Masao Abe, and the Week That Changed My Life

Masao Abe (1915-2006), a professor of religion, and one of the greatest Zen Buddhist communicators, opened up a rich dialogue with religious leaders around the world. He was also a key disciple of Shin’ichi Hisamatsu (1889-1980) a renowned Zen Master and scholar.

I first met Abe-san in September 1964, at his home in Kyoto, where we sat in a small tatami room, adjacent to a serene garden, drinking tea and talking about Buddhism. That day, and in the week that followed, Abe- san both inspired and shamed me; he challenged me to do things I didn’t think were possible while staying by my side. I can say without exaggeration that at the end of that week I was a different person, not only with new thoughts and feelings, but with character traits that I had never possessed.

Before I tell you what Abe-san said and did, I need to fill you in on the events, beginning in the summer of 1963, that lead me to his doorstep that day.

After completing our junior year at Cornell, Matt Chait and I, inspired by Kerouac’s On the Road, left New York City in a pink 1957 Buick for a 6-week, 6,800-mile trip around the US. While we stayed at Cal Berkeley, I wandered into a book store and found a used copy of another Kerouac book, The Dharma Bums. I didn’t open it until we were in Los Angeles, when one day Chait and I decided to go our separate ways, and I took the car to Santa Monica beach. I got settled and started reading about Kerouac and the character which he based on real life Gary Snyder. Gary is now almost 90, a beloved poet and environmentalist in northern California. He trained as a Zen monk in Daitoku-ji in Kyoto in the 50’s and 60’s.

At that point in my life, thanks to great teachers at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, I had read a lot of world literature. But I never came across a character like Gary. He was disciplined but also spontaneous, he was self-contained and seemed indifferent to what other people thought about him. I sat there and compared myself to Snyder. What I saw was phoniness, a constant desire to impress others, and I felt a deep despair. Then the thought popped into my head, what is real? And I thought of my brother Neil and my girlfriend Angel and I felt like the only thing that was real was love. And then feelings of love flooded my whole body. I sat there on the beach and everyone who I saw or walked by I loved. Eventually over the next 7 hours I made my way slowly down the coast and wound up on a pier in Manhattan Beach. I talked with a family that fished off the pier and I felt I could see their essence and I loved them. The next day the feelings had faded, but I made up my mind that when I returned to school for my senior year, I would read everything I could about Zen Buddhism.

So, I took my classes in math and psychology but in my spare time I read books on Zen. During that year I never actually practiced Zen or met anyone who did. The closest I came was when a Hindu Swami delivered a lecture at Cornell that Monty Stambler and I went to. We waited until everyone had left so we could ask the Swami questions. Monty asked him, “What should we read?” and the Swami said, “Read your own mind.” I asked him, “What should I do when I walk”? He said, “Keep your mind in your feet.”

Of course Monty and I were thrilled to receive this wisdom. In fact, for the rest of senior year when we would see each other on campus, we wouldn’t even say hello. Monty’s face would light up as he said, “Read your Own Mind”,  and I would reply, “Keep your mind in your feet.”

As we got close to graduation, when other students were applying to graduate schools or for jobs, I was writing to Japanese Buddhist priests to obtain a sponsor for a visa to Japan. That last semester I took a class on the Philosophy of Psychology, with professor Norman Malcom. At the end of the year he asked me what I was going to do after I graduated, and I told him I was going to Japan to study Zen Buddhism. He told me that before I went, I should visit with Professor Emeritus Burtt, who had written several books on Buddhism. 

I met with Professor Burtt after graduation and he was very interested in my experience on the beach. Then he said, “Marty, your timing is excellent. Every 4 years the East West Center at the University of Hawaii hosts an international philosophers conference. There will be many Buddhist scholars. I’m 80 years old and the trip to Honolulu is too much for me, but if you want to attend you can go in my place and represent Cornell.” Of course I accepted and made my travel plans; a flight from JFK to Hawaii and two weeks later, a boat from Honolulu to Yokohama.

