Tofu Roshi

A few weeks back, my taiji instructor randomly handed me a book and said I would enjoy it. It's called The Life and Letters of Tofu Roshi ( Amazon). And I did enjoy it. It's...a strange book. On the surface, it's a collection of letters sent in to a zen center along with the replies. Well, more than half of the letters are too strange to be believed; it's hard to imagine people writing them and meaning them to be taken seriously. Like a concerned mom: "I think my son is meditating, you know, when we're not watching," or one letter said only "I am weird. Can I help it?"

While the letters are entertaining (and Tofu's responses even more entertaining), the commentary between the sections of letters is the most interesting. Ichi Su (the author) describes how she came to follow a Zen path, and the struggles she went through on that path. It is a truly Zen book, profound and humorous all at once. The book could be considered an extended koan, or a collection of modern koans. I think the saga of the missing shoes was my favorite part, though I have only a vague idea what (if anything) it represents. That koan runs throughout the book, and is "resolved" only in the very last section. Just as a note of interest, it is not clear from the book whether Tofu Roshi ever existed or if he is simply a character invented by Ichi Su. I'm pretty sure this vaguery is deliberate, and it is definitely in keeping with the Zen flavor.

I'll close with one of the (shorter) letters & responses:

Dear Tofu Roshi:
I can't get my dog to stay on his meditation cushion. Could I just tie the zafu onto the dog for forty minutes a day?-------------Doggoned

Dear Doggoned:
When your dog won't sit, which should you tie, the dog or the zafu? Practicing with this question will teach you the meaning of shikan taza: Sit! Just sit!

(The last book Don suggested for me was rather a disaster. It was about the founder of a New Age Institute somewhere down in Arizona or New Mexico. Some interesting thoughts, but she took herself so seriously, and was so convinced of the aboslute truth of some extremely doubtful propositions, that I couldn't stand the book.)