I consider myself to be a pretty typical Jewish girl from New York, and I had always considered my parents to be pretty typical, if liberal, New York-Jew parents. Or I did up until about two years ago. Then they went Buddhist on me.

Sam Brenner The Roshi and His Translation Spread Knowledge

Not that this was a bad thing; in fact, I think it’s pretty cool that on those weekends during my senior year in high school when I got the apartment to myself, my parents were often out in the forests of upstate New York meditating at the Omega Institute (a place where affluent city folk get in touch with their inner Buddhas). So, the point is that Zen Buddhism has been a part of my life for some time now, via my tofu-loving parents.

For this reason, I was particularly excited to attend a lecture on Monday by Roshi Keido Fukushima entitled "The Sixth Patriarch’s Zen." The Rose Hills Theatre was respectably full of both students and faculty. This lecture was the first of three events offered during the Roshi’s two-day visit to Pomona, which is an annual event and is sponsored by the Religious Studies department. On Tuesday afternoon, he gave a lecture and demonstration on Zen calligraphy, and in the evening he led a Zazen meditation meeting, where he discussed Zen practice. I was unfortunately unable to attend the events on Tuesday, but if Monday’s lecture was any indication, I’m confident that they were both fun and informative.

Fukushima is the Abbot of Tofukuji, one of the great temples of Kyoto, Japan. He was introduced by Religious Studies department chair Margaret Dornish as one of the preeminent contemporary Buddhist leaders and teachers and one who has made a particular effort to "build bridges" between Asia and the West. Dornish and the Fukushima have known each other for thirty years, since the time when both were students. He became head Abbot of Tofukuji in 1989, and he has visited Pomona every year since.

Dan May The Big Chill: Students get ready to practice their Mantra.

The Roshi lectured in Japanese with a translator. He is a smiling, funny, gentle-seeming man who told several jokes and anecdotes before beginning the lecture proper. He opened his talk with a story about a visit he made to Pomona in the early seventies, when he made a mocking comment about then-president of the college Alexander behind his back. The comment made its way to Alexander and garnered him an invitation to his house for dinner. The two are apparently very close friends to this day, but Fukushima noted that he always has and always will continue to address him as President Alexander." The Roshi’s connection to the college is a long standing one that he affectionately termed "the K/C (Kyoto/Claremont) connection."

The lecture was about how the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism(that is, the sixth disciple of the disciple etc. of Bodhidharma, who is considered the father of the Zen school of Buddhism) became a Buddha, and then went on to become a patriarch. He spoke first about the difference between Indian Buddhism and Chinese Buddhism; Bodhidharma was the one to bring Buddhism from India to China, and it was in China that Zen had its beginning. The main distinction is that Indian Buddhism is rooted in the study of Buddhist philosophy, whereas Chinese and Japanese Zen Buddhism is more centered around the practice or Buddhism in all aspects of day-to-day life (i.e., meditation).

The short version of the story of the Sixth Patriarch is that he was originally a woodcutter who became a monk and then a Buddha (which means he reached enlightenment via meditation). He won the mind-seal by writing a new version of a poem that demonstrated his deep understanding of Buddha nature to the Fifth Patriarch.

After he spoke about the Sixth Patriarch, the Roshi went on to discuss his relationship with D.T. Suzuki, a Zen scholar and trained monk widely known throughout the Western world. Fukushima attended Suzuki’s University and knows him well. He spoke of Suzuki’s struggle with how to teach Zen to Americans. He felt that he needed to take a different approach than the one he used with Chinese and Japanese students, which was based on Zen practice, because he believes Americans to be very intellectual and more responsive to philosophical discussion than meditation. Fukushima views this as a barrier to a full understanding of Zen, which he classified as very focused on the self and less so on doctrine or philosophy. An intellectual understanding is valuable, but experiential practice is necessary to fully grasp Zen.

The Roshi had a few more observations of Zen in America. According to him, it became a trend in the sixties, when hippies would take LSD and talk about Zen. He thinks that some hippies were truly spiritual and took good paths in Zen training; they didn’t just read about it, they actually meditated. Fukushima himself took on his first four American disciples in 1974, and four more in the course of the eighties. He noticed in the late eighties what he described as a dangerous turning point in Zen, namely that many Americans who were turned onto it mixed up different Zen and Buddhist practices that resulted in what he called "mixed-salad Zen." He sees this problem as having been largely straightened out at this point, however, and he predicts that American Zen in the twenty-first century will be great. The main problem that he still sees with many American students of Zen is that they want to make Zen masters, whereas in actuality one must become a Zen master.

Overall, Roshi Fukushima’s talk was fascinating, lighthearted, and educational all at once. Pomona is very lucky to maintain such a connection with him. Listening to him speak made me want to go meditate in the forest with my parents.