The conference was so much better than I was even hoping for. No one seemed to mind that I was 20 years old.  I had read enough books so that I could participate in many conversations. In one of them I started talking with Dick DeMartino (1922-2013), a professor of religion. DeMartino had gone to Japan after the war as a Naval language officer and eventually became a consultant to the international Military Tribunal. He became interested in Zen, and eventually studied with DT Suzuki and Shin’ichi Hisamatsu. The ex-pat Zen world was very small in those days and DeMartino knew everyone and generously introduced me to DT Suzuki, who at 93 years old, was attending the conference. He wrote letters to Philip Kapleau, one of the first American Zen masters, and arranged a meeting in Yokohama, and to Masao Abe whom I would meet when I got to Kyoto. On the island, he introduced me to Robert Aitken and Tai-san, a Japanese monk, who lead a meditation group called the Diamond Sangha. On Sunday, when there were no lectures, they invited me to join their group for a one-hour zazen (sitting Zen) session.

I got there early and Tai san showed me how to sit and breath slowly. He told me that when zazen started, to count my breaths slowly from one to ten, and then start over. It was one of the most boring, painful hours of my life, with no redeeming benefit. As I left, Tai-san told me that when I went to Japan, Zen training sometimes required doing zazen 10 hours a day. I left the Diamond Sangha in crisis, and I remember wandering around Honolulu for hours trying to decide what to do. A big part of me wanted to go back to the US because there was no way I was going to endure that amount of pain. Finally, what tipped my decision, was when I pictured my friends at Cornell, and my neighbors in Brooklyn, laughing at me, saying, “You said you were going to be a Zen monk and you never even got to Japan.” So I worked out a deal with myself, saying I’ll go to Japan, and visit temples, do a little zazen on my own, and talk about Zen with English speaking monks and priests.

The first few weeks in Japan, things seemed to be working out exactly that way. In Yokohama I had lunch with Kapleau and he shared his experiences and advice. In Kyoto, my sponsor Sohaku Ogata, gave me a small room in his temple Chotokuin, part of the Shokoku-ji compound of 12 temples and a Sodo where the monks trained. The next week I went to Daitoku-ji to meet with Ruth Fuller Sasaki and Imgard Schloegl. There I was with friends of Gary Snyder, sitting 100 yards from where he trained as a monk (although he was back in the US at that time). And then I went to visit Masao Abe. As I sat with him I felt it couldn’t get any better. Here was a Japanese Zen master who spoke English and he was telling me about Buddhism. Then everything changed. Abe-san said” Seldman-san, for a student of Zen, your timing is excellent. My teacher, Hisamatsu, one of the most respected Zen masters in Japan, is about to retire. But starting next week, he is conducting his last week-long Sesshin and you can come as my guest.”

So I asked him what do you do at a Sesshin? He told me there were some lectures, chanting, and mild manual labor, but mostly it was 10 hours a day of zazen. I immediately panicked and started throwing out every excuse I could think of as I politely declined the invitation. Abe-san was quiet for a moment. He never responded to anything I said, but what he did say showed me he could see right through me. He said, “ Seldman-san, in Buddhism you have to die the Great Death.” 

As I sit here 55 years later, I can still feel the impact those words had on me. I had no idea what they meant but they conjured up images of courage and sacrifice. Then Abe-san proceeded to tell me stories of monks who not only had endured pain and hardship, they had chosen pain and hardship on their journeys.

Abe’s message got through to me, and the mixture of inspiration and shame worked to the point that I told him I would like to attend Hisamatsu’s Sesshin. As usual for me I left myself an out. I told myself I would try it and if it got too hard I would quit.

So I showed up at a large temple on the outskirts of Kyoto with 60 Japanese practitioners and Hisamatsu Roshi (Zen master). We had a simple meal at 4pm and then we all went into the large meditation hall to hear a short lecture from Hisamatsu and then begin zazen. I only understood one word of his lecture: he said New York and everyone looked over at me. We did zazen for 2 hours and then there was a break. I thought I did pretty well, after all this was twice as long as I had ever sat. So I went to the room I was assigned to sleep in and decided to stop for the evening and stretch out my legs. After a couple of minutes went by I heard a gentle knock on the paper door. It was Abe-san. He asked me how I was doing, so I told him I was going to stop for the night but I would come back in the morning. He said, “I know it is difficult for beginners, but there are 60 people and Hisamatsu waiting for you to return. No one will continue until you come back.”

