Nyogen Senzaki - Early Training

Early Training

When Senzaki was five years old his mother died. He was sent to a Pure Land temple run by his grandfather, with whom he began the study of many Chinese classics. The elderly priest had a profound influence on him, which was, as Nyogen Senzaki later wrote, "to live up to the Buddhist ideals outside of name and fame and to avoid as far as possible the world of loss and gain". When Senzaki was 16 his grandfather died, stating to Aizo just before dying:

When his grandfather died Senzaki left his grandfather's temple and enrolled in a school to prepare for medical school. According to his own account, he read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin while in school and tried to imitate Franklin's approach toward spirituality. He felt himself drawn a bit to Christianity during this period, but ended up meeting a haiku poet who taught him about Matsuo Bashō. By the age of 18 he had read the entirety of the Tripitaka. During this period he read about how Tokusan had burned a volume of Diamond Sutra commentaries he himself was currently studying. This was Aizo's turning point, and he decided to become a Zen Buddhist monk.

On April 8, 1895 (on Vesak), when Aizo was 19, he was ordained as a monk and was given the Dharma name Nyogen at a Soto Zen temple. The word Nyogen means "Like a dream, like a fantasy" in Japanese and came from concluding verse of Diamond Sutra. Nyogen says he would have preferred to be ordained at a Rinzai temple, but there was none in his area. The next year Nyogen went to Kamakura to Engaku-ji where he studied Zen under Rinzai master Soyen Shaku. Soyen was a strict teacher who was very harsh and physical in his training methods. During this time Nyogen contracted tuberculosis and lived in virtual confinement in a small hut on the grounds of the monastery. The next year, on the verge of death, somehow his condition managed to improve and he was able to go back to the monastery.

Here Nyogen came to meet another 20th century pioneer of Zen, D.T. Suzuki. Suzuki was a lay student of Soyen Shaku. Nyogen was becoming disconcerted with the institutional practices of the monastery at the time, and turned to books as a means of release. Here he came across the works of Friedrich Fröbel, the founder of kindergarten. In 1901, Nyogen asked Soyen if he could leave the monastery to open a kindergarten. He called it Mentorgarten, a place free of religiosity and ritual where children could be children.