Some reflections on Matsuoka Roshi

By the time I stumbled upon the Zen Center of Long Beach in 1985, Matsuoka Roshi had already been in America for decades. Black and white photos hanging on the walls showed a young, compact and incredibly vital man practicing judo with some tough looking characters in Chicago in the 1950s. Tidbits of information passed along by him in conversation had him drinking with D.T. Suzuki at Columbia University in the same decade. And me? I was just a dumb kid off the street who was badly in need of some discipline. The first time I stepped into Matsuoka's zendo, I felt a strange mix of emotions. Here was a man who could clearly beat me into the ground if he wanted to. He was tough, uncompromising, and obviously someone you would not want to mess with. At the same time, there was something really genuine and compassionate about him. I had absolutely no self-esteem, but Matsuoka Roshi pumped me up in some unusual ways. When I headed off to Japan in 1987 with no plan other than to chase girls and get the hell out of Orange County, he told everyone that I had been invited to Japan by the Ministry of Education! Then, when he visited me in Tokyo a year or so later, he tried to convince every pretty waitress to give me their phone number because I was "young and lonely."

More importantly, he taught me how to sit zazen, which changed my life and continues to change my life every day in amazing ways. With misdirected anger blowing off of me in every direction, he taught me how to turn that energy around and focus it where it counts: in the pit of the stomach. It saved my life, just like hearing Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page for the first time did when I was fourteen. People like Matsuoka are hard to find. Sometimes they're around but we just refuse to see them. Hard to believe it's been twenty years!