Dokusan

With dokusan (jap.独参, "individual visit") refers to the meeting in private with the champion in the Rinzai - Zen in the West (to some extent in Soto Zen ). The discussed contents, which often concern very personal questions, concerns and answers of the student, are subject to absolute confidentiality.

The Dokusan is not like the Taiwa , a simple conversation about correct zazen , breathing or other contents of the exercises, which sometimes even more advanced students are allowed to hold instead of the master.

Dokusan is one of the pillars of Zen practice. An often used comparison is the egg, which is broken open from the outside by the hen and from the inside by the chick; with the help of the teacher, the student breaks through the shell of ignorance. The docusan is often used to process kōans and to review the practitioner's progress in practice and his / her approach to the "essence view" ( kenshō ).

Course of a Dokusan

Dokusan is subject to a fixed sequence, which includes the walk to the master's room, entering the room, greeting the master, the course of the conversation and leaving the room. The rituals differ depending on the school.

The master can end the encounter at any time by ringing a small hand bell. Then the student has to leave immediately - observing all the usual rituals - and continue working on his task. In this way, the teacher can recognize undesirable developments and dead ends in the exercise and guide the student back onto a target-oriented path.

Work with koans

When working with Koans in Dokusan, the student has to present the "solution" to a specific "task". Since there are usually fixed collections of koans (e.g. Rinzai-Roku, Mumonkan, Hekiganroku), the answer of the master in the case of the "solution" of a koan usually consists only of the comment: "Good. Next koan. ”Sometimes the master then quotes the following koan and dismisses the student by ringing a bell.

Traditional work on the koan requires memorizing the text, as the student should recite it in full each time at the beginning of the docusan. Since the "solutions" of the koans can sometimes take the form of unusual actions or uttered sounds, it also happens that a student enters the room and leaves all forms aside, whereby western students in particular are often said to have a tendency towards artificial staging, so that Dokusan does not do justice to the struggle between two spirits for the truth of the moment (i-shin-den-shin = from my mind / heart to your mind / heart).

Similar to a therapeutic session, the relationship between student and master is often highly charged and great spiritual battles arise. If the master is "worth his salt", then the student is brought to deep insights again and again through very dense moments of experience and in breaking the barriers of the koan, even after the greatest frustrations, from which a deeply felt admiration for the teacher arises over time . The long-term task of the master ( Roshi ), like that of every teacher or therapist, is that the student completely emancipates himself from the master and finally cuts himself off (which does not detract from the worship). In Zen, one even speaks of the fact that a student who is "only" as good as his master is not his master. That is why the student should "climb the shoulders of the master" - this reflects the spiritual freedom of Zen.