Not one for birthday fanfare, yet the 50-year mark persistently called for attention. After many years focused on teaching and enjoying all the challenges and creativity of its vocation, this year I found myself drawn to personal intensive training. After all, teachers need teachers and training too!

I’d been stalking Chozen-ji for six years, ever since my gongfu sibling described their month-long residency, and shared Tanouye Rotaishi’s translation of the Fudochi Shimmyo Roku, all of which rang bells of deep resonance. To give you context, I’ve shared a little bit from the official website: 

Chozen-ji was founded by Omori Sogen and Tenshin Tanouye, both renowned Zen masters, swordsmen and calligraphers. Omori Sogen was a direct Dharma Successor in the Tenryu-ji Line of Rinzai Zen and a successor of Yamaoka Tesshu's Taishi School of Calligraphy and of the Jikishinkage School of Fencing. 

Tanouye Roshi was a kamaʻaina – born of the land of Hawaiʻi – and a public school teacher with a specialty in music who turned his school room into a martial arts dojo every afternoon. He was also a determined student of the martial arts and earned the 6th or 7th degree in seven different arts including Judo, Kendo, Karate, Iaido and Jojitsu.

With this background, Tanouye Roshi developed an approach to Zen that uses the breath and physical training to cultivate Ki’ai—the intangible yet ever-present spirit/vibration of every object, person or interaction. Using the martial and fine arts, he developed an accessible method that emphasized the interruption of habits and attachments. In doing so, he gave practical form to Omori Roshi’s proclamation in the Chozen-ji Canon:

“Zen without the accompanying physical experience is nothing but empty discussion. Martial ways without realizing the "Mind" is nothing but beastly behavior.”

The above quote is in clear alignment with the principles I train and live, and even now, reading it brightens an internal spiritual flame. Chozen-ji is not generally open to mainlanders, as training isn’t designed for tourists. So, I felt lucky to be invited to join a rare, one week intensive for beginners.

Day One

The Tenzo (head of the kitchen), a powerful Filipina healer and multi-year resident, took me aside, told me I needed to “bring it, I mean really bring it,” show these kids how it’s done, because I was repping the 50+ folks like us. As her eyes lasered into mine, I switched into the beyond-zen gear named Chozen-ji.

Boxing, conditioning, martial arts training

"Intense martial spirit is woven into the fabric of all operations, efficiency and purpose expressed through the body in motion, with the land."

An austere, beautiful Japanese aesthetic is ever present, without being overwrought. There are many areas of ordering, the kitchen, bathroom, zendo, weeding the grounds, stacking wood, and smoothing gravel. Conceptually, the activities are quite simple, yet to be meaningful they require daily animation, with equal attention. Zazen was not more important than dishwashing, Kendo and boxing were not above weeding, etc. Tidying, and not leaving bits of ourselves around for others to clean up, was a general ethos. Training is in all things, always in motion, without exception. All done with focused intensity and a fast pace, with dignified form and alignment. It can seem fierce, even harsh in its directness, and is designed to keep us awake, not allowing the mind to alight on old habits and beliefs, thus returning energy to the entirety of being.

When the mind builds up a hierarchy of preferences, thinks it is above or below a simple task, suffering sets in. Internal arguments, complaints, rebellion, resentments…distract from the task at hand, and destroys one's dignified and centered posture. Feeding aberrant thoughts ultimately wastes energy, causes frustration, fatigue, and negativity. Working the small effects the whole, working the large effects the whole too. It's a practice of mental-physical hygiene and totally mundane, yet accumulates toward a more ordered and unperturbed base. When we persistently comb out resistance and static, all activity flows in the same direction. When it happens collectively, we co-resonate, get in the zone together, rowing the boat in the same direction with more power and joy than a single individual could ever imagine. It's like a beautiful symphony, much more than just notes and technique. To make music takes real physical labor and skill accumulated over time, with equal amounts of listening and attuning to conditions that arise in the moment. Our bodies are the instrument, the community is the orchestra. We each play and yield, sensitive to timing, rhythm, and role, within a communal environment.

Chopping and stacking wood was part of daily practice. Fuel for the wood fire kiln

Chozen-ji is a Zen dojo and temple in the Rinzai lineage, a direct descendant from the samurai. Its training focuses on three main branches: Zen, martial arts, and fine arts. Why I felt drawn to this tradition was because for three decades my path has been in martial arts, fine arts, Classical Chinese Medicine, and Daoism. For most of my education, these disciplines were separate, but internally I always sought a unified stream. So I was excited to discover Chozen-ji braiding these together, communally, in Hawaii for over 50 years. The invitation to train as a novice was an immense privilege.

