Miniatures of a Zen Master

By Robert Aitken and Nelson Foster

For more than four decades, Robert Aitken Roshi has taught thousands of people the Buddhist practice of Zen meditation, and has led hundreds through their practice of the study of traditional koans. He has authored more than a dozen books, including a celebrated appreciation of Basho's haiku; volumes of commentary on sacred texts; works on ethics, daily life, and social action; and one of the best–loved introductions to Zen Buddhism, Taking the Path of Zen. After a long and remarkable life—he will be 91 years old when this collection is published—Aitken Roshi offers a collection of 266 short texts. Some are clearly parables; others are simple stories, quotations, memories, and commentaries. Resembling Benjamin Franklin's Almanac or the epigrams of Chamfort as much as it does work from ancient sages, this collection of "miniatures" distills a life devoted to teaching and awareness. Any person living a considered life, whether secular humanist or religious seeker, will find this a book of rich inspiration.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Release date: Aug 27, 2009
• ISBN: 9781582439983

Robert Aitken

Robert Aitken (1917-2010) was Roshi of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu and the author of Taking the Path of Zen and The Mind of Clover. His introduction to Zen came in a Japanese prison camp during World War II, after he was captured as a civilian in Guam. R. H. Blyth, author of Zen in English Literature, was imprisoned in the same camp, and in this unlikely setting Aitken began the first of several important apprenticeships. After the war Aitken returned often to Japan to study. He became friends with D. T. Suzuki, and studied with Nagakawa Soen Roshi and Yasutani Hakuun Roshi. In 1959 Robert Aitken and his wife, Anne, established a Zen organization, the Diamond Sangha. Aitken was given the title "Roshi" and authorized to teach by Yamada Koun Roshi in 1974.

Book preview

Miniatures of a Zen Master

Also by Robert Aitken:

The Morning Star

Zen Master Raven

Original Dwelling Place

The Dragon Who Never Sleeps

The Practice of Perfection

Encouraging Words

The Gateless Barrier

The Mind of Clover

Taking the Path of Zen

A Zen Wave

with David Steindl-Rast,

The Ground We Share

with Daniel W. Y. Kwok,

Vegetable Roots Discourse

Copyright © 2008 by Robert Aitken

Introduction © 2008 by Nelson Foster

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aitken, Robert.

Miniatures of a Zen master / Robert Aitken ;

with an introduction by Nelson Foster.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-58243-441-4

ISBN-10: 1-58243-441-7

eISBN: 978-1-58243-998-3

1. Religious life—Zen Buddhism. I. Title.

BQ9286.2.A37 2008

294.3'4432—dc22

2008013039

Book design by Gopa & Ted2, Inc.

Printed in the United States of America

COUNTERPOINT

2560 Ninth Street

Suite 318

Berkeley, CA 94710.

www.counterpointpress.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

for Gina

Table of Contents

Introduction

MINIATURES

BOOK I

Intimacy

The Virtue of Distraction

Buddha’s Birthday

The Tangled Web

Therapy

Lucky

Vows

The Timeless

Liking Yourself

Doubt

Killing Time

Light

Ground Your Practice

Do Not Kill

Teaching Yourself

It Is to Laugh

The Domain of Integrity

The Perfection of Character

As You Are

Long-Lost Home

Yourself as an Instrument

Faults and Weaknesses

Be Yourself

Essential Emptiness

Make It Clear

The Heart Sutra

How’m I Doing?

The Lesser Vehicle

Get Serious

The Meaning of Jukai

BOOK II

Seeing and Hearing

The Shorter Kannon Sutra

The Impact of Truth

Six Essentials

Me to You

The Dojo

Enticement to Live

Guanyin

The Dharma

Schiller’s Creator

Yakuseki

The Raft Is the Shore

The Mountains and Rivers Sesshin

Vacancy!

