A conversation

One of the first phone calls I made before going to Oslo was to the Rinzai Zen center. The Rinzai Zen center was also one of the first groups I visited when starting fieldwork, right after having spent time at KTL. At their internet site one can read that the teachings and practices of this group follow what is called the Japanese Rinzai tradition. The Zen-tradition is explained as being about the “direct experience of truth and reality through sitting meditation”, and as emphasizing interconnection: “When the wisdom of this ripens, we acknowledge that any form, even a stone or a bird, is part of the self”¹⁵. At the time I was doing fieldwork the group had an Austrian Zen teacher, Genro Seiun Koudela. He had been their teacher from 1991, and would visit the group from time to time. He lived in Austria as Abbot of Bodhidharma Zendo, Vienna. “Googeling” provides 64 hits on his name¹⁶, far too much to elaborate upon here as such. What strikes me is the international character of his Zen education as well as his practice as a teacher: He was born in Vienna in 1924, and he has spent 25 years in the USA; Pennsylvania as well as California and New Mexico, presently teaching in Austria¹⁷.

The daily leader of the Rinzai Zen center lives in Oslo. He is not a teacher himself, but he was listed as their contact person when I began fieldwork. Their homepage on the internet¹⁸ informs us that he has studied with Joshu Sasaki Roshi and Genro Seiun Osho since 1986.

Their biographies underline international rooting¹⁹, an observation that would turn out to hold true for the other Buddhist groups as well. I am told that when the daily leader began his Zen practice in 1964, it was with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco, a Japanese Zen priest belonging to the Soto lineage, born in Japan in the early 20^th century. I am told that five years

15 Rinzai Zen Center homepage, http://www.rinzai-Zen.no , last accessed 2007-10-27. Translated from Norwegian to English by me.

16 Last search performed 2007-10-27.

17 Information on this can be found at several different internet sites, for instance http://www.mbzc.org/centers.php4 and http://www2.hmc.edu/www_common/religious_studies/baldy/history.html, last accessed 2007-10-30.

18 Rinzai Zen Center homepage, http://www.rinzai-zen.no/, last accessed 2007-10-20.

19ss Googeling provides 570 hits on Joshu Sasaki Roshi (Last search performed 2007-10-27). He is presented as the founder and Abbot of Rinzai-ji in the USA, born in Japan in 1907. He entered Zen training at Zuiryo-ji in Japan at fourteen, but went to the USA in 1962, establishing the first Zendo of Rinzai-ji. The Mt. Baldy Zen center was opened as a monistic style training facility in California in the early seventies. Joshu Sasaki Roshi is presented as engaging in extensive traveling in the USA and abroad (Mt. Baldy Zen homepage, http://www.mbzc.org/teacher.php4, last accessed 2007-11-17).

after Shunryu Suzuki Roshi came to San Francisco, where a center was established, the daily leader began his Zen practice with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. It was no surprise to me that when I called the daily leader he answered in Norwegian with a slight American accent.

I took notes when talking to him on the phone, and when talking to him in person I used a tape recorder, transcribing our conversation word by word afterwards. He told me that the Rinzai Zen was a small, active group having their main meditations twice a week: Thursday afternoon and Sunday morning. Some people came on a regular basis; others were just

“passing by”, he said. This sounded like the same phenomenon that I had noticed at the Monday meditations, what I have formerly referred to as a porosity that made it difficult to delimit the gathering of people as a group. I asked him if he had any idea why this was so. In his experience, he said, the most eager visitors dropped out first. The more skeptical ones tended to stay. In his opinion the drop-outs tended to be people with too many preconceptions, too many ideas about what Zen and meditational practice was. When things turned out to be different from their ideas, they left.

“People, who are shopping, keep shopping. But if you end up in a group and belong to that group, and feel that this is something, you stay. Shopping is being constantly on the lookout for something else: “This is it!” And then some time passes, and you find out that, no, this was not it after all… Most people are seeking.

The problem is that they are seeking something outside of themselves. That is the problem”.

What he perceives to be “shoppers” are seen as engaging in an enterprise that is contrasted to serious engagement in Buddhist practice.

The group was characterized by diversity regarding education as well as age, but there were a lot more men than women, he told me. This surprised me. At the Monday meditations the genders seemed to be equally represented among the participants. He told me he had no idea why there were so many men, but that it had always been like that. This was not just a characteristic of the Norwegian group, but the same pattern was to be found in Austria, mainly men, only ¼ women, he said. Another characteristic of this group was that they all wore black at the meditational gatherings. There had been no dress-code at KTL, so I was curious as to why. He answered:

“In Japan they wear black. Red and yellow in Tibet, there are different traditions in different countries. Anyway, in a tradition it is about being part of the group. We put away any distinguishing features. Normally we dress to stand out, to

be special. But it is precisely this “special” that we put away. And when doing walking meditation, we move as one body”

I wondered if there were any differences when it came to the philosophy and/or meditational practice when comparing the Rinzai Zen to the other groups. He told me that this tradition emphasized meditation and contemplation. Meditational practice was about “focusing on the breath, letting thoughts settle”. In contrast to Tibetan Buddhism, Rinzai Zen does not practice visualizations. The closest thing to visualization had to be koan practice, he said:

“Koans are stories, conversations or encounters between teacher and student.

