Memoir @ MindSay

I was curious about another issue and when the master invited other questions I raised my hands in gassho.

 

"Yes?"

 

"I'm curious about using profanity in the Temple," I said, "the words 'shit' and 'fuck' for example."

 

I explained that there had been a short period a couple of years prior when it seemed that the master was using the word "fuck" a lot in Dharma Talks, and in Dharma Study, and also in casual conversation; and that it had seemed to me contagious, and that soon others, too, persons I'd not heard employ the word before, were using the word "fuck"—Alison had used it, Irene used it, Sally used it, Kent used it, and then a few weeks ago, I explained, Eleanor had used the word "fuck" a dozen times or more in her Dharma Talk. I wondered about the use of such language in the Temple, I said, and I wondered what the master thought about it.

 

"Should we use the words 'shit' and 'fuck' in the Temple just any old time we fucking feel like it?" I inquired.

 

"Why not?" the master asked.

 

He sounded pissed.

 

Hm.

 

"That's my question," I said.

 

"Why not?" the master asked again apparently irritated. "I'm asking you!"

 

I thought for a moment.

 

It had been the master's opinion I was interested in. Taboo language was a subject I had to address once or more every quarter in each of my classes. There were two reasons I did not want my students to use taboo language casually, thoughtlessly.

 

One, there were always two or three people present who for moral or religious reasons found it objectionable. Under pressure from the majority of their peers they had always surrendered, eventually, but it sometimes required an hour or two of discussion and debate.

 

Two—and by far the reason more important—my students often preferred to cuss so they didn't have to think. It was simple self-indulgence. In our analysis of almost any important philosophical, social, or psychological issue I could predict that at least one student would answer "That's bullshit!" or "That's a bunch of fucking bullshit!" to the question "Why?" They liked the word "bullshit" for the same reason they liked the word "evil." It ended analysis so they didn't have to think. Why did hijackers crash airplanes into the World Trade Center? They're evil! No further investigation necessary. Are women denied equal rights and opportunities? That's bullshit! No further consideration required. The various forms of "shit" and "fuck" were aids to the inarticulate. They closed—indeed slammed shut and locked—doors to curiosity, patience, and reason. But this argument was the more complex of the two and I knew from our correspondence and conversation that the master dismissed both intellectual curiosity and reason out of hand. I figured I'd try the simpler reason first and see what happened.       

 

"Because some people find it offensive?" I suggested.

 

"It's just a word," the master said. "There are no good words and no bad words."

 

The master appeared to be mildly offended by my question still.

 

"Just words," he added.

 

The master knew that I knew his position on this issue, we had discussed it more than once, and that we had no major disagreement about it, but my curiosity about it had arisen for me again, just as it had for many old liberals troubled by the apparently bottomless descent of public discourse to new depths of vulgarity. I just wanted to hear the master talk about it. I knew others at the Temple had questions about it, too, and the text for the day and the subject of the master's Talk had seemed the perfect opportunity to inquire.

 

"Zen Buddhism is no wimpy religion!" the master now declared.

 

People laughed.

 

"It's not niiice," the master whined, mocking.

 

People laughed.

 

I nodded.

 

"People want their religion and their world always to be happy and niiice and their lives to be lived in an ocean of perfect and beautiful pearls," the master said. "But the universe is not like that—it contains both pearls and shit and you can drown in the shit," he explained, "and you can also drown in the pearls. Most of my students already know of the danger of shit," the master added, "so often I must assume the responsibility of warning them about the danger of pearls."

 

The master ran his familiar riff on "nice" and "shit." He retold the story of the Zen master whose disciple had asked, "What is Buddha?" The master had answered, "Dried shit stick." It was one of the master's favorite anecdotes and I had heard him tell it at least twenty times, probably more. At each telling he always explained that the shit stick served the monks in the same way corn cobs once served midwestern farmers in their outhouses before the invention of toilet paper. Now with this retelling for several minutes the master digressed to discuss the pros and cons of various brands of toilet paper—fluffy and soft and recycled and sturdy and thin—and to explain the merit of the cheap industrial brand he purchased for the Temple. This was only the first of a series of personal anecdotes literally about shit. When the master had concluded, Eleanor raised her hands palm to palm for permission to speak.

 

"Yes?"

 

"I don't think there are bad words," Eleanor said like an echo.

 

She looked across the room to me.

 

"There are just bad ways of using words. If certain people don't like certain words, they should simply excuse themselves and leave the room where they are being used or even leave the Temple if they feel they must."

 

She waited.

 

I nodded in understanding.

 

"My therapist told me I need to tell more people more often to just fuck off!" she said. "I agree with her—I think she was right—and I have and I do and I think I am much the better for it!"

 

For a moment I thought Eleanor was going to tell me personally right there and then to fuck off.

 

She did not.

 

She just met my gaze with an even, level gaze of her own.

 

My own personal opinion was that no one needed to tell more people more often to fuck off—just the opposite in fact. For a minute or two, yes, of course it might feel good to have vented, but what real good could it do? It was just an indulgence, no more. What was the real origin of such an impulse, I wondered, and who were the people who had evoked it in Eleanor and what had they done to persuade Eleanor to address them so? It had been less than two years since I had told my friend John to fuck off—twice—and in retrospect it was hard to see how my curses had accomplished anything other than inarticulate release. Now I thought my silence would have been better; but at the time I could not resist the crude and selfish desire to somehow have the last word.

