Shadeless Trees

Greetings Friends,

We are moving through this wonderful collection of encounters with Buddhist Women found in the book The Hidden Lamp for our Summer Read. This week we met Keizan Zenji and Mokufu Sonin engaged in the dialogue below:

Hidden Lamp Case 20: Sonin’s Shadeless Tree

Master Keizan Jokin asked the nun Mokufu Sonin, “The winter is coming to an end and the springtime is arriving. There is an order to this. What is your understanding?”

Sonin replied, “In the braches of a tree without shade, how could there be any seasons?”

These two people are very important figures in the history of Zen Buddhism. They are direct Ancestors in our Soto Zen lineage tree. So, they are our Ancestors.

What is an Ancestor?

One way we understand Ancestor in Buddhism is someone who aligns their heart and mind with the aspiration to awaken and liberate all beings from suffering. So, someone who wants to help us wake up!

But one Zen teacher says in actuality —all beings are your ancestor.

What would it be like to truly see the world this way?

Are all beings trying to awaken us?

Is everyone we meet helping us on this path of liberation from suffering?

Are they, through their words, thoughts and actions aiding us in opening our own hearts and minds to the love, compassion and wisdom of this universe?

It may not always feel that way. But we can aspire to practice as if it were true, this is taking the view of bodhicitta— the great compassion unfolding this life.

Connecting to the Zen Ancestors can remind us that humans have been walking this path of awakening for a long time. They were shaped by the path and they also shaped or opened new dimensions of the path through their embodied walking.

I find that hearing the ancestor’s stories is a lot like pulling a tarot card, or reading a myth or fairytale. Their life stories usually contain dharma teachings, universal themes about the path, but also personal dimensions that may resonate with our own struggles, questions, doubts, curiosities or lived experience.

Keizan’s Path

Keizan Zenji is a great example of this. Considered the “mother of Soto Zen”, he was born in the early years of Soto Zen in Japan, just eleven years after Dogen Zenji (the founder) died. His mother and his grandmother were both Zen practitioners, but also embodied and practiced a more ancient form of spirituality that was common amongst women at the time—a form of spirituality we might call “folk” or “shamanistic” or “animist”. (In her recent books, Bringing Zen Home and The Little Book of Zen Healing Paula Arai explores how the blend of Zen and shamanism is still alive in how many lay women engage in dharma practice).

Below is an excerpt from Sallie Tisdale’s book Women of the Way, here she shares the story of Keizan’s birth. This short selection introduces us to some of the people and practices that influenced Keizan throughout his life.

Many years later, when Ekan Daishi was thirty-seven years old, she had a dream. She swallowed the morning light, warm and as soft as silk, and it filled her entire body. A few days later she realized she was pregnant. Then she prayed, as she had often prayed, to the beloved statue of Kannon: “May this child be a spiritual leader, a benefit to all, and please, may the delivery be easy.” For the next seven months, she bowed 1,333 times each day and recited the Kannon Sutra. The baby was born on the property of the Kannon Temple in the province of Echizen, without pain. A short while later Daishi took vows as a nun, and the baby’s grandmother, Myōchi, helped raise him.

So Keizan was raised with a deep connection to both his mother and grandmother and to the Bodhisattva Kannon (who is the bodhisattva of compassion). He was brought up in an enchanted world, where kami (spirits) filled the natural world, where Buddha’s and Bodhisattva’s appeared in dreams, where even the mundane aspects of life were part of the art, the ritual of living in an interconnected world of mutual reciprocity. A world emerging from the great compassion of Kannon. Keizan also listened to the wisdom of his dreams, practiced Buddhist astrology and geomancy.

He was instrumental in creating and recording the ceremonies we have throughout the Buddhist liturgical year. His love for the ancestors, led him to gather the stories of the Zen Buddhist lineage dating back to Shakyamuni Buddha. Creating a mythological retelling of their lives, and giving teachings inspired by their stories. This collection of his dharma talks on the ancestors, is called the Denkuroku, the Transmission of the Light.

Here’s another selection from Women of the Way revealing some of the ways he practiced and saw the world, and how he carried his mother’s vow forward after she died.

