John Daido Loori Roshi

I received a card today that informed me that the abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery had passed away. You can find more information about this interesting man on the pages set up in tribute to him by the Mountain and Rivers Order.

I did not know him well but I did have the opportunity to sit with him and listen to his dharma teachings. What I do remember of him was that his teaching seemed effortless, spontaneous and authentic. In very few words he cut quickly to the heart of things.

When I first visited Zen Mountain Monastery, I was looking for some serious peace of mind – my father had just passed a few months previously, my wife had left me a year before that and I was two months shy of a radical career change from software development to nursing. It was in this crazy, mixed-up state of mind that I first walked into the old church that serves as the meeting hall and zendo of this order.

The first weekend Daido spoke to us and although I don’t recall everything he said, I remember looking at the navy tattoo on his arm and thinking how it reminded me of my father’s. I thought – here is a man without pretention who is being himself. He is not trying to be refined; he is not trying to be anything. He smoked, a fact which in the end likely brought on his terminal lung cancer, and didn’t hide this fact either. He was who he was without apologies. I respect that.

He said a number of things that first weekend:

Regarding vegetarianism he said be mindful of what you put into your mouth, in the end cabbage or cow it is all the same, all of it takes life to sustain yours. Eating is sacred activity.

He was known to be cantankerous with his students when it was needed. During one of the dharma talks he spied a monk falling asleep sitting up – he broke from his soft-spoken lecture and shouted “Wake Up!” I assure you this had the effect of waking everyone up. Months later I realized that in two succinct works he had offered the central tenant of Zen Buddhism, “Wake Up,” and with it had drawn a metaphor between physical and spiritual waking up. The teaching was simple, authentic and beautiful. What is the practice of Zen Buddhism if it is not the practice of waking up, of awareness, of mindfulness?

During the first dharma talk I attended, Daido Roshi broached death, a topic especially poignant to me as my father had died only a few months previously. I remember in the experience of watching my father grapple with death, realizing that I, a rather reflective and thoughtful fellow, could never know about death until I faced it myself. I saw in my father that direct experience counted far more than endless hours of suppositions about what death would be like. While there is use in careful thought about experiences, one should perhaps take care not to equate introspection with experience. To this point, Daido offered this anecdote:

I was sitting with my teacher and said, “You know, I think I finally have a handle on this life and death thing.” To which his teacher replied by leaping forward grabbing Daido’s throat and squeezing as he knocked him over. At that moment, Daido said, he realized he didn’t have a clue about life and death. It was very simply done, and very to the point.

Broaching oneness he once said that oneness is all well and good, but if you walk out into the street with some unrefined belief in “everything is one” you are likely to get pasted by a car and in this he highlighted the middle way – everything is one and everything is not one.

During a question and answer session between us “Zen newbies” and the monastics, one of Daido Roshi’s students, Ryushin, replying to a question about enlightenment said, “If you are looking for enlightenment, you won’t find it here.” Again a central truth – we won’t find enlightenment by looking, thinking, searching elsewhere. It is right here, right now. “Practice is Enlightenment” as Daido would say later. Every moment is enlightenment if we could just be aware of it. As if we could survive today on yesterday’s experience.

Nearly every day I think of something I’ve heard in one of Daido’s dharma talks or have heard in the talks given by his spiritual successors, Ryushin, Shugen, Hojin or Jimon.

Thank you, DiRoshi, we never met face-to-face, but you pointed the way and I went searching for the ox.