How & Why Shinzen Became a Monk

So you were ordained a monk Mount Koya in the Shingon tradition right correct is that something you always wanted to do since you work, it. No, not really what I always wanted to do since I was a kid was be a summer I. I saw in the 50s. Japanese samurai movies. When I was in middle school I just got fascinated with the whole Japanese culture thing.

And that led to my learning the Japanese language in la going to Japanese ethnic school. In addition to American public school.

And that got me to Japan in my.

Senior year at UCLA, where I was an Asian language major and I encountered real life, Buddhist monks. But my interest in them was just because it was the closest thing to ancient Japan that still exists In other words, in the temples honey. They have telephones and electricity and all that, but it's sort of like the old days right so I was fascinated with it that would be the closest that I could get living.

Not only the wisdom source right so I was hanging out in Buddhist temples just to sort of live as close as I could fantasy of ancient Japan. But it wasn't meditating because that's the last thing in the world I had a proclivity to do I knew I was scattered and impatient and Wimpy and all those things, so I was just hanging out having fun in the temple. But I had a sense that they knew a kind of secret that they would be.

Willing to share but they would never push on me.

So what I got back to the United States. I was graduating from UCLA and I thought.

Well, I want to go to Graduate School. I want it to be related to Asia. I'll study Buddhism because you need a lot of esoteric languages for that and I was good at languages. And so forth so I wasn't going to become an academician on professional scholar of Buddhism Pass. My prelims for a PhD at the University. Wisconsin so they sent me back to Japan to do research on topic.

So I decided to pick the shingle on school of Buddhism, which is the Japanese version of ledgeriana practice. Also on his Tantric Buddhism Esoteric Buddhism. I chose that because, although many Westerners at that time were studying Tibetan forms of Adriana practice. No one knew about or were studying the practice as it had been preserved in Japan for 1000 years, so I thought OK, I'll make this my academic.

Bailywick my specialty, I'll be the expert in the Western World on the Japanese version of practice.

So I went there with that in mind with that goal. But when I got there, they wouldn't teach me anything because it's.

For self transformation, not just as an intellectual curiosity, so they said.

The only way that I could learn it if I was willing to become a monk at live in the temple so in order to be able to write my PhD thesis. He became a month to so you could write your pH D base is pretty much.

But what happened is that my motivation shifted once I started to live in the temple.

And once I started to get some instruction in the practice, I realized there was a huge potential there for me personally, so they were very clever. They put me in this situation that turned me around and then something happened, something happened in my personal life that pretty much blew piaui emotionally.

And pointed out to me the absolute necessity of.

Seeing beyond the body and the mind and.

That happened while I was in that first year that I was a monk there in Japan.

And that just changed everything for me when I was in Graduate School at Wiscconsin. My hero was my graduate. Advisors name was Richard Robinson and he was an intellectual giant just an intellectual giant is all I could say he could make puns in 3 languages simultaneously. His specialty was Buddhist logic. Yes, there is something called Buddhist logic.

It's Aristotelian Syllogistic logic that was used in the media. Amika School of not guard you're not somewhat along the lines that the Greek Zeno School and so forth use logic to sort of show People beyond the world. Let's let's be out of the world anyway. He was a master of that. And while I was a monk. I got this letter from the United States.

He had been injured in a bizarre and horrific accident, he a fuse blew out in his house and he went down to change it. And there was no source of electricity, so light. He struck a match and there have been a gas leak there. He went up like a torch and just burns all over his body and horrifically if he had lived had been.

Terrifically deformed.

Any just suffered in agony for a month and then died.

And I thought I thought to myself, what good is all that knowledge.

What good is all that intelligence?

If this can happen at anytime to a person.

That made it real for me.

An camping the motivation to want to see beyond the limited identity with the body and the mind.