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.
Born in Japan in 1914, Mokudo Taisen Deshimaru grows up close to his mother and grandfather, a former samurai.In his youth, he meets Kodo Sawaki, a great master of Soto Zen, and follows his teachings. He was ordained monk by the latter, who asks him to travel to Europe and spread the practice of Zen. He comes to Paris in 1967. Taisen Deshimaru (弟子丸 泰仙, November 29, 1914 - April 30, 1982) was a Japanese Soto Zen teacher who brought Zen to Europe for future civilizations and who founded the Association Zen Internationale.
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.
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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.
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.
Main Centre
Association Zen Internationale (AZI)
175, rue Tolbiac - 75013 Paris
Tel: 00 33 1 53 80 19 19, Fax: 00 33 1 53 80 14 33
Email: zen.azi@club-internet.fr
Association Zen Internationale Web site :www.zen-azi.org/index_e.html
A Selection of Books by Taisen Deshimaru Roshi
- 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
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.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Do zazen unconsciously, automatically and naturally, and it will have an infinite influence. Then everything is possible. But if your object is limited, then this object is not so large, it is not infinite.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Don’t think of after or of before. This is the secret of kendo. Only of here and now. During combat, don’t think of defeat, nor of victory, but be in the freedom of here and now.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“During zazen, brain and consciousness become pure. It’s exactly like muddy water left to stand in a glass. Little by little, the sediment sinks to the bottom and the water becomes pure. “
– Taisen Deshimaru Usb 2.0 pc camera drivers download for windows 10, 8.1, 7, vista, xp.
“Each person is living in a world which he creates by his own proper consciousness. So, what is the ego?… Each one of us thinks: I am me, I am like this or like that.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Even if we hate the weed, and even if we abandon this hate of the weed, it will grow.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Everything in the universe is connected. Everything is osmosis. You cannot separate any part from the whole interdependence rules the cosmic order.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Human beings are afraid of dying. They are always running after something: money, honor, and pleasure. But if you had to die now, what would you want?”
–– Taisen Deshimaru
“If the body is strong and the mind is weak, the body kills mind. And you become insane. If the mind is strong and the body weak, then mind kills the body. And you commit suicide.”
– – Taisen Deshimaru
“If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“In a fight between a strong technique and a strong body, the technique will prevail. In a fight between a strong mind and a strong technique, the mind will prevail, because it will find the weak point.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“In modern times education is too soft. You here all receive soft educations. You have all received educations which make your minds become like encyclopedias.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Most people do not like criticism. But they should. They should say thank you.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Nobody today is normal, everybody is a little bit crazy or unbalanced, people’s minds are running all the time. Their perceptions of the world are partial, incomplete. They are eaten alive by their egos. They think they see, but they are mistaken; all they do is project their madness, their world, upon the world. There is no clarity, no wisdom in that!”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Religions remain what they are. Zen is meditation. Meditation is the foundation of every religion.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Sometimes I am a philosopher, sometimes a religious person, sometimes a monk, sometimes an educator, sometimes a whiskey-drinker.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
Taisen Deshimaru Books
“The body moves naturally, automatically, without any personal intervention or awareness. If we think too much, our actions become slow and hesitant.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“The error of democracy is that people imitate others and do not create anything.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“There is no need to have an object in what you do.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
Taisen Deshimaru Books Pdf
“To have a few precious stones is better than to have many pebbles. If everyone became a precious stone, then the stones would lose their value.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“To have compassion is to have the same mind as the other.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve – as if you might die in the next instant.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“To receive everything, one must open one’s hands and give.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“True religion is not esoteric or mystical, it is not an exercise in well-being or gymnastics.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Western political movements, the masculine-feminine movement-they like the monsieur-madame dualism…. Women criticizing men…. Always this dualism. So it is not possible to harmonize…. This works for a while. But then comes the divorce.”
–– Taisen Deshimaru
“What I am trying to say is that the person who could treat you good and really love you could already be in your life, but you could have been blinded by the things you want in a man so you overlooked the person that you were really looking for.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“What is called zazen is sitting on a zafu in a quiet room, absolutely still, in the exact and proper position and without uttering a word, the mind empty of any thought, good or wicked. It is continuing to sit peacefully, facing a wall, and nothing more. Every day.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“You cannot separate any part from the whole: interdependence rules the cosmic order.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“You have to practice until you die.”
– – Taisen Deshimaru
“You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Zazen is like water in a glass. Leave the water to sit quietly and soon the dirt will sink down, down, and the water will become pure.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Zazen means to stop running after and to stop running away.”
–– Taisen Deshimaru
Taisen Deshimaru Quotes
“Zen is beyond this: there is no man, no woman. During zazen, no female, no male. No masculine, no feminine. The sexual organs are not at all important. Women in zazen are better off-they don’t have testicles which get in their way.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
“Zen is physical education. It is not a gymnastic, nor is it a martial art. The action of the body influences mind and consciousness.”
– Taisen Deshimaru
Taisen Deshimaru Frases
More on Taisen Deshimaru
– Taisen Deshimaru, the Modern-day Bodhidharma