Finding The Teacher
An introduction to my Zen teacher, Sayama Daian Roshi, and some guidance on the teacher-student relationship in Zen
When I finally met my Zen teacher, Sayama Daian Roshi, I was four days into what I had thought would be just a tongue-tip taste of Zen training at Chozen-ji, a Rinzai Zen temple and martial arts dojo in Hawaiʻi. Chozen-ji's head priest had agreed to let me come for a three-week live-in period, during which I'd learn the fundamentals of Chozen-ji's uniquely vigorous and multidisciplinary approach to Zen Buddhism.
Those first four days felt astonishingly full, beginning before dawn with zazen (seated meditation), then including vigorous manual labor and martial arts throughout the day, and only ending at 10 or 11 at night. By the time Sayama Roshi arrived, peeling rubber into the Dojo parking lot in his Acura TL, I knew that I had found something singular and special here. Before learning about Chozen-ji, I had never known what a Zen dojo was or that such a place even existed. Yet, it felt like everything I'd ever hoped for.
Here's how I describe my first meeting with Sayama Roshi in my book, Three Years on the Great Mountain: A Memoir of Zen and Fearlessness, which will (amazingly) be in stores in two weeks:
When he walked into the kitchen, my eyes were drawn to Sayama Roshi’s all-white hair, styled in a short, almost military haircut. It gleamed on his head. He was dressed casually, in a polo shirt and jeans, and I wondered if I would have recognized him as a Zen master if I’d seen him on the street, the only giveaway being the intense way in which his eyes sparkled. Sitting down on the floor opposite me at the kitchen tables, he smiled broadly in a way that felt welcoming and engaging, but I could also sense that he was already sizing me up.
I wondered if I would have recognized him as a Zen master if I’d seen him on the street, the only giveaway being the intense way in which his eyes sparkled.
"So, how are you liking it?” he asked. Rather than waste time on the usual pleasantries, I decided that here, sitting in front of the abbot of this amazing temple, was my chance to get right to business.
“I like it a lot,” I replied. “I want to stay. I heard that the usual periods for longer live-ins are three months, one year, and three years. I’d like to start with a year.”
Sayama Roshi looked at me for a moment and then burst into laughter.
Two days later, Sayama Roshi repeated his question and I replied that I'd already told him and that I wanted to stay. I was very happy to learn later that my request was accepted.
For the next five months, I trained with Sayama Roshi in zazen and Kendo (The Way of the Sword, or Japanese fencing) three days a week. We also spent many hours working on the grounds together and talking. I often ate dinner with him and his family, and would eventually become so comfortable in his home that he'd jokingly suggest I reorganize the kitchen so that it made more sense, and then laughed thinking about how much that would annoy his wife Yumiko, who was also my teacher in Chado, The Way of Tea.
Five months later, I formally asked Sayama Roshi to be my Zen teacher and began doing sanzen, or koan training, with him. My reasons for asking to become his student were, in retrospect, both substantial and superficial. I liked him, he reminded me in some ways of my dad. To me, Sayama Roshi also embodied Chozen-ji training.
Unlike the many other American Buddhist teachers I'd met over the years, Sayama Roshi never dipped his toe into another tradition or sect, and held no curiosity for what the Buddhist meditation centers on the mainland were doing. He had started young, more than 40 years earlier when he had met Chozen-ji founder Tanouye Tenshin Rotaishi, and then never looked elsewhere or back. There was a surety in his approach, a confidence that he had been lucky enough to find himself at a young age in a school that could provide endless depth. This resonated with my impression of Chozen-ji Zen training, which was that I could just do it forever.
Sayama Roshi’s' confidence in this approach resonated with my impression of Chozen-ji Zen training, which was that I could just do it forever.
