Shika Dokan Martin on Joshu Sasaki Roshi

"Our teacher was born in 1907 in Japan and he went into the monastery at age 14 in 1921. He actually got ordained under a very powerful and well-respected teacher in Sapporo, Japan, and from what we could tell he was always very strong and very stubborn…He started his training in Sapporo and went on to train in Matsushima Zuigan-ji, which is the main training monastery that he's associated with. So basically the character that we have learned of him in Japan is that he was stubborn and very strong and brilliant as a Zen student, but because of that he didn't get along with other people very well. He created a lot of enemies, he was controversial and radical in certain ways. He ultimately got sent over here to the U.S. where he had to discover a way to train Americans and teach the Zen from Japan. So that's what we know of his character in Japan and here in the U.S., he was a very fierce, fiery teacher. I think people were attracted to him because he had a very obvious spiritual presence or power…He was also showing you that you too had that power and presence, or at least the potential for it. So I think there are certain people who were attracted to him just because he was powerful and they wanted to hang out with this spiritual being, but the value of his teaching was that he was constantly demonstrating what was possible and showing that you yourself had that potential to discover and to bring that out in yourself...He was constantly looking for ways for people to realize and understand that it's something that comes from within yourself. Part of what was radical about him was he didn't have the whole framework for teaching that exists in Japan because so few materials were translated, so he had to change the way he might have taught in Japan because there are a few different traditions within Japan. Not all the basic Buddhist texts were translated into English. He didn't have so much to work with, so he had to come up with his own style to work with his limited english and to work with a lack of materials" -Shika Dokan Martin