89 Why

The master asked the six of us who remained to bring treats to the last class. Besides Harold, two other men also did not attend. Following an abridged version of our normal evening activities the master invited the remaining four of us all upstairs to sit around a table in the office where we shared what we had brought—cookies, crackers and cheese, chips and salsa. I brought a bag of Hershey chocolate kisses. I remember vividly that the master twice reached into the bag and pulled out a heaping handful and unwrapped from its tinfoil one chocolate kiss right after another and popped it into his mouth. As we sampled our treats and sipped water or tea the master asked each of us in turn why we had come to the Zen Center.

Stewart, the only one of us able to sit in the full lotus posture, had practiced yoga for six years and had simply become curious about Zen, a practice often mentioned in conjunction with yoga.

Stewart praised yoga and he recommended it.

"But I feel as if something is still missing in my life," he said.

The master nodded.

"Might Zen help me with that?" Stewart asked.

The master simply smiled.

"And you?" the master asked one of the two women present.

Middle-aged, a survivor of breast cancer, she had just celebrated her fifth year free of the disease when, alas, cancer was detected in her other breast. Discouraged and depressed she hoped perhaps to learn how to endure and to survive the terrible impending struggle.

"All over again!" she said.

The master, silent, said nothing, just nodded in sympathy. 

"And you?" the master asked the other woman. "Why are you here?"

A Christian her whole life, she explained, first her church and then her religion had begun to feel unsatisfying and empty to her following her recent divorce. Her three children grown and gone, her husband had dumped her for a much younger woman. Now she was lonely and looking for something, the woman said, but she did not know exactly what.

"Do you think Zen might help me with that?" she asked.

"I don't know," the master answered. "It might."

I was last.

"Twenty-five years ago at the urging of a friend I began practicing what I thought was Zen," I said, "and I had an amazing experience that totally changed my life. I'm here partly because I would like to know what that experience was but I am here mainly," I explained, "because another friend of mine, who has also practiced Buddhism for twenty-five years, recently told me that he thought I needed a teacher, and I trust him, so here I am."

Just as with the others no comment from the master.

I liked that.

The master offered a short summary of his own life history—college, graduate school in English, marriage, baby, anxiety, college teaching, his frustration, separation, divorce, lsd, marijuana, musician in a band, unemployment, depression, a number of blue-collar jobs, welding in particular, more marijuana, reading a book on Buddhism and then practicing on his own, finding a teacher in Dainin Katagiri, and eventually becoming a monk.

"The very first time I sat," the master told us, "it felt right."

Of the seven students who started the class in September 2001, I was the only one who continued to practice at the temple. The two women I never saw again. Stewart twice attended Sunday services and then disappeared from my life. Darren, a young man absent on the evening of our last class, I saw again at a sesshin—a daylong intensive meditation retreat—not long after the conclusion of our class together and in the next year once or twice more at Sunday services at the temple before he, too, dropped out of sight.

Though I felt a vague discomfort with the religious aspects of my experience I liked the master. He had been completely unpretentious and his instruction immediately improved my daily sitting at home which I had already come to appreciate even before I attended the classes at the temple. My half lotus posture felt steady and stable and simply receiving some instruction from a master who knew what I was supposed to be doing increased my confidence and commitment. My wife also offered encouragement. She ordered a black mat and cushion for me and moved furniture in our spare bedroom to provide me a place to sit.

Ho!