Philip Kapleau Roshi (1912-2004)

Philip Kapleau Roshi (1912-2004)

Remembrances from Sean Murphy, Don Morreale & Kenneth Kraft

One time, during a dharma talk, Kapleau said, “Once you truly embark upon the path of Zen, you will lead a consecrated life.” I’ve been working out the implications of this statement ever since. What does it mean to lead a consecrated life? It means that your aspiration to awaken becomes the central organizing principle of your life. It informs your every choice, from the people you associate with, to the work you do to support yourself. It determines what and how much you eat and drink. It dictates your manner of speech, how you walk, how you do the dishes, what you will allow yourself to watch, read, listen to. It even calls into question which pronoun you use to refer to yourself (“I”? “We”? “One”?) Kapleau was a stickler on this point, suggesting that we find ways to avoid self-referencing in speech.

Toward the end of a sitting one evening, Roshi told us, “When you ask people what kind of experience they are having with the practice, you usually get two very different kinds of answers. The first group says, ‘Fantastic. The practice is transforming my life.’ The second group says, ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been sitting for a year now and I don’t notice much change. Of course, my wife says I don’t fly off the handle as much as I used to. But I really don’t see it.’ You have to take what the first group says with a grain of salt,” Roshi said. “It’s the second group for whom the changes have really gone deep, so deep that they may not even be aware of them. That’s the real Zen.” It was this sort of off-the-cuff observation that began to shape my understanding of what meditation is, or is supposed to be. “You can let go,” he seemed to be saying. “You can surrender to the practice and trust that it will take you exactly where you need to go.”