Additionally, Sayama Roshi had certain bona fides, like having a PhD in psychology, being a healthcare executive, and having done sanzen with Omori Sogen Rotaishi, Chozen-ji's other founder and a renown Japanese Zen master who had achieved significant recognition within the Rinzai Zen establishment in Japan. Sayama Roshi had also done extensive Aikido and Kendo training and, in this and other respects, he felt really, as locals in Hawaiʻi would say, samurai.
One of the things that brought me to Chozen-ji was the hope that, in training in a sect of Buddhism that valued lineage and authenticity, I might find the kind of teacher-student relationship I had always heard about but had never been able to find for myself. When I was doing vipassana and insight meditation, I read books and heard lectures by mostly White Western teachers who had spent time as monastics in Asia. They described living and training alongside their teachers, which gave rise to many opportunities to develop a certain intimacy, getting to know each other through life's more mundane and candid moments.
But most of the opportunities I found to spend time with teachers were through meditation retreats and lectures. On the retreats and through paid spiritual mentorship programs, I shared my spiritual and personal challenges with these teachers and sought their advice. One would be forgiven for thinking this sounds more like sitting with a psychotherapist or following a public intellectual than the traditional ideal of going to live with the Buddhist master on the mountain.
One would be forgiven for thinking this sounds more like sitting with a psychotherapist or following a public intellectual than the traditional ideal of going to live with the Buddhist master on the mountain.
In his book, An Introduction to Zen Training, Omori Rotaishi writes about how one should select and regard her Zen teacher. What he describes is quite rigorous and circumspect, beginning with saying that someone should train for three years with a Zen teacher before committing fully to them as their student and beginning sanzen.
"It is… desirable for the student to love his master so much that he would dedicate his whole life to his teacher. Thus, it is important that the teacher and student be compatible and that the teacher be an authentic master who has received Dharma transmitted by genuine religious ancestors."
Elsewhere, Omori Rotaishi quotes the fundamental Soto Zen text, the Shobo-genzo, which describes the historical Buddha as saying, "If you meet your teacher preaching the highest Bodhi, don't seek his identity, don't look at his face, don't blame him for his faults, and don't think of his conduct. Solely out of esteem for prajna [wisdom], let him have hundreds and thousands pieces of gold daily, hold a religious service presenting him with heavenly food and… showering heavenly flowers upon him. Worship him three times a day, paying him great respect."
When I asked him about this passage, Sayama Roshi offered a sharp counterpoint from the father of our own sect of Zen, Rinzai (or Linji in Chinese): "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
"If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."
"I didn't worship Tanouye Roshi," Sayama Roshi elaborated.
I deduced from his response that we students of Rinzai Zen shouldn't hold anything or anyone as precious or holy, not even the Buddha. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't still regard and treat our teachers with love and the utmost respect, both for the depth of their training and for the ways in which they encourage our own.
A teacher, Sayama Roshi had said to me previously, isn't someone who's perfect.
"You certainly know I'm not perfect, but you're still here. Cristina, if I disillusion you, you should just feel, ‘Well, I’m going to be greater than Sayama Roshi.' And don't quit. If you quit—for whatever reason—I'll be really disappointed in you!"
“And don't quit. If you quit—for whatever reason—I'll be really disappointed in you!"
Today, I am a sensei myself, instructing junior students at Chozen-ji in ceramics several days a week. I don't expect anyone to think of me as preaching the highest bodhi. I would be incredulous if they did. I just try to train as hard as I can, and care for them in the ways I've been cared for by my own teachers as we live and train side by side week after week, and share our lives.
Instead of trying to justify being atop the pedestals that it sometimes feels like people want to put me on, or thinking that the highest Zen teaching is embodied in ideas and lectures, I keep in mind a story about a young student who went to train with the Zen Master Dogo. After several weeks of living with the master, cleaning up and serving tea, he became frustrated and asked his teacher when he would begin teaching him in Zen.
"Dogo said, 'When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning, do I not take it gratefully? When you give me something to eat when mealtime comes, do I not accept it? When you greet me, do I not return it? When have I not instructed you in the essentials of Zen?'”