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Welcome back to my UnMind podcast and Substack posting, after a brief hiatus. This segment and the next will recap my remarks at the annual retreat of the Silent Thunder Order given last weekend. This year's retreat was dedicated to the memory of Daigaku Kongo Richard Langlois-roshi, my senior dharma brother at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago, and the first dharma heir of Zengaku Soyu Matsuoka-roshi, our lineage founder in America.

My talks on Saturday evening and Sunday morning followed a week of presentations by those members of our community who had met Kongo-roshi when he was alive, with one exception. These were a series of heartfelt and deeply moving remembrances, not only of significant interactions with Kongo, but the impact that his teaching and personality had on the speakers and their practice. His legacy is captured in their Zen lives, rather than in a body of written and recorded works, although his record is also substantial, and available online and through his archive at Northwestern University.

After listening to the other talks, I decided not to add too much to the historical or biographical comments or more on Kongo's style of teaching, personality, etcetera, but to look at his contribution under a larger lens — the future of Zen in America and what it might look like. Listening to an audiotape of one of Kongo's talks it comes across as "musical" in the since of a jazz improvisation or riffing on different subjects, a kind of kaleidoscopic impression overall but repeatedly focusing on a single-pointed emphasis on sitting meditation, or zazen.

Similarly in my presentation I mean to convey a kind of cinematic impression, not necessarily more information to log about propagating Zen in America, but the changing landscape in which we are operating, challenging us to react with creative agility, developing skillful means to introduce newcomers to Zen, and train our members in the essential method of its practice. This is what Kongo did in his time and cultural milieu, and what Matsuoka-roshi and all the ancestors did. Our challenge is the same: bringing the legacy of our lineage into the 21st century context of the USA.

The other speakers who knew Kongo enjoyed a different relationship with him. We were dharma brothers, not teacher and student, though all relationships in Zen are teaching or learning relationships. As Matsuoka-roshi would often say, "We teach each other Buddhism."

Not that there are not seniors and juniors in the mix. An incident at the Zen Buddhist Temple of Chicago illustrates this distinction in a subtle way. One day I happened to be attending on the sitting period, which means that I was responsible for standing and watching the meditators, Kyosaku stick in hand, and responding to any request by striking their shoulders. And in general, correcting their postures if needed. Kongo was sitting facing the wall near the altar, and I approached him, touching his shoulder and gently pushing the stick against his back, as we are trained to do. He did not resist, exactly, but he did not move, either. It felt as if I were trying to adjust the posture of a Buddha statue, made of wood, stone, or metal. He did not budge, like a stone or a mountain. He never said anything about it, but I got the feeling that I had presumed upon the relationship. Juniors, in general, never correct seniors. And Dogen's instruction to seniors is that they are not to abuse juniors.

In Kongo's discourses he would sometimes refer to someone as "my disciple," which is a common expression in Zen communities. But it should be understood that a more modest term such as "student" is more appropriate. We do not have personal disciples in Buddhism. Anyone entering the formal path is a disciple of Buddhism, or Buddha, if they have a devotional bent of mind.

Such tropes, and usage of language in general, should be forgiven in considering the intent and meaning of a Zen teacher's written record; at that point in the propagation of Zen to America, they may have been appropriate, but with time have come to carry inappropriate connotations.

Kongo and I had many things in common, along with both of us being 20- and 30-something white midwestern males. He was a polymath, with multiple vocations and avocations, such as working for the rapid transit as a day gig, the CTA; involvement in martial arts, music, and philosophy; and of course, Zen. He enjoyed multiple lineages, including being director of the Chinese Cultural Academy.

For my part, I balanced multiple careers in professional design, teaching at the Art Institute and U of I, engaging in fine art, and music on a more amateur level, and, of course, our mutual interest in Zen, where I also enjoy the recognition of multiple lineages from Matsuoka-roshi, my root teacher; the Sawaki-Uchiyama lineage, after Okumura-roshi performed a formal transmission ceremony, and a dotted line to the Shunryu Suzuki lineage through Seirin Barbara Kohn-sensei, my preceptor.

The importance of lineage is not personal, but social in its aspect of credentialing my standing to promulgate and propagate Zen to the next generation. As Matsuoka-roshi said, "We live in a credentialed society; if you do not have credentials, no one will listen to you." So, we take on the traditions, such as wearing the robes, not for ourselves but for others.

Kongo and I also underwent multiple marriages - two each, if memory serves. The additional complexities of trying to balance professional and family life with that of training others in Zen amounts to a vivid illustration of what Master Dogen referred to as "katto": literally, "twining vines," such as wisteria. The entanglements of life, which become karmic with time, yielding unintended consequences. Master Dogen would quote an ancient Chinese saying in this regard: "Fall down seven times; get up eight." Or as Matsuoka-roshi would often admonish: "Don't give up!"

A koan for you: why does it say "eight"? Why not "Fall down seven times; get up seven"?

