Kobun Chino Ototgawa Roshi, Soto Zen priest, was active at San Francisco’s Zen Center and founded Zen temples in California and New Mexico. His Dharma name was apt. He did seem to float and morph like a cloud as he went about his duties. He became the holder of a World Wisdom Chair at Naropa University in Spring 2002. Shortly afterwards, he died trying to save his daughter from drowning on July 26, 2002 while in Switzerland.

Keith Kumasen Abbott recalls his Zen teacher and mentor Kobun Chino Roshi in an excerpt from Cloud Phoenix, A Memoir of Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

At the end of my interview with Kobun in the autumn, well before taking the refuge vows in the spring, he pointed to the roll of paper at my side and said in his particularly juicy voice that he reserved for pleasurable moments, “What have you got for me?”

I said I wanted him to calligraphy a Zen phrase mugaku no koto meaning “a thing of learning”. The characters were not included in the book I read, only the romaji version of the phrase. My intention was to compare the modern Japanese characters with the old fashioned style of the same characters and carve a chop. In my memory this expression was praise, either for a Zen student or as a piece of calligraphy. 

However, because of the intensity of the interview, my mind was broken down into a very primitive state and despite his constant good humor and tenderness, Kobun was tough in Buddhist matters. When I answered his question I could only remember the mugaku part and not the rest of the phrase. 

Kobun said no matter, he’d just paint mugaku. He asked me if I knew what it meant. I said no. He said the phrase was used for the arhats, early ascetic Buddhas, and meant “no more learning” or “no further learning need apply”. The notion being that education, study etc. was superfluous to the task of achieving Buddha mind. 

Then, after a long pause, he said, “And that will be the first half of your Buddhist name. The second half you will receive during your vows.”

This was the very moment when what turned out to be the ongoing comedy of my Buddhist name first started, but I didn’t know it at the time. 

For the rest of the afternoon I accompanied Kobun on his duties, one of which was talking to an Ikebana group. 

During the Ikebana talk, he said that when his father used to do brush, he would place Kobun between himself and the table. Thereafter, whenever Kobun ground his ink and paints, he always imagined that he is sitting on his father’s lap.

That afternoon he took out his calligraphy supplies and had me sit behind him on his right hand side, so I could watch how he did a version of mugaku. He noted that he was doing an “old style version of the character gaku”. 

Later, when I could not find this old character in my collection of calligrapher’s dictionaries, I switched to a modern Japanese dictionary and found it phonetically, the newer version being a simpler character in style.  The modern dictionary translated mugaku as “ignorant” or “illiterate”. 

I was delighted. Going backwards in calligraphic practice is the ideal, and the dissolving of all traces of practice or learning is the goal. 

While Kobun was co-teaching our brush workshop in the spring semester of 2002, I was showing students how to carve seals. I had brought a few of mine, as well as stamped impressions of all of them. Kobun was examining these closely, when one of the students pointed at my mugaku chop and asked what it meant. I said that it was the first half of my Buddhist name and that it meant “illiterate” or “ignorant”. 

The students were taken aback. “Why did you get this name?”

I said, “You’ll have to ask Kobun, he gave it to me.”

Kobun looked up, he’d been deep into viewing one of my chops. Then he said, “No, no, that’s not it,” and patiently explained the Zen meaning of mugaku, how this state was the true Buddha mind, etc.

The students didn’t really buy this. Most of the students were undergraduates. None at that table had much or any Buddhist training at all.

Kobun realized his well intended explanation was only muddying the waters. 

So I added to his burden by deadpanning, “Well, I looked it up in the dictionary.”

He gave me this doubletake of mock despair and then shook his head, giving up.

With my Zen and/or poet friends I joked that the last half better be good, something typically flowery, as I could see my name being translated as “five cans short of a six pack improved precious lotus”. Others suggested “elevator doesn’t go to the top celestial nova”. 

