It touts “a simple rustic space to preserve and explore Zen aesthetics as living art.”
The Little Zen Museum in Victor is not actually a museum at all. Not yet, anyway.
A 4-foot-tall Buddhist statue shaded in pink, purple and white is the paramount figure in the couple’s living room. The 300-year-old statue is Kannon, the goddess of mercy and also the god of compassion.
“She was saved from the Cultural Revolution,” said Gannon, pointing to the statue’s charred left knee. The couple purchased the rare statue 10 years ago from an antiques dealer in Seattle.
The 100-year-old statue of Fudo, the Buddhist divinity for wisdom and fire, sits on a dresser in the couple’s room. The gift is meant to fight away evil spirits.
Japanese paintings, calligraphy, and dozens of colorful ceramic tea bowls decorate the walls and shelves. The rest of the pictures and artifacts are in storage for lack of space.
Takabayashi, a Buddhist monk who left Japan and the monastery 30 years ago to come to the United States to teach Zen, is indifferent to the idea of a museum. Though he’s one of only a handful of Zen masters from Japan to establish Zen in the West, he’s retired now. But Gannon, his wife of 11 years and one of his former students, is leading the charge. She wants to open a small museum to share Japanese art forms and display the things that have come to enrich her life.
“It’s not a goal so much as a fruition of my years with Genki,” she said. “He is living history. Genki is the bridge between the 16th century in the East and the 20th century in the West.”
On a recent warm afternoon, Takabayashi - which means high pine forest - selected two ceramic tea bowls off the shelf and scooped into each a heaping spoonful of matcha, a radiant green powder tea grown in Japan and used in traditional Japanese tea ceremonies.
He added warm water and mixed the expensive drink with a bamboo tea whisk.
Before sipping the herbal concoction, he instructed everyone at the table to eat what looked like two mini-pancakes stuck together with a sweet red adzuki bean sauce to balance the tea’s bitter taste.
“It’s good mind-making,” said Takabayashi.
Mid-sentence, his speech flowed from English to Japanese and back to English. Gannon often helps translate for visitors even though she doesn’t speak Japanese. Somehow, the two seem to communicate perfectly.
Their lives are simple and full. Zen is a way of life - their way of life. It’s about being present in the moment. They describe Zen as synonymous with focused.
“Cooking focused. Calligraphy focused,” he said. “Everything is Zen activity.”
“There should be no separation between meditation and your everyday life,” Gannon adds. “With Zen, you can’t have more or less of it, it’s just an approach to life.”
Few of their Bitterroot neighbors know about the couple’s life or history. Only close friends, family and neighbors have visited, but news of a Zen master living in the Bitterroot is often greeted with interest.
The 75-year-old hails from a small midland Japanese town. His grandfather was the gardener at a nearby temple where Takabayashi eventually moved at age 10. He lived there for more than a decade and was adopted by his teacher.
On the couple’s nightstand is a black-and-white photo of 11-year-old Takabayashi with a group of young monks. He is holding a “begging hat.” It’s used by poor monks to solicit rice from strangers, Gannon said.
When asked what he learned at the temple, Takabayashi replies, “Everything.”
He later was accepted into the famous Daitoku-ji monastery in Kyoto where he lived until 1978, teaching Japanese Zen.
Glenn Webb, a former University of Washington art history professor, visited the monastery and insisted Takabayashi come to the United States to be the resident teacher at the Seattle Zen Center, which Webb founded. It took three letters, one visit, and finally a one-way airplane ticket courtesy of Webb to convince Takabayashi to pack his bags. He didn’t speak English when he touched down in America.
He taught and lived in Seattle for 20 years. That’s where he met Gannon, who had returned from a Tibetan monastery in India and attended Takabayashi’s meditation sessions.
The couple was married in a New York Buddhist temple 11 years ago. When Takabayashi retired in 1997, the couple moved to Montana to be close to family. Though they began their new life in Ronan, they migrated south during the fierce forest fires of 2000. The couple waded through the smoke to find the plot of land near Victor they now call home.
“Ordinary life is important to Zen,” Gannon said.
Their lives today may not seem ordinary to some Montanans, but it’s normal to them. Takabayashi continues to sell his artwork. He spins ceramic tea bowls and fires them in a kiln behind the house.
As for Gannon, she would like to share their lives - and the things they’ve acquired - with everyone.
“There’s so much richness, there’s no point leaving it in boxes,” she said.
Reporter Chelsi Moy can be reached at 523-5260 or at chelsi.moy@missoulian.com.
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albert bowman wrote on Oct 3, 2008 5:32 PM: