One Drop of Sogen

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One Drop of Water from Sogen

When Giboku Zenji was nineteen years old he entered Sogenji monastery and trained under Gisan Zenrai Zenji. One day the young monk was making the bath. When he felt it was ready, he called Gisan Zenrai Zenji to come, yet when his master tried to enter the bath the water had become too hot. In those times the baths were an iron pot filled with water and heated from below by a wood fuelled fire, so when the water seems just right the still burning fire will continue to raise the temperature further. To get it to the most comfortable heat Gisan Zenrai Zenji ordered his student to bring cold water.

Giboku Zenji ran to the well and began bringing cold water in wooden buckets. It was hard work running back and forth and pulling the water out of the well by a rope. After enough buckets had been brought his teacher said that it had become the perfect temperature and asked him to stop adding the cold water.

Thinking that his work was over he threw the water remaining in the buckets away, without a thought. Suddenly Gisan Zenrai Zenji was screaming at him, “Why are you throwing away this water? Why didn’t you take it outside and pour it on a plant where it could have turned into that plant’s life energy. If you just discard it then it is meaningless water.” The nineteen year old was so remorseful about his behaviour that he vowed to follow his master’s teaching and never waste even one drop of water again. He also changed his name to Tekisui (One Drop) Giboku Zenji.

Later he became the successor of Gisan Zenrai Zenji and returned to be abbot of Tenryuji during a time of political changes. Many people during this civil war died and lost their homes and even Tenryuji was burned down to the ground. Buddhism, which had for 300 years supported the political system of Japan, was now forbidden. Yet with the help of his student, the great swordsman Yamaoka Tesshu, Tekisui Giboku worked hard to have Buddhism re-established, even bringing his case to the highest politicians. After five years of struggle, the ban on Buddhism was removed and it flourished again.

In his death poem it says:

The one drop of Sogen, Seventy six years

Receiving and using the teaching.

It never got used up,

Moving freely throughout heaven and earth