Kiai: Expressions in Training

An Interview with Esteban Martinez Sensei

Ellen: How did you get introduced to zen?

Esteban: It was through aikido which I started training in when I was 13 or 14; this was in Puerto Rico. Then when I was 17, I went to Chicago to participate in Toyoda Sensei’s summer training. While there, I trained in all the classes, and worked and lived with the full-time resident trainees. 

As part of our training, we had to sit zazen at 6:00am every day. I had never done anything like that, but all resident students were required to participate, so I did it. There was no instruction; it was just grab your cushion and sit. 

I was like, “what the heck are we doing?” Eventually I started asking people about it and I got a very small amount of instruction, but it wasn’t very formal. Over time it just became a normal part of life in the training. 

When I returned to Puerto Rico, I told my sensei that I had learned meditation and asked if we could start doing some of it.  I recognized that there was something important about zazen, but it was still very connected to aikido. It was another part of our aikido curriculum, so to speak. 

Ellen: Do you think your maturity level, being a teenager, impacted how zazen landed in you? 

Esteban: I never had a problem with it in my body. I could always sit cross-legged. I would get corrected for falling asleep but sitting still wasn’t an issue. Honestly, I never thought it was hard. 

My interest was in the focusing we had to do through counting the breath and not getting caught up in thought. It felt like a real challenge to actually see if I could count to ten. All this made sense to me in the context of aikido. I understood why we needed ‘mental training’, at least that’s how I saw it at the time. Aikido was physical training, and zazen was mental training. 

Ellen: So, did you end up continuing to train in zazen back in Puerto Rico? If so, how did that take shape?

Esteban: Well, we would occasionally sit as a group, but we would also have aikido seminars with Whitelaw Roshi where she would incorporate zazen and work with posture. 

Also, in Toyoda Sensei’s last Puerto Rico seminar, in 2001, he taught zazen. At that point, our dojo community had become much more interested in zazen. We were beginning to have a regular sitting practice, so we were ready for more training around that. 

During college and then when I started in a restaurant (I was working 60+ hours a week), my training had to move to the background. I always stayed connected through occasional seminars, but my practice wasn’t especially deep. 

Then in 2005 I was feeling ready to get back into training. I had settled into my work as a chef, and was in a relationship with the woman who would become my wife; my life was really taking shape. Bob Caron Sensei, at the Zenshinkan Dojo, was keeping aikido and zen together. He kept the training model from Chicago alive, so I decided to train there. 

Initially I only went for zazen, but over time also stayed for aikido class. Whitelaw Roshi started coming to run zazenkai, which was sometimes weekend-long, so I participated in those training sessions when I could. When we learned about the training in Spring Green with Greene Roshi, Bob and I began to consider joining for sesshin. My first time at sesshin would have been 2017. 

Esteban Martinez Sensei receiving training in aikido with Toyoda Sensei

Ellen: Okay, Wow! That's an amazing training journey. I want to touch in on your work as a chef. With so many of your formative years focused on intensive training, do you feel like that impacted your relationship to the culinary arts? 

Esteban: Well funny enough, I decided I wanted to learn to cook because Toyoda Sensei was a really good cook. 

When I was in Chicago, each resident had an assigned day that they were responsible for cooking the meals. I had to cook on Saturdays, and I was like, “I don’t know how to cook, I’m 17.” So I called my mom and was like, “what do I do?” The American grocery stores were unfamiliar and carried unfamiliar foods. I felt like these guys were about to get the worst version of Puerto Rican food ever! I was embarrassed.

Occasionally Toyoda Sensei would cook lunch and it was just awesome. I saw how his skill as a cook was related to his skill as an aikido instructor. I didn’t know how, but it felt clear that there was a connection.  

Ellen: As an adult with a more mature lens do you now understand the relationship?

Esteban: Yeah, I’m not so sure being a good cook made him a good aikido instructor. I think it's clear that it was the other way around. Being a martial artist made him a good cook. I also feel that’s what's happening for me now. 

In my work as a chef, I was able to grasp skills quickly, maintain a good attitude in the kitchen, and be present in the rush of a high tension environment. That was all developed through martial arts training; I never had a problem with any of it. 

Ellen: As a teacher of the culinary arts, do you integrate (whether explicitly or not so explicitly) zen?

Esteban: Yes! That’s my training now. I’ve been trying to crack that egg. I have had many conversations with Pat Greene Roshi about this. How to teach zen in an academic environment is a good koan for me. 

