see Part 1
Tricked into koans
In 1981, David Weinstein, currently teacher at the Oakland Zendo, moved from Hawaii to Japan. There he studied Zen with Koun Yamada, Roshi.
Yamada was something rare- a Japanese Zen teacher who was never ordained as a priest. He was a hospital administrator, husband and father of three children. He built a zendo- meditation hall- on his property. During the winter months, when it was too cold in the unheated zendo, he would invite his students into his own home to meditate.
Upon meeting Yamada, Weinstein felt he had found another grandfather. He timidly told Yamada that he “didn't do koans” and was only interested in sitting meditation. Yamada agreed with such kindness that Weinstein “immediately fell in love with him.”
Yamada agreed that he should commit himself to “just sitting” and added, “I want to ask you a question. You don't have to answer now, I don't even want you to think about it. Maybe sometime later we'll talk about this question: How do you stop the sound to the distant temple bell?
Weinstein recalls thinking that it was “a weird question. I had no idea it was a koan. I was glad I didn't have to think about it. I proceeded to forget it.”
After that, Yamada would occasionally ask him, “What about that question about the temple bell?” and Weinstein would reply, “I don't know.”
“Then one day he asked me the question and I heard this response coming out of my mouth and he said, 'Yeah- like that.'” Weinstein says he does not remember what that reponse was, and says it doesn't matter. After that, Yamada would continue to pose “weird questions,” until he eventually suggested Weinstein undertake formal koan study and he agreed. “At that point, my trust in him was so cemented that I thought, if he thinks I should try, I'll try.”
Yamada gave him his first official koan and Weinstein, “treated it like those other questions- I just forgot it. I never thought about and didn't worry about it until I was going to go see him and had to give him an answer. I was doomed from that point on. I was tricked into koans!”
Weinstein feels that the kindly, familial quality of Yamada's teaching helped “defuse the charge” around the mysterious koans and make them more approachable. This has inspired his determination to help his own students discover how to integrate koans into their ordinary lives.
After seven years of study, he left Japan to return to California, where he would attend graduate school and continue the study of koans on his native soil.
(see Part 3)
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Stephen Colgan can be contacted at StephenColganMFT@sbcglobal.net
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