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Hakuin Studies

Summaries of Hakuin’s Writings in Japanese (Kana hōgo)
by Yoshizawa Katsuhiro  



Oniazami #2



『於仁安佐美』 巻之下 (Wild thistles, part 2)

The second part of the Oniazami is entirely separate from the part 1. A sermon written by Hakuin on the twenty-fifth day of the first month of Hōreki 寶暦 2 (1752), when Hakuin was 67 years old, it is addressed to Katō Kuranosuke Nariaki 加藤内藏之輔成章, retainer at the castle of Iyo Ōzu 伊豫大洲.

It contains Hakuin’s advice for the samurai, whose duties involved serving the feudal lord and conducting ceremonial affairs. For them Hakuin recommended investigating the matter of death and the “sound of one hand” koan devised by Hakuin himself, taking up these questions in a spirit of dauntless courage. In the second section of the sermon he castigates the contemporary Zen world, in which unenlightened Zen teachers peddle watered-down Zen and hand out “transmission” to numerous successors.



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  Last Update: 2003/12/19