There it was. I was finally trapped. Either I could go back and face certain pain, hour after hour, day after day, or I could leave. That would confirm that while I talked a good game, I was weak; a coward who couldn’t keep a commitment. 

I’ll give myself a little credit. I made my decision quickly and I followed Abe-san back into the meditation hall. Luckily it was totally dark except for a few candles and I couldn’t see people looking at me. Abe-san placed me next to him, at the edge of the group, so my squirming wouldn’t bother other people. He sat next to me, two feet away, the whole week. I sat there, I suffered, but I followed the same routine as everyone else. The highlight of the week was when Abe-san told me that even though I wasn’t a student of Hisamatsu, he could arrange a short interview with him, and Abe-san would act as the interpreter.

I sat across from Hisamatsu and immediately noticed his soft moist eyes. I thought he was going to give me advice but he mostly asked me questions about my background and what I studied in school. The only statement he made was “There is wisdom you cannot find in books.” Then Abe-san signaled to me that the interview was over. When I went outside, Abe-san noticed I was shaking, and he stood close to me and said, “Hisamatsu has had an effect on you”. I told him, “No one has ever looked at me like that. I felt like nothing else in the world existed for him.” The meeting with Hisamatsu helped me in another way. I made the connection that zazen was training me to concentrate and focus, and eventually that would lead to the kind of capacity Hisamatsu had, to be totally absorbed in the moment.

Finally, the last morning came. We got up at 4, did 2 hours of zazen, and had breakfast, before we said our goodbyes. I can’t say I had any moments of tranquility or had any spiritual insights, but I completed the Sesshin. As I bowed to Abe-san and thanked him, his smile conveyed that he was happy for me. I left the temple, and descended a long cobblestone path, bounded by temple walls on both sides. The sun was just coming up. This was 1964 and the Rolling Stones had not yet written their famous line, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.” But that perfectly described what happened to me. I walked down the path, feeling the sun on my face and I experienced new feelings of strength confidence and courage. I said to myself, “I can handle a monastery, I’m going to become a Zen monk.”

For the next month I did zazen by myself at Chotokuin 5 hours a day and tried to learn Japanese. Then Ogata-san and Abe-san took me to the Shokoku-ji Sodo and introduced me to Kajitani Roshi. The monastery was 600 years old and was built for 90 monks but due to the war and the economy, currently there were only 6. Because the monks were concerned that I would get sick and they would have to take care of me, we agreed that I would do zazen with the monks in the evenings, and move into the monastery once a month for the week long Sesshins. After 3 months the monks decided to let me move in. I stayed until August when I got a draft notice from the US Army. From 1965-1971 I was in the US Army and reserves, while I completed my Ph. D. in clinical psychology. In 1972 I went back to Shokoku-ji for another 3 months.

Over the years I only saw Abe-san a couple of times, in Japan and Santa Barbara. Now that I am close to retirement, I have a lot of time to reflect. Every morning after I do zazen I have a period of gratitude, and starting with my 4 immigrant grandparents, I thank the people who shared their love and wisdom with me. Of course I think of Abe-san, and lately I’ve realized that in addition to putting me on this path for the last 55 years, he also gave me a template for how one person helps another person reach their potential.

– He saw potential in me that I did not see in myself.

– He was tough on me and pushed me beyond what I thought I could do.

– He supported me and stayed by my side.

– He loved me, not because I was especially loveable or deserving, but because he was full of love.

I once read that Abe-san said about Hisamatsu, “Without him I am not what I am.” Sitting here, softly crying, that is exactly how I feel about Abe.

(If you want to read more about Masao Abe, read Masao Abe, A Zen Life of Dialogue, edited by Donald W Mitchell, Charles E. Tuttle Co. 1998)