Sōji-ji

um where she was sitting at sojiji Is this the one? Yes.

So this is the picture, and it's in this book called Zen is Eternal Life by Roshi Kennett.

And this is her as a young woman sitting in this Japanese monastery at Sojiji.

And this was, I was, as I was reading, I was just fascinated by monasticism.

But I was always like, well, you know, I'm just, I'm just reading about it.

Some of y'all have been here for some of those talks and are aware of the situation.

But basically a group of 15 of us from the Sangha went in late May for Dave's Zuisei ceremonies at Sojiji and Eheiji, which are Zen's head temples in Japan.

So Gigi was Keizan's temple.

Eheju was Dogen's temple.

You know, I love that topic a lot actually because whenever we read, uh...

There's a, there's a book in Zen that we, well, ostensibly are supposed to study, that some of us are nerdy enough to get into called the Denkoroku, and it was written by Master Keizan Zenji, who was the founder of Sojiji, the mon- the second of the head monasteries of this tradition.

Uh, he was credited with basically making Sotoshu get really big a few generations after Master Dogen.

Although he was, I believe, ordained by Master Dogen when he was very young, uh, he came into his own as a master, uh, a little bit after Master Dogen passed away.

Rev.

Master Jiyu, in her diary, The Wild White Goose, wrote of how she eventually became grateful for the many hardships she went through during her training and Sojiji, as they helped her to find the Iron Man within, she says.

This term, which is called Vajrasattva in Sanskrit, refers to the immovable, imperturbable, and indestructible Buddha nature within one.

This not neglecting mindfulness practice, then, is our vital protection, our armor, as the Buddha says.

So for, you know, teacher-student links.

And then he founded a temple called Sojiji.

And Sojiji ended up Like almost all the temples end up being down at some point and then getting rebuilt and maybe sometimes rebuilt somewhere else.

So long after Kaizen was gone, Soji was rebuilt in Yokohama.

And I thought it would be really fun to show you.

Surrounded by a city filled with modern buildings, the abundant greenery of the temple grounds presents visitors with the sense of being in another world.

The visitors pass through the sanmon, main gate, into an atmosphere of solemnity that allows them to forget that the temple is located in an urban setting and provides them with the perfect environment for ascetic training.

Sojiji's principal image, a statue of the Shakyamuni Nyorai, the Tathagata, is enshrined in the Butsu-den, Buddha Hall.

So we're not quite sure what Dogen wore.

And there have been several attempts in the history of Soto Zen in Japan to figure this out by very close examination of texts or staring for a long time at old statues and paintings and trying to figure out, oh, did they have it like that or like that? And one of these investigations led to a huge fight in the 1800s between the two main temples of the Sōtō school in Japan, which is Eiheiji, that was founded by Dōgen, and Sojiji, which was founded by Keizan.

And they got very intensely angry with each other for a very long time about two main things.

The first one was whether you should fasten your ropes with a ring or with a tie.

So there are little adjustments that came up.

But at Eheiji Monastery in Japan, which is the monastery founded by Dogen Zenji in the 1200s, and it's the home temple, the first home temple of Soto Zen in Japan, And it's now one of the two home temples, including Sojiji in Yokohama.

Let's see, about two years ago this fall, I went to Japan to perform Suisei, which is... a common step for priests as part of their priest career, you might say, so does a priest, after you have received Dharma transmission, you go to the two head temples and you are abbot for a day or abbot for a night, technically.

And what you do is you arrive there late one day, and then there's some rehearsals, and you have dinner, and you spend the night there.

ceremonies.

You are the officiant.

In a sense, you are taking the place of Dogen Zenji at Eheji, and then you go to Sojiji and do the same thing there, and there you are, in a sense, taking the place of Keizan Zenji, who are considered the two founders.

Keizan Zenji was a few generations after Dogen, but really was instrumental in establishing Soto Zen and spreading Soto Zen in Japan.