I’ve been more aware of how to help students connect their senses to their cooking. I’ve been teaching for 10 years now, and I realize it's easy to get caught in the curriculum and just teach the book. I’ve been letting go of some of that so that there is room for the students to look at their cooking in a different way, especially with sophomores who now have the basics. 

The lessons are all there and available, I just have to be sensitive and present for when they come up. For example, if someone is sauteing onions and they add garlic too early, it burns. I can help them recognize that if they were paying attention to the conditions and their intuition, they would have picked a different time to add the garlic. I can help them listen to themselves and their senses, rather than following a recipe like a robot.  

Ellen: In addition to the pillars of aikido and cooking, you also have shodo. How does shodo fit into the mix for you?

Esteban: Again, Toyoda Sensei. It's wild because it’s like this guy defined my whole life at the age of 17!  

When I finished that summer training in Chicago, and was preparing to leave, Toyoda Sensei hand brushed a calligraphy for me. It’s not a formal certificate, but more of a token; it has my name and states that I completed his summer course. 

In my last days training, he went down to the basement to brush it and then called me down to meet with him. When I arrived in the basement, it was freshly painted on the table for me. He told me what it meant, which I later forgot and had to look up again once I learned to read calligraphy. The other residents told me he didn’t offer many people calligraphy, so I felt there was importance in it. 

Just before leaving Chicago, I stopped at a Japanese souvenir shop and I bought myself a brush, bottle of ink, and a kanji book; I knew I’d never be able to find these materials in Puerto Rico.  So basically, that’s how I started, copying kanji from the piece he made for me and the book I bought. 

Ellen: So initially you were entirely self-taught, that takes some commitment. Do you think that style of training served you? 

Esteban: Eventually I could mimic what he created, but I didn’t use any real technique as I had no proper training. I worked like this for years, just messing around. At some point Whitelaw Roshi did shodo with us at zazenkai, and that further piqued my interest. It clarified that I didn't know what I was doing. I wanted to take it further and truly learn how to do calligraphy as an art, so I needed a teacher. 

Every summer, here in Rhode Island, there is a Japanese Festival; I figured that someone from the group that organizes the event would know who could teach me calligraphy. Turns out there was one Japanese woman willing to teach; she had no classes available, so I ended up learning from her one-on-one. 

Ellen: I’m wondering if in those years of just copying, copying, copying if you were able to access or express kiai through calligraphy, or did that only come through formal training?

Esteban: Looking back on my early pieces, you could recognize some sort of kiai in those pieces. In my early pieces there was a little bit of playfulness, ignorance, and definitely wildness. Through studying the form, I was able to add beauty. Prior to that they never looked elegant, they were very rough. 

Ellen: What do you think happened at the level of kiai in that transition? Did you tame it? Harness it?

Esteban: The training is a refinement. If we look at kiai as energy, it is the ability to focus that energy into a laser and work with precision, as opposed to having kiai like a lightbulb that’s just everywhere. Because of my training, I was able to bring the energy to the elegance. 

There are a lot of highly skilled calligraphers that can make beautiful pieces, but they can also be dull. They are too pretty almost; too perfect. I knew that was the other extreme, I could lose that wild energy if I got too boxed in on form and tried to be perfect. I’ve certainly done that too, but now I can play with both. 

Ellen: For people that are interested in training with shodo, could you tell us a bit about your school and training there?

Esteban: What I try to do is offer an authentic way to learn calligraphy for western students. In Japan, shodo is no longer practiced widely. All students learn to write with a brush at a young age, but very few take it on and actually make it a practice. When I was in Japan, it seemed like every year there were fewer and fewer people doing it. 

During my time there I also met with the artisans making the brushes, paper, ink, etc. They were impacted by this decreasing interest, making it harder for their businesses to survive. I realized that the west was interested and that there was a huge opportunity to be an ambassador of sorts for the West and Latin America. 

There were other people trying to do this as well, but there were not many (if any) doing it online. I think that was the door I was able to crack, how to offer it online. I started working online in 2015.

Ellen: Oh wow, you were an early adopter.

Esteban: Exactly. When I started making YouTube videos about calligraphy there were no others; now there are a ton. The mission has always been to not teach it from an academic point of view. This isn’t Japan where kids learn it in school and there is a system. We follow the Japanese system as a blueprint, but we’re not here to teach calligraphy academically. 

In a cool new development, we now have a formally trained Japanese teacher who is helping me further develop an authentic curriculum. Through her connections we are also now able to exhibit in Japan, which is very exciting. We can sit side by side with Japanese students and it is clear we have earned our place.  

Ellen: That is very cool. How would you say zen informs the curriculum?