And the student gets an aha-experience through this. Koans are classical stories that illustrate the path. It is used a lot as an object for dialogue, between teacher and student”.

He pointed out that he did not know a lot about the differences between the groups, but he knew that the style of Rinzai Zen was a lot stricter:

“At KTL it is OK to move and to stand up during meditations, here it is not.

We sit totally still for 25 minutes at a time”.

Having said this, he quickly emphasized that the differences were “merely cosmetic”. An emphasis on similarities, not differences, becomes the concluding remark. The emphasis on similarities would turn out to be a common denominator in the narratives of all my informants.

I found many similarities between what the daily leader told me, and what I had been taught at the Monday meditations when I asked about Buddhism. When asking what he considered the core in Buddhism, his answer went as follows:

“The core would be the four noble truths. That is the basis. The most central one of them is impermanence. What do I experience as me? You look for something that is constant, something that lasts forever. But everything is constantly changing, so where do you find your “self” then? I wear a mask depending on circumstances;

we are different personalities in different contexts; “today I am not quite myself…”

So, we are constantly changing. All the time. A very simple principle”.

This could have been said by any of the teachers at any of the groups. I felt I was on familiar ground, compared to my experience from the KTL Monday meditations. This was also the case when I questioned him whether he considered Buddhism to be a philosophy or religion, or maybe something totally different. He answered that that would depend on the definition of religion:

“We don’t have the concept of God. The concept of Buddha nature moves in the direction of a “divine principle”, but everything has Buddha nature. There is no dualism. Religion answers to the longing human beings have to go beyond dualism, to achieve “one-ness”; uni-vers. One, just one. Experiencing one-ness is religion”

The oneness he points out would also turn out to be a common denominator in the stories of all my informants.

“What about Buddhism as therapy?” I asked, having read so much about Buddhism as therapy, and being interested in the aspects of transformation.

“Well. It is best in this kind of practice that you are relatively balanced. If you are not mentally stable you have to work with that first and foremost, before starting this practice. You are confronted with yourself. And, if you are mentally unstable, you need someone to support you. Get out of the situation. Zen practice is not therapy. It can of course function therapeutically, but you have to be fairly balanced to enjoy this practice”.

I asked if this meant that the group didn’t function as a church or a congregation, open to everybody. He explained:

“To really engage in this practice you have to be balanced, I believe. We have had people here that have been unstable to differing degrees. They have just disappeared by themselves. They don’t find what they are looking for here. It seems like a natural process. Finding out if you are fit for this practice or not. Our practice is so strict, that if you are not properly motivated, it does not work. I have heard about masters working in jails, and, there are rumors among people in prison: They are so strict! (he laughs) That says quite a bit…”

The strictness he pointed out, the wearing of black clothes and the predominance of male participants were new elements to me. But apart from these aspects, my impression was one of encountering something familiar. The sense of familiarity was enhanced when he told me about the history of this group. A group of Norwegians had come together to study and explore Zen. This happened at the same time as KTLBS had been founded, in the early seventies. Both groups had started with a group of young Norwegians meeting on a regular basis. Both started out without any direct connection to any tradition, and both established such connections after a while:

“This group started without any contact with any specific tradition. Then they heard about a Zen master in Austria, and some went there. Then we started to move

in two different directions. Some wanted to get connected to a specific teaching tradition, others wanted to make a Norwegian version. Buddhism adapts to the culture it enters. But these are processes that take years. To adapt things you have to know what you are doing, what to change and how”

In the late eighties they became connected to the Zen master, Genro Seiun Koudela. In 1993 this Zen master became their formal teacher. The group was slowly growing, and had a core of very serious practitioners, he told me, adding that “people feel safe and want to continue”.

He also said that there had been periods with what he refers to as argumentation and gossip, which in his opinion tended to scare people away. I asked what the arguments had been about. He told me that the bone of contention was the existence of two different tendencies:

one, having a connection with a certain tradition and a teacher, two, adapting to Norwegian conditions. These tendencies were something I would later on discern myself from the data-material I produced, as a basic issue that every group somehow related to. The Rinzai Zen group in its present form emphasized the connection with a certain tradition and teacher. But some people could react negatively to what they conceived of as alien import, conceiving of it as merely copying Japanese style, he said. He, however, does not conceive of it as being so.

On the contrary:

“Things can be changed. However, to do this, one has to understand what it is all about. Changing things you don’t understand the full meaning of would be wrong”.

The gathering was open to everybody, but I asked permission to attend since I was doing research, even though my intention was merely one of participating. I had found the conversation with him both interesting and enjoyable, and I was looking forward to going. I had been told that this was a very strict kind of meditational practice, entailing sitting still for 25 minutes not moving at all, before doing walking-meditation, and then sitting still again. I had also been told that everybody had to wear black clothes, due to an emphasis on putting aside everything that make individuals differ from each other. All this was new to me, and yes, it sounded a lot stricter than the meditational practice at KTL. But nothing I could not handle. I thought myself relatively well prepared, but I was in for surprise.