A Lake Called Maya

by The Reverand Raj Wiseman

A tribute to Kobun Chino Roshiby Rajarshi

I was in my favorite chair, studying, when an abrupt rap on my door allowed to enter a close friend, who was currently attending the two month Sutrayana and Vajrayana seminary with The Sakyong, Mipham Rinpoche at Shambhala Mountain Center, the rustic retreat center established some thirty years ago by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. "Have you heard?", he asked somewhat quickly. "You haven't heard? ...", he asked again, and this time I noticed a tearfulness in his eyes and a seriousness upon his face. I think I just shook my head sideways, 'no'. "Roshi drowned this morning trying to save Maya, who also died", he said noticeably distraught.

Kobun Chino Roshi had been in Switzerland teaching Zen studies, and on this occasion the family of his wife Kathrine and three children -Tatsuko, Maya, and Alyosha- were along with him. On this particular afternoon the children were playing outside their residence. Maya the youngest daughter, straying perhaps a bit too far, ended up in the pond nearby. In a heroic selfless effort of a father's desperate attempt to save a beloved child Kobun Chino went under also; both father and daughter died.

Born in Jokoji, Japan in 1938, Kobun Chino entered monastic life at Sogenji Monestary of the Soto sect at the age of 18. Along with his bachelors and masters degrees in Mahayana Buddhism, his list of teachers and dhrama transmitters reads as a virtual who's who of distinguished Soto lineage holders. Although in his youth Kobun Chino does not appear to have been a spectacular student of Zen, when I had the good fortune of meeting him at Shambhala Mountain last year it was obvious that here was a seasoned and authentic Zen master who had chosen to forgo the context of the monastery andembrace the context of the family. In what seemed to me to be a classic embodiment of the famous 'ten stages of herding the ox', the Roshi felt only the need arising out of a profound compassion to forgo the solitudes of monk hood and return to society by embracing a loving wife ... 'to bring up the little ones in the dharma'. And of course, to teach.

Kobun Chino was initially brought to the United States by Suzuki Roshi in 1967. In the early 1970's he met with Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, and there seems to have been an immediate affinity. With his poularity growing and many of the forms of practice still evolving, Trumpa immediately recognized the value of several of the traditional Zen buddhist practices and contemplative arts as worthy additions to the sadhanas he was developing for his own western students. It was Kobun Chino who ini- tially gave the newly emerging Shambhala sangha their initial transmissions in Ikabana (flower arranging), oriyoki (the traditional Zen monastery meal service ritual), and the specialty in which he was considered an accomplished master, Zen calligraphy. During this period Kobun Chino helped establish Naropa Institute, and Trungpa Rinpoche made him an acharya in the Tibetan Kagyu tradition.

It was during one of his calligraphy classes here at Shambhala Mountain that I had the good fortune to study with Roshi personally. He and his wife Kathrine, along with their satellite of three adorable children ages 3, 5, and 6, first took up residence here at Shambhala Mountain last fall, following upon his acceptance of the World Wisdom Chair at Naropa Institute in nearby Boulder. Everyone here immediately recognized this as a truly remarkable blessing to be able to study again with one the Shambhala sanghas "Grand Old Uncles".

But Roshi had won me over months before, during my very first experience with him shortly after their arrival here on the land last fall. This was not a pompous grand entry of the great old master during some formal teaching session, where starry-eyed neophytes whispered inflated accolades of the great sages radiant virtues with bated breath. This was the mess hall, where a short, aged Japanese fellow quietly led his noticeably younger, plain-and-simple looking wife and three adorable wide-eyed kids to the dinner table, bowing kindly to many as he passed by. As it so happened, they took the table right next to me at the back wall. As was my usual habit, I sat there alone, studying during my meal.

After just a few moments, with the group of five only partially seated, Roshi turned and came to me and asked in very simple Japanese-laiden English, "Sorry", and he gave a short but unhurried little bow of the head, "Any cushions?", and pointing to the littlest one closest to his spot at the end of the table, "Need cushion", with a gentle smile. I understood what he meant and said, "Ok", and exited to the adjoining room where I knew there was a stack of meditation gomdens. Upon receiving the cushion from me he said, "Ok, thank you", and turned to help his child to her plate. During the course of the meal I couldn't help but keep an eye on this quaint little group, not just because here was the hallowed Kobun Chino Roshi, who I had never seen but only heard about, now sitting suddenly in front of me. There were these three adorable, wide-eyed angels trying to be good, bundled to the hilt against the brisk fall mountain air. What struck me was theutterly humble, gentle manner with which he served the children. I have observed other parents tending their own during meals, but nothing could match the air of softness and patience I was witness to here, in every gesture. The kids, quite frankly, didn't seem to notice, it being to them too natural, too commonplace, having been held in those very same hands from shortly after they breathed their very first breath.

And then a most interesting thing happened. The littlest one closest to Roshi spilled her drink, which proceeded to run immediately and fully onto the floor. Without comment, complaint, or hesitation, Roshi simply got up, napkin in hand, and tried to initially contain the spill. When I saw him get up from the floor, realizing he was in need of something more to complete the task, I grabbed a handful of paper napkins from the bamboo basket in front of me and rose to greet him as he began to search for additional help. Without comment he accepted the napkins from me, again with a short but unhurried bow of the head, and when he stood up straight his eyes fully engaged mine, and in that moment I could tell that, and trust me on this, there was indeed no one there.

