Sekida Kazuki - Zen Training: Methods and Philosophy

Written by a lay teacher with 60 years of experience in zazan, this book provides everyone from absolute beginner to experienced student with detailed, progressive information and discussion on breathing, posture, distraction, actions of mind, physiology, mood, laughter, kensho, and samadhi.

Library Journal

An extraordinarily important book. It should be on the shelves of all libraries.

Choice

[Sekidas] approach is radical in its attempt to define Zen practice in terms of Western physiology and phenomenology.

New Age Journal

This book is a valuable work. Though physiologically technical, it remains personal and practical, focusing on the actual experience of zazen practice. Ultimately, however, it is the concentrated and serious spirit of the book that most tellingly establishes its value to those interested in Zen.

Philip Kapleau

ABOUT THE BOOK

Zen Training is a comprehensive handbook for zazen , seated meditation practice, and an authoritative presentation of the Zen path. The book marked a turning point in Zen literature in its critical reevaluation of the enlightenment experience, which the author believes has often been emphasized at the expense of other important aspects of Zen training. In addition, Zen Training goes beyond the first flashes of enlightenment to explore how one lives as well as trains in Zen. The author also draws many significant parallels between Zen and Western philosophy and psychology, comparing traditional Zen concepts with the theories of being and cognition of such thinkers as Heidegger and Husserl.

KATSUKI SEKIDA (18931987) was by profession a high school teacher of English until his retirement in 1945. Zen, nevertheless, was his lifelong preoccupation. He began his Zen practice in 1915 and trained at Empuku-ji in Kyoto and Ryutaki-ji in Mishima, Shizuoka Prefecture. He taught at the Honolulu Zendo and Maui Zendo from 1963 to 1970 and at the London Zen Society from 1970 to 1972.

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ZEN TRAINING

METHODS AND PHILOSOPHY

Katsuki Sekida

edited, with an introduction, by A. V. Grimstone

SHAMBHALA

Boston & London

2012

S HAMBHALA P UBLICATIONS , I NC.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

1985 Katsuki Sekida and A. V. Grimstone

Cover art: Circle, Triangle, Square, by Sengai.

Reproduced with permission of Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sekida, Kazuki, 1893

Zen training: methods and philosophy/ Katsuki Sekida; edited with an introduction by A. V. Grimstone.

p. cm.

Originally published: New York: Weatherhill, 1975.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2583-3

ISBN 978-1-59030-283-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. MeditationZen Buddhism. 2. Zen BuddhismDoctrines.

I. Grimstone, A.V. Title.

BQ9288.S4313 2005

294.34435dc22

2005048965

Contents

I SHOULD LIKE to express here my thanks to all those who have helped and encouraged me in the writing and publishing of this book. Parts of it originally appeared in Diamond Sangha, the publication of the Zen group of Honolulu, and I must first express my feeling of gratitude to Mr. Robert Aitken, who initially edited my articles and prepared them for publication in Diamond Sangha, and to Mrs. Anne Aitken, who typed my manuscripts and generally spared no effort in the work of getting them printed. Without their helping hands, encouragement, and the hospitality of the pages of Diamond Sangha, those articles would never have appeared. This also is the place to express my gratitude to the readers of Diamond Sangha for their steady encouragement; it has meant much to me.

The articles that appeared at that time were independent of each other and were published separately. The work of organizing those articles into book form, of editing the material that I added later, and of writing the introduction was undertaken by Dr. A. V. Grimstone, in Cambridge, England. I wish to thank him most warmly for the care he has devoted to the task, and for his many helpful suggestions. He has worked on the book as if it were his own.

I also wish to thank Miss Debra Graynom, of the Maui Zendo, who helped me by typing some parts of the manuscript, and more generally I want to express my gratitude for the encouragement given me by the members of the Zen groups of Honolulu and Maui, and the members of the London Zen Society. Among the latter I particularly want to thank Mr. Geoffrey Hargett for suggesting .

I hope that this book will be of interest and help to those who wish to study Zen. Good luck in your Zen practice!

K ATSUKI S EKIDA

Kochi Prefecture, Japan, 1975

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author and editor wish to express their gratitude to the following for granting permission to reprint published material: Chatto and Windus, Random House, and the literary estate of C. K. Scott-Moncrieff for extracts from Scott-Moncrieffs translation of Marcel Prousts Swanns Way and Within a Budding Grove; the University of Illinois Press for a figure from the American Journal of Psychology; R. D. Laing and Penguin Books for an extract from The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise, 1967 by R. D. Laing; David Magarshack and Penguin Books for passages from the formers translations of Dostoevskis The Idiot and The Devils, 1953, 1955 by David Magarshack; A. C. Guyton and W. B. Saunders Company for material from Function of the Human Body; Iris Murdoch and Routledge and Kegan Paul for passages from The Sovereignty of Good; Manchester University Press and the University of Chicago Press for an extract from Karl Jaspers General Psychopathology, translated by J. Hoenig and Marian W. Hamilton; and Macmillan Publishing Company and Allen and Unwin for a passage from Edmund Husserls Idea of Phenomenology, translated by W. P. Alston and G. Nakhnikian in Readings in Twentieth-Century Philosophy.

T HE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK , Katsuki Sekida, was born in Kochi, a town in the southwest of Japan, in 1893. He began the practice and study of Zen in his early twenties, in circumstances that are partly described in chapter 16 of this book, and has continued this uninterrupted ever since. His experience therefore extends over almost sixty years. Although his study and practice of Zen have been intense and profound, and although he lived and studied for some years in a Zen monastery, Ryutaku-ji, he has always remained a layman, earning his living as a schoolteacher until his retirement in 1945. In his later years he has become greatly respected as a teacher of Zen. These few biographical facts are important to the reader, I believe, since they help to establish that this book is the work of a man who can write of Zen with the authority of prolonged experience and deep study.

In 1963, Mr. Sekida accepted an invitation to go to Honolulu to join a Zen group that had been founded there at the initiative of Robert Aitken, and he remained in Hawaii until 1970. It was in Honolulu that Mr. Sekida began working on an expanded English version of a book he had written in Japanese, An Introduction to Zen for Beginners, and early drafts of various chapters of this book were circulated with a newsletter, Diamond Sangha, published by the Honolulu Zen group. I met Mr. Sekida in 1968, when I was working in Honolulu for a time, and again in 1971, when he came to England for several months at the invitation of the London Zen Society. At that time he asked me if I would assist him in the final preparation of his manuscript for publication. I gladly agreed to do this, since it seems to me that his ideas are interesting and important and his book is a most valuable one. I can claim no profound knowledge or experience of Zen myself, but in the course of my professional activities as a scientist I have acquired a certain experience of writing and editing, and it seemed to me that it was this that Mr. Sekida chiefly needed, rather than a deep knowledge of his subject. Mr. Sekida completed his manuscript in 1972, and the final version is now before the reader.