 

It was around this same time and also in order to have the last word on the very same issue—the war in Iraq—that another correspondent of mine had sent me an email with this subject line:

 

"Eat shit and die!"

 

No.

 

I did not believe that we needed to tell more people more often to fuck off; nor did I believe that people ever needed to be told to fuck off; nor did I believe that Eleanor, though I knew almost nothing about her personal situation, would gain any lasting and real benefit from telling people so; nor, did I believe, would they. What possible good could it do? But I didn't want to play point counterpoint and there was not time now seriously to explore the issue. Eleanor and the master were behaving as if they believed they had no more to learn of the subject.

 

But others present had questions.

 

"Isn't the word 'fuck' always bad?" asked Steve.

 

"Not in my opinion!" the master sternly replied.

 

The master had puffed himself up in the way so familiar to me.

 

He sounded defiant.

 

"Thank you," said Steve politely as he put his palms together and bowed.

 

I grinned at Steve's reply and I laugh now remembering it as I edit and tinker with my text.

 

Dean had his hands up palm to palm.

 

"Yes?" asked the master.

 

"I think it's bad around children," Dean said.

 

"In that situation it's not appropriate!" the master declared.

 

"No," Dean agreed.

 

"That's different!" the master exclaimed still clearly annoyed.

 

Different?

 

How?

 

I wondered—

 

I was curious about the master's reasons for believing so and I would have enjoyed hearing him explain. It seemed to me that the reasons for avoiding such language around children were little different from the reasons for avoiding such language around adults; but the master's dismissive tone clearly implied that the reasons for such an exception were so obvious that they needed no explanation. It seemed now that the master had grown impatient and weary of the subject. He had adopted the habitual manner that three years earlier had led Daly to complain that the master used his position as moderator of group discussion as a bully pulpit. By his body language, by his demeanor, by his peremptory tone, the master had made it clear that he was displeased with much if not all of what he'd heard; indeed it felt to me as if the master were specifically quite displeased with me personally for even asking the question and that he believed the discussion was over.

 

The master first frowned and then just acting he glowered.

 

"Sometimes the assholes need to be told they're fucking assholes!" the master declared.

 

Eleanor laughed and then others laughed, too.

 

I laughed.

 

But I could not agree with this statement either although I certainly believed that people sometimes needed to be told what they did not want to hear and also that there were times when it seemed to be me who had to tell them and, yes, of course, sometimes when it was me who had to be told. It had been many years, however, since I had called somebody an asshole either to his face or behind his back and it was not a name I imagined myself ever calling a person to his face in the future. I now regretted those times in my past. I would take them all back if only I could, I thought, and apologize. I had just gotten old, I guessed, and kind of old-fashioned. It was rare that I vented and when I did I repented. Too many times in my life I had experienced and witnessed how taboo language—profanity, obscenity, vulgarity—degraded rational discourse and dragged everybody down. I now tried hard to be reasonable, so hard old friends would hardly know me. I believed in reason and in the effort to reason. There were still many times of stress and conflict when the old epithets and expletives—"what a fucking asshole"—arose in my mind and teased and tempted me to speak or to write them but it was now increasingly infrequent that I did. Instead I watched them appear and dissolve, appear and dissolve, appear and dissolve, and there was no question that I felt a happier man for it. This silent observation of my own mind was one of the things I had practiced daily for thirty years—as I write I hear the master's objection to my use of the word "practice"—and it seemed unlikely that at the master's urging or example I would now surrender to impulse and begin telling the assholes to fuck off or that I would ever again believe as I once did that such behavior was somehow more honest and more brave than my quiet reflection and curiosity about the origin of those words in my mind and the temptation to use them in my heart. But just as I had wondered only a few minutes earlier if Eleanor was about to tell me to fuck off I now wondered if the master thought I needed to be told I was an asshole. Did I have this experience to look forward to at my next private meeting with him? "You sanctimonious prick!" I could imagine him saying to me. Half grinning, half glowering, to me he did look mildly pissed even still as he closed his text and brought his hands together in gassho.

 

The doan—Richard today—struck the rim of the keisu, the big bowl, with the baton and, our hands raised palm to palm in gassho, we all recited together the universal dedication and the transfer of merit.

 

May this merit extend universally to all so that we together with all beings realize the Buddha Way.

 

Then the master slowly untied his legs and got up carefully from his cushion, softly brushed off his mat, fluffed up his zafu, bowed to the Buddha and to the sangha, and then walked the five steps to the bowing mat in front of the main altar to offer his three prostrations—because of his sore knees and sore leg today he was able to perform only standing bows—while together the sangha and the master recited the four vows before the final two bells on the inkin and we adjourned.

 

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.

Buddha's Way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it.

 

We fourteen students—"practitioners" the master often called us—stacked our black mats and black cushions neatly in the corner of the Buddha Hall, and then stacked our sutra books neatly on the bottom shelf of the built-in whatnot, extinguished the three candles on the two altars, and repaired to the kitchen for informal conversation and the usual pastry and our cups of hot coffee or tea.

 

The kitchen conversation was about dogs.

 

The master and Eleanor planned to visit the Humane Society in the morning to find a second dog for the Temple. To the smiles, chuckles, and laughter of the six or eight people in the kitchen the master and Eleanor told story after story about temple dogs and their pissing in temples to mark their territory. Alison's dog had one day lifted its leg and pissed on the main altar, Mikiko's dog had pissed on Mikiko's robe, Kent's little dog had regularly pissed and left puddles of piss in the Buddha Hall and recently, Eleanor explained, to mark its territory at Laugh Out Loud in Philadelphia the new dog there had been pissing all over the temple. Dogs will be dogs, the master concluded, laughing, and the master loved dogs, often almost more than people, I had heard him say, and, I had come to believe, dogs definitely more than children. I was still thinking of taboo language. It was the discussion of taboo language following the Dharma Talk that had inspired the topic in the kitchen. I thought of my mother and father. I'd never heard my mother cuss ever and my father only rarely and even then only mildly. "Damn it!" Dad might say under his breath once in a blue moon. To my knowledge neither of my parents had ever spoken the word "fuck" nor—I would bet—ever wanted to. To my father the people who so casually uttered the dirty words "fuck" and "shit" and "asshole" in a temple would have seemed little better than dogs, pissing to mark their territory with the odor of their anger, unhappiness, and unrest and also with their arrogance and indifference to the sensitivities of the fastidious, here a "shit," there a "fuck," everywhere a "shit fuck." To my father, I knew, to use the word "fuck" was to not give a damn, to not care, to piss on the world. I'd heard the master cuss the computer, "motherfucker," and the presumptuous and condescending note, "shit," that the anonymous Christian had left in his mailbox, and the Christian who wrote it, "asshole," and on too many other similar occasions of irritation, "shit," and annoyance, "fuck," to enumerate. I'd heard him cuss and swear in the Buddha Hall, cuss in the kitchen, swear in his Dharma Talk, cuss in Dharma Study, and swear in the backyard at the picnic table, and dozens of times in both anger, "fuck," and fun, "shit," I had heard him cuss and piss on the name of sweet Jesus, and, well—

 

Why not?

 

In his Dharma Talk on the second Sunday of October the master had chosen to speak on a text from "Shobogenzo," one fascicle on the relationship between teacher and student, abbot and monk, master and disciple.

 

In it Dogen urges teachers not to slap and to scold and to do so if they must only in compassion and not in anger. Dogen's defense of such tactics in exceptional cases is an explanation of what a few years ago might have been called tough love. That rationale is not sophisticated. It is the same rationale that both parents and school teachers offered sixty years ago in defense of corporal punishment—for using a paddle, for example, and spanking children.

 

If you spare the rod you spoil the child.

 

Dogen advises a teacher to wait until the anger subsides before he speaks or acts.

 

In his explication of the text the master explained that for a variety of reasons he had years ago given up using the Zen stick, the "kyosaku," to strike students; but he defended as consistent with Dogen's teaching his use of the language and the tone that others and I considered abusive.

 

"I correct students only in compassion," the master said. "Never in anger."

 

I was instantly dubious.

 

I had no doubt that the master wanted and wished this to be true. But it seemed to me a silly assertion, one contradicted both by my own observation and by the testimony of many others. I'd heard at least dozen different people at the Temple relate anecdotes of times they had been the object of or witness to displays of the master's anger. The master himself had said many times in public and had told me again only recently that anger had been an issue for him his entire life. In the memoir of their training together at a monastery in Japan his friend David Chadwick had portrayed Fuman—Norman in the book—as a man often angry and annoyed.

 

The master paused in his lecture.

 

We waited.

 

It seemed that now perhaps even the master himself questioned the veracity of the claim he had just made.

Only after several seconds did he continue and then it was to draw a distinction between anger and annoyance.

 

"I never speak or act in anger," the master said again.

 

He paused.

 

"But I do speak and act from annoyance."

 

Hm.

 

A fine distinction, I thought, one the master had not permitted me.

 

The master offered several examples of incidents which had annoyed him—students behaving improperly, breaches of Temple etiquette, mistakes in the ritual forms, carelessness in the rites and ceremonies—and had evoked from him "harsh" words. The master compared himself as Dogen had in the text to a parent and his students to children.

 

This analogy I had always considered unfortunate.

 

I still do.

 

Often there were times, the master explained, when it was necessary for him to reprimand—sharply, curtly, brusquely—in order to correct and protect the student, like the child, from harm and to get his or her attention and to wake the student up. It was obvious from the subject of his Talk and from his remarks, I thought, that the master had been thinking some more about the allegations of arrogance and anger and of emotional and verbal abuse. His Talk seemed to me one part exploration, one part consideration, one part defense of self.

 

We students were to understand, the master suggested, that our teacher occasionally behaved this way only for our own good. The master told a story he had been told by his teacher Katagiri, whose own master, annoyed one day, intended to strike with his stick every monk in the zendo; but old and feeble from cancer he had been unable to finish what he had planned and begun to do.

 

"I never loved him more!" Katagiri had told Fuman.

 

I was touched.

 

The intended analogy and its implication were clear.

 

Our master, too, he implied, said and did only what he had to say and do in order to instruct and correct us.

 

"Skillful means," now the master called it. "Upaya."

 

Ugh.

 

It was "skillful means" that Dogen recommended and urged in the text the master had read and explained in his Talk, and the term is commonplace in Buddhist literature, but it was a term that I would have applied only in irony to the rude interruptions and crude sarcasm, mockery, ridicule, and harangue that I had first seen the master employ with other students and had only later felt and experienced myself. It made me feel slightly sick to my stomach to hear the master apply the term "skillful means" to himself and to his methods; and my stomach turned again as I recalled and recorded the moment in my journal.

