Biography
Sawaki's parents died early, and he was adopted by a gambler and an ex-prostitute. When he was 16, he ran away from home to become a monk at Eihei-ji, one of the two head temples of the Sōtō Zen sect. He later became a Zen teacher, and during the 1930s he served as a professor at Komazawa University. At the same time, he also took responsibility for Antai-ji, a zen temple in northern Kyoto. Because of his regular travels throughout Japan to teach zen, and against tradition his not becoming a conventional abbot of a home temple, he came to be known as "Homeless Kodo" ("homeless" in the Japanese referring more to his lack of a temple than a residence). Sawaki died on December 21, 1965, at Antaiji. He was succeeded by a senior disciple, Kosho Uchiyama.
He is known for his rigorous emphasis on zazen, in particular the practice of shikantaza, or "just sitting". He often called Zen "wonderfully useless," discouraging any gaining idea or seeking after special experiences or states of consciousness.
Read more about this topic: Kodo Sawaki
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