Under the Tokugawa a new middle class of urban merchants and craftsmen arose, and with it came a version of Zen for common people, with masters who could touch the concerns of the working class. Among these beloved masters must certainly be remembered the monk Takuan (1573- 1645) from Ikkyu's rebuilt Daitoku-ji temple, who introduced Zen teachings to this new audience, and the wandering teacher Bankei (1622- 93), whose kindly, mystical interpretation of oneness through _zazen _earned him wide fame. Overall, however, Rinzai Zen remained spiritually dormant until the middle of the Tokugawa era, when there appeared one of the most truly inspired Zen teachers of all time. The master Hakuin (1686-1769) was born as Sugiyama Iwajiro in Hara, a small village at the base of Mt. Fuji. He was the youngest of five children in a family of modest means, an origin that may have helped him understand the concerns of the poor. As he tells his story, he was seven or eight when his mother took him to hear a priest from the Salvationist Nichiren sect preach on the tormenting Buddhist hells. He was terrified and secretly began day and night reciting the Lotus Sutra (which claims to protect from the perils of fire or water those who chant the proper incantation). The fear of hell, with its boiling caldrons, so permeated his young mind that he even became leary of the traditional Japanese bath, then often taken in a round tub fired from the bottom with wood. He claimed this fear of the bath finally convinced him to become a monk. _One day when I was taking a bath with my mother, she asked that the water be made hotter and had the maid add wood to the fire. Gradually my skin began to prickle with the heat and the iron bath-cauldron began to rumble. Suddenly I recalled the descriptions of the hells that I had heard and I let out a cry of terror that resounded through the neighborhood. From this time on I determined to myself that I would leave home to become a monk. To this my parents would not consent, yet I went constantly to the temple to recite the sutras. . . .1_