Taisen Deshimaru (Yasuo Deshimaru) was born in 1914 into a Samurai family of the Saga Prefecture, located on Kyushu Island, in southern Japan.
Taisen Deshimaru Roshi (1914-1982) Born in the Saga Prefecture of Kyushu in 1914 of an old Samurai family, Taisen Deshimaru was raised by his grandfather, who was a Samurai Master before the Meiji Revolution, and by his mother, a devout follower of the Buddhist Shinshu sect. Taisen Deshimaru’s was one of the first Zen masters to come and teach in the West. It is through Master Deshimaru’s books that I have discovered Zen. Discover his humor and profound wisdom through these quotes. “Discussion has nothing to do with Zen.”.
He was raised by his mother, a fervent follower of the Nembutsu Buddhist sect, and by his grandfather, who was a Samurai before the Meiji Revolution that abolished the Samurai class. As a youngster, Taisen Deshimaru was strongly influenced by the spirit of Bushido and by the martial arts, as his grandfather taught him both Kendo and Judo.
In his youth, he was interested in spirituality, and he studied Christianity. His numerous meetings and discussions with Christian monks, priests, and theologians left him unsatisfied. He found his education in Christianity to be lacking. Update apple macbook air. Soon after, dissatisfied with Christianity, he eventually returned to Buddhism.
Having no interest in his mother’s Nembutsu Buddhism, he came into contact with the Rinzai school of Zen. He eventually became dissatisfied and felt unfulfilled with Rinzai, and he subsequently left the organization.
In 1935, while studying economics in Tokyo, twenty-one-year-old Taisen Deshimaru grew interested in Soto Zen and met Master Kodo Sawaki, and became his disciple. Nobody knew at the time that Taisen Deshimaru would loyally follow Kodo Sawaki for thirty years.
After following Kodo Sawaki’s teaching for a year, Taisen Deshimaru wanted to become a monk, but Sawaki Roshi encouraged him to remain a lay practitioner. Each time Deshimaru asked to be ordained, Master Sawaki sent him away, telling him he should continue to practice Zazen in society. Sawaki claimed that Zen is not separated from life and that Deshimaru should experiment with many things in life beyond the monastery.
After finishing his studies at the University, Taisen Deshimaru found a job as a manager of a cookie factory. He got married and had three children.
Right after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor during World War II, Taisen Deshimaru was recruited by the Japanese army. It was at this time that he and his Master parted ways. Kodo Sawaki told his disciples these last words: “This may be the last time we see one another. Nevertheless, love all mankind, regardless of race or creed”.
Because of his myopia, Deshimaru was discharged from the front. Instead, he was sent to Indonesia for several years to perform administrative duties for the Japanese army. He narrowly escaped death several times while in Indonesia.
When the Second World War was finally over, Deshimaru rejoined his Master, Kodo Sawaki, and followed him until his Master’s death fourteen years later.
In November of 1965, shortly before Kodo Sawaki fell ill, Deshimaru received ordination from his Master. While on his deathbed in December 1965, Sawaki gave the Shiho, or transmission, to Taisen Deshimaru. Thus, Deshimaru himself became a master in the tradition of Soto Zen.
Sawaki expressed his wish for Deshimaru to spread Zen to other parts of the world, as Bodhidharma had done centuries ago. Deshimaru decided to travel to Europe and spread the true teaching of Soto Zen there.
To pay homage to his Master, Taisen Deshimaru sat in Zazen for forty-nine days after Kodo Sawaki’s death.
In 1967, resolute to spread Zen in Europe, Deshimaru put his family in the hands of his son and boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway for France. He arrived in Paris without any money or possessions, except his zafu, his Master’s kesas, and notebooks. He was not able to speak French and only knew English poorly. Macintosh laptop computers.
Taisen Deshimaru lived in the back of a health-food store where he practiced Zazen every day. He made a living by giving lectures on Zen Buddhism and shiatsu massages.
Photograph Of Taisen Deshimaru
Following his Master’s wish, Deshimaru Sensei was driven by a profound desire to spread the practice of Zazen in Europe. An especially notable thing about Taisen Deshimaru is that he made his Zen teaching accessible to the Western mind, which is often unfamiliar to Buddhism.
Impressed by the unique personality of Deshimaru Sensei, a growing number of people started showing interest in Zen and started practicing with him. In 1970, Master Deshimaru created The European Zen Association, which would later become The International Zen Association (AZI). A year later, Taisen Deshimaru opened the first Zen dojo in Paris, which was entirely dedicated to the practice and teaching of Soto Buddhism.