At my dokusan with Kobun while preparing the refuge vow ceremony in May, he said to me, “Oh, there is one more thing I have to do.” Then he added, “I must……” and he feigned agony putting his fists to his head, “POUND MY BRAIN! For the last half of your name.” 

During the refuge vow ceremony when Kobun came to the bestowal of my dharma name, he placed “on the straight/clear path” after “no path of further learning”. Mugaku choku-do.

Then he paused, looked at me severely and said, “Now, you do know what mugaku means, don’t you.” 

I let more than a few moments pass. “Yes.” 

He waited.

I didn’t say anything.

A restlessness among his other students set in along with the monks present. Some students behind me let out a little laugh.

“And,” he said helpfully, prompting me with a little shovelling motion. 

I gave the correct arhat/Zen explanation. He nodded gravely, my explanation was correct. 

“But,” he said, unfolding the certificate of my entry into the lineage of Buddhas he had calligraphied, “you will not be known by that name. This name you will be known by I have written here, in the last place on the list of Buddhas, your name will be Bear Sage.” 

He pointed at the last characters at the bottom of the lineage scroll leading back up to the big circle on the top. Kuma sen. 

So Kobun got the last word in on this shaggy dog story of my name, and I’m connected to the big Enso Circle at the start of all the other Buddhas by the moniker Bear Sage. 

It was a lovely ceremony, even if I didn’t know what I was doing exactly. Kobun wasn’t really thorough when it came to details. I relied on Michael Newhall and Lesley Hall for what to do and say and some of what they thought would happen did actually happen. 

When I invoked my parents during the ceremony, as is the custom, I impulsively said “Hi Mom, hi Dad,” as I made my last bow. A sense of their presence came over me. As Kobun began passing the calligraphied lineage over the incense, I had a powerful urge to join this part of the ritual. At the first pass over the incense, I reached out and held the paper with Kobun and felt the incense smoke on my fingers and the vibration of Kobun’s voice through his hands and the paper. I felt connected to a primitive time and space. This sensation returns now to my fingers whenever I remember that moment and Kobun’s Crossing Over Ceremony at the Shambhala Center when I sprinkled incense over the charcoal, the feeling of Kobun’s presence returned in the smoke curling over my fingers. 

Always the teacher, Kobun proceeded to go over the lineage, pointing out and naming various Buddhas and their accomplishments. 

Kobun stated that my painting reminded him of a priest early in the lineage. This priest painted animals as monks, badger-faced priests in No theater drag, etc..I knew the paintings but I’m still not sure I heard the name of the painter correctly. Kobun talked about my paintings and my connection to the Old Tyme painters who worked with good humor, unburdened by a lot of seriousness, which honored me again with a lovely sense of connection. 

There were lots of laughs during the ceremony (including during the simultaneous installation and de-acquisition of my first Buddhist name), but the ceremony was quite moving and elegant. The lineage certificate was so lovely with the big red seals and all the various Buddhas’ names in Kobun’s superb and fluent calligraphy. 

Researching the lineage, I later found two other Mugaku priests. One was a 13th century Chinese Zen missionary to Japan, Maguku So-gen, and both a master calligrapher and founder of En-Gaku-ji monastery. In Japanese he was called Bokku “Buddha Light”. 

After the ceremony, I went in to thank Kobun, Martin Mosco and his attendants for their kindness and patience. That was the last time I saw Kobun. 

On July 26th, while vacationing in Switzerland, Kobun tried to rescue his youngest daughter Maya from drowning. Both perished. Shocked, a sesshin was held by his students at Naropa and a Crossing Over ceremony on Sunday, August 4th. His death is such a loss for the entire Naropa University community. 

But the time I had with him, teaching brush, watching him paint and witnessing his gentleness, astute humor and Zen comportment, was enough. In a way.

*

The first time I saw Kobun was at a public event, probably around the summer of 1994. He was about to paint some calligraphy for Naropa’s meditation room, and the public was invited. He painted a few scrolls, then pieces of pottery. I came away totally impressed.