 

But as a child I had been whipped every day by my father—so I remember—and insulted; and more than once I had heard much the same defense from him. My father, too, I had forgiven and loved, but neither as a child nor as an adult did I nor would I ever condone his terrible whippings and cruel epithets.

 

Perhaps the other common translation of "upaya" would have been to me more palatable.

 

"Expedient means."

 

Hmm.

 

This parental conduct and intention seemed intrinsic to the relationship between teacher and student in Zen Buddhism and, yes, also, apparently, the condescension and arrogance that seemed necessarily to go with it. This reduction of student to child and elevation of priest to parent was one of the first things I had noticed about the Temple and about relations between teacher and student there—the more so in sesshin—and one of the first things that bothered me.

 

It still did.

 

It was present, too, in Christianity in the language of "heavenly father" and of priest, "father," and children and in the image of good "shepherd" and "sheep." To me it seemed an incongruous analogy given the renunciation of family by both Siddhartha and Jesus and their recommendation, insistence, and even demand that their disciples do the same. The master, too, had divorced his wife, he had told us students, and he had by his own admission for years left the care and parenting of his daughter solely to her mother.

 

Fetter.

 

I remembered, too, the master's impatience with me.

 

"You always walk in here acting like we're equals," the master had complained.

 

But there were times, I had to admit, that I, too, did feel I was a kind of parent to some of the younger students of my own, those only sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, who had been whirled and spun crazily out of their own dysfunctional families and had then landed for a few hours a week in my college writing classes; and my friend Billy had tried to explain to me once how the renunciation of family was just the first step towards love of the whole human family. Yet that love seemed quite different from imagining oneself a parent of all humankind; and I did not see myself ever as the parent of my older students, not even those in their mid-twenties and certainly not those older still.

 

No.

 

To be simply a teacher was more than enough for me.

 

A responsible friend.

 

Now the master had concluded his remarks and he invited questions.

 

Richard put his palms together in gassho. He wanted to know more about the master's decision to give up the stick. Richard suggested that the possibility of lawsuits might have been a factor. He wondered if the master missed the stick the way a parent or a school teacher might miss the liberty to spank. 

 

"Do you feel limited?" Richard asked.

 

"Do I seem limited?" the master replied visibly bristling.

 

Whoa!

 

How quickly the master could take offense!

 

Pissed.

 

Richard misunderstood and he restated his question.

 

"I mean as a teacher do you feel restricted by not using the stick?"

 

"Do I seem restricted to you?" asked the master.

 

Indignant.

 

Richard thought a moment.

 

Too long.

 

"Do I?" the master insisted.

 

He scowled.

 

"No," Richard conceded.

 

"I've slapped you, haven't I?" the master asked.

 

He waited.

 

It was clear to everyone that the master was speaking metaphorically.

 

"Yes."

 

"I've slapped you more than once, haven't I?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Many times?" the master persisted.

 

"Yes."

 

"Am I limited?"

 

"No."

 

This question of the difference or lack of difference between metaphor and fact had come up many times at the Temple. It was a distinction that seemed crucial to me. Had Bodhidharma cut off his own eyelids or was the tale no more than legend? Had Huiko cut off his arm? Yes, that seemed to be fact. Had Mikiko cut off hers? The master had insisted that she had and the master would not concede that his assertion was metaphor. Did it matter? To me it did. Mikiko still had both of her arms. Had Huiko cut off a boy's finger to teach him a lesson or was this tale also not history but parable? To me the difference did matter. Dean had explained in his Dharma Talk how the master had more than once cut off Dean's right index finger. This was possible only as metaphor and Dean had so intended it.

 

Had the master slapped Richard?

 

Had he?

 

Both the master and Richard agreed that he had.

"Yes."

 

But the master had never struck Richard.

 

No.

 

Not really.

 

Did it matter?

 

Yes.

 

To me it did.

 

Was there any difference?

 

Yes.

 

To me an important one.

 

But the master and I had already been over this road.

 

Forward.

Time passed.

 

My conflict with the master over my alleged dishonesty and cowardice having now nearly dissipated, I struggled to formulate questions about my practice for our biweekly private meeting before zazen on Tuesday. The master seemed in an uncharacteristic mood. Initially—for only a minute or two—he appeared sober, stern, and serious when he first sat down after offering incense but he then appeared self-conscious and slightly uncomfortable and for reasons I didn't know or understand throughout our conversation he smiled and grinned sheepishly and blushed readily and often.

 

I did not know what this was all about.

 

I ignored it.

 

I asked him what he meant by students blaming him for their inability to practice. I told him that I had never heard people at the Temple blame him for their problems. The master explained that a former student had told him she'd left the Temple because of his profanity.

 

This reason the master considered specious.

 

"We cannot avoid hearing others say things we do not like," he said. "We cannot forbid others from using words we would rather not hear."

 

In his voice I heard impatience.

Exasperation.

 

"They will use them anyway!"

 

The master paused to collect his thoughts.

 

"That's unrealistic!" the master added. "It's going to happen."

 

I waited.

 

"Sooner or later we're going to hear them."

 

The master seemed to be offering a defense of his own profanity. His own use of vulgar language, the master seemed to suggest, presented an opportunity for members of the sangha to practice tolerance and acceptance.

