Soen Nakagawa - Zen Training

Zen Training

In 1931 Nakagawa and Yamada graduated from Tokyo Imperial University, and it would be several years before the two would meet again. A short while after graduation Soen attended a Dharma talk by Rinzai Zen master Keigaku Katsube at Shorin-ji and knew then he wanted to become a monk. Soen wanted to be ordained on his birthday at Kogaku-ji, once the monastery of his favorite Zen master Bassui. His mother felt he was throwing away his education, but knew he was a grown man who had to make his own decisions. So on March 19, 1931, Soen was ordained as a Zen monk by Keigaku Katsube at Kogaku-ji and given his Dharma name Soen. Just like Bassui, Soen then begins travelling to Dai Bosatsu Mountain in Kai province (near Mt. Fuji) doing solitary retreats as a hermit and then returning to the monastery to resume his duties as a monk. On the mountain Soen would sit zazen and write haikus, bathing in nearby streams and living off of the land. One day while on the mountain he nearly killed himself by eating poisonous mushrooms, and some peasants from nearby took him in and nursed him back to health. During this time Soen also becomes a friend and informal pupil of Dakotsu Iida, the now famous haiku poet. He later sent his work to Iada and had it published in Iida's haiku journal, Unmo. In 1932 Nakagawa first dreams up the idea of an International Dai Bosatsu Zendo while meditating on Dai Bosatsu Mountain, travelling to Sakhalin Island in Siberia in an empty search for gold to fund the project. It was also on Dau Bosatsu Mountain that Soen came up with his original mantra, "Namu dai bosa". In 1933 Nakagawa completes his haiku anthology Shigan (Coffin of Poems). That following year, 1934, selections from Shigan are published in the haiku journal Fujin Koron.