makashikan, the book was in the shade of the Makashikan for a long time and has not, perhaps, enjoyed the public’s attention.

How did a layperson like me come across this book? Well, I would like to talk about my curious encounter with it.

Though man is sure to die…

Nearly 67 or 68 years ago, when I was first becoming able to remember, I had fearful dreams every night. I often saw in my dreams stars burning down one after another like bombs and destroying the earth. For some reason I cried out in the dreams, The earth is going to ruin, the earth is going to ruin.

Some time later I awoke and was aware of my mother’s voice trying to shake me awake. Oh, that was only a dream! I said to myself, freed from the nightmare and relieved. But I still had nightmares every night, so I felt uneasy towards evening and hesitated to go to bed, thinking I may have that dream again! Even now I clearly remember that painful time.

This state continued at the longest for perhaps a month. In time I came not to care a bit about the end of the earth.

But the next cause for my concern came when I was in the third or fourth year of elementary school. The day is sure to come when I must say good-bye to my father and mother. This idea made me very sad and worried.

This was not a dream. When I got into bed at night, I was haunted by this idea and couldn’t fall asleep. I had therefore no alternative but to pile up some five or ten books and read one after another until I felt really sleepy.

In the meantime a very self-centered idea occurred to me. That is, I had better die before my parents. Then I wouldn’t feel the loneliness I would feel surviving them. Since neither my father nor mother were likely to die before I turned twenty years old, I decided I would die at the age of twenty.

Then I suddenly felt better and didn’t fear the night any longer. I passed the age of twenty long before I was aware of it and forgot completely that I had had such a selfish idea.

But things didn’t go well.

In the summer when I was twenty-four, my father, who had been quite healthy, suddenly fell ill and passed away all too quickly after being confined to bed for a month or so. My father was not only a parent, but also my best friend. His death made me feel more sorrow than I would feel at the prospect of my own death.

What I felt then was far beyond sorrow. I was so sad that I couldn’t do anything. And I keenly pondered the following idea.

Why does man have to die in this advanced world? At the same time I found it very strange that the majority of people didn’t consider death to be a serious matter.

Why do those people remain calm about the matter? I read one book after another to settle the question. I also went around asking opinions of different people.

But I could neither see nor hear any opinions that could make me convinced deep in my heart. On the contrary, most people said to me, You have so much free time that you are concerned about such a trivial matter. I advise you to work hard from morning until night. Then, the matter will disappear easily. Other people said, If you get married and have children, you won’t have time to be concerned about the matter. The expression of such opinions is not generally confined to businessmen or statesmen who are fussy about secular affairs. Even scholars and religious leaders who preach lofty ideas to us express the same opinions.

Looking back over those days I think I might have asked those questions in the wrong way. But it is true that I couldn’t find a single person who had spiritually pursued the matter of death and reached enlightenment after having worried about the matter of death, the universe, and above all, the question What is man’s life?

To be sure, many of the scholars and religious leaders told me some words appearing in holy scriptures, and about early founders of religious schools and saints. However, I couldn’t bring myself to believe that those scholars and leaders really put their teachings into practice, though I may have taken a jaundiced view of them.

I gradually came to disbelieve those so-called famous people, the present whole society governed by celebrities, and above all man’s histories and cultures over thousands of years. Finally I came near to holding complete nihilism and even taking an antisocial action or killing myself to end my misery. It was right in those days that I encountered the book titled "Tendai’s Shôshikan."

How did Shakya-muni solve aging, sickness, and death?

It was Archbishop Ninomiya at Kan’eiji Temple in Ueno, Tokyo, who handed me this book, saying You should read it. In those days I frequently visited the temple to ask for his teachings. Buddhism was the only hope to me at the time.

According to the Buddha’s biography, it is said that he was deeply worried in his young days about the fact that man gets old and has to die, with no exceptions.

Here lay the root cause for him renouncing the throne and secretly leaving the palace in order to seek after truth, so says the biography.

This story may have been fabricated in later ages. I imagine, however, that the person who wrote the story must have been intensely concerned about the matters of aging, disease, and death.

If that were the case, I wanted to know clearly how the Buddha tried to settle these matters. Jûni Innen (Twelve Nidānas / Twelve-limbed Dependent Co-origination) and Hasshôdô (Eightfold Holy Path) only, both of which frequently appear in the Sutras, were not convincing to me.

