Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / A Buddha Weighs Less Than A Feather- Bansho, Zen Teacher

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A Buddha Weighs Less Than A Feather- Bansho, Zen Teacher · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddha Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Good morning, everyone. Nice to see you all. Thank you for coming together to practice here at Great Vow. And those of you online and at home, those of you who may listen to this talk later, I'm one of the many ways that people can access Dharma these days. So my name is Bansho.
• 0:43
  I've been away for a few months, for three months, and four and a half of the last six months, I've been in Japan at a training monastery called Toshoji. And one of the reasons why, I've I've always wanted to, for many years, to go and experience, the practice of Zen in Japan and had the opportunity to do that. And one of the reasons for, forgoing is that part of the way that the that, teachers, can be are recognized, for their training in Japan is by participating in six months of training at a monastery if you're a foreigner. So they call it ango, two angos, six months. So that was part of the impetus to go for six months.
• 1:49
  And that certification that comes from that will open doors for future people here at Great Vow if they want to go to Japan. And, right now, Chosen has that, is that is that person. So so that's a reason to go. If you're gonna send somebody to do this training, they want someone who actually knows what it's like to to do that. So Today, I'd like to talk a little bit about what I'm excited about.
• 2:23
  The experience that Toshoji was actually what, bringing back, the statue. And so I wanna tell you a little bit about the story and of its origin, the origin story of the statue, and I hope that it is something that can allow us to open our view to the art and artists that are all around us here at the monastery and everywhere else. Also, just the it's a story of devotion, of persistence, craft, craftsman skills. So I'd like to start with a koan. Saigo, the woodcarver, said to the monk Bansho, how does a 50 pound Buddha weigh less than a feather?
• 3:18
  The monk said, I don't know. The carver said, Here you go. So so while I was I was at this international training monastery, so there were people from Japan but also many many countries, I was the only native English speaker there out of 20 to 25 people. But you can get along fine, many people speak English. There were a lot of people from South America and Europe were the foreigners and then probably a third were Japanese.
• 4:01
  Those of you who know Boushin, Noriko, she's now there, came while I was there and it was a joy to be there together and practice. Life there is in many ways similar to Great Vow. We rose early, there it was around 03:30AM and we went into the night, lights out was at nine, simple work. I worked in the kitchen, I cleaned, gardened, landscaped. One time we harvested donated cabbage in the field of a local farmer.
• 4:38
  We drove out there at dusk and were given hand sickles to go up and down her fields and amusing the local grannies to no end see us out there and filled up a pickup truck, back of a pickup truck filled with cabbage. So we were having cabbage three and four times a day. So one of my roles was to tend the fire for one of the baths. The baths were wood fired, the heat in the Zendo was wood. So on this day it was the bath for the teachers.
• 5:18
  Now don't think of this as a fancy bath, it was basically a large closet probably the size of the the room back there. Half of it was for changing and lighting incense and the other had an iron bowl in it or cauldron, it's called a Goemon Burrow, so our Goemon Bath. So this has an interesting story, the name of the bath Goemon is named after a bandit from the fifteen hundreds. Now this bandit crossed a well, let me just read from Wikipedia, it says was a real life bandit leader during the Izuchi Momoyama period who became a legendary outlaw hero known as a Japanese Robin Hood. He allegedly stole from wealthy samurai and merchants to help the poor and but he was eventually caught.
• 6:15
  Some think some think he made a mistake by knocking a bell off of a table trying to assassinate a warlord named Toyotomi Hideyoshi and his punishment was to be boiled alive in an iron bath cauldron. So now these baths have his name, everybody goes to be boiled although we only we only got it up to about a 113 degrees Fahrenheit. So on the bottom of the outside wall of this room of the bath is a door the size of a shoebox lid and so the Goemon person builds and feeds a fire in that door, most of the time on hands and knees to heat up the well water over the course of a few hours. That day, I was trained to make the fire when an old Japanese man approached me. I spoke with him in rudimentary Japanese and he in basic English.
