Alumni News Spotlight Tozan (Thomas) Hardison: Practicing Music and Mindfulness November, 2003
The search for meaning defines our lives—and for some, the journey takes both literal and spiritual form. Tozan (Thomas) Hardison has traveled farther than most. A Juilliard-trained pianist, he taught piano for more than two decades before caring for a sick friend inspired him to earn a nursing degree. The discipline of music and the compassion of nursing found their ultimate union when he moved to Japan for seven years to become a Zen Buddhist priest.
Tozan Hardison
Spirituality hardly came out of left field for Tozan Hardison, a Washington, N.C., native, whose earliest education was in a Catholic convent school that gave him "a sense of seriousness" along with his earliest piano lessons. But this country boy had never seen a nine-foot Steinway until his audition at Juilliard: "I sat down and started playing the 'Tempest' Sonata of Beethoven and was about to cry, the sound was so beautiful!"
After earning his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1960 as a student of James Friskin, Hardison opened a private teaching studio in a 200-year-old Connecticut barn famous as the former hideout of Boss Tweed. He had been an associate professor of piano at Eastern Michigan University for several years when teaching began to lose its luster, and he returned to New York to care for his ailing godmother, Mrs. Edwin Hughes (whose husband he had studied with when Friskin went back to England for the summers). The sense of service brought Hardison such satisfaction that he earned a nursing degree and worked at Stamford Hospital as a cancer nurse before returning to North Carolina to care for AIDS patients at Duke University Hospital. "That's where I really got in touch with Buddhism," says Hardison, who was flying out to San Francisco for Zen study that helped him remain detached but compassionate in the face of death.
Japanese friends on an exchange program at Duke invited him to visit in Sendai, Japan—"and another door opened," says Hardison. He taught English at Tohoku University to support himself while mastering the intricacies of the tea ceremony ("a Zen communion, in a sense, conducted in total silence punctuated only by the boiling of water and the knocking sounds of bamboo utensils"). As he progressed through the various stages of rigorous training for the Zen Buddhist priesthood—conducted entirely in Japanese—Hardison learned Japanese characters and brushstrokes, created his own pottery bowls and vessels, and even made his own robes.
After his ordination, Hardison lived and worked for four years in a Zen temple in Murata, a small, rice-farming village of some 800 families where "old Japan" is preserved "like you see in the movies of Kurosawa." Eventually he returned to the United States to establish his own small Zen temple in the Appalachian Mountains outside Boone, N.C., which he maintained for six years.
Though he no longer teaches formally, music has remained a constant throughout Hardison's life: playing for Mrs. Hughes during her illness, playing chamber music while nursing, performing on request in Japan, and giving small recitals in his house and in local retirement homes. He recently returned from a 10-day trip to Japan that included a benefit concert for the village of Murata. Hardison notes that his music has been enriched by the compassion learned in nursing and the mindfulness of Zen: "I was so arrogant as a young guy, playing all this loud and fast stuff. But after awhile, you get honed down, and now I love to make beautiful sound."
Hardison is quick to counter misconceptions about Buddhism: It is not so much a religion as a philosophy of life, one that requires mindful practice, understanding, and commitment to being a better person. He says he meditates every day, but adds: "There are other ways to meditate than just sitting on a cushion and being quiet." It's easy to live as a hermit and be a perfect Buddhist, he points out; the real test of one's Buddhist practice is how one functions out in the world, getting along with people and dealing with problems.
Having grown up as an Episcopalian, Hardison still likes to go to services for the major holidays: "It's a root thing for me, very comforting and inspiring. I don't feel that my Buddhism has taken away from Christianity. As a matter of fact, I know and appreciate it a lot more since becoming a Buddhist priest."