 

I wondered.

 

This seemed to be an important issue for him.

 

I listened.

 

"Students look for flaws in their teachers," said the master, "and especially in this country it seems to me that if and when students do find flaws in their teacher students are unforgiving."

 

The master mentioned his friend Doshin Pont, the priest at a sister temple who two years earlier had begun and continued a sexual relationship with one of his students, a member of the sangha, a married woman. Pont, too, had been married, and he was the father of young children. He had been discovered and the affair exposed. Both the woman and he had confessed, apologized, and abased themselves. Pont had been impeached, he had resigned from his position as priest, and he had asked publicly to be forgiven by the many people he had betrayed.

 

But this had not happened.

 

"They would not forgive!" the master explained. "No way!"

No.

 

He shook his head slowly, sadly, no—

No.

 

"No way."

 

The priest should have been forgiven, the master believed.

 

"The man had been contrite, he had done enough."

 

I was silent.

 

Breath.

 

Forward—

 

I asked the master what he had meant by "practice issues," the supposed subject of our practice group meetings. It seemed to me that people simply talked about conflict they felt in job and family.

 

"They all just talk about what makes them unhappy," I said. "Is that what you want us to talk about? Is that the subject of our group meetings—what makes us unhappy?"

 

"Unhappiness is what brings people here to the Temple," the master said. "They come because they suffer—that is what moved the Buddha to the path and that is what moves others to the path."

 

I listened.

 

"They're unhappy and they want to know why and they want to know how to end their suffering."

 

The master paused.

 

I waited.

 

"Conflict is an opportunity to practice, and to deepen practice, and to deepen our understanding of ourselves and of life."

 

Yes.

 

That I understood.

 

Yes but—

 

What had moved me to the path?

 

Curiosity.

 

What had moved me to the Temple?

 

Billy.

 

Practice issues came up constantly for the master, too, he explained. Living now in the same living space with Eleanor, he said, presented him with special personal challenges. This much in abstract and general terms the master had told all of us in our practice group meeting on Sunday. Now the master said that sexuality had always been an issue for him and that now it had come somewhat unexpectedly into his life and his practice again. The master spoke of his sexual life casually, openly, naturally, comfortably, as any man might broach this topic with a friend.

 

"Sexuality arises for me in visual images," the master said. "That is just how it comes up for me and always has and now that I share the same intimate living space with this beautiful young woman I have been presented with new challenges."

 

The master thought for a moment.

 

"It's all mental," the master said. "It's just a new challenge for me and a new opportunity for me to practice."

 

The master explained that in practice things come up, conflicts, sorrows, and ethical dilemmas arising from student efforts to follow the precepts.

 

"No one can stand up straight and follow the precepts and live upright all the time," the master said, "not my teacher, not you, not me, not anyone."

 

I nodded.

 

This was the claim my Christian students so often made of Jesus.

 

Without sin.

 

Perfect.

 

"No one can do that," said the master.

 

"I know that," I said, "but we can try all the time."

 

"Yes," the master said, "we try and we fail because the self, the ego, is too powerful and in spite of our good intention and our best effort again and again we act only in our own interest."

 

Hmm.

 

I wondered about the word "only."

 

"Yes," I said.

 

"I've failed," he said and paused. "I've failed many times."

 

"Me too," I said.

 

Together we thought about this.

 

He returned to the topic of my conflict with him and what I had said at the practice group meeting in response to Nikki's question about whether I had acknowledged that my problem was within me myself or whether I still thought the master was wrong. I had wondered if the master would mention this remark in our meeting tonight.

 

"You said—" began the master.

 

I interrupted.

 

"You were wrong," I said.

 

The master smiled.

 

I smiled.

 

"No one asked me what I thought," the master said.

 

I laughed.

 

"They were certain they already knew your opinion," I said.

 

He smiled.

 

The master didn't pursue the topic.

 

He explained in general that when he probed and pushed a student to an uncomfortable place it was to encourage the student to explore an area of the self the student did not necessarily want to know—an intention I had never doubted—and that as a teacher he himself had to be willing to go with the student and to be there with him. But I was not sure that I had really seen such a willingness in the master. I wanted to, I hoped I would, but I knew the master could be curt, dismissive, and cold.

 

That I had seen.

 

"I thought you were too comfortable, too smooth," the master said, "and it wasn't credible so I pushed you."

 

He paused.

 

"But when I pushed you it was no picnic for me either!" the master exclaimed.

 

As he uttered his last half dozen words he raised his voice and made an exaggerated and comic face that communicated in a goofy way how difficult and perhaps even painful our email correspondence and disagreement had been for him, too. It was an affectionate and conciliatory gesture.

 

"I know that," I said.

 

The master leaned forward in his chair, towards me, and made another funny face.

 

"I wouldn't call it fun!" he added.

 

I laughed.

 

"No," I said.

 

"Anything else?" he asked.

 

"Our conflict did not come up when I sat," I explained, "although I always expected it to; and on the rare occasions when it did I was able just to let it go like I did everything else; instead it bothers me at other times—in the car on my way to work and then again in the car on my way back home."

 

"You have a strong home practice," he said, "and zazen is the perfect container for what ailed you. There are things you can do to take your mind off of the conflict on your drive to and from work."

 

Curious, I waited.

 

"I listen to the radio," he said.

 

"Oh."

 

Our talk was over.

