Taisen Deshimaru

We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.

Taisen Deshimaru (29 November 1914 – 30 April 1982) was a Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist teacher. His experiences led him to Bangka Island, where he taught zazen to the Chinese, Indonesian, and European inhabitants of the island. The island was under the attack of the Japanese Occupational Army, who were executing large numbers of the inhabitants indiscriminately. Feeling a plight for the people of Bangka, Deshimaru eventually took up their cause and was quickly labeled a rebel by the Japanese Army and thrown in prison. Shortly before he was due for execution, high Japanese officials released him and the other prisoners waiting to be killed. Following this, he was placed in an American POW camp in Singapore until he was released months later. He died in 1982, after having solidly established Zen practice in the West.

Quotes

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.

Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated.

Meditation is Drinking it!

Only universal truth can provide the highest wisdom. Take away the word Zen and put Truth or Order of the Universe in its place.

• Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.
  • As quoted in Zen to Go (1989) by Jon Winokur, p. 126

• Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there.
  • As quoted in Armed Martial Arts of Japan: Swordsmanship and Archery (1998) by G. Cameron Hurst, G. Cameron Hurst, 3rd, G. Hurst I, p. 4

• You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself wholly to each day, as though a fire were raging in your hair.
  • As quoted in Just Before Dark : Collected Nonfiction (1999) by Jim Harrison, p. 39

• You have to practice until you die.
  • As quoted in Leading from Within : Martial Arts Skills for Dynamic Business and Management (1999) by Robert Pater, p. 223

• Zen is not a particular state but the normal state: silent, peaceful, unagitated. In Zazen neither intention, analysis, specific effort nor imagination take place. It's enough just to be without hypocrisy, dogmatism, arrogance — embracing all opposites.
  • As quoted in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Buddhist Wisdom (2000) by Gill Farrer Halls, p. 162

• If you have a glass full of liquid you can discourse forever on its qualities, discuss whether it is cold, warm, whether it is really and truly composed of H-2-O, or even mineral water, or saki. Meditation is Drinking it!
  • As quoted in Real Magic : Creating Miracles in Everyday Life (2001) by Wayne W. Dyer, p. 123

• Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.
  • As quoted in Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis : Meditations on Computer Systems Development (2002) by Patrick McDermott, p. xix

• We feel our shell keeps us safe, but it crushes us and others, and keeps out light and sun.
  • As quoted in Zen Miracles : Finding Peace in an Insane World (2002) by Brenda Shoshanna, p. 80

• You must not take out your sword because if you try to kill someone, you must die for it yourself. What you must do instead is kill yourself, kill your own mind.
  • As quoted in A Galaxy Not So Far Away : Writers and Artists on Twenty-five Years of Star Wars (2002) by Glenn Kenny, p. 99

• You are the strongest and the others keep their distance. It is no longer necessary to win victories over them.
  • As quoted in A Galaxy Not So Far Away : Writers and Artists on Twenty-five Years of Star Wars (2002) by Glenn Kenny, p. 99

• To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give.
  • As quoted in Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom : A Collection of 10,000 Powerful Quotations (2003) by Andy Zubko, p. 184

• If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
  • As quoted in The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) by John Cook, Steve Deger and Leslie Ann Gibson, p. 279

• Think with your whole body.
  • As quoted in Wisdom of the Peaceful Warrior : A Companion to the Book That Changes Lives (2007) by Dan Millman, p. 19

• We should learn to think with our fingers.
  • As quoted in Meditation (2003) by Jose Lorenzo-Fuentes, p. 113

• Religions remain what they are. Zen is meditation. Meditation is the foundation of every religion. People today feel an intense need to go back to the source of religious life, to the pure essence in the depths of themselves which they can discover only through actually experiencing it. They also need to be able to concentrate their minds in order to find the highest wisdom and freedom, which is spiritual in nature, in their efforts to deal with the influences of every description imposed upon them by their environment. Human wisdom alone is not enough, it is not complete. Only universal truth can provide the highest wisdom. Take away the word Zen and put Truth or Order of the Universe in its place.
  • Online interview "Questions to Master Deshimaru" at zen-deshimaru.com

External links

• Profile at Buddhist Masters and their Organisations
• Taisen Deshimaru in My Space
• New Orleans Zen Temple (Robert Livingston Roshi, Deshimaru's student)