FROM KAMIKAZE PILOT TO ZEN MASTER-HARADA TANGEN

By 1944 it was becoming clear to Japanese military leaders that they were losing the war with the United States. In a desperate attempt to turn the tide back in their favour, Japanese officials decided to employ suicide bombers against American war ships. Young men were recruited to fly planes loaded with a combination of explosives, bombs, torpedoes and full fuel tanks crashing their aircraft directly into an enemy ship. Calling these pilots kamikaze, which translates as spirit wind, nearly 4,000 kamikaze pilots died during the war causing terror among US navy personnel and killing more than 7,000.

One young Japanese man, trained as a kamikaze pilot, was waiting his turn to fly a suicide mission when the war ended.“Just on the brink of death, my life was miraculously spared,” he

realised. It was an awareness which would compel him to examine the purpose of his life and lead him to become one of Japan’s great modern Zen teachers.

Harada Tangen was born on August 24, 1924. Harada’s mother was advised to abort him. Her pregnancy was complicated and there were concerns that even a successful delivery would likely cost her life. She refused an abortion, gave birth and died shortly after birth. Harada felt he lived because of his mother’s protection and ultimate sacrifice.

In 1944 Harada was conscripted and recruited as a kamikaze pilot. He received a year of intensive training and was scheduled to make his final flight on August 15, 1945 when he heard Japanese Emperor Hirohito

announce over loud speakers that Japan had surrendered and the war was over. Though he survived the war, Harada was tormented by the death of many friends, despairing over the meaninglessness of the war and confused about the purpose of life. “My life was spared over and over again, and yet I couldn’t rejoice in life,” he said. “I couldn’t appreciate it, not then; I felt only anguish and despair. Those who had died, was their death in vain? Did they die, and that was it? These questions stayed with me; they took over my mind.”

Finally, a friend suggested he visit a local Zen center to seek out spiritual guidance. There he encountered a Buddhist teacher named Harada Sogaku, one whom Harada recognised as a person whose teachings could help him and bring peace to his mind

Victor M. Parachin, M. Div. (CYT) is an author, Vedic educator, yoga instructor, and Buddhist meditation teacher. He is the director of Tulsa Yoga Meditation Centre (USA). Victor researches and writes extensively about eastern spiritual philosophy and is the author of numerous books. His work is published regularly in YOGA Magazine. His book – ‘Think Like a Buddha: 108 Days of Mindfulness’ was published by Hohm Publishers and his latest book ‘Buddhist Wisdom for Beginners: An A-Z Guide’ is published by Sunstone Press.

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and spirit. After ten years of study, Sogaku appointed Harada as a Zen teacher, sending him off to lead a nearby temple, where he was to teach and continue his practice. Because of the war and due to neglect, there was no congregation and the temple was in ruins.

Rising daily at 4 am to meditate, Harada then spent his days rebuilding and repairing the temple, offering teachings, conducting ceremonies, going on begging rounds to raise money, and ending his days by sitting in meditation until late into the night. As word of his gentle presence and gifted teaching spread, people from all over Japan began visiting him at the temple. Gradually, his audiences came to include visitors from around the world.

His teachings often drew from his own experiences, ones which people could quickly relate to and which resonated even with those whose knowledge of Buddhism was limited. At one teaching, he shared this insight about the importance of self-giving: “When

I was eighteen or nineteen years old, I resolved to become like a chair. That was because a chair doesn’t refuse its services to anybody; it just takes care of the sitter and lets him rest his legs. After it has served its purpose, no one gets up and thanks or offers words of kindness to the chair. It will more likely get kicked out of the way. What’s more, the chair doesn’t grumble or complain or bear a grudge, but just takes whatever is given. When there is a job to be done, it puts forth all its energy without picking and choosing according to its desires. I was thinking, ‘wouldn’t it be great to have such a heart’. I wrote on a big sheet of paper, ‘Be like a chair’, and everyday took note of how-close I came.”

Harada stressed the vital importance of personal experience rather than merely reading and studying about Zen meditation. “It is interesting to observe what a great discrepancy there is between theoretical understanding and truth itself. Take a dumpling, for example. Without actually sampling it, any explanation, regardless how thorough, would give only a rough

idea of the flavour of that dumpling, but never its essential taste. Without actually chewing it, you cannot know its actual flavour. Zen is just like this. From the first time you sit, you can fully experience the flavour of Zen.”

Additionally, he advised seekers to move from mere theory to practice, engaging one’s mind and body fully in meditation. “No matter how much you study, how many books you read or how much theory you learn, this kind of knowledge can only be an aid, but never the driving force, toward peace of mind. And actually, if one is not careful, theoretical exercise can even be an obstacle. The important thing is to let go of mind and body and take refuge in truth itself.”

Harada Tangen died on March 12, 2018 at 93 years of age. Upon hearing of the death, one of his student’s remembered Haraden Tanga as “a simple, kind, happy man, who lived his teaching.” Those closest to Harada, often called him Roshi-sama, which translates as beloved master.

WORDS OF WISDOM FROM HARADA TANGEN

• While what you seek is really now and here, you habitually think of it as somewhere out there, outside yourself. So you search and search in vain. What you are looking for is already wholly and completely yours.
• Become ever more able to appreciate your Buddha-self. That is not to say be arrogant. There is nowhere anyone to feel small, no one to be made small, no one to feel superior, no one toward whom you could feel superior.

• Please see it: everything is alive. Great, great Alive. This is the happiness of all happiness.
• No matter how blessed you may feel in your present circumstances, how easygoing, how secure and pleased you are: you cannot hang on to that world. It will be jerked out from under you. Impermanence is swift.
• Worry, anxiety, and trouble take so many forms and wear so many faces. Suffering can leap out at you in so many ways.
• We have to break through our selfish disposition and be able to appreciate all the things we are blessed with, appreciate life itself.
• That which we most deeply yearn for is the thing that is already most fully present, already the very closest to us.

• Patience, calm endurance, is doing what needs to be done without looking away. It is casting off selfishness.
• Completely enveloped in and assisted by the whole universe, you are like the mountains, like the seas, like the great sky which knows no limits. This great, big boundlessness is your own mind, ‘Big Mind’.
• There is something urging you to look deeper, something which seeks to be known.
• If you set out to do it, it will be done— if you don’t, it won’t be done; when something isn’t done, it is because you didn’t resolve to do it.
• Joyful mind is the mind that cannot help but feel gratitude. It is not that you feel thankful because you are supposed to feel thankful, but rather that you cannot help but feel thankful. You feel so much gratitude that it spills over as joy.
• The more you know of this world, the more you see it to be a giant exhibition of suffering. Everywhere you look, you see plenty of examples of misery.
• In this modern world, wrapped up in all the luxury and convenience that we have, many people are still unable to appreciate how blessed we are.