 

We bowed and I walked downstairs to light the altar in the zendo. At 6:55 I hit the han, at 7:00 I rang the inkin, at 7:40 I walked ten minutes, at 8:20 we chanted the "Fukanzazengi," and at 8:30 when I drove home the thunderstorm and rain everyone had been expecting for several days was again delayed so I turned on the air conditioning in the pickup for my ten-minute drive home. The night was windy but the air still humid, sticky, and warm.

 

Too comfortable?

Yes.

 

I had felt comfortable in my practice.

 

Too smooth?

 

I had never been described that way before. I could not remember ever wanting to be smooth.

 

Not credible?

Not credible?

 

Jesus!

 

I inhaled, deeply, and exhaled, slowly, through my pursed lips, smiled, just a half, and then with my right index finger I punched on the radio.

 

You can’t always get
What you want
You can’t always get
What you want
You can’t always get
What you want

  

My wife was sitting on the couch, the television on mute, as she read one of her many slim volumes of contemporary poetry. As usual she was curious about what had transpired. I always told Ruth everything about my practice at the Temple and my relationship with the master.

 

"Nothing," I said. "It was all pretty uneventful."

 

"Come on," she wheedled.

I laughed.

 

I offered her the short version of what I've written here.

Impermanence.

By midmorning of the next day less than fourteen hours later I was right back where I'd started. What on earth had I been thinking? I couldn't give the Dharma Talk! All I could think about was my teacher.

I emailed the master.

"Today I am thinking of my Talk. I continue to struggle with my ambivalence about our relationship. Do you think it might be better if the Talk is given by a student who is experiencing fewer doubts than I am at the present? If you still want me to try I will do my best—but with regard to my practice just about the only thing on my mind is us and I can't talk about that with you not there. It wouldn't be right. What do you think?"

I wondered.

"Can you help me?" I inquired. "I'm at a loss." 

The master promptly replied.

"Alison will give the talk. I will tell Joe. What do I think? This is not about 'us,' Bob. It is about 'you.' Sit down, point the finger back at yourself, and whatever you find there drop it. You are at a loss? Good," the master said. "Now allow things to come up from there."

I felt relieved.

"Allow things to come up from there."

Yes.

This was what I had been doing or at least trying to do since the very beginning of this ordeal nine months before yet my study of myself had yielded nothing of the dishonesty and cowardice the master insisted I should find. The next two weeks were uneventful but the master had scheduled a meeting of our practice group after service on the first Sunday of October. In front of the group—the master, Eleanor, Joe, Alison, Dean, Jefferson, and Nikki—I would have to address any issues that had come up in my practice. There I hoped to be able to put the problem behind me but I knew that I might very well be asked for specifics and, if so, I didn't want to wander. On a small sheet of paper that I could fold and carry in my pocket I made a list—a recapitulation—and hoped I would not have to consult it. I titled it "My Conflict with the Master—He Felt I Needed Confronting."

1  The master attributed to me feelings I didn't feel—deep anger and deep sadness.

2  When I said I wasn't feeling deep anger and deep sadness the master said I was dishonest.

3  When I said I hadn't been dishonest the master said I was afraid to admit to the sangha and to him what I really felt.

4  When I said I wasn't afraid of revealing anything to him or to the sangha the master called this denial.

5  The master implored me to admit—to confess—that what he had been saying about my dishonesty and cowardice was true.

6  But I could not—and I cannot—say what I do not feel or think is true.

7  The master said that I was stuck in emptiness and that he didn't think he could teach me.

But the practice group meeting passed without incident.

Nikki spoke first.

Her job.

When it was my turn to speak I explained that the master had felt I needed confronting; that in our conflict I felt that we had reached impasse; that I thought either the master or I might find it necessary to end our relationship but that the master had suggested we meet face to face for an hour every other week; and that although the master continued to confront me I felt that our relationship had improved.

No one present at the meeting asked for the particulars—and why would they? Except for Eleanor and Jefferson, everyone present had heard the story of my conflict with the master more than once.

Nikki had two questions.

"Do you think the obstacle is in you or do you think the master is wrong?"

"I think the master is wrong."

Nikki nodded.

"Are you scared?" she asked. 

I didn't know what she meant.

"Scared of what?"

"Scared that you might lose your teacher," Nikki said. 

"No."

"That possibility would terrify me!" she said.

"No, I don't have that kind of fear," I said. "My faith in the teaching and in the practice is so strong that I can't imagine losing it."

Nikki nodded.

I thought.

"I don't I think I feel as reliant on the master as you do," I added.

I thought again.

"On my drive to work one morning I considered the possibility that my relationship with the master might end," I said. "My love for him and my gratitude for what I have learned from him brought tears to my eyes."

Silence.

Breath.

Now it was Alison—then Joe, Eleanor, and Jefferson.

The master was the last to speak of his practice. The master mentioned what he had learned from sharing the Temple with Eleanor. He complained of his fatigue and his trying perhaps to do too much. Someone asked—I forget whom—if the master ever got sick and tired of the questions students constantly asked him. The master acknowledged his impatience and frustration with students who after six or eight years at the Temple still failed to do what he had repeatedly told them to do. 

But tired of their questions?

"No." 

The master thought a moment.

"What makes me mad," the master said sounding suddenly mad, "is when my students blame me for their inability to practice!"

The full stress, weight, force, and accent of his sentence fell squarely on its second "me."