• 7:11
  He said, I used to make fire like this when I was a boy. It was March 7 and he was there to take photos of the plum blossoms and he says he comes to Toshoji, that monastery twice a year, spring and autumn to take photos. His name is Tsuginori Saigo and he's 82 years old. He worked as an engineer at an auto company and retired to be a sculptor of Buddha's. But then, he said, I had to give up carving because of my shoulder.
• 7:46
  I hurt it and just didn't have the strength anymore. We talked for a long time. Now he takes pictures of flowers and posts them to Instagram. Peachboy3, if you'd like to follow him. After we talked for a while, me tending the fire, he talking about photos, he said, this is the first time I've talked to anyone here in fourteen years and this felt very comfortable.
• 8:18
  He took a photo, me and the guy training me took our photo next to the plum blossoms, a Brazilian named Sajo and we went and went on his way. So Saigo san came back a couple days later and we talked some more. So Saigo san, san is an honorific that you use when you talk about somebody, Saigo is his last name, his family name and so maybe he'll listen to this so I'm gonna speak with him with respect and call him Saigo san. He worked as an engineer for an auto parts company and during that time he met a master woodcarver and so I'd like to Saigo san talked about his master in wood carving and so I'd like to share what he said. Here's what Saigo san said about his wood carving master.
• 9:19
  Sculptor, Mr. Fujisawa Gakushin. Gakushin Fujisawa, A Journey from Worldly Radiance to Sacred Stillness. Saigo san said, Gakushin Fujisawa was a visionary Buddhist sculptor, so he's talking about his master, whose life stood as a powerful testament to the spiritual act of renunciation. His biography is defined by a dramatic transition between two worlds.
• 9:47
  In the first half of his life, Fujisawa embodied worldly success. A graduate of the faculty of law at Kyoto University, he lived a life of immense opulence in Tokyo and Nagoya. He drove a custom Rolls Royce. He hosted lavish parties for hundreds in his expensive city, expansive city residence and maintained an estate so vast it required a team of gardeners weeks to tend. He moved through the upper echelons of society possessing every luxury the world could offer.
• 10:21
  However, around the age of 40, he underwent a profound transformation. He renounced his secular glory and was ordained as a monk at Onjoji, the head temple of a Tendai, of the Tendai Jimon sect. So that's a sect, different, it's not Zen Buddhism but Tendai is actually the kind of Buddhism that Dogen practiced before he became, studied Zen. It was very old. So he renounced his secular glory and was ordained a monk at the head temple of the Tendai Jemon Sect.
• 10:56
  He traded his mansion for a humble rented studio in the quiet town of Asakuchi Okoyama. His later simple life was not a result of necessity but a conscious choice, a liberation from the burden of possession. He lived as a spiritual aristocrat finding joy in the harmony of all things So he lived as a spiritual aristocrat finding joy in the harmony of all things rather than in material wealth. His genius was multifaceted. He was a gifted operatic tenor whose talent stunned professional directors and he maintained close ties with the political and sporting elite of Japan.
• 11:34
  Yet his heart remained devoted to selfless service exemplified by his frequent missions to India to donate school uniforms to children. Master Gakushin sculptures are characterized by a by powerful raw chisel marks evidence of a rigorous internal battle to strip up away the three poisons of greed, anger, and delusion. The statue was created by a direct disciple who studied under this legendary figure inheriting not just the art of carving but the philosophy of a soul that found true wealth in letting go. So my new friend Saigo san began to study with this master and he said he became obsessed carving Buddhas two to three times a week and on most weekends. As you can hear this was not just a hobby but spirituality.
• 12:32
  Saigo san's grandfather was a Shingon priest and his own father ordained late in life in the Shingon school which is the esoteric school of Buddhism in Japan. So this is a man, Saigo san, the carver I met, steeped in Dharma. So when he came back two days later, he presented me with a gift of two palm sized stone figures, a kanon and a shakyamuni. One was for my trainer to build fire and the other was for me. He talked for a while and as as we did fire.
• 13:15
  After a long time Saigo san said to me, I have talked to you longer than anyone at this temple and this is the longest I have talked to a foreigner. This made a beautiful this made a meaningful memory for me. I want to give you a Buddha to take back to America, it's this big. And he put his hand three feet from the ground and I said, No, no, no, no. Please don't give this to me.