(…) he encouraged his disciples to live without ego, self-interest, or desire for personal profit
While living in France, Master Deshimaru wrote numerous books destined to introduce Zen Buddhism to the Western World. His simple and straight to the point approach make his books accessible to both the general public and the advanced practitioners. His most famous books are The Ring of the Way, Zen & Karma: Teachings of Roshi Taisen Deshimaru, and Questions to a Zen Master.
During the following years, with the help of his ever-growing number of students, he created more than one hundred Zen dojos in both Europe and North America. In 1979, Deshimaru Sensei founded in France, the Zen temple of La Gendronnière, the largest Zen temple outside Japan. The temple was officially recognized by Japanese Soto Zen authorities as the Head Temple of Europe.
In early 1982, Taisen Deshimaru was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He continued to practice with his disciples through the spring of that year. As he left for Japan to receive medical treatment, his last words were, “Please, continue Zazen.” Taisen Deshimaru Roshi died in Japan on April 30th, 1982.
Taisen Deshimaru Books Pdf
Taisen Deshimaru left his disciples with the essence of Zen, which had been transmitted from Master to disciple since the Buddha. His teaching was very humorous and straightforward, yet concrete and deeply rooted in daily life. Like Dogen Zenji and Kodo Sawaki before him, he insisted on the importance of shikantaza, and he encouraged his disciples to live without ego, self-interest, or desire for personal profit, and to follow the cosmic order “unconsciously, naturally and automatically”.
Because of his unique character, his uncompromising Zen practice, and his pioneering mission to spread Zen in Europe, Taisen Deshimaru is called, in his homeland of Japan, “The 20th Century Bodhidharma”.
The Association brings together practitioners and dojos from Europe and beyond who adhere to Master Deshimaru's teaching and to membership in the Soto Zen school. This represents more than 200 dojos and practice centers worldwide, though principally in Europe.
Since its conception, the Association has facilitated the organization of many sesshin (intensive practice retreats) and other practice-related events, as well as the traditional ango (summer retreat) which is practiced annually by all Buddhist communities around the world.
Biography: Born in the Saga Prefecture of Kyushu in 1914 of an old Samurai family, Taisen Deshimaru was raised by his grandfather, who was a Samurai Master before the Meiji Revolution, and by his mother, a devout follower of the Buddhist Shinshu sect. Though, unlike Kodo Sawaki before him, Deshimaru had a happy childhood, he was nonetheless tormented, even at an early age, by this ephemeral world of birth and death. Nembutsu, as practiced by his mother, did not fulfill him. Nor, finally, did his long study of the Christian Bible, under the guidance of a Protestant minister. Deshimaru's contacts with theologians and priests left him unsatisfied, for Christianity, which had first captured his full attention, seemed in the long run to be hopelessly lost in abstract poetic imagery. It lacked, for him, the practical, while contemporary education (Deshimaru was graduated from the University of Yokohama), confined within its time-conditioned concepts, lacked the spiritual. In his search for a means to set his mind at rest, Deshimaru left off his study of Christianity and returned to his own religion-that of Buddhism. Consequently, he came into contact with the Rinzai teachings. Eventually becoming dissatisfied with Rinzai as well and feeling unfulfilled in his work as a businessman, Deshimaru began a series of meanderings which eventually led him to the Soto Master Kodo Sawaki.
Arriving for the first time in the Master's hermitage, he found Kodo Sawaki sitting erect on a cushion with his back to the door. Overcoming his initial shock-the Master was sitting in the perfect posture of the Buddha, and this alone left Deshimaru momentarily speechless-he addressed the man. Kodo Sawaki did not reply, and Deshimaru was left standing awkwardly in the doorway. He repeated himself, and again (as when Eka addressed Bodhidharma in their first encounter) there was no reply. But unlike Bodhidharma, who left Eka standing for two days before answering, Kodo Sawaki finally said: 'I have been waiting impatiently for your visit.' The Master uttered these words without turning to his visitor, without the slightest movement, without even lifting his eyes.
With the great joy that is felt when one's wanderings have come to an end and one has found a true Master, Deshimaru did gassho, and in that moment he became Kodo Sawaki's disciple.
Following directly in his Master's footsteps, he devoted himself, body and mind, to the practice of Shikantaza. However, after the Japanese attack on the American base at Pearl Harbor, circumstances obliged the disciple and his Master to part company - we will certainly lose the war,' Kodo Sawaki said at their leave-taking. 'Our homeland will be destroyed, our people annihilate . . . and this may be the last time we see one another. Nevertheless, love all mankind regardless of race or creed.'