Esteban: We definitely promote the idea that doing calligraphy can make your life better. I teach it the way we teach zen with repetition and consistency emphasized. It’s the same thing as training zazen; you need to sit every day. If you want to do calligraphy, you need to practice consistently. 

I encourage students to look at their schedules and see how it can fit in. Three days a week, four days a week, twenty minutes, an hour; whatever it is, once you decide, you have to maintain the practice. If you decide you are going to train on Monday nights, then train every Monday night and set a timer if you need to. Repetition, repetition, repetition is the main learning tool. 

Ellen: Sounds familiar! Now what about the Rhode Island dojo? You established that for in-person training, yes?  

Esteban: Ha, yeah cause I don’t have enough to do already. My wife is always reminding me that there is only so much time, haha. 

Ellen: So how is that going?

Esteban: It's going well. That started because even though my aikido dojo was also my zen dojo, it was not a full-time zen dojo. We could sit after class, but that was about it. 

When I started going to Wisconsin for sesshin it felt great, but I saw there was a limitation. I could only get to Wisconsin once a year, two times if I was lucky; then the rest of the time, I was mainly sitting at home. I’ve done zazen at home my whole training life; my practice sustained because of what I was doing alone. 

Eventually, though, I got to the point where I wanted to go deeper and put zen on the front burner. Aikido has really served me, but I felt there was a ceiling there. There were places I could only go through zen. I developed a bit of frustration because I was hungry for training, but it felt so far away. 

I remember telling Greene Roshi about my frustration, and he encouraged me to use that frustration, to do something with it. It became pretty clear that what I was bitching about was not having a place to train, so the action felt obvious. I needed to start a sitting group. 

Ellen: That does feel pretty straight forward, but there aren’t many who would actually take it on. 

Esteban: When I came back from that sesshin, I really marinated in the idea of it and how that would happen. Then 2020 and COVID hit, so things were put on pause. However, in November 2020, I could feel there was some zoom fatigue and people were trying to figure out how to start opening things back up. I also saw people really needed meditation and were looking for it; I felt that this was our chance. 

Thankfully, there was a moment where the stars aligned for us to find a space. My wife was beginning to rent an office for her acupuncture practice and noticed that the basement was unused. She asked if there were any plans for it, it turned out there were not, and it was a perfect space for a sitting group.

We started with Sunday mornings and met every week. The calligraphy school funded the zen program so that we could purchase cushions and okyo instruments. I also built a small butsudan. 

Ellen: When did you launch?

Esteban: Officially we opened November 2020; that first year was pretty much just me and my wife. Greene Roshi told me that, when we open, we have to sit zazen whether someone shows up or not. We need to build the energy that “zazen happens in this space”, even if no one shows up. And we did that many many times. 

Then we started to get some people from the upstairs health clinic. Initially there was a lot of turnover, people coming once and then never again. But now in our second year we’re seeing some people coming back. People also started finding us on google, which was helpful. There’s not a lot of Zen in Rhode Island, so I thought we’d be golden, but you know perhaps there is a reason for that…

Ellen: Yeah, zen, marketing, and new student retention; I feel like there are some real challenges with that mix. 

Esteban: Exactly. I remember Greene Roshi giving a teisho about the fact that no one has figured out how to market zen, or market it the right way. Part of the problem is everyone uses the word zen, but they don’t really understand what it means. 

My challenge is that I don’t want to lie to people and tell them zen is something it is not. But I also don’t want to scare them their first time coming to sit. That means I have to give them enough instruction to give them a taste, but I also have to really watch for what they can handle. Sometimes 30 minutes is more than enough. 

Thankfully, people eventually started showing up more consistently. We even had a couple people participate in zazenkai and have one who is planning to attend sesshin in October. 

Ellen: This is wonderful Esteban! I’m so excited for your group and am very excited to train again together this Fall. 

Esteban: Me too. I’m enjoying it. It’s actually been really good for me. It has cemented my commitment to my practice, for sitting at the dojo and at home, but also for sesshin and other training. 

Ultimately though, it really is a gift to be able to sit with people. I’ve always craved a local community to sit with. There was actually a moment at zazenkai where if I closed my eyes, even though we’re not supposed to, I could feel the kiai of Spring Green. It was like we were there. 

That experience along with the energy of our returning students feels like the seeds we’ve planted are starting to sprout. 

Ellen: Beautifully said Esteban. Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me, it’s really a pleasure to learn about what you’re doing. I’m forever impressed by the amazing work happening in our greater Chosei Zen community.