Soko Morinaga

Infobox Buddhist biography
name = Soko Morinaga


img_size =
img_capt =
landscape =
birth_name =
other_names =
dharma_name =
birth_date = 1925
birth_place = Japan
death_date = 1995
death_place =
nationality =
denomination =
school = Rinzai
lineage =
title = Roshi
workplace =
education =
occupation =
teacher =
reincarnation_of =
predecessor = Goto Zuigan
successor = Venerable Sokan; Venerable Soho
student =
spouse =
partner =
children =
website =

Soko Morinaga (盛永 宗興, 1925-1995) was a Rinzai Zen roshi. He was head of Hanazono University and abbot of Daishu-in in Kyoto, one of the twenty-four sub-temples of the Daitoku-ji temple complex.

He began his Zen training in his early twenties at Daishuin under Goto Zuigan, formerly abbot of Myoshin-ji and at that time abbot of Daitoku-ji, after finding himself adrift at the end of World War II. Later, he became head monk of Daitoku-ji. He was Dharma successor to Oda Sesso-roshi, who was also a disciple of Goto Zuigan Roshi and who succeeded him as abbot of Daitoku-ji.

He had a number of Western students, most importantly Shaku Daijo and Ursula Jarand, both students of many years of The Roshi's at Daishu-in in Kyoto. Shaku Daijo was there ordained as a Zen monk in 1979. Together with Ursula Jarand, Daijo built Daishu-in West in Humboldt County in Northern California, which was inaugurated by The Roshi as a Zen Temple of the Myoshin-ji line in 1996:

See: www.daishu-in-west.org

The Roshi also made annual visits of one or two weeks each Summer to England to teach at the Buddhist Society's annual summer school. In 1984 he ordained Venerable Myokyo-ni, head of the Zen Centre closely affiliated to the London based Buddhist Society. Myokyo-ni was Irmgard Schloegl, an Austrian woman who had trained at Daitoku-ji while he was head monk there and whose own direct teachers were now no longer alive. In a very short time she moved away from The Roshi's traditional Rinzai Zen teachings, reverting to her lay interest in Jungian psychology, with the result that a number of The Roshi's disciples declined her requests to become her successor. In his last summer school talk to the London Zen Group, before returning to Kyoto for what was to be the last time, The Roshi expressed his disappointment that no true practitioners in the line of Rinzai had emerged from the London Zen Group throughout the course of the many years that he had been offering them teaching.

Daishu-in West is the main training place in the Western world where The Roshi's teaching and practice of traditional Rinzai Zen may be followed.

His autobiography, "Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity" was first published in English in 2002.

ee also

*Buddhism in Europe
*Buddhism in Japan
*List of Rinzai Buddhists

Publications

In English:
*"Pointers to Insight: Life of a Zen Monk" (1985)
*"The Ceasing of Notions: Zen Text from the Tun-Huang Caves" (English translation of the German translation of Ursula Jarand, 1988)
*"Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity" (2002)

In German:
*"Dialog über das Auslöschen der Anschauung - Dialogue about the Extinction of Contemplation" Jarand, Ursula (translator), Frankfurt am Main: R. G. Fischer Verlag, 1987 - German translation of the Jueguanlun (Zekkanron) and Morinaga Soko Roshi's commentary on this text
*"Hui-neng, Das Sutra des Sechsten Patriarchen - Hui-neng: The Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch" Jarand, Ursula (translator), München: O. W. Barth Verlag, 1989 - German translation of the Platform sutra and Morinaga Soko Roshi's commentary on this text

External links

[http://ashejournal.com/index.php?id=3 There is no trash] an excerpt from "Novice to Master".

Quotes