His dreams about Yōkōji were strong and good, filled with spirits and buddhas. Even the stars overhead, streaming slowly between the black branches of the pines, were correctly aligned. The hills were no more beautiful than other nearby hills, but he could see through these particular hills to the hidden hills beneath. He believed that he could see the true monastery already there, the one belonging to the other world—the world of protectors and guides. In this place, where the boundary between worlds was very thin, he would build the Monastery of the Eternal Light.

A year later Daishi died. Almost at the moment of her death she reached for her son’s hand. “I made a vow to Kannon,” she said. “You must continue it. You must help all beings come to the Dharma. Especially, most especially, because you can, you must help all women of the three worlds and the ten directions. “Take the little statue,” she added, nodding toward the Kannon she had found all those years ago in the mud. “Take care of it forever.” In her memory, Keizan ordered that a Sōtō women’s temple, Hōō-ji, be built in the province of Kaga.

Keizan and Sonin’s Dharma Friendship

One of the most remarkable aspects of Keizan, is that he really took this vow to heart.

Sonin was a patron, she donated the mountain where Keizan built Yokoji, one of the many monasteries he helped found, and the one where he spent most of his time. After Sonin’s husband died, she went to Keizan to ask for ordination. The night before Keizan had a dream that his beloved deceased grandmother came to him and asked for ordination. From this point on he regarded Sonin as a reincarnation of his grandmother, and the two were very close as teacher and student, and then as friends and collaborators. Keizan wrote that the two of them were like, “magnet and iron.”

Keizan wrote that Sonin’s aspiration for awakening “clarifies each day”, that “she radiates kindness” and that her “insight is ripening”, shortly before the dialogue above took place. He had asked her about, “temporal existence” and she was unable to answer. She let this question work on her. And sometime later asked Keizan to engage in dharma combat. That is when he asked her about the seasons changing from winter to spring.

Sonin’s understanding was clear, and she was able to meet Keizan in the place with neither light or shadow.

Sonin is the first woman in the Soto Zen lineage of Japan to receive full dharma transmission. Keizan gave transmission to two other women, Konto Ekyu and Myosho Ekan, before he died. (Keizan’s mother Ekan Daishi, Mokufu Sonin, Konto Ekyu and Myosho Ekan are all part of the Women’s Lineage found in the ZCO chant book, at the monastery we would chant their names as part of morning service twice a week.)

In closing, this short snapshot into the lives of Keizan and Sonin, I want to share another excerpt from the Women of the Way.

In 1322 Keizan and the nuns founded Enzūin, the Temple of All Pervading Perfection, across the stream from the mountain gate, hidden in the trees. Enzūin was dedicated to the well-being of women forever, and it was most especially meant as an honor to his grandmother and in keeping the promise he made to his mother Ekan Daishi when she died.

At the dedication, the statue of Kanzeon, with its eleven serene faces, was installed as the main image. It had come to seem like an animate thing, hearing and acting on the prayers of its bearers. In its base Keizan placed a lock of his own baby hair and his umbilical cord, which his mother had preserved. In this way, he gave his own life to this women’s hermitage in the trees.

Sonin was the first living abbot there, although Ekan Daishi was considered the first ancestoral abbot. There is still a portrait of Ekan Daishi, Keizan’s mother and Sonin as the first abbots on the Yokoji temple property.

So, here is a story of the legacy of two Zen Ancestors. If you want to learn more, listen to the podcast where I also explore this short koan exchange and how we too are shadeless trees, in the midst of the changing seasons of our lives. If you are curious to learn more about Keizan and Sonin, there is this great resource here.

Is there are any aspects of Keizan and Sonin’s story that piqued your interest or felt resonate with your own life and practice?

Hope to see you for one of our live online gatherings or in person for a retreat this summer!

Weekly Online Meditation Event

Monday Night Dharma — 6P PT / 9P ET Join weekly for drop-in meditation and dharma talk. We are currently exploring the Hidden Lamp: Teaching from the Buddhist Women Ancestors

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I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, Astrologer and Artist. I offer 1:1 Spiritual Counseling sessions using IFS and Hakomi (somatic mindfulness). I also offer astrology readings. Check out my website to learn more. I currently live in Columbus, OH and am a supporting teacher for the Mud Lotus Sangha.