I didn't know what the master meant.

We adjourned.

There was one other topic on his mind. The master had twice overheard me in response to a question tell someone at the Temple that I'd been practicing thirty years. The master thought this was misleading. No matter what I thought I'd been practicing before I arrived at the Temple, the master told me, it definitely was not Zen Buddhism. The master asked me half a dozen questions about what I had then called my practice and about the men I had called my teachers, Stephen Gaskin, John Seward, and Billy Boyar. The master had heard me explain many times that the simple central principle of that practice—as I understood it—was to tell the truth all the time. The master knew, too, of my commitment to nonviolence. In Dharma Study the master had himself once referred to what he called my "precept practice," a term I'd never used myself nor ever heard. I thought the master might now ask me to repudiate my whole idea of what I'd been doing for the past thirty years—what I had called my practice—but he didn't go that far, a concession for which I was grateful. The master asked only that from now on I say that I had practiced Zen Buddhism for four years, the term of my association with him at the Temple.

 

I didn't mind.

 

My previous commitment had no name.

 

To me it seemed the teaching of Krishna, the teaching of Buddha, of Purna, the teaching of Lao Tsu, the teaching of Socrates and of Plato, the teaching of Nigantha Nataputra, the Mahavira, the teaching of Jesus, the teaching of the first Christian martyr Stephen, the teaching of Patanjali, the teaching of Shakespeare, the teaching of Tolstoy, the teaching of Gandhi, the teaching of Martin Luther King, Jr., the teaching of Suzuki, the teaching of Trungpa, the teaching of Stephen Gaskin, the teaching of my friend John—before his conversion on September 11, 2001, to the politics of George W. Bush—and the teaching of my friend and teacher Billy and of his secular teacher and mine the supreme ironic nihilist Glenn O'Malley, and the teaching of the millions of anonymous, nameless, and unknown women and men over the millennia who had renounced violence and struggled to survive, to live, and to be happy by means other than violence, threat of violence, and force. I did not and do not know any proper name of the broad and eclectic discipline which had revealed to me my reality and my god but I knew it by experience and I knew that in spite of the unhappiness this conflict with the master had caused me my faith in the power or the god or the mind or the nothing that had been responsible for my own personal awakening and commitment could not and would not ever be shaken.

 

"It's nothing."

 

"I agree."

 

"Let it go."

 

"All right."

 

"It's mind," the master said.

 

"Everything is mind," I said.

 

"Yes."

Forward.

 

I told the master how much I had enjoyed his essay in the most recent issue of Prairie Wind. It had been about his experience in monasteries in Japan and about the opening of his third eye. I'd immediately sent it to my friends Billy and John and to my youngest son Stephen. Billy and Stephen had liked it just as much as I had and I told the master so.

 

I thought it was by far the best piece of writing the master had done.

 

"Thank you," he said.

 

The master was reminded of my day of crying during Rohatsu sesshin in December and now he asked me questions about it. I'd emailed Billy about it the day after it ended and since then I'd not thought again of it at all.

First the master wanted to know if it had scared me.

 

"Oh no!" I said. "Not at all."

 

"There was no fear in it for you?" the master asked.

 

"No, none."

 

"Would you want to experience something like it again?"

 

I had to think about this.

 

It had not been an experience I wanted to repeat. Why should I? What for? Nor had I any desire to experience again what I had experienced in 1975 and that experience had exceeded my weepy day of joy in Rohatsu by a trillionfold. Dharma gates are boundless, I recited almost daily. I vowed to enter them all.

 

"I don't know about all that crying," I said finally.

 

"Why do you dislike crying?" asked the master.

 

It was an old subject between us and I really did not want to go over it all again.

 

"Conditioning," I guessed.

 

The master did not press the matter. The master and I had talked before of our two fathers and of the old saw that boys don't cry. The master claimed to be a big cryer. I had seen him shed silent tears—though not many—half a dozen times in the Temple when telling stories of his relationship to the men he had called master. He had told me, too, that he cried at sad movies and even at sad literature and he'd once mentioned in my journal that he had cried reading the short anecdote I'd told of one of my students. Though I had cried from 4:00 in the morning till almost 11:00 on the sixth day of Rohatsu the master thought I still hadn't cried enough. He misunderstood, I believed, some things I had written about war and the Holocaust and about my father and his diabetes and his death.

 

"You need to cry more," the master said.

 

Need?

 

Ugh.

 

"Were you here for service on Sunday?" the master asked.

 

"Yes."

 

"How was Eleanor with the Dharma Talk?"

 

"Good—in command, knowledgeable, confident, calm, at ease."

 

"Tell me about her Talk."

 

"She used various forms of the word 'fuck' about ten times," I said smiling. "I figured that was your influence."

 

The master blushed and laughed.

 

"Is that all you remember of it?" he asked in mock disgust. "Her saying fuck?"

 

He made a face.

 

I laughed.

 

I summarized Eleanor's Talk.

 

"Did she handle questions well?"

 

"Yes."

 

I assured him that she had.

 

He was pleased.

 

I told the master that after Eleanor's Dharma Talk I'd had a good visit with Dean at the picnic table in the backyard. I explained that Dean had much appreciated the master's Dharma Talk on the Sunday of the most recent sesshin, a service and Talk that I'd missed.

 

"Yes?"