• 13:46
  Please please donate. Please donate this Buddha to this temple that we're at. I'm serving this temple, don't give me a Buddha, don't donate anything to me please. And he became he became very firm. I'm giving it to you and I want you to take it to your temple in America.
• 14:07
  So yes, yes, of course. I am honored to receive this Buddha. I am honored to receive this Buddha. Will take it to America. He asked when I was leaving and when I told him the April 19, he said, Okay, I have one month to finish the face.
• 14:29
  So he posted about this and here's what he said about our meeting. So this is my version, this is his version. I carved this wooden Buddha statue back in 1995. At that time I was working as a three d CAD CAM, CAE engineer. Although my schedule was hard, was fully committed to my professional responsibilities and gave my absolute best to my engineering work.
• 15:00
  I could only balance such demanding projects because of the incredible support and hard work of my staff for which I am deeply, still deeply grateful. During that same period I met a master Buddhist sculptor whose work was so profound that I became his disciple. To honor both my profession and my passion I spent two or three nights a week and nearly every weekend carving. Since the finished statue is too large to keep at home I have a long I have long hoped to find a meaningful place to dedicate it. I am happy to say that this wish is finally coming true.
• 15:36
  I recently met Mr. Bansho, the leader of a Zen group from Oregon during his trip to Japan. He has kindly offered to accept the statue and it will soon be sent across the ocean to its new home at a Zen temple in The USA. So this is the statue, Chisha, please. So a little bit about the statue itself.
• 16:10
  This particular statue is one piece of solid wood, it is three feet tall and 50 pounds. The wood is camphor, camphor wood. It's very interesting, was asking Hogan who knows a lot about wood, we find camphor around and he said he'd never seen it outside of out of Asia and the first time I ever encountered camphor wood was a tree in Nagasaki. We visited there some years ago and visited a temple in Nagasaki that when you or a shrine when you go up there has one of those torii gates and half of it was blown blown up and so it's got one side up and then half of the other going over survived. And then there is a camphor tree, huge camphor tree and which like everything else after The US bomb dropped the atomic bomb, you know, many beings were killed including untold numbers of plants and people thought of course that the tree was gone but when when it came time for spring, this tree that they thought was dead actually had leaves.
• 17:43
  And it became a symbol of the resilience and rebirth of Nagasaki after the war and you can still visit the tree, still there. So a little bit about, for those who are interested in such things, I asked him before this talk about about camphor and about wood and he said, he said that my master carved giant Katsura trees from Hokkaido which are Japanese maples in his early to middle period. Katsura logs with a diameter of one meter, three feet, were not simply expensive. They had become virtually nonexistent and impossible to obtain which led him to start using camphor wood instead. As for me, I started using some Japanese maple and cypress that my teacher shared with me for smaller works but most of my sculptures, this is Saigo san said, were made from camphor wood like this.
• 18:44
  In contemporary large scale Buddhist sculpture, the standard technique is Yosegi Zakuri in which multiple pieces of wood are joined together. So a lot of the statues you see in temples are different pieces that they fit together especially, you know, massive ones. It's interesting to try and look at them and see the seams, you can't, you actually can't see the seams where they're all put together, it's amazing. So large Japanese Cypress are no longer available, readily available therefore both my master and I who use the single block tradition came to rely on camphor as large trees are still more obtainable. So a little about the wood played a crucial role in early Japanese art not only as a material but also in shaping style and technique.
• 19:36
  It's suitable for single block carving, large trunks allowed sculptors to carve entire statues. It's highly resistant to insects and decay and so a lot of the statues that you know there's a national treasure that's a camp for Buddha that is from the June and it's it's like it was carved yesterday. It's relatively soft and easy to carve, ideal for early sculptural work, the less suited for fine detail so it ends up being sort of rough cut and when you come and look at the Buddha you can see that it has that element. He says that, you know, for those of you really deep out on wood carving, the texture of the wood encourages bold solid forms rather than intricate detailing. It has a fragrance, distinctive fragrance, the natural scent is kind of cedar pine ish considered appropriate for religious site spaces so it has its own incense as well as kind of repelling insects from gnawing on it.
