TOSHOJI

a Zen Monastery in Okayama, Japan

At the age of 75, and as a fully-ordained Zen priest and director of Hakubai Temple, I had the opportunity to live and practice at a monastery in Japan for seven months. I was encouraged to do so by my Dharma brother, Hojosama Bunei Otokawa. the son of my Zen master, Tenzan Keibun Roshi. He made it possible for me to go.

Alxe, my wife, encouraged me to go. She said she knew it was the fulfillment of a long-held dream for me. It really was.

While I was there, the abbot, Seido Suzuki Roshi, asked me to design and build a garden at Toshoji, which is in a mountainous region, relentlessly cold in the winter and buggy in the summer. 

The monastery has records from 1433. It burned or was abandoned a few times since, but the original plans seem to be on record with the prefecture governance (as well as in the monastery’s records).The monastery has been rebuilt according to those plans, exactly like the original.

The site he selected for the garden was the flat ground on same grade and just beyond the visitor parking area. This flat area was the lowest of a three-level terracing of a mountainside.

All Zen projects begin after a short prayer expressing compassionate aspiration, followed by thorough cleaning. We began in the autumn with cleaning the grounds and the forest. Monks brought down an enormous amount of material. The brush and branches were burned by two monks who practiced fire meditation. So, the Hakubai-en (White Plum Garden) began with the most thorough clean up I’ve ever seen.

Then, a large excavator appeared on site and that night a disciple of Roshi showed up.

He grew up in Brazil, and acted exactly like you would expect a Brazilian monk to act. He was also an expert with all large machinery. When he was finished, the finished grade was established and the garden could begin to take shape.