I had been splitting my time between the San Francisco Bay Area and Boulder, teaching various semesters and/or summer writing programs at Naropa. Before this, the brush master I had last seen paint was the official calligrapher of Japan’s national airline and he was very flashy, a showman. 

Kobun’s way of working was very pedestrian and matter-of-fact. He did the work while sitting on the floor. What threw me was during one scroll, he stopped, put down his brush, and then drew in the air with his finger the character he wanted to do next, checking to make sure he had all the strokes and order right. 

At the time I thought, “Gee, this guy’s nothing but a sign painter.”

During his preparation for one scroll, he looked up as if struck by a sudden idea and said, “Maybe I should use a t-shirt.” He shrugged and added, “My students think I should paint t-shirts to make money.”  And he got this big funny grin as if this was too ridiculous for words. 

He sprinkled powdered gold into the ink for the last scroll with a very off-hand attitude, as if he had no idea whether this would work at all. He acted so casual, random and bemused the entire time, it was as if he were only doing this to fill up the time or let the time fill him up. The spectacle was disorientating because I was used to much higher voltage shows. 

Months later, I came into the meditation hall and saw his scrolls, one hanging on the north wall facing the altar and the other on the east wall. The calligraphy stunned me. During the following years, I could not stop looking at them and admiring his beautiful energy. When people asked me why I was at Naropa, often I said, “So I can go and look at Kobun’s calligraphy.” I was not joking at all. The work moved me in ways that always seemed fresh and new. 

*

A few years later when I was given the opportunity to assist Kobun during his workshop, I jumped at the chance. I had studied with several different brush masters and wanted to experience Kobun’s way. 

However, the calligraphy workshop was over-enrolled with students, and the preliminary planning was chaotic. The course started amidst much confusion. Some students had no brushes, as supplies hadn’t arrived. I always carried a box of brushes from my workshops with me, so I distributed those to the students. 

Kobun seemed not to have much of a plan for the course. Although we started with the single line ichi (one), the usual starting place, Kobun also drew other, more complicated characters on the chalk board for practice. But he drew them with water, and in Colorado altitudes water doesn’t stick around. My job quickly became to copy the characters as fast as possible, then provide dupes with the numbers of stroke orders for the students. 

On the second or third day the brushes arrived, but they were very small and delicate. Not useful for beginners. Kobun switched the traditional practice of sutra copying to fit the brushes, and he distributed a version of the Heart Sutra for the text. However, the brushes were far too pliant and slim. Most students had little control over the brushes. Frustration set in. They switched back to the larger brushes but these were too big for the spacing of Kobun’s copy. A kind of randomness set in as students brought their own characters and the course never pulled together. 

Compounding the issue, many attendees were just fans, students or seekers. Attempting to make contact with the Master they approached Kobun and asked him about matters which had nothing to do with calligraphy. At one point Kobun himself had a commission to complete so he reserved half a day to paint, leaving the instruction of the course to myself and others. Even then he was interrupted. It was clear that the guru biz, which I had witnessed many times before with visiting celebrity teachers, was threatening to swamp Kobun during the workshop. This hunger for attention from celebrities always impressed me because of the need and demand. Simultaneously it also depressed me, because the intense rush seemed to spoil whatever it was that people wanted. 

Sutra copying never interested me as an artistic practice. I wasn’t much help to students who were simply overlaying a rice paper sheet on Kobun’s machine copy and tracing the characters underneath. 

During a lull, I decided to draw a version of Kwannon I remembered from a Japanese book that I had recently studied. I put a cloudy moon to the right of her along with her name, but then decided not to put her on a cliff or leaning over a table, but on a rock. 

Rocks have always been a fascination ever since I was very, very young. I used to collect interesting rocks from the long driveway between our lawns and compose them into miniature mountain ranges on the sidewalk to our front door. I loved to paint them. 

Under Kwannon I painted a rock which was quite complex with different tones of ink, compared to her simple reclining figure. 

Kobun happened to make a tour of the students about then. When he came up behind me, there was a long intake of breath, and then he let out a long “mmmmmmm”. 

