Katagiri Roshi Twenty Year Memorial And Enlightenment

Katagiri Roshi died in the early morning hours of March 1, 1990. Tomorrow morning we’ll be doing a memorial ceremony after morning zazen. It’ll be much like last year’s commemoration – click here for that.

“Rely on the teaching not the teacher” says the first of the four reliances. Indeed, every teacher is unreliable at least in death. What was Katagiri Roshi’s teaching?

One of the Katagiri-inspired reflections that I’ve been doing lately has to do with enlightenment, the central issue of Buddhist practice, imho.

Reading Two Shores of Zen I was reminded about how in some lineages, enlightenment is the only thing. Reading a yet-to-be published manuscript from another line, I was reminded how in some lineages, there is no enlightenment. Or nonenlightenment is enlightenment.

I’ve got a few things to say about this that don’t fit well in this post so I may return to this theme in the near future.

Anyway, in terms of commemorating Roshi and relying on the teaching, it seems to me that in this regard he had a balanced view.

“Of course, enlightenment is important for us,” Roshi often said, and because it is important he often focused on daily life as an antidote to spiritual intoxication and to encourage the activity of enlightenment, bringing peace and harmony to our little corner of the world.

In the context of the rampant spiritual fascination of 70’s and 80’s, this makes sense to me. Maybe if he had lived to this day where enlightenment is mostly poo-poo-ed in Zen circles, he’d emphasize it more.

So here’s a memorial story about Katagiri Roshi’s attitude toward enlightenment from the first book I wrote and didn’t publish. I searched for the recording of these events but found that none existed. Well, the visiting teacher refused to allow recordings but we recorded nearly everything Roshi ever said. The tape for this talk cut off just before the question below was asked.

I did check with the person who asked the questions and he remembered it very much like I did.

In about 1981, Minnesota Zen Center hosted an important teacher, one of the few Americans at the time who had received dharma transmission. He and Katagiri-roshi led a workshop together. Our guest was big in body and charisma. He walked steadily with his head slightly tilted toward the floor, seemingly pushing the floor like a rolling pin.

During a discussion period with him, Katagiri-roshi absent, a new student asked, “Are you enlightened?”

The room tensed as if a taboo had been violated. The teacher’s chest seemed to contract. His face flushed. “That’s a meaningless question,” he snapped, “don’t ask me such things.”

Why be defensive, I wondered?

The next day it was Katagiri-roshi’s turn to lead the discussion. The visiting teacher was absent. Again, the same man asked, “Are you enlightened?”

“Oh, enlightenment,” said Katagiri-roshi, completely nonplussed. “You know, one day I was at monastery [Tassajara]. So hot. So hot. Almost nobody else came to zazen. Anyway, I went. Sweating. Thinking, ‘How stupid you are.’ Suddenly, just like Dogen-zenji say, body and mind dropped off completely. Then after a while, ‘I’ came back. Ahhh! Then I feel as if I am floating up into the sky, thinking, ‘Now you are a saint.’”

With this Katagiri-roshi flung back his head and laughed at himself, as if to say, “How stupid I am!”

Katagiri Roshi Twenty Year Memorial and Enlightenment