Oda Sessō

Oda Sessō
Religion Zen Buddhism
School Rinzai
Personal
Born 1901
Japan
Died September 16, 1966[1]
Senior posting
Title Rōshi
Predecessor Gotō Zuigan

Oda Sessō (小田 雪窓, 1901–1966)[2] was a Rinzai Rōshi and abbot of the Daitoku-ji(大徳寺) in Kyoto, Japan, a Dharma successor of Gotō Zuigan. He was elected abbot of Daitoku-ji upon Goto's retirement from that post in 1955. At Goto's request, Oda opened Daitoku-ji to foreigners. His western students included Gary Snyder,[3][4] Janwillem van de Wetering, Irmgard Schloegl, and Philip Yampolsky.

Snyder described him as

[T]he subtlest and most perceptive man I've ever met....His teisho were inaudible, his voice was so soft. Yet as one of the head monks at Daitoku-ji Sodo said much later, 'Those lectures of Oda Rōshi we couldn't hear I am beginning to hear today.'"[5]

Alan Watts said,

[H]aving a conversation with him is like dropping a pebble in a well and never hearing it drop. The soundless pebble in the bottomless well."[6]

Janwillem van de Wetering gave an account of his stay at Daitoku-ji in his book "The empty mirror".

See also

References

  1. ↑ Stirling 2006, pg. 125
  2. ↑ Stirling 2006, pg. 50
  3. ↑ Snyder 1980, pp. 97, 98
  4. ↑ Kraft 1988, p. 20
  5. ↑ Stirling 2006, pp. 74-5
  6. ↑ Kyger 2000, pg. 264

Sources

Further reading


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