Customer Reviews

Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

The "golden age" of Zen was in the T'ang Dynasty (619-906) in China. By early eighteenth century, what was left of Zen in Japan wasn't much. But the strength of Zen is in the individuals, the truly liberated spirits, it produces, and early eighteen century Japan saw one of the greatest ever: Hakuin Zenji (1685-1768). This book is a translation of what is considered the most important text by this legendary exponent of the Rinzai Zen tradition. Hakuin was a man of high standards, and he had little patience for the soft soothing "Zen" of his day. He pulls no punches in his criticism: "At present, this country is infested with a race of smooth-tongued, worldly-wise Zen teachers who feed their students a ration of utter nonsense" (pp. 24f); "Now that's not even good rubbish" (p. 52); "Phffmp! What graveyard did you pillage for those old left-over offerings?" (p. 92). (Waddell's lively translation contributes to one's appreciation of this dynamic personality.) For Hakuin, what was most important was the breakthrough *kensho* experience, reached after years of rigorous meditation practice; apart from *kensho*, the words and ideas of Zen are worthless and meaningless. Hakuin's Zen represents a level of authenticity consonant with the height of Zen in the T'ang Dynasty. It is a Zen that focuses on the central matter relentlessly, and has absolutely no use for anything that serves to distract from this. In this respect, Hakuin's words may be a useful corrective to some of the more diffuse, feel-good, self-satisfying elements of the New Age. I would not necessarily recommend this book to someone who knew nothing about Zen; at least a cursory knowledge of classical Zen is useful in making sense of Hakuin's many references to great Zen Masters of the past. Not the best starting book, but any serious study of Zen will eventually involve confronting this fiercely determined defender of authentic Zen, and this book is undoubtedly the best English introduction to Hakuin.

Currently Professor of International Studies at Otani University in Kyoto and editor of 'The Eastern Buddhist,'Norman Waddell has made a name for himself with some sterling translations of Buddhist material('Unborn:.The Life & Teachings of Bankei.'Hakuin Zenji's 'Itsumadegusa' etc.). He has excelled himself with this latest endeavour, a translation of Hakuin Zenji's (1686-1769)'Sokko-roku Kaien Fusetsu' - a key text from the renowned reformer of Zen in the Tokugawa.

For convenience sake, Waddell has titled this work 'The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin.' It is certainly that, of course, but it shows Hakuin's indebtedness to his precursors, being Hakuin's commentary on the records of the Chinese Sung master Sokko (Chin. Hsi-keng, 1185-12699), more commonly known in Japanese Zen circles as Kido Chigu - or simply 'Kido.' Texts of this sort have been required reading for Zen students - as a spur to their training. Happily, this translation is the nearest you could get to reading the original text - and, as such, it will undoubtedly fulfil similar needs among Western Zen students.

Waddell has captured well the terse, relentless flow of Hakuin's thought - geared up to encourage Zen practice. As such, it will seem like being thrown at the deep end, to a reader taking a first glimpse into Zen material, but such was Hakuin's purpose. Seasoned practitioners will derive immense benefit from this text. The English translation, with extensive notes, appendices and index, amounts to a mere 137 pages, but so much energy has been compressed into Hakuin's words, this little text seems rather like one of those mysterious, tiny white stars, emitting radiation seemingly disproportionate to their size. In the hands of a less skilful translator, that effect would have been dissipated - but,Waddell has made Hakuin's words live, all over again, in this sterling piece of translation. The extensive notes and appendices are very helpful -without being tedious or cumbersome. I recommend this text to anyone, with a serious interest in Zen. It will take its place as a classic in Western Zen sources.

If you are looking for some straight talk on Zen, Hakuin dishes it up without ketchup.

Essential for the library of all Zen students. And a fascinating read for anyone interested in Zen, eastern religion, traditional wisdom, or just fresh perspectives on the nature of life, death, reality and the human condition.

Norman Waddell has done us all a great service by providing this lovely translation of the Zen teachings of this popular, no holds barred Zen master. Pure blood and guts Zen from page one right through to the index!

It would be easy to underestimate this thin little book, both because of its unprepossessing format and its blandly generic title vaguely suggesting a dull if edifying anthology. That would be a mistake. In typical Zen fashion it's short and to the point, and it's a translation of a single text that would change the course of Rinzai Zen history forever.

Indeed, whatever Rinzai Zen may have been before Hakuin came along in the 1700's, his reforms redefined it thoroughly, utterly reformulating and reorganizing it according to his keen firebrand religiosity. Rinzai Zen as we know it today (and as it was introduced to the West by D.T. Suzuki) is for all intents and purposes Hakuin's Rinzai Zen, and the entirety of his approach is more or less thoroughly outlined in the text translated here, the "Sokko-roku Kaien-fusetsu" of 1743. Based on a lecture given by Hakuin in 1740, it's ostensibly a introductory pep talk to encourage his disciples along in their Zen practice, but it quickly bursts the confines of this usually stilted genre and winds up as an impassioned statement of what Hakuin considered authentic Zen practice and a harshly and yet humorously polemic denunciation of what he felt was the moribund state of Zen in his day. This is Hakuin's Zen in a nutshell, folks, unequivocally announced to the world for the first time in this important text.

