and a half. Leaving my wife behind, I had recently resigned from my job on the mainland. I had come to Hawaii to study kyudo, the Zen Art of Archery. My destination was Chozen-Ji, a Zen temple located in the Kalihi valley, a ten-minute drive from downtown Honolulu.
I had written ahead to inform Tanouye Roshi2 , the abbot of Chozen-Ji, of the time of my arrival. Usually when students from the mainland come to Hawaii, he makes arrangements to have them met at the airport and brought back to the temple. However, I had explained in my letter that I would be happy to take a cab if it would be more convenient.
After collecting my suitcase in the baggage claim area, I looked around to see if anyone had been sent for me. Unfortunately, I did not know who I should be looking for. Perhaps the person from Chozen-Ji would not be able to recognize me. I started to feel ill at ease. How long should I wait before taking a cab? What if I took one and missed the person who had come to meet me? My anxiety about entering a Zen temple grew. What did this mean? Was this a message of some sort? Zen masters are known to treat their students harshly. Was this part of my training; or was it a sign I was not welcome?
Finally, after about two hours, I hailed a taxi. I gave the driver the address and was relieved when he told me that he had heard of the street the temple is on. He took the highway towards downtown Honolulu, then quickly exited on to Kalihi Street, the street that Chozen-Ji is on. The road began to climb; the higher we went, the narrower it became. The setting now looked more like a tropical rain forest than a major metropolitan area. The driver told me he had never traveled this far into the valley before. We continued to climb. He slowed down, turned right into a driveway, and told me we were there.
"What kind of place is this?" he asked.
"A Zen temple," I replied.
"I've never seen it before," he said, looking intrigued. "I'd like to come back here some time and have a better look at it."
I paid the driver, got out of the cab, and looked around. It was dusk and very still. In front of me were two sets of Japanese-style buildings separated by a large hill. I walked towards the buildings on my left and saw a sign that read, "Visitors Check in at Office." Below was an arrow that was supposed to point the way to the office. Unfortunately, I could not tell which set of buildings it pointed to.
There was still no sign of activity. I decided to check the buildings on my left. I climbed several stairs and stepped on to the verandah that ran along the outside of the building. I noticed a faint smell of incense and advanced forward. Suddenly, Tanouye Roshi came running out of the doorway. "Quiet, we're doing zazen and take your shoes off!" he said (I later saw the sign at the top of the stairs that said "no shoes past this point"). He motioned me to go back to the stairs and said, "We were wondering when you were going to arrive."
"Didn't you get my letter?" I asked.
"I got the letter," he replied. "You gave us the flight number and your arrival time. You forgot to tell us what day." He slowly shook his head from side to side.
I took my shoes off on the stairs and stepped back on to the verandah. Tanouye Roshi then showed me into the kitchen. "Hurry up and change into your training clothes," he said. "Kyudo practice starts in half an hour and you might as well go. I know this is going to be hard for you."
I changed clothes and waited in the kitchen. An older Japanese man with a shaved head and wearing priest's robes walked by on the verandah. Tanouye Roshi spoke to him in Japanese and brought him towards me. "This," said Tanouye Roshi, "is Suhara Osho." I said I was pleased to meet him. Tanouye Roshi translated.
I had been looking forward to this meeting for a year and a half. Suhara Koun Osho is a Zen priest from the Engaku-Ji temple in Kamakura, Japan, and is also a kyudo master. Tanouye Roshi had met him the year before and had invited him to come to Chozen-Ji to help establish a kyudo school there. This was the end of his second visit to Chozen-Ji; he was scheduled to return to Japan in four days. I had timed my trip to meet and train with him in Hawaii. I hoped that this introduction would make it possible to study with him in Japan later in the year. In fact, I had already arranged a job in Japan so that I would be able to support myself while training with him.
Tanouye Roshi then pointed me in the direction of the kyudo dojo and told me to go there for practice. Disoriented and embarrassed by my entrance to Chozen-Ji, I walked to the kyudo dojo for my first lesson in the Zen art of archery. Over the entrance of the dojo were four Japanese characters. Later I learned that their English translation is "One arrow, one life."
Like most Westerners, until that day what I knew of kyudo came from the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel. Herrigel was a German philosophy professor who spent five years in Japan during the 1930s. Wanting to study Zen, he was advised by friends to take up one of the Zen arts. Because of his previous experience with pistol shooting, Herrigel chose kyudo.
I first read Herrigel's book in 1967 as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin. It was the first book that I read in college, assigned by my English composition teacher for reasons I no longer remember. In spite of its popularity, I was disdainful of the book. I had no interest in spiritual matters and was impatient with what I considered to be vague mysticism.
Five years later, as a graduate student in psychology at the University of Michigan, I started studying another Japanese art, karate. I trained hard in it for five years, and receiving a black belt became an important goal for me. Before I could achieve that goal, I obtained my doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1977 and moved to Toledo, Ohio. I continued to prepare for my black belt examination there.
The year before I moved to Toledo, I met Mike Sayama, a fellow graduate student. I learned that he had studied martial arts at a Zen temple named Chozen-Ji in Hawaii. He invited me to practice zazen with him. Still having no interest in Zen and finding unappealing the thought of sitting cross-legged on the floor for long periods of time, I declined his invitation.
Shortly after moving to Toledo, I saw Mike demonstrate a kendo form as practiced at Chozen-Ji. I had never seen such intense concentration before in the martial arts. This was a dimension to the martial arts that was new to me. When he again invited me to train with him, I accepted.
Mike started a small training group for people interested in Zen and the martial arts. I commuted 200 miles a week to participate. Although I joined for the martial arts training, zazen was required of all participants and, reluctantly, I did zazen with them. Through the group, I became interested in Zen for the first time. Ten years after dismissing it as vague mysticism I reread Zen in the Art of Archery and saw it in an entirely new light.
In Zen they say that when you are ready for a teacher, the teacher finds you. In 1977, I was ready. In retrospect I was experiencing a life crisis. For as long as I could remember, my energies were focused on establishing myself professionally. Through four years of college and six years of graduate school, I imagined that when I received my degree my life would fall into place and that I would have no worries. In 1977 I had obtained my PhD, got a good job and began to have articles accepted by professional journals. Yet, for some reason, the fulfillment that I anticipated did not accompany these successes. I was left with a growing sense of uneasiness, a feeling that there must be more to life than professional prestige. For the first time, Zen interested me. I saw Zen training as a way to find the fulfillment that was lacking in my life. Zen became the way out of my existential dilemma.
As I trained in Zen, my attitude towards the martial arts changed. Where once I saw the martial arts as means of self-defense or physical conditioning, I now saw they also afford the opportunity for spiritual growth. Soon, pursuing a black belt became yet another meaningless goal in my life; progress in the search for one's true self cannot be measured by a piece of colored cloth.
The Japanese affix