In those days the Manchurian Incident was beginning to escalate into the Japan-China War, heralding the outbreak of World War II. It was a time when death itself in the battlefield was rushing chaotically to young people who had no time to consider the problem of senility or sickness. In desperation I asked Archbishop Ninomiya to teach me not empty lessons, but more specific actions or more rational disciplines.

To my earnest pleading he handed me a book titled "Tendai’s Shôshikan." To be honest, I didn’t entertain a 100% expectation for this book at first. That was because I had never been wholeheartedly impressed by any book that was recommended by a wide variety of people.

However, I started to read it, thinking it impolite not to look through a book the Archbishop had taken the trouble to find for me. But the moment I read the preface, I said to myself, What? It starts with the phrase, "Though there are several ways to enter into Nirvana, the true method, to be brief, is only through the two ways of Shikan (Cessation and Insight)." Nirvana is a Sanskrit word that has been rendered as Nehan (transliteration of nirvana), which is more familiar to us Japanese. Here it means attaining enlightenment (awakening). To enter into enlightenment there are several ways, that is, you can choose from various ways, but the quickest and easiest way is "nothing but the two ways of Shikan. In a word, it is declared that The practice of Shikan offers the shortest way to the attainment of enlightenment in Buddhism."

Now, what exactly is Shikan? To put it simply, "Shi means Not stirring up (ceasing) our emotions and Kan means Correct thinking faculty (insight)."

When I read the first phrase I felt, Well, this book is different from what I expected! The writer’s confidence in life or perhaps his hope, or perhaps some indescribable and extraordinary atmosphere, pressed on my heart. "The man who wrote this book must have exercised thoroughly the practice of Shikan and got hold of something. Otherwise he couldn’t have made such a strong declaration in the first phrase," so I began to think. However, what I felt at that moment was something more than mere intuition.

What causes fear and anguish?

I am sorry to stray from the main topic, but in those days or maybe several years earlier I was researching the relationship between facial expressions and hormones. The reason I was making such a queer study comes from the fact that my occupation was playwriting and directing theatrical performances, which I had done for two generations, since the time of my father.

Even so, why did I go so deeply into the matter of facial expressions and hormones? Explaining this question would make the story confusing. So I had better say that I am such an eccentric character that, in anything I put my hand to, I am not satisfied until I have made a thorough and minute investigation.

Now, back to the question of facial expressions. We are inclined to get angry or shed tears in spite of our efforts to suppress these emotions.

When, in fact, you try to investigate the causes, you will find that these phenomena are influenced by the autonomic nervous system, which operates apart from the control of the cerebrum.

If so, what is it that controls the autonomic nervous system?

The answer is endocrine substances, that is, hormones. Which hormones, then, cause us to get angry, cry, or laugh? This question made me start an investigation into the connection between facial expressions and hormones.

The answer was made clear by Hans Selye, an Austrian physician, when he traced the cause of facial expressions to hormones. At that time he published his famous stress theory, and it has become a matter of common knowledge today. When I started to work on the research, Selye was still a medical student at a university in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Therefore this problem had not yet been dealt with by an expert researcher on the subject. Under such circumstances I was obliged to go on with my work step by step.

But one day I realized that excess adrenaline produces manifestations similar to the expressions of anger seen in the patterns of Bunraku puppet shows or Kabuki performances. Thinking This is interesting, I undertook further in-depth research and came to know that getting angry is not a matter of mentality, but seems to be a physiological phenomenon that occurs when adrenaline is secreted in large amounts.

Furthermore, along the way I became aware that man’s fear or anxiety also has something to do with adrenaline.

Though I had made some advances, I never dreamed that not only the fear of death but a variety of sufferings or worries could be relieved by treating adrenaline in the proper way. But the moment I began to read Tendai’s Shôshikan, I was struck and said, This is what I should do!

What is enlightenment (awakening)?

True enough, the fear of death or man’s sufferings or worries are caused by physiological phenomena and not by the functions of the brain. But it doesn’t follow that there is no connection between the autonomic nervous system and the brain. When we get overly excited and the autonomic nervous system is out of balance, our brains get out of control, too. At the same time, a man who cannot exercise his thinking faculty correctly has no idea how to control his own emotional surges and is inclined to become irritated, gloomy, or nervous.

Come to think of it, the relationship between the autonomic nervous system and the brain seems to me like the relationship between a horse and its rider or between a car and its driver. No matter how