One of the hidden dimensions of the history of Zen, from the countries of origin down to today, is the steadily increasing impact of what has been termed "cultural evolution." Evolution in the cultural or social sphere occurs at a much more rapid rate than in the natural, or biological sphere. This is often pointed to as a source of many of our modern maladies. On the simplest level, it is sometimes framed as the fact that you might teach your son to build a kayak, based on what your father taught you. Your son may make significant improvements to the design and engineering, as you may have from your father's instructions. In one lifetime, or several in sequence, the functioning of the kayak may improve dramatically, while the biology of the succeeding generations remains mainly the same.

Cultural evolution today, multiplied by hundreds of generations of millions of people working day and night, results in the overwhelming complexity of our times, fostering intrusions into the field of natural evolution through medical and technological advances, including genetic manipulation. This seems to fly in the face of the simplicity of Zen, but as Matsuoka remind us, "Zen is always contemporary." Zen helps us to cope with the distractions and challenges of modern life, from driving on the expressway to navigating the vicissitudes of family, career, up to and including the political realm.

I recapped a few of the chronological dimensions of my relationship with Kongo and Matshoka-roshi, as in the song, "are you reeling in the years?" They and I are transitional figures, in that we are moving from one cultural idiom to another, in Matsuoka's case, assimilating into an alien culture from a great tradition; in the case of Kongo and myself, adapting that new tradition to our current culture and its demands.

O-sensei was born in 1912, died in 1997, at 85 years old. As of this year, I have outlived him, as well as Buddha and Dogen. It makes me feel like I am living on borrowed time. Transitional figures, of course, always appear a bit ridiculous to their contemporaries, as misfits. But in Zen, they, and we, are all speaking with one voice, pointing at something that transcends nationalities. Buddhism, or what it is pointing to, is not Indian, it is not Chinese, Korean, or Japanese; and it is certainly not American. Buddha was not a Buddhist, any more than Christ was a Christian. That the history of Zen started in India is a kind of fluke, a perfect storm of causes and conditions. Its essence cannot be caught in a cultural bottle.

Matsuoka-roshi came to America in 1940, the year I was conceived. I was born in earl March, 1941, so I had to have been conceived on or about the week of July 4, 1940. Langlois-roshi, born in 1935, died in 1999, just a couple of years after Matsuoka.

Matsuoka moved to Long Beach in 1970, the same year I moved to Atlanta, leaving Kongo to take over leadership of Chicago. He later relocated to Evanston, where it is in its 75th year of operation.

Okumura-roshi said I am old enough to be referred to as "roshi" — which I understand has the connotation of "old and useless" — and so is an apt appellation. I began attending the temple in Chicago in 1965, So last year, 2025, marked my 60th year practicing Zen.

A few thoughts on the tradition of giving dharma names as an expression and tradition of the formal lineage (this may sound a bit like a George Carlin routine). Kongo, my senior dharma brother's first dharma name means "diamond" - adamantine, tough, brilliant, etcetera. His second name (J. gago), Daigaku is likewise a bit intimidating, meaning "great mountain."

My first name, Taiun, however, means "cloud"— which suggests something soft, diaphanous, and drifting, as Sensei said, like a cloud in the sky, "no barriers anywhere." And of course, every time I turn around, I run into another barrier of some sort. I don't take it personally, and I doubt that Matsuoka meant any offense in giving me such a wimpy name by comparison. My second name,

Zenkai, meaning "whole world of Zen," kind of rounds out the picture, challenging me to inlude everything, without exception, in the embrace of Zen's worldview.

And, using the "scissors/rock/paper" meme, eventually water from the clouds wears down the highest mountain, and even diamond eventually succumbs to the ravages of time.

There are more anecdotal and historical details that may be of some interest, such as the "Bermuda triangle" we formed when Sensei moved to Long Beach and I to Atlanta, leaving Kongo in Chicago.

Over the years from 1970 to 1997 we engaged in correspondence via snail mail and telephone, annual visits, and periodic reunions in Chicago as well as in Japan. Top-of-mind recollections from that period include calls to Sensei when Kongo had brought him back from the West coast, when he would answer, "Not dead yet!" or "Pretty soon go to heaven!" He had a sense of humor that was not challenged by his dependency on the ministrations of the extended care facility in which he was eventually ensconced, awaiting the inevitable. His physical decline had not diminished his mental acuity. Kongo and Tessen Stuart Ericksen had taken on the responsibility of seeing to it that Sensei's final years would be passed in relative comfort. I and many others would visit him there, bringing his favorite dish, eel over rice.

There are many other memories to share, but the main message is that their legacy, Matsuoka and Kongo's, may be found in their students, rather than only in the written and recorded record they left behind. More on this in the next segment. Meanwhile please pursue your participation in this legacy and lineage by returning to the cushion in good times and bad. It will never let you down.