The Masters of our Tradition

After 28 generations of successors to Buddha Shakyamuni, Bodhidharma became the Dharma heir of the patriarch Hannyatara (Jap. for Prajñātāra) at the beginning of the sixth century. Bodhidharma embarked on a long and arduous journey to China, introduced Zen there and became the first Zen patriarch in China. According to early reports, he was already a hundred years old at that time.The legends about Bodhidharma are rich. Whether they are historically authentic or not, they have acquired deep significance in Zen teaching.

Kodo Sawaki (1880-1965) lost his parents at an early age and had to make a living as a child in the care of an uncle’s friend among gamblers. After witnessing the death of an old man in a brothel, he became aware of the impermanence of life and the absurdity of such a death. Without family, without friends, without money, sixteen years old, he went on foot to the temple Eihei-ji. First accepted only as a servant, he was ordained a monk in 1897. Later he retired to an abandoned hermitage, disappointed to realise that the practice of zazen had virtually disappeared from Japanese Zen. He slept little, spending his days and nights practising zazen and studying the teachings of Master Dogen.

After years of such life, he began to travel and spread the teaching all over Japan, in big cities and fishing villages, in universities and prisons, making the practice of zazen accessible to lay people. As he did not want to settle anywhere and was always travelling alone, he was called “Kodo without a place to stay”. At the age of 55, he was appointed professor at Komazawa Buddhist University and eventually also became one of the people responsible for teaching at Soji-ji temple, one of the two main temples of Soto Zen in Japan. Kodo Sawaki was respected and admired throughout Japan for his simple and free life. Many disciples followed him, among them Yasuo Deshimaru. In 1965, when Kodo Sawaki was dying, he asked Deshimaru to follow him and pass on the original Zen in the Western world, the pure practice of shikantaza (“touching the truth while sitting”, Eihei Dogen), which was almost forgotten in the traditional temple system of that time.

Taisen Deshimaru (1914-1982) grew up on the island of Kyushu. Unlike his master Kodo Sawaki, he had experienced a happy childhood. Nevertheless, the contradiction between his mother’s religious spirit and his father’s materialistic world preoccupied him from an early age. The Amida Buddhism practised by his mother satisfied him just as little as his later preoccupation with Christianity. In search of an authentic spiritual path, he finally met the Zen master Kodo Sawaki and became his disciple.

For 30 years, Taisen Deshimaru followed his master and practised with him until his death in 1965, while at the same time continuing his life in society. Kodo Sawaki had long rejected Deshimaru’s wish to be ordained as a monk. He recognised in him a true seeker of the Way and did not want him to become a professional monk in the traditional temple system, as is customary in Japan’s institutionalised Zen. It was only shortly before his own death, therefore, that Kodo Sawaki ordained him as a monk and asked him to plant living Zen in a fresh soil.

Two years later, Taisen Deshimaru accepted the invitation of a group of macrobiotics to come to Paris. He lived very simply, offered shiatsu massages, began to teach the practice of zazen and was soon able to open the first dojo. At that time, Zen was known in the West only to a minority of intellectuals from books. Deshimaru strove to make Zen accessible to everyone and made numerous contacts with well-known scientists, artists and politicians of his time.

During his fifteen years of teaching in Europe, Master Deshimaru founded over a hundred dojos and, with the help of his students, created the first great Zen temple in Europe, La Gendronnière, in France. Based on his teachings, fundamental Zen texts were translated into European languages for the first time, annotated and published. He received official confirmation of the Dharma transmission from Yamada Reirin, the abbot of Eihei-ji. In Japan, he was appointed kaikyosokan, the person responsible for the teachings in Europe.

Taisen Deshimaru brought the essence of Zen in all its freshness and originality to Europe and was therefore called the “Bodhidharma of modern times” in Japan. Following the tradition of the old masters, he knew how to make the authentic, traditional Zen teachings accessible to the Western mind. Through decades of practice with his master Kodo Sawaki, while at the same time leading a social life, Taisen Deshimaru succeeded in combining the material and the spiritual, the contrast of which had preoccupied him so much in his youth. This synthesis became the core of his teaching in Europe, where he found the ideal environment to spread a Zen that was rooted in everyday life and present in society. He often said: “Do not make a separation between the spiritual and the material. You must embrace the contradictions!”

It was Master Deshimaru’s great desire to help overcome the current crisis of civilisation by spreading the practice of Zen. He had a deep desire to help people today and to lead them to a deeper understanding of themselves and their lives through zazen. The summer practice periods, whose tradition goes back to Buddha Shakyamuni, thus enabled thousands of participants over time to experience authentic practice. Taisen Deshimaru died in Japan in 1982. His last words before leaving were, “Continue Zazen eternally!”

Michel Bovay was born in 1944 in Monthey, Switzerland. In his youth he was a successful musician, composer and producer and played in various bands, of which especially the rock band The Sevens caused a sensation in the sixties. In 1972 he met the Japanese Zen master Mokudo Taisen Deshimaru and followed him to Paris a short time later. As a close disciple, trusted collaborator and organiser, he helped Master Deshimaru significantly to spread Zen in Europe. In his daily dealings with this extraordinary personality, he experienced Zen in the truest sense of the word in everyday life.

After the death of Mokudo Taisen Deshimaru in 1982, Michel Bovay became one of the main people responsible for passing on his teaching. He was appointed, along with three other close disciples, to receive confirmation of the Dharma transmission from the abbot of Eihei-ji Temple, but did not accept it until 1998 from Gu’en Yuko Okamoto Roshi of Teishoji Temple, who himself had practised as a disciple of Kodo Sawaki and had always supported Deshimaru.

In accordance with his master’s wish, Meiho Missen Michel Bovay returned to Switzerland in 1985. Here he concentrated his teaching in the Zen Dojo Zurich, leading zazen days, sesshin and summer camps. From 1995 to 2003 he was president of the Association Zen Internationale founded by Taisen Deshimaru. Michel Bovay was the author and co-editor of the book Zen (Practice and Teaching, History and Perspective) and created a theatre performance entitled Zen Stories, which he staged with great success in German and French-speaking countries. Following a serious illness, in 2007 he handed over responsibility to his eldest student, the Zen nun Eishuku Monika Leibundgut. Meiho Missen Michel Bovay supported her and the Zen Dojo Zurich until his death in 2009. One of his last sentences, which he repeated several times, was: