Kodo Sawaki: Quotes about people

Kodo Sawaki was Japanese zen Buddhist monk. Explore interesting quotes on people.

Kodo Sawaki: 18 quotes1 like

“My sermons are criticized by certain audiences. They say that my sermons are hollow, not holy. I agree with them because I myself am not holy. The Buddha's teaching guides people to the place where there is nothing special… People often misunderstand faith as kind of ecstasy of intoxication… True faith is sobering up from such intoxication.”

Source: The Zen Teaching of "Homeless" Kodo (Kyoto: Kyoto Soto Zen Center, 1990), p. 72

“I went to the Russo-Japanese War and killed people until I had enough of it. If you think about it soberly, this is a serious matter. Today the newspaper writes about the extermination of the enemy or how we clean them away with machine gun fire. That almost sounds like everyday household cleaning. They fire with machine guns and call it "cleaning away the remains of the enemy". Imagine that would happen in the midst of the ginza: people getting "cleaned away" as if you were shooting animals! It would be a serious affair. Compared with today the former war was old fashioned. We shot only one bullet at a time. That was not so gross like shooting your machine gun as if you were spreading water with a watering can, or throwing big bombs, or poison gas. I also once killed enemies at the battlefield of Baolisi, chasing them into a hole, and I was never punished for it. I even received monthly payments as a veteran after I came back from the war. That means that you do not always get punished for killing a person. It depends on the regulations of the time if you get punished or not. But these regulations are made by men.”

Comments on the Shodoka (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku,1st edition 1940, p. 414)

“The asshole doesn’t need to be ashamed of being the asshole. The feet don’t have any reason to go on strike just because they’re only feet. The head isn’t the most important of all, and the navel doesn’t need to imagine he’s the father of all things. It’s strange though that people look at the prime minister as an especially important person. The nose can’t replace the eyes, and the mouth can’t replace the ears. Everything has its own identity, which is unsurpassable in the whole universe.”

Zen ni kike (To you) (Tokyo: Daihorinkaku, 1987)