In Memorium: John Daido Loori

John Daido Loori, dharma heir to Zen Master Taizan Maezumi, died yesterday morning from lung cancer. He was 79 years old.

The following is excerpted from a eulogy by Zen Master Bernie Glassman:

"I met Daido at Naropa in the summer of 1976 where he was teaching Zen and Photography. He was a striking figure, even among the throng of famous and infamous counter-culture icons gathering around Trungpa Rinpoche. He would stalk about, camera pointing, tall, lanky, slightly hunched forward. The emotional impact of his photographs astonished me, and still does today: fragments of the natural world intensely manifesting heightened consciousness. . . Daido has always been one of the most creative leaders establishing Buddhadharma in the West. His love for and immersion in the natural world led him to open the Zen Environmental Study Institute, and to expand Zen training to include excursions in the wilderness, helping others reconnect or connect for the first time with nature. He has offered Mt. Tremper as a presentation site for so many wonderful teachers from a huge range of traditions and disciplines. He founded Dharma Communications, which continues to provide a quality, multi-media source for Buddhist teachings. He has written and edited so many wonderful books on traditional and modern forms of Zen practice, Buddhist ethics, art as the sacred-made-visual, and philosophy. His tireless devotion to the work of Dogen Zenji has helped introduce this seminal Buddhist to a wide audience of practitioners, academics and artists in the West."

Although I have read several of his books, I had met Daido Roshi but once. In the fall of 2003, I went up to Mount Tremper for a weekend retreat, and was informed that I was lucky - Daido was going to be in attendance for the entire weekend, which was not always a given considering his many commitments. But over that weekend, he did not spare his presence, meeting with us, teaching, lecturing, and leading zazen. On Sunday morning he gave the dharma talk, and even allowed us the opportunity for a one-on-one dokusan (private teaching).

My question to him was on practice, and in response he posed a Soto Zen koan to me, taken from Dogen Zengi's Genjo-Koan. Reciting from memory, Daido said, "When all dharmas are seen as the Buddha-Dharma, then there is delusion and realization, there is practice, there is life and there is death, there are buddhas and there are ordinary beings. When the myriad dharmas are each not of the self, there is no delusion and no realization, no buddhas and no ordinary beings, no life and no death. The Buddha's truth is originally transcendent over abundance and scarcity, and so there is life and death, there is delusion and realization, there are beings and buddhas. And though it is like this, it is only that flowers, while loved, fall; and weeds, while hated, flourish."

"Are you familiar with that passage?," Daido asked. I was.

"The first sentence mentions 'practice.'" Daido pointed out, "but 'practice' is not mentioned again in the next three sentences, although all the other examples are. What is this 'practice' that is only mentioned once? Think about this closely."

I had always planned on going back up to his monastery and continuing the conversation, but kept putting the trip off month after month, then year after year. I was always planning to go back "later," and could always find some excuse or another not to leave now. But now Daido Roshi is gone.

Dogen was right - impermanence truly is the reality right before our eyes. "Out of fear of time slipping away too swiftly," Dogen once said, "practice the Way as if you are trying to extinguish a fire enveloping your head." We should practice now, while we can, before it is too late.