• 20:47
  So as I got closer to the departure I wondered if Saigo san would show up again with a statue because after we he said I would bring it and he said I have a month to finish the face and time ticked by ticked and I didn't hear from him and we didn't really explain exchange much, we didn't exchange, I didn't give him my email or anything like that. So my mind sometimes as I was thinking about coming back with, I wonder if that guy's gonna show up with that Buddha and I would think, how am I gonna get this Buddha to America? And then I would think, oh he's probably not gonna bring it but if he does, what will you do? So if you think, the mystical magical mind of Zaza in Japan, well, it's just like here. You just take your mind with you.
• 21:43
  So on April 8, ten days before I was gonna leave and a month after we first met Saigo san and his wife Hiroko showed up with a statue. Everyone at Toshoji was astounded and happy and impressed with impressed with the the craftsmanship. So, now what do I do? I have this giant Buddha, 50 pounds, three feet tall. How does it how are we gonna get it to America?
• 22:22
  So thus became the the other next part of the journey. So I thought, okay, how am gonna get this Buddha? I have one suitcase I have two suitcases, a carry on and a bigger one, glad I packed light. So my idea was that I was going to put get a box and kinda pack all my clothes in it and then hire this service. They have this amazing service in Japan that you can ship your luggage ahead of you.
• 22:58
  I mean it's like unbelievable, you can go to seven Eleven and give them your suitcase and say I'm going to such and such hotel, you know, five hours away and you give them like $15 and they like take your luggage and then you don't have to worry about it on the train or it's amazing. Why can't we have nice things? So my plan was that I was gonna pack this Buddha, give it to Yamato, which is the service company, and then they would take it to Osaka Airport and then I would put it on the plane and I it was just under the weight that it's like, oh, the second bag is free. Yes, this is gonna be totally free. So what to pack it on?
• 23:50
  So none of the boxes at Toshoji were big enough, we didn't have enough wood to bake make a box so my friend, my fellow breakfast cook Kakushin, there's a Japanese Kakushin, He's very intrepid guy, took me to a hardware store or first first we bought a garden chest, a plastic garden chest with wheels to roll it and the problem was is that the inside outside dimensions would fit the Buddha, the inside dimensions would not. So the Buddha fit about halfway in so it's like, oh well this isn't gonna work. So we had to go back to a hardware store, take back that and look around. We looked at all the possibilities, we looked at boxes, we looked at wood, we looked at Cocker Sheen was like, let's get a big trash, plastic trash can and we'll put that, put it in there, we can put two together and just, it was, we tried everything. So I was like, well, this isn't gonna work, maybe we can make a box back at the monastery.
• 25:08
  So I bought a bunch of bubble wrap and some tape and went back. In the meantime, while we were going back coming back from the hardware store, I got an email from Yamato saying, we won't take your Buddha. We don't ship Buddhas. They have a policy on their website that says they don't take personal altars and Buddhas fall under that. So it didn't matter what kind of box or trash can or garden chest or whatever I was going to put this Buddha, Yamato was not going to take it.
• 25:43
  Which meant that I was going to have to take the Buddha and Yamato could have my luggage. So, because Yamato would not take it, I had to carry I was gonna have to carry the Buddha. And, because I couldn't have a couldn't find a box big enough, there was no way to check the Buddha onto the train, the, into the plane. So I was gonna have to ride with this Buddha all the way to America. So, with a lot of, you know, and I'm living with like 15 other guys who have all these ideas about so all of you are thinking about, did you think about, couldn't you have, we went over that, you can save it.
• 26:38
  All you guys, we went over it. I had two continents, eight countries, we went over it. So there was no option, believe me. So I had to buy a plane ticket, spent two hours on on the phone with the airline. It's called cabin seat baggage which is buying a seat.
• 27:08
  So on the day of my departure, I got a ride to the train station and started carrying the Buddha in my arms. And one thing to know about Japanese train stations, they do not have luggage carts available. So if you think you're gonna show up and push a Buddha around on the luggage cart once you get in the door, not gonna happen. You're gonna carry it and put it down when you need rest and carry it. So, three trains later, I arrived at Osaka Airport to check-in.