He stood for a moment looking down at her. 

“Too bad the rock is more alive than she is,” I said. 

He looked nonplussed, then his mouth opened in his familiar silent laugh. “Oh, she’s just more quiet.”

*

Although Kobun seemed gentle and humorous on the outside, his Zen was consistently fierce and unyielding inside. This was revealed from time to time, if there was a mind around to witness it. 

For the first semester brush students I would show a film on the National Treasures of Japan. After watching the documentary, a discussion arose on how labor intensive and exact brush manufacture was and Kobun joined in with their jokes. “There’s your next summer job!” and “Could Naropa offer some work study money for this?” 

After the scene in the film depicting an interaction between a brush master and a client in which the master passed a brush to the client saying that the brush came with a promise to be an eccentric brush once it was used, Kobun suddenly joined their conversation in Japanese, talking to the screen. There were now three people discussing the brush’s potential wayward behaviour. Then the client gave the brush a test run, and more conversation ensued. 

After this particular scene, the film narrator switched to a history of brush calligraphy in Japan. Up to then Kobun had been very at ease and happy, but when he saw the image of the first Buddhist Priest to bring calligraphy to Japan, his whole demeanor changed instantly. He drew himself up into zazen position, acknowledging the presence of a Dharma ancestor, and he maintained that posture for the rest of the film. This moment, for me, demonstrated what Kobun transmitted constantly – that even in his most relaxed modes, this strength was present. 

*

Personally, the most powerful of Kobun’s teachings arrived to me while Kobun was occupied with painting. After each class working with the students’ problems, I would sit down next to him and watch him paint. It didn’t matter what he was painting: a letter, copying a sutra or composing a calligraphic work. Although I’ve studied Buddhism since the age of nineteen, I only recently realized that the art has taught me more than all those words. Kobun’s way of painting contained constant revelations. 

But, during those times sitting together, he was always sidling up with sly tests in his own deliberate and funny way. I had never sewn anything before I started working on my rakusa. I understood that this occupation was, like brush, for meditation and not production. Nonetheless I was still distressed when sickness and events at work interrupted my snail-like progress on the sewing project. 

One day, in the midst of one of the many interruptions in my rakusa, Kobun looked over from his painting and asked, “And how is your rakusa coming along?” 

“It’s not, right now.” Without going into the tedious reasons for the latest delays, “I’ve never sewn before in my life.”

“Oh,” he nodded as if that idea had never occurred to him. “But,” he said brightly, “you’re so good with the brush, for you the needle should be no problem.”

All I could do was mutter something about, “Well, I love the brush.” 

Kobun returned to his calligraphy and painted a few more characters. “I haven’t even started on the list of Buddhas for you. We have time,” he said mildly. 

*

Our brush workshop was organized around three sections of four class units: three days of practice with certain characters and then “Paper Day”. This was when the students had to brush their characters on three pieces of paper using three larger brushes. These were done solo, with all the workshop members watching: Showtime! 

To facilitate the Beginner’s Mind, neither the type of paper nor the three brushes had ever been previously handled by the students. 

During this exercise, myself and Kobun sat behind and above the student, in chairs on a platform, and observed their brushwork. 

For my advanced students, however, I required them to fo first. I made it a practice to be the paper feeder and I sat to the student’s left. I took away the finished calligraphy and fed new sheets backed with the blotter newsprint. Sometimes, if the student was prone to nervousness or humor, I helped their creative process along; saying things like, “Comfy, are we?” or “This will be a snap.”

After the students in our first Paper Day finished their public displays, I invited Kobun to do the last three sheets and assumed the role of the paper feeder again for his benefit. But after he finished his always incredibly graceful and gorgeous work, he motioned for us to switch places. 

This was exactly what I didn’t want to happen, to follow Kobun’s calligraphy with mine. But there it was. 

I sat down, selected a line of poetry in my mind, and went through the drill: posture, mindfulness, visualization, blank mind, go. For the five characters I had chosen the biggest, slickest brush which carried the largest load of ink.

