95 Doan

"You seem committed," Edward told me when I arrived one evening.

"I am," I said.

"We need more evening doans," he said. "Do you want to learn?"

I hesitated.

I wanted to learn but I wasn't sure I wanted to be doan. That office seemed complicated, a position of responsibility, and I enjoyed having to do nothing at the temple but watch, follow along, and do as others did, bow and chant and sit and breathe. I was still a novice. There was so much I could not keep straight—how to bow and when, which direction to face, when to sit, and when to stand. At every service still, I felt ignorant, awkward, and uncomfortable, and then as doan there would be the han and the inkin to master. I played no musical instrument, I possessed no musical talent whatsoever, yet each evening the doan began the concluding chant by singing its title.

"I'll show you right now," Edward said.

"All right."

"Good!" he said. "This will help us out a lot."

"All right."

Edward showed me how and when to turn on the porch light, the table lamp in the corner of the buddha hall, the overhead light in the zendo, how to check and to organize the mats, the cushions, and the sutra books in the zendo, and if necessary to clean up animal hair, cat vomit, or the dead rodents that Rosie sometimes left in the zendo as gifts, how to set the thermostat, how to open the