Hakuin's prose is incredibly engaging, full of hyperbole and humor, sarcasm and spirituality, entertaining asides and startling diatribes, erudite scriptural references and crassly vulgar remarks. And Norman Waddell's virtuoso translation does full justice to Hakuin's eccentric style, capturing his shifts in tone perfectly and not afraid to take the kid gloves off and let him sound as colloquial as he wants to be (and that includes bad words, boys and girls). That he can do this with such careful craftsmanship and thus make Hakuin sound alive and current without being euphemistically goody-two-shoes or else uncharacteristically contemporary shows a fine-tuned, balanced translating sense that in the end makes this key Zen document a joy to read.

Extensive yet unobtrusive notes, appendixes, and a fine introduction complete this text well, and samples of Hakuin's calligraphy and painting round it off nicely. Zen practitioners will find Hakuin's exhortations extremely moving and inspiring, and students and scholars of Zen Buddhism and Japanese religious history will find this essential formulation of Hakuin's Rinzai Zen Buddhism a significant and highly useful text. It's also nice and short, and so would serve very well as a primary source in a university course on these subjects. Highly recommended for all concerned.

Norman Waddell's translations of Zen classics are consistently lucid and highly readable, and his rendering of this text is no exception. So my 3-star review reflects my issues, not with the translator, but rather with the highly esteemed Hakuin himself. His continuous carping, at least in this particular volume of his teachings, overshadows whatever wisdom he has to impart. Even old Lin-chi (810-866 C.E.), the hyper-critical founder of the Rinzai sect to which Hakuin belonged, occasionally came up for air!

No doubt Hakuin had legitimate concerns with the decline and deplorable status of Zen in his own time. The history of Zen is replete with examples of teachers who strongly expressed their discontent with the status of popular practice during their respective times. He exceeds them all, however, with his relentless rant against every approach and school that does not use his own method, namely that in order to realize enlightenment it is essential for a student to arduously struggle with and penetrate the paradox of a koan (to the satisfaction of the teacher, of course!). This is expressed repeatedly by such emphatic statements as, "You must strain and suffer as a means to enlightenment," and "work through the final koans before you die." Incongruously, between rants he gives faint praise to the very schools he condemns. Nevertheless, Hakuin's emphatic insistence on systemized koan training equates to elevating his raft as being superior to all other rafts for crossing the river.

His incessant condemnation goes on page after page, often throwing out bucket after bucket of babies with the bath water. Hakuin's obsessive use of derogatory epithets include calling Soto School silent meditation practitioners and followers of the Pure Land sect as "half dead duffers...listless old grannies...and miserable wretches." He even refers to those adherents of his own Rinzai sect who espoused quietist approaches to practice as lazy do-nothing "buji" Zennists. Ironically, buji is the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese term chen, which means natural or uncontrived. Lin-chi, or Rinzai in Japanese, frequently used the term Cen-jen (Jp. Buji-nin) to describe a "True Man of no rank" or enlightened person (see Burton Watson, The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi). Unfortunately, contemporary institutionalized Japanese Zen schools still use Hakuin's misappropriation of the term "buji" to mean an undisciplined or frivolous approach to practice.

By his own account, it appears that Hakuin often unsparingly used the shout and the stick on his students. This approach was deplored by a teacher who proceeded him by a half century: the esteemed Zen Master Bankei (see Waddell, The Unborn) who felt that hitting a student with the stick was disrespecting the Buddha-mind within each being. Concerning the use of koans, Bankei acknowledged that they once might have been of value as spontaneous responses to a specific person and a given situation of the moment. Once systematized, however, they degenerated into "hopelessly contrived artificial techniques and unnecessary encumbrances." Since koans were not used systematically until the middle of the 10th century, Bankei rhetorically asked, "Zen teachers didn't use koans before the Sung Dynasty (960-1280 C.E.). Why do I have to?"

The core teaching of the historical Buddha has nothing to do with koans, sutras, any specific form of meditation, or doctrines identified by various "-ists" and "-isms." He advocated following The Middle Way and taught the Four Noble Truths for the cessation of our self-created suffering. He made no claim other than being awake, which is what the term "budh" means in Sanskrit. It would also appear, according to words attributed to him in the Diamond Sutra, that he did not intend to establish a religion: "In reality there is no formula that gives rise to enlightenment [and] what is called `the religion given by Buddha' is not, in fact, Buddha-religion."

It is said that Bodhidharma defined Zen as "A special transmission outside the scriptures with no dependence on words and letters." Perhaps it is time we stopped using the words Zen and Buddhism as connectives for a common term.

This is an excellent and compelling work. Hakuin's teachings are well represented and this is an excellent source for those interested in deepening their "intellectual" understanding of Buddhism.