Bishop Ditch

Folk Stories of Zen

Zen Study

The Buddha Dharma

The Beginning of Practice

The Exacting Master

Improvised Practice

Beginner’s Mind

The Rich Ambiguity

Hush Hush

Maezumi Roshi

The Old Teacher

Women in Zen

Itadakimas

Upright Livelihood

Zen and Psychology

The Snow Man

Upright Speech

Coping with One’s Mistakes

The Great Master

Not Conventional

Ailments of Old Age

A World Religion

Important Work

Yaza

Study Practice

No Almighty God

Simone Weil

My Damned Mother

What Happens after Death?

The Attitude toward Dr. Suzuki

Zazen for the Mentally Unstable

Put God on the Shelf

Shin-jin Datsu Raku

Breath Counting

In Charge of Nature

Whitman and Dogen

Beliefs

The Disadvantage of Being an Old-Timer

Dangerous Work

The Way of Yao

No Zazen for Children

A Loaded Word

Dumbing Down

Déjà Vu

Be Decent

First Reasons

This Very Body

Enlightenment

Awareness of Time

Circumambulation

The Jewels

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674)

BOOK III

The Myth of Sisyphus

The Middle Initial

Danger Man

Gratitude

Guidelines

Love Never Faileth

The Drunk

Love

Prevalence of Gays

The Midway Rail

The Naming of Children

The Illegal Annexation

Son of a Famous Man Syndrome

The World of Make-Believe

Step’um

The Noble Cause

Choosing Your Battle

Overhead Wiring

All Beings Are Sick

What Works for You?

Our Elders

Obedient Objects

Kenneth Rexroth

Remembered in Museums

The Listening Project

Sixty Miles an Hour

Truth-telling

At Waimanalo Pier

Wrong as Hell

The Fragrant Emperor

BOOK IV

The Mountain Stream

The Palaka Shirt

The Eightfold Path

The Empty Space

Saint Andrew

FDR

Bon Dancing

Moose, Indian

Dinosaur Mountain

Old Age

Here I Come!

Colonel Boogie March

Dasa Side

A Cue

TA DAH!

Miles Carey

Picture Brides

Old Asian Women

The Turnover

The Notch

The Green Flash

Finger Bowls

The Gurgling Magpie

Secret Sorrow

The Friendly Animals

Tongues in Trees

The Mejiro

Cinque Ports

Stephen Crane

A Turning Point

Sharing the Silence

Uncle Max

The Foreign Groom

Holocaust Survivors

Counting Seconds

Pleasant Memories

Grandmother’s Admonitions

Humane Antennae

Reading the Book

Incredibly Naïve

Liquid Sunshine

All Things Are under the Law of Change

A Fine Memory

Grandpa Baker’s Failure

Impressing Mom and Dad

Mother’s Inability

The Patriot

Dad’s Indiscretion

Trick or Treat

The Human Spirit

Expelled

The Master

Advertisement

Carrying the Dog

Owly-Growly

Saimin

Unexpurgated Mother Goose

Dr. Maher

The Puffer Fish

Seahorses

The Music of the Spheres

Introduction

THIS LITTLE BOOK contains the late thoughts of one of America’s first native-born Zen masters, set down at the age of ninety by a man looking back on (and still putting to good use) the experiences of an extraordinary life. They read not as after-thoughts, intended to correct or improve earlier staements, so much aas manifestations of a fresh turn of mind that has come both unexpectedly and in due course. This is a late work, too, as a capping achievement in a long career of teaching and writing, thirteenth in the string of books that Robert Aitken has devoted, quite variously, to his one great topic and passion, Zen Buddhism. Not a few of its contents are late thoughts in a simple, nocturnal sense as well—inspirations that visited at night as Aitken Rōshi awaited or awoke from sleep. In the early stages of preparing the book, frustrated by the number of half-dreamt ideas that escaped by morning, he positioned a digital recorder by the bedside, with which to capture phrases for retrieval and evaluation in the light of day.

Readers familiar with Aitken Rōshi’s previous writings may discover a resemblance between the short prose of this book and that of Encouraging Words, published in 1993. Like items in the Words in the Dōjō section of that earlier collection, a number of these miniatures originally were spoken into the stillness of the dōjō, or Zen training hall, to guide and spur on the group sitting in zazen. Other miniatures bear a marked similarity in spirit to the pithy essays he has produced for decades, in which a news item,