Right next to his daughters chair yet half under the table, Roshi returned to his hands and knees, completing the task at hand. And then I witnessed something remarkable. When done, Roshi paused right there where he was, and knowing where his daughter was sitting, her feet dangling around his head, he leaned forward a few inches and touched the top of his head to her feet. He then calmly got up, discarded the dirtied napkins and returned to his meal.

Now here, I immediately realized, was an awakened practitioner. I could tell from his mannerisms at the very start that this man was well practiced, but the gesture at the very end, having patiently finished well, clearly indicated a mindfulness of genuine maturity. Not just from the moment of the child's spilled drink, but in the ongoing meditation he walked into the room already abiding in, Kobun Chino simply flowed. Here he responded to yet another minor crisis without complaint or psychological ruffling of any kind. It was simply the play of phenomena, and when that little meditation on his hands and knees (in front of everyone in the hall by the way) was done his last gesture of thanks, that humble little bow of gratitude and submission to the moment and the little goddess above him in the form of his daughter, was graciously offered.

There is no need of philosophy, hip esoteric transmissions, or detailed analysis in the face of this form of teaching. "It's in the depth of such an act that this son of the dharma has won the benevolent smile of the Buddha", I thought. I closed my book.

Months later I had yet another opportunity to engage Kobun Chino during calligraphy classes given by him during one of our staff retreats. His manner was much the same. He entered the room quietly; his entire demeanor was unassuming, carrying only a well-worn wooden box of his brushes. He slowed down as he approached the small Shambhala shrine on the side of the hall, paused to remove his grayish, hand woven wool skull cap, and bowed most humbly in front of the framed Ashe ('stroke of enlightenment') that had come from the brush of Trungpa Rinpoche himself -an expression of graciousness for which he was not obligated. After greeting everyone thefirst thing Roshi did was to survey the large, blank scroll, which the staff had unfurled for him to work his magic on. After deciding what to pen, and selecting the appropriate brush (a rather large one, actually, the hair about the size of a baseball) he got again on his knees and began -but there again was that pause ... the brush full of ink, poised to begin his stroke, and then the pause of mindfulness, to make sure one is clear and connected.

When he did begin so many of the strokes, especially the first (and most importantly the first touching of the brush to the blank paper where one symbolically turns the first Cosmic Spiral, thus establishing the manifest Seat of Dharma as Cosmic Law) embodied the Primordial Bindu, the Grand Point where the nirvanic field first spontaneously radiates off of the Transcendental Ground and coagulates into the primal unmoving constant around which, and in relation to which, the downward-spiraling samsara will unfold and thereby attain conventional meaning.

As I watched the way he was holding, moving, and overall using the brush to make the figures, I noticed the way in which he was using the various kinds of strokes -hard and soft, dark and light, thick and thin, solid and wispy, slow and quick- to generate the images. I later realized, upon reflection, that this somewhat more archaic style (I heard him call it, 'grass style') was not the more formal, clean scholars style one sees in everyday Japanese or Chinese penmanship. This style may have appeared to the average uninitiated mind as rough and uncultured, but it was, in fact, the chosen style of the great Zen masters because it permitted and conveyed the optimum range of diverse relatedness. By incorporating the greatest range of complementary dialectics, here expressed through the various modes of contrasting brush strokes, the diverse dharmas and dhatus could be expressed, as well as the more sublime intent conveyed through the implicit emptiness pervading every image, because none of the brush-strokes-as-dharmas truly existed in and of themselves, nor had any real value or meaning except in relation to their complementary opposite as well as the whole of the rest of the other various strokes in composite.

By the time Kobun Chino had finished the first full phrase of some six glyphs ('Great Path Eternal Peace') I had become completely convinced that here was an embodiment of authentic Zen. All in all the dharma transmission which had come to me via these two above mentioned occasions easily puts Kobun Chino amongst a small group of my upa-Gurus, my 'authentic dharma transmitters'.

One last issue to comment on. Because I am here at Shambhala Mountain amongst so many diverse practitioners, it's natural that some would ask such questions as, "I wonder what would be the karma involved in an incident like this, for both father and daughter?", and I did indeed hear such rumblings around the dinning tent. And I have no reservation in offering up this response. For Kobun Chino nothing but the utterly highest merit of the purest kind. I don't believe even neither teaching nor building Stupas can touch merit of this order. There then comes the stickier issue of the little dakini Maya.

But here, quite frankly, we have a simple situation of innocence, and what the I Ching would call, "No blame". Consider that even in civil law, no child is legally responsible for its actions, while in many esoteric traditions it is taught that a child is karmically untouched until age 7.

Even so I want to continue my story from above, where Roshi is on his hands and knees and makes that remarkable gesture of touching the crown of his head to his daughters feet. When I glanced up, there was Maya staring right at me, her head lowered somewhat over her plate so as to be looking out past her eyebrows, and with an impish grin, all the while playing with her food. And here, the two of them together simultaneously -above and below, the old and mature with the young and innocent, the one playing and the other tending, father and daughter- was a living image of the unity of nirvana and samsara, mature enlightenment and innocent ignorance.

And so I say this, for little Maya, no blame ... at least. In fact, consider the possibility that this incident may well have been the spring board to this bodhisattvas' last necessary expression of profound selflessness and his transition to initial Buddhahood. That is the truth I hold. And in his last reaching out for her in those cold, dark waters, in that same acknowledgement of essential oneness I saw with my own eyes, his spiritual and pranic release surely must have blessed her.

Father and daughter, nirvana and samsara ... one once again, as they had always been.