Why the Hermitage at Katada

Text

Someone asked Kasō why he had withdrawn from Daitoku-ji to the small hermitage at Katada by Lake Biwa rather than taking a prominent abbacy. Kasō said: 'At Daitoku-ji I could hear Kyoto. Kyoto is a beautiful city. But you cannot hear the dharma over Kyoto. At Katada I can hear the lake. The lake has better manners than Kyoto. It does not tell you what to think. It just keeps being water.'

license: public_domain

Attribution

• Speaker
  Kaso Sodon

Lineage: Rinzai

By Kaso Sodon

• The Crow and the Confirmationdialogue
• The Certificate Ikkyū Would Not Takedialogue

Sources

• contentZen Buddhism: A History, Volume 2 — Japan

  Heinrich Dumoulin (trans. James W. Heisig & Paul Knitter)

  Tōkai Yawa; cf. Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. 2, pp. 175–177

  Tōkai Yawa: Why the Hermitage at Katada