I could’ve been remorseful for not having found Chozen-ji earlier, as a young twenty-something and imagined a more streamlined path, but why give myself a hard time? I am not in control of such things. A benefit of being older is appreciating complexity, releasing dogma, and widening perspective. After many years of chronic illness, major surgeries, debilitating injury, I’ve been in very low places that I didn’t volunteer for. Yet I wouldn’t have the faith and the tenacity for life as I do now were it not for those challenges. In addition, over time and through the hardships, my sense of humor and willingness to be curious and delighted became healthier too. Humor can restore an innate wildness, and is sometimes the only medicine that can turn a situation around.

Hotei. Calligraphy "Look beneath your feet"

"All work is training, none more important than another."

As the 50-year-old on a team of newbies half my age, I surprised myself that I could meet the fast pace and intensity, and even felt the training enlivening! In a few days, I could keep up with my long-legged Senpai, who was over a foot taller than me, and became familiar with the schedule. Which sounds easy enough, but it’s called an intensive for a reason, the schedule is relentless from pre-dawn to sleep, active full body-mind attention. Physically, mentally, and energetically, there are many activities including zazen, kinhin, okyo, boxing, conditioning, hojo, kendo, meals, setup, breakdown, cleaning, splitting and stacking wood, weeding, moving giant stones...all work is training, none more important than another.

This I struggled with when it came to cleaning the bathroom. It seemed to take the other newbies all week to figure out when and how to clean the bathroom, even though it was the same time every day. I built up resentment and judgments of their unwillingness to help and made up stories about how spoiled, lazy, and privileged they were. Treating me like a maid, leaving auntie to do the foulest cleaning while they were making themselves a second cup of coffee, or taking 15 minutes to put on a band-aid. On the third night, sore and inflamed from the hours of boxing training and physical labor, I was in so much pain, I barely slept. Yet the worst pain was in my mind. I blamed those selfish youngsters for not getting with the program and making me pick up after them. Restlessly, I tossed around on the hard tatami, while the wind and rain drummed and burst onto the zendo walls. My mind and body burned through precious sleep hours with judgments and stories about people I hardly knew. It wasn’t until the cold hour before the roosters crowed, absolutely exhausted, that I just didn’t have any gas left to burn. Only then could I remember myself once being twenty-something, and how consumed I was with doubt, injustice, lack of self-esteem, relational strife, major health issues, and the general drama of youth. Finally, I realized the judgements and rage were familial and cultural habits that had been projected onto me for much of my life, and here I was, re-enacting this useless pattern onto people around me. It was unkind, unnecessary, and truly wasteful. Were I the only novice student, I’d be doing all these jobs on my own anyway. So why was I making misery and projecting blame? Getting up with the roosters, I decided to do these jobs with excellence and dignity, for my own satisfaction and desire to contribute to the whole. This mental re-frame helped me to the very last day, on solo bathroom duty again, this time knowing that I left Chozen-ji in the best condition I was able to. One small act of reciprocity to appreciate the attention and care I received all week from the established community. It felt clean.

Teachers and students

"At least half of the training is the land shaping us."

Hawaii is vivacious, with supersized plant, animal, and insect life. We’d clear an area of weeds, and an hour later see new ones pop up with vigorous life force. Being tucked into Kalihi valley, we had all sorts of weather…rain squalls, downpours, streaks blown sideways, sun and rainbows through soft and fluffy drizzle. Sometimes you smelled the ocean, sometimes it was the mud, or the trees as the wind combed through the ridges, animating the mountain like a furry green dragon. It pulled apart the clouds, and on dark nights, thundered on the zendo where not much sleep was had. It was a theatrical drama, but not a human drama, and therefore felt refreshing and energizing. No head trips, no blame. Just wind. Just rain. Just sun. Just moon.

Returning to nature is a common theme, perhaps the primary theme in Daoism and Zen, too easily forgotten even amongst long-time practitioners who primarily think and talk about Zen and the Dao, rather than being animated by its true nature. Living in the city, it's hard to feel the profundity of how temporal human existence is in the context of nature. Urban environments are intentionally human-centered and it’s easy to assume this orientation as the norm, but it is not the true order of the cosmos or even this tiny planet. Climbing the mountain ridges surrounding the Dojo, the red earth could shrug you off the cliff or blow you down with a sigh. It is obvious humans are not the most powerful force and certainly not the most important. To cultivate land and waters directly is to fulfill life, sensitive and responsive to the interwoven relationship of humankind and nature, by continually erasing the distinction.

Chozen-ji Temple grounds

November 2024

Join us for more training