Deshimaru was being sent on a dangerous mission over enemy waters, and the Master knew this, and so he removed his old Rakusu (a material worn over the neck and breast, symbolic of a Kesa) and gave it to his disciple, along with his notebook containing the Shodoka. 'Respect and have faith in what I have given you,' said the Master, 'and you will have good karma.'
Deshimaru, whose job it was to direct a Japanese-controlled copper mine off Indonesia, shipped out in a convoy of freighters and destroyers. However, once they were beyond Japanese-controlled waters, submarines of the United States Navy made devastating attacks on the convoy, sinking one ship after the other. Deshimaru's freighter was carrying a cargo of dynamite, and whenever a torpedo skirted the bow or the stern, crew members, beyond themselves with fear, plunged blindly overboard. The ship was in the hands of a capable captain, however, and so Deshimaru sat on the forecastle below the captain's cockpit in the perfect full lotus. He sat, calmly and erect, on a case of dynamite. Forty days later Deshimaru's unarmed freighter pulled into the Mekong and threw anchor. Of a convoy of fifty-one ships, his alone arrived at its destination. The freighter, incidentally, was called The Supreme Law of the Buddha.
Finding himself on the island of Bangka, off the coast of Sumatra, Deshimaru taught the practice of zazen to the Chinese, Indonesian and European inhabitants. However, saddened and depressed by the comportment of his own people (the Japanese Army of Occupation was indiscriminately torturing and executing large numbers of the local inhabitants), Deshimaru actively took up the Bangka people's cause. Tagged as a resistance fighter against the Imperial Japanese Army, Deshimaru was thrown into prison. Despite malaria, the intense heat, the flies, the filth, the lack of food and water, and his scheduled execution, the man sat facing a wall in his cell, with his Master's Rakusu about his neck.
Directly before the mass execution was to take place, word arrived from the highest military authorities in Japan, and Deshimaru, along with all those awaiting execution with him, was set free. (The Japanese Military Tribunal that convened after the war ordered the execution of all those responsible for the Bangka Affair).
Recovered from a life-and-death bout with malaria, Deshimaru again set sail, this time for the island of Billiton, where he was to direct a Dutch-captured copper mine. His ship had hardly set out when American fighter planes swept down on it. Their rockets scored direct hits, and Deshimaru, who was sitting on the bridge in Shikantaza, was hurled clear of the sinking ship and into the sea. Utterly alone, and without a life jacket-with nothing, in fact, except the old Rakusu and notebook on him-he remained afloat for a day and a night. Discovered eventually by a Japanese PT boat, Deshimaru was pulled to safety Though his clothes were torn and half gone, the Rakusu came out intact. And the Master's notes, written in ink, were as fresh and clear as when they were first penned.
When the war was finally over, Deshimaru was taken prisoner by the Americans and incarcerated in a prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore. After many more months of hardship (corned beef rations being their sole luxury), Deshimaru, along with the other twenty thousand Japanese war prisoners in the same camp, was returned to his homeland.
Deshimaru rejoined his Master and remained by his side until the latter's death fourteen years later. He received the monastic ordination shortly before the Master fell ill, and he received the Transmission (the Shiho) while Kodo Sawaki was on his deathbed. As material evidence, the Master gave his disciple the Kesa. So the Transmission and the Kesa, handed down from Buddha to Buddha and from Patriarch to Patriarch, were passed on from Master Kodo Sawaki to Master Taisen Deshimaru in the year 1965.
'In India during the time of Bodhidharma,' said the dying Kodo Sawaki, 'Buddhism was in a state of decadence. And so Bodhidharma's Master told his disciple to take the teachings with him to the West. Likewise in Japan, Buddhism is now dead. And so you, my Dharma heir, you alone, who know the true teachings of the Buddha-take them with you to the West so that Buddhism may again flourish. All people who do zazen are my disciples.'
After burying Kodo Sawaki's skull in the ground outside the Dojo, Deshimaru sat immobile in the perfect posture of the Buddha for forty-nine days. Then he left his homeland for the West.
Taisen Deshimaru Libros Pdf
From the time of Buddha to that of Bodhidharma, seven hundred years went by, from Bodhidharma to Dogen another seven hundred years; and from Dogen to Deshimaru seven hundred years.
- From Deshimaru, Taisen (ed. Philippe Coupey). The Voice of the Valley.
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Taisen Deshimaru
A Selection of Books by Taisen Deshimaru Roshi
Taisen Deshimaru Martial Arts
- Za-Zen, the practice of the Zen
- Sit Zen Teachings of Master Taisen Deshimaru by Taisen Deshimaru, Philippe Coupey
- The Ring of the Way: Testament of a Zen Master by Taisen Deshimaru
- Questions to a Zen Master by Taisen Deshimaru, Nancy Amphoux