• 27:51
  My Yamato had my luggage which was great, moved around. I have a backpack, I have my robes on my back, I have these bags, I have this Buddha. So I went to the counter and I'm checking in to get my my I have a boarding pass for me, a reservation for Shakyamuni and at the ticket counter they said, we're not sure that you can actually bring this. And I said, what? Actually I said, Nani?
• 28:35
  Nani deska, what is it that you're saying to me? So we're not sure you can bring this and because the ticket the ticket people sold me was for a person and so they said, this doesn't weigh, we thought it was gonna be a big person. I was like, do you have American seats? And so they said, it's this only weighs 50 pounds and so it's gonna unbalance the plane. And I said, well, my visa is expiring tomorrow so I really need to leave.
• 29:18
  And so I spent, I was at the ticket counter for an hour, hour and fifteen minutes, hour and a half as they were on the phone with Hawaiian Airlines Japan to figure out what would happen. Meanwhile, all these people are coming, they're getting their boarding passes, there's no one there but me and I'm thinking, how is this gonna happen? What's gonna happen? So they did want to help for sure, they did want to help and if I could, at one point I was saying, they were like, how are you gonna secure this? And I said, I was on a car and we put a seat belt on it and here's where it was.
• 30:03
  And I saw her describing to her manager, you know, like, wear the seat belt. You just tell, it's like international language, seat belt. So the manager came up to me and said, we're still not sure you can bring this but we've let security know that you're coming and you're gonna have to it's up to the flight crew. So you might take this through security and get to the gate and the flight crew might tell you no. And I said, okay, I'll take that chance.
• 30:46
  So we'll check my bags, I don't know what's gonna happen but my bags at least are going to The US. And here again, oh yeah, no carts past security so I'm carrying this Buddha. It's now been eight hours of travel and carrying this Buddha. Go past security, go through immigration, they stamp, hey, you're leaving the country and it's like, oh man, I really can't go back. Because I had this thought, well maybe I have twenty four hours in Osaka, I can find a shipping company and that can do it, take it and I'll come back.
• 31:23
  Yeah, so I'm leaving and so I'm carrying this Buddha and then this guy comes up to me and he says, hey, can I help you out? And it was, it happened to be this guy that I struck up a conversation in the ticket counter line with him and his, Japanese partner but it was just him, he was, she was seeing him off and his name was Justin and he is a union carpenter from Seattle and he said, I'm a woodcarver and I heard you talk, you know, I was really interested in your story and I'd love to help you out and he was on the same flight. So he and I traded back and forth carrying the Buddha because he thought like, I'll just carry it to the gate for you because you've gone long enough and then I was like, just give it back to me when you're tired. He's like, no, I'm not tired, it's great, it's totally great dude. And he's caring, caring, caring and pretty soon he was like, alright I'm gonna give this back to you, okay?
• 32:31
  So we get to the gate and we're sitting there and he's like, You're gold dude, if they let you this far you're totally gold. It's gonna happen, it's gonna happen. I was like, I hope so, I don't know, we'll see. And I should have known that it was probably gonna happen because you know, the crew, the ticketers spent like an hour and a half with me and if it's like usually a no, it's like no right away, right? So they really wanted But then I saw the Hawaiian Airlines crew come and I was like, oh, it's a There are all these Hawaiians.
• 33:07
  They're and they're in their flowered shirts and it's like, oh, this is I think this might happen because they're like Justin because he had moved from Seattle to Hawaii and he'd lived there for twenty years. It was like, oh, they want this to happen. So they did let me on. Yes. They did let me on.
• 33:33
  So that was three planes, four airports. I almost missed a plane at one point, I lost my wallet in the middle of it, in the middle of Honolulu Airport, couldn't find it, ran back and forth, left the Buddha at the gate and I'm trying to find my, I told them the plane from Osaka, I was like, I left my wallet on the plane, can you go find it? And they went and looked, they're like, Nope, no wallet. So I was like, I can't get my next boarding pass without any ID, now what am I gonna do? And then somebody said, are you, what's your name, what's your last name?
• 34:10
  Green. What's your first name? Patrick. Oh, this is yours. So they ran back, they were closing the door.
