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Rev. Taihaku Priest/ Tanaka Shinkai Roshi
by Taigen Dan Leighton
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DC note: Taihaku Priest passed away on
May 24, 2021. The announcement of her death
is below.
I spent
less time with Taihaku Gretchen Priest than some of you, and
never visited her Vermont temple, but I much appreciated her
presence and our conversations at a number of SZBA and ASZB
conferences.
In the context of her sad, early passing, I am sharing information about Taihaku's background. I lived in Kyoto 1990 through 1992, translating Dogen with Shohaku Okumura, among other activities. I did a handful of sesshins with Tanaka Shinkai Roshi, Taihaku’s teacher later at Hokyoji, the training temple founded by Dogen’s Chinese disciple Jakuen near Eiheiji. Earlier as a young priest, Shinkai Roshi had been invited by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi to come to SFZC to help, as he invited Katagiri Roshi and Kobun Chino Roshi. At that time Shinkai Roshi had to decline the invitation as he was leading the Tokyo branch of Eiheiji. I did sesshin with Shinkai Roshi at his temple then, Saikoji, a small temple in a little rice village outside Kameoka west of Kyoto. He had built this temple with a twelve seat sodo, monk’s hall, where practitioners, including his several resident monks, slept, ate oryoki, as well as did zazen.
I also once rode the
train with Shinkai Roshi from Kyoto to a sesshin he led in an old temple in
Shizuoka, closer to Tokyo, attended by a number of his students from Tokyo.
Shinkai Roshi was kind but also
strict, very dignified. I liked his sesshins (and dokusan) very much. One
feature was that between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner
there were no bells, no formal kinhin periods. Whenever one wanted you could
get up and do kinhin in the hallway around the sodo, or use the toilets
behind the sodo, but you could also just sit zazen for hours. He called
this “Buddha’s schedule.” I believe he had travelled previously in South
Asia.
I think he received the important
position of Abbot of Hokyoji shortly after I returned to California from
Kyoto. Later he once visited Green Gulch with a couple of his moks and I
had the pleasure of showing him around.
In Taihaku Gretchen Priest's kind,
dignified presence and clarity I could definitely see her training with
Shinkai Roshi.
For more background on Taihaku, here is a very interesting interview on David Chadwick’s cuke.com with her ex-husband, Jeff Broadbent, who was an early practitioner at Tassajara, and a student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. I recall Shinkai Roshi mentioning Jeff Broadbent, who had visited him. At the time I did not know Jeff’s name. Jeff mentions Suzuki Roshi encouraging Taihaku to return to meditate in Vermont, when she returned from Japan where they were about to go. http://www.cuke.com/Cucumber%20Project/interviews/broadbent.html
May Taihaku Priest’s students and temple flourish.
with bows,
Taigen Leighton
Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, Chicago
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi lineage
Dear Sangha and Friends,
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