Sex and the Gurus: The Case of Joshu Sasaki Roshi (Leonard Cohen's teacher)

Joshu Sasaki Roshi (Leonard Cohen's teacher)

Obituary: Mark Oppenheimer, "Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Rinzai Zen Master, Dies at 107, The Influential Teacher Leaves a Mixed Legacy," Tricycle (July 30, 2014).
 

Obituary: Paul Vitello, "Joshu Sasaki, 107, Tainteed Zen Master" New York Times (Aug 4, 2014).

In Malka Marom's book of interviews with Joni Mitchell, we find this remarkable discussion of Leonard Cohen's Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Joshu Sasaki's bad behavior did finally catch with him in 2012. But this is in the 1970s. It's interesting to see Joni Mitchell and Malka Maron processing having a problem with his behavior as basically deriving from their own Judeo-Christian hang ups:

I did some drawings of Leonard’s teacher, Roshi, for a cookie drive; they were printed in a Zen magazine called Zero. So I had a little bit of contact with Roshi. He was a jolly little guy. He liked to drink and he liked to smoke and he liked to giggle, all things that I’m fond of — not so much the drinking, but smoking and giggling are up my alley. So I did spend a little bit of time in his company and Leonard’s.  This was in the early ’70s…[197]…Following that event, [Joshu Sasaki] Roshi came up to me and I hugged him, because I enjoyed him. He was giggling and I was giggling. We were finding kind of the same things funny that night. I hugged him. He was a little tiny man, in his seventies at that point.

Next day I get a call from Leonard and he says, “Roshi wants to move in with you.”

I said, “Great. I’ve got a spare room. He’s welcome to stay here.” Because I know he’s gonna be up at Mount Baldy most of the time. He was married at that time to a young Japanese girl who was a math, kind of, wizard. I didn’t know much about Buddhism and monks at that time. “He’s welcome to stay here.”

So they came over and, at the time, I was dating a very handsome actor, and so he was here also. I was entertaining them in the living room, but I treated Roshi like an elder monk, with more respect than the younger men.

Suddenly, Roshi jumped up and he said, “C’mon, Cohen, Roshi lonely. Let’s go.”

I realized, oh my God, I didn’t know that he had some kind of romantic designs on me, which I never would have guessed. And I was kind of horrified, coming from a Christian backwoods, like, “Oh, you monk, you’re not supposed to be human.”

M[arom]: Something like that happened to me also, with Roshi, I mean. Also in the ’70s, [198] while I was on a shoot in Montreal, I get an invitation from Leonard to come to his house for dinner. So I walk in and I see this amazing-looking elder, almost like a halo around him, sitting cross-legged on a chair by the table. And I said to Leonard, “Who is this luminous elder?”

“That’s my teacher. I call him Roshi,” Leonard said.

So I turn to Roshi and start talking to him. Like, “Pleased to meet you, how fortunate you are to have Leonard for a student …”

Leonard interrupted with that grin of his that I love, “Roshi doesn’t understand a word of English.” “Wow, is he ever radiant, Leonard, what a glow about him …”

“Yeah, but you know, he can’t get it up. Would you get it up for him?” Leonard said, joking or teaching some illuminating Buddhist lesson? I couldn’t tell.

It certainly illuminated to me that under my sort of bohemian, debonair, woman-of-the-world spirit is the daughter of my father: a religious observant Jew, who, though a bit shocked and very embarrassed, reverted to the Jewish traditional way of learning: answering a question with a question. “Why would you follow a teacher who can’t get it up?”

“For the balance,” Leonard replied, barely able to keep a straight face. “I have one teacher who can’t get it up and one teacher who can’t get it down.”

Malka Marom, Joni Mitchell In Her Own Words: Conversations with Malka Marom (Toronto, ON: ECW Press, 2014), 196-198.