 

"Dean said your main point was that the student must submit. That was key—submission. The student must submit to the master. He himself had submitted, he said, to his master. There was no other way."

 

I paused.

 

"The student must submit."

 

Huh—

 

The master screwed his face into the funniest most extreme caricature of astonishment and incomprehension I'd ever seen the master make and that is saying something.

 

Whaa—

 

The master looked like he thought Dean had lost his mind or that I had or that we both had. I had thought that perhaps the master would demand of me the same kind of total submission to him that Dean had understood as the supreme requirement of practice. But the master's reaction was not at all what I expected. Instead the face he made was hilarious.

 

I laughed.

 

The master did not acknowledge it.

 

The master remained silent, wondering, it seemed—for a moment or two lost in thought. I could imagine. It was funny! As I wrote this account I was remembering it and laughing again. But this was my impression—not his. The master had not a word to say to me on the subject of submission. Instead he changed the subject. He mentioned that he needed a person to give the Dharma Talk on Sunday while he was in Milwaukee for the annual meeting of the Association of American Zen Masters. It was an inquiry. I felt good now about our talk. I had been the only senior student at the Temple who had not given a Dharma Talk in the master's absence over the summer.

 

"I'll do it," I said.

 

"Good."

 

We sat a moment in silence.

 

"Is there anything else?" the master inquired.

 

We had talked for forty minutes and the master had noticed me checking my watch. I still had the candle in the zendo to light, the stick of incense to offer at the altar, and the mats and cushions to check—and the sutra books—before I hit the rolldown on the han at 7:55. I pulled from my pants pocket the small card on which I had noted the issues I had hoped the master and I might address. At the bottom of my short list were two items I had added and forgotten. On numerous occasions the master had shared with me—just in passing—information, recent news, and sometimes even his opinion of other students.

 

"Do you talk with others about me and my practice?" I asked.

 

The question startled the master. Taken aback and perplexed he made a quizzical face as he thought.

 

"Only good things," he said tentatively. "I've told others of your strong home practice."

 

The master appeared concerned.

 

"Have you heard something?" he asked.

 

"No, no," I said, "I just wondered."

 

Breath.

 

"Anything else?"

 

This would be delicate.

 

Breath.

 

"There is one more wild thing I'd like to try out on you," I said.

 

I made a silly face—a look I hoped meant I don't know—and shrugged my shoulders and gestured with my hands to try to indicate that what I was about to say was totally speculative and that I intended no offense.

 

"Go ahead."

 

"Do you ever apologize?" I asked.

 

My question amused him—thank god—and in his astonishment the master laughed and smiling made a face of mock disgust.

 

"You know I do," the master said. "More than once in the past I've apologized to you."

 

"Yes—for little things," I said. "But I wondered if you had ever apologized for your conduct in situations like the one I have just been through with you."

 

"If I've been wrong—yes," the master said. "With you I don't think I'm wrong."

 

"Thank you."

 

In spite of all I had been through with this teacher, my teacher, the master, I felt grateful for the directness, for the honesty, and most of all for the equanimity of this reply.

 

"May I say one more thing?" I asked.

 

"Go ahead."

 

"I think it would be a very positive and healing gesture if you could say to the sangha what you have said to me—that anger has been an issue for you your entire life and that although you have worked on it and believe you have made considerable improvement you also know that anger is still an issue for you and that you know you sometimes manifest excessive anger when it may be inappropriate."

 

"But I already have, Bob, more than once!" the master exclaimed.

 

I waited.

 

"You know that," he said. "You've heard me."

 

I waited.

 

"Have you apologized for it?"

 

"No."

 

I waited.

 

"I do think it might be a healing gesture for our sangha," I suggested a second time.

 

The master thought for a moment and then smiled awkwardly and blushed as he replied.

 

"No, Bob, no, that's just way too New Agey for me," he said. "I won't do that."

 

The master shook his head.

 

No.

 

He smiled.

 

No.

 

"Okay," I said. "It was just a thought."

 

He smiled.

 

I too.

 

We agreed to meet again in two weeks and palms together in gassho we bowed.

 

"Thank you," I said.

 

He smiled.

 

I left his room and walked downstairs.

 

It was 6:50.

 

Eleanor had turned on the porch light, the table lamp in the corner of the Buddha Hall, and the ceiling light in the zendo, and she had propped open the windows. I asked Eleanor about the extra chair in the zendo and she explained that the master had been using it. His knees had been bothering him again. I made a cursory check of the mats and cushions and I lit the candle and offered the incense. At five minutes to seven I hit the han.

 

I remembered when I got home and recorded all this how cool and light my breath felt in my nostrils as I inhaled that night and how freely and easily it seemed to sail and coast in and out of my body and how solid I sat on my cushion. The mental pain of my confusion and doubt had dissolved and evaporated. I sat for fifty minutes, then walked for ten minutes, and then I sat the twenty minutes remaining before I began the evening chant. When I left the Temple at half past eight Eleanor locked the door behind me and waited until I had slipped into my sandals and had stepped off the porch and onto the front walk before she turned off the light. I was happy again. The quiet presence of life in the flowers and trees felt heavy and wet in the dark.

 

I could feel its pulse.

Oh—

I felt a strange urge to kneel and pray.

I did not.

 

"So how'd it go?" Ruth asked when I walked in the door.

 

"Fuman complained that I think we are equals," I said.

 

"Aye," she said, "there's the rub."

 

I laughed.