• 34:21
  Yeah, it was very exciting. I did get to commandeer a wheelchair at one point in Hawaii, so we had a little bit of a break. But I could not run through the airport like I wanted to with it. So, So Saigo san, the woodcarver, Gakushin the master, Bansho the monk. You look around the monastery and all of these pieces have this kind of story, master and student, disciple, you know we have this Buddha here, two Buddhas, this Buddha, all these pieces have a story.
• 35:09
  So the Koan, Saigo, the woodcarver said to the monk, How does a 50 pound Buddha weigh less than a feather? The monk Bansho said, I don't know. The carver said, Here you go. So how does a 50 pound Buddha weigh less than a feather? Well, I just told you.
• 35:36
  So I'd like to close by reading the dedication from Sugi Nori Saigo for this statue. Statement of dedication, Buddha statue to Oregon USA at the Toshoji Zen temple in Japan. It is a profound honor to dedicate this Buddhist statue to your esteemed temple there in Oregon. I studied the art of sculpture in Asakuchi, Okiyama, Japan under the late master Gakushin Fujisawa. Though a man of immense intellect and diverse talents, my master chose a life of voluntary poverty and devoted himself entirely to the practice of compassion.
• 36:23
  What he passed down to me was not merely the technical skill of wood carving, but a philosophy of life to strip away one's own ego and to find the sacred within all things. This work was created in the stillness of that philosophy, a space free from worldly desires. Following my Master's teaching that even the smallest wood chip is a fragment of life, I placed a prayer into every stroke of the chisel. It is my sincere hope that this statue traveling across borders will stand as a companion to all who visit this temple sharing a light of serenity and boundless compassion with every heart. April 2026, Okoyama Japan, sculptor Saigo Suginori.
• 37:51
  Yes.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Did the seat belt fit?
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: Did the seat belt fit? The seat belt did fit and they asked me if I would want, if I needed an extender and I did not need one. It fit perfect. It's like he's done this many times before. Yes?
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Is there a home in the monastery yet?
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: We're trying it out in the guest area so that's where it was beforehand and so it'll live there for a while and we'll just see. But yeah, I don't have an agenda for it and so we'll see where it ends up. Yes?
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: I had a vision sitting right by me at one of their children when they were 75 telling this story,
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: so much business and whatever version. Yeah. Yeah. Roshi of the monastery said, Toshoji said to take the dedication and put it in the hollow underneath. It's kind of solid wood but it's kind of carved hollowed out for that kind of thing so we'll put the dedication in there so people can find it later.
• 39:03
  Yeah. Yes?
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: Your perseverance is inspiring. I was wondering, was your, did you have a point where you're like, oh, this is just not gonna happen? And then how did you get through that? Well, you have to repeat
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: the question. Yeah. So the question was about how did I, I'll restate it and you can see if I need to fill in but it's basically how did I persevere and did I ever think it wasn't gonna happen? Is that it? I at least was open to the possibility that it wouldn't happen and my mind was looking at ways to work with that, you know, the problem solving mind because the problem solving mind is like, okay, so if I have to get on this plane because my visa is expiring, maybe I can call somebody at the So to Shu in Shimicho and they know a temple in Osaka and they can come and take the Buddha.
• 40:00
  Like I was like, maybe the Buddha just stays here at this Osaka Temple until I can come back or I'll tell the Roshis and they can go to Osaka and pick it. So I was like, my mind was of course conspiring, but that was like actually a sliver of it. There was only a, that like hour and a half of a twenty seven hour journey that I didn't think that it would happen. The rest was just, I said I would do it. I said I would take it to America.
• 40:33
  And and I'm, how could how could I not? I said I would do it. So so I never, that's what, that's how I was, just persisted. There was just no option not to do it. I said I would do it, so I'm doing it.
• 40:52
  And then it became easy, then it's just like, how am I gonna do it? Not weather. Because weather is like, oh, this is too hard and it's just then the mind is like just focused on how do I I mean, a way, it's like a a vow. Right? I vowed that I would bring this to my temple in The US so that we can all so we can have be share in the light of serenity and boundless compassion.
• 41:21
  So, yeah. Thank you.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendesk.org. Your support supports us.