As I just barely started to tilt the brush from the horizontal position into a vertical stroke, Kobun said in his big juicy sutra chanting voice, “That’s a REALLY beautiful brush.”

There was an audible crack in my wrist as I titled the brush back to a horizontal position. I checked to make sure no ink had run off it and onto the paper. By some miracle none had, and I turned to Kobun. “YES, this IS,” I said, “a REALLY beautiful brush.”

Kobun had this huge smile. I gave him a big smile back and went back through the drill: posture, mindfulness, visualization, blank mind and go:

“Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.”

*

Another example of his public humor arose the Monday after the weekend he formally received the World Wisdom chair at Naropa. This was our second Brush Workshop together. After leading the class in meditation, I mentioned to the students that Kobun was now so installed and we should congratulate him. 

The class spontaneously applauded and Kobun stepped out inside the circle of tables, clasped his hands over his head like a prizefighter, and shook them in celebration. This was a very startling and incongruous vision, as he was dressed in his robes, and the students whooped and whistled. 

When the noise ceased, I addressed him formally, “Roshi, did you bring the wisdom chair with you?”

“Yes, I did,” he said.

He walked back slowly around to the other side of the table, seized one of the ratty yellow plastic chairs, “This one!” He banged it down on the floor. “Right here!”

*

Of all these moments and experiences of his teaching, I think whatever it was that Kobun passed on to me was done when we first said goodbye at the end of the summer workshop when we first worked together. It wasn’t anything unusual or memorable, but that was the point. 

He asked me to walk him out to his car. On our walk something passed between us, something old and very strong and yet something I already knew, and yet I have no name for this. 

It was then, and immediately after that moment, and all during the next year that I decided to ask him to take me as his student whenever he returned to Naropa. 

It wasn’t until the Naropa memorial ceremony, when several people during the offerings remarked that Kobun accepted very few students, that I knew of his reluctance. So I believe I was his last student. I feel deeply honored.

Apparently he always said he didn’t want to be a Zen master. He insisted that he should be called Kobun, rather than sensei or roshi. 

*

Seven days after his death I had a dream of Kobun. We were on a wooden slat porch looking out over an Alpine meadow, very much like the meadows up at the Dharma Mountain Center in Northern Colorado where he lived during his tenure at Naropa. 

It was spring and the overflow from the snow melt had seeped down a low slope into the new meadow grasses and plants. Glints of water shone here and there. From the porch we watched the meadow without talking. It was clear that this was some part of a ritual.

Then we were inside in formal dokusan, facing each other. Kobun nodded,, that I should begin. I raised up my right hand between us, and there seemed to be a scroll in it. But one that I could not see, I only felt the weight of it in my hand. I motioned to his right side and a scroll unfurled, but it was like a polyester film, mylar, and it was two foot by about fifteen foot strip of the meadow. 

The meadow was in bright color, just as it was when we were looking at it, but it wasn’t painted, it was moving, alive. 

We passed the scroll between us, over our knees, examining it, as it rolled back up. Kobun and I commented on the changes that had taken place since we were out there on the porch. The water table had lowered, and there was a hummock that had risen above the water. 

The mound was ablaze in white, green, pink, olive, and gray-green grasses and mosses; milky, translucent, striated, fuzzy blades and sprouts. And poking up through them were little black spikes of new reeds. This excited Kobun and myself as we ohhed and aahed over this hummock. It flashed like a jewel with its brilliance. 

When we were done with this scroll, I unrolled two more, one at a time. We minutely inspected all three scrolls, the meadows. We examined the landscape for the changes since we had last seen it because while we held the strips, the meadow kept altering, the sun drying the flood of spring waters, new plants emerging…..

Then the dokusan was over, and I woke up. 

#keithkumasenabbott #keithabbott #zen #buddhism #kobunchinoroshi #roshi #naropa #longmontcolorado #bouldercolorado #calligraphy #kumasen #painting #dokusan