67 Sex

Guru—

The biggest blow came in 1990.

My friend Billy, the person I would have called my teacher had anyone demanded that I name one, had committed himself to the Shambhala and Vajrayana path. When Trungpa died in 1987, Billy's teacher, he told me at the time, was Ösel Tendzin, the man formerly known as Thomas Rich. Billy often encouraged me to find a teacher, too, or for reasons of simplicity and consistency at least to abandon the eclectic practice I had learned from Gaskin, from John, and from my study of archetype and myth, and to settle on just one particular school of Buddhism.

I thought often about it.

Now, just as scandal had upset the entire Zen Buddhist community in San Francisco and beyond, it seemed an even greater tragedy had struck the organization founded by Chögyam Trungpa. Before his death from addictions to alcohol and tobacco, Trungpa had made Ösel Tendzin his dharma heir and had appointed him Vajra Regent of the growing international organization known as Shambhala.

 "My teacher has AIDS," Billy quietly informed me one afternoon as we stood outside his home in west Texas, "and it seems he also has infected several of his male students with the human immunodeficiency virus."

Billy explained that because of its tolerance of homosexuality the organization and sangha to which he belonged attracted many homosexuals. Billy and I did not discuss the details of the actual tragedy. Though Billy was himself still coping with the reality and meaning of this event, he did plan to remain in the organization and on the path. I hardly understood the relationship between teacher and student in Buddhism. Though I had read Trungpa's books I knew little of the path my friend Billy had taken. Because of my own unique personal experience and now the stories of Baker and Gaskin, I had become skeptical of the whole concept of the relationship of teacher and student in Buddhism and of devotion to the guru.

"My god!" I said. "How terrible!"

"Yes."

Given the esoteric nature of tantra and Vajrayana—its secrecy had been one of the reasons I myself preferred Zen—and Billy's natural curiosity and willingness to experiment and to try almost anything, I could not help but wonder if perhaps my friend, too, might have had sexual contact with his teacher.

I worried.

"Did you—" I asked, letting the obvious question hang uncompleted.

"No."

Thank god!

I was relieved—but I puzzled over Billy's continued commitment to the organization and I left Texas even more skeptical of the relationship between teacher and student. Back home in Iowa I continued as before to apply and to practice in my own way—as I had learned them from John—the principles Gaskin had laid out in his books and talks. Though John, the person who had initiated me into this mystery, no longer spoke of The Farm or of Gaskin except in irony or disapproval, the fact remained that I was still trying to practice.

But then how could I not?

The gift I had received as a consequence was so great that even as I write this I feel compelled to stop typing, to kneel, and to press my forehead to the floor in full prostration to express my gratitude.

What could I say?

I had been struck by lightning, electrocuted, and electrified for one full year. But it had been both a blessing and a curse. When I felt frustrated and despondent at my inability to understand what it meant and to know what do with it, I heard in my head the opening line of my ode to joy:

I wish now that it had never happened—

I wish now that it had never happened—

I wish now that it had never happened—

I wish now that it had never happened—

When John's software company failed, he took a new job in the city. He began attending meetings of the Native American Church, he sat in a sweat lodge, he chewed peyote buttons in a tipi, and he learned to pray. John fell in love, had an affair, divorced his wife, and eventually—in what he said was one of the most traumatic events of his psychic life—John was dumped in turn by his girlfriend. Yet through it all, John informed me, John continued to sit zazen. Early in the new millennium John had fallen in love yet again, married, and settled with his wife in a small town in Tennessee. My friend Billy continued to practice. At a Buddhist retreat he met a woman, fell in love, divorced his wife, and eventually Billy, too, married for a second time. He accepted a new job near Austin teaching juvenile felons in a state correctional facility and later a job teaching English at the local community college. Billy and I corresponded regularly, John and I once in a while. I continued to teach at the community college in Omaha, raised my children, became a grandfather and, I believed, faithfully studied, practiced, and taught as best I could on my own without a teacher what I thought the true dharma, the true teaching.

The Way.

As our conversation continued, my friend Billy sensed something in my emails that led him to tell me that he thought I needed a teacher. Insofar as I had a teacher, Billy was it.

"You need a teacher."

Hm.

I took his advice with the utmost seriousness.

It began to eat at me.