This page is intended to share teachings from Kobun.
If you have a teaching to share, please send it to info@hokojitaos.org
Arthur Greeno, March 2008
Back in the mid eighties, when Kobun was living near Hokoji down on Walking Rain Road in El Salto, he had two firepits. One was behind the house and across the acequia (irrigation ditch) in a clearing surrounded by Pine and Juniper trees. The other was up in his camp beside the house he was building on Paw-a-Suki Road. One evening we were sitting by the fire down by the acequia and he suddenly said to me, "My teacher told me, I am the same as you, but, I am not you. Do you get it?" Back then I had no idea what he was talking about, didn't even realize it was koan. I'm still working on it.
Another time he re-iterated the old story about Bodhidharma. Someone asked Bodhidharma "How is it best to teach people about the Dharma?" Bodhidharma answered, "Point them directly to nature."
Often during the last few sesshins at Hokoji with Kobun, he would mention that Bodhidharma would return during our lifetimes. He would look around the room, pointing to different people and asking, "Are you Bodhidharma?" Then, he would finally point to one of us, always someone different, and say "Ah, there's the real Bodhidharma!"
Once in sesshin Kobun said, "When you sit, sit. But, when you get up, go do something kind for someone." It wasn't just what he thought we should do, it was what he would so often do himself. One time I was coming home from a trip to town and discovered Kobun loading a large plank onto the top of his old gold colored Volkswagen Rabbit. I asked what he was up to, and he said, "Go get a big saw out of the shed." So, I did- selecting the largest of several Japanese style wood saws. We loaded that up along with some very large nails, a crowbar and a couple of hammers, and headed down the road to the Frank Waters place, where elderly Frank lived at that time with his wife Barbara. As we approached the plank bridge over El Salto Creek that led to their parking lot, a rotting piece in the bridge became quite visible. So, that was what we had come for- to replace that rotten plank that he'd probably noticed on a recent visit. Frank and Barbara invited us for tea afterwords, and were so grateful and happy. Thus, were we all.
There was also a wonderfully playful side of Kobun, demonstrating the richness of the practice of zazen within our day to day lives. During the first sesshin that I sat with him at Hokoji back in the mid 1980's, he tapped me on the shoulder during one period and motioned for me to follow him outside. There, he said, "We go horseback riding!" Off we went down to Walking Rain Road to pick up my two young daughters, and then off to the Lobo Ranch. The owner, Gail, was waiting for us, with four horses saddled up, including a pony for youngest daughter Margaret. We rode for a couple of hours, picking our way along a mountain trail and galloping through a meadow. Then we drove back to the house, let the daughters off and headed back to sesshin, as if nothing extraordinary at all had happened.
Kobun's last sesshin at Hokoji was Rohatsu of 2001. Afterward, we were standing in the parking lot, looking up at El Salto Mountain. He said that he was very happy "that so many of my students have stopped seeking". The memory of that reverberated recently when I picked up a copy of Master Seung Sahn's book entitled "Wanting Enlightenment is a Big Mistake."
