To exclude the satori experience from shikantaza would necessarily involve stigmatizing as meaningless and even masochistic the Buddha's strenuous efforts toward enlightenment, and impugning the Patriarchs' and Dogen' s own painful struggles to that end. This relation of satori to shikantaza is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately it has often been misunderstood, especially by Westerners to whom Dogen' s complete writings are inaccessible. It thus not infrequently happens that Western students will come to a Soto temple or monastery utilizing koans in its teaching and remonstrate with the roshi over his assignment of a koan, on the ground that koans have as their aim enlightenment; since all are intrinsically enlightened, they argue, there is no point in seeking satori. So what they ask to practice is shikantaza, which they believe does not involve the experience of enlightenment.
Such an attitude reveals not only a lack of faith in the judgment of one's teacher but a fundamental misconception of both the nature and the difficulty of shikantaza, not to mention the teaching methods employed in Soto temples and monasteries. A careful reading of these introductory lectures and Yasutani-roshi's interviews with ten Westerners will make clear why genuine shikantaza cannot be successfully undertaken by the rank novice, who has yet to learn how to sit with stability and equanimity or whose ardor needs to be regularly boosted by communal sitting or by the encouragement of a teacher or who, above all, lacks strong faith in his own Bodhi-mind coupled with a dedicated resolve to experience its reality in his daily life. Because today, Zen masters claim, devotees are on the whole much less zealous for truth, and because the obstacles to practice (posed by the complexities of modem life) are more numerous, capable Soto masters seldom assign shikantaza to a beginner. They prefer to have him first unify his mind through concentration on counting the breath; or where a burning desire for enlightenment does exist, to exhaust the discursive intellect through the imposition of a special type of Zen problem (i.e., a koan) and thus prepare the way for kensho.
By no means, then, is the koan system confined to the Rinzai sect as many believe. Yasutani-roshi is only one of a number of Soto masters who use koans in their teaching. Genshu Watanabe-roshi, the former abbot of Soji-ji, one of the two head temples of the Soto sect, regularly employed koans, and at the So to monastery of
Hosshinji, of which the illustrious Harada-roshi was abbot during his lifetime, koans are also widely used.
... [Yasutani Roshi] began attending sesshin regularly at Harada roshi's monastery, Hosshin-ji. At his very first sesshin he attained kensho with the koan Mu.
... At
Hosshinji, noted for its severe sesshin, on the fourth night and every night thereafter, at eight, there is a tmique discipline for combatting the seductive visions of bed which begin to tug at the fatigued, faltering mind at this hour. With the clang of the large zendo bell there is a sudden outburst of "Mu-ing" by all who are striving with this koan. At first weak and uncertain, this collective howl gathers depth, force, and momentum under the energetic prodding of the free-swinging kyosaku of the godo and his aides, who yell: "Voice Mu from the hara, not from the throat!" When these cries of "Mu!" reach a crescendo of deep bellows, as they eventually do, suddenly they are turned off by the clanging of the same bell, usually about thirty minutes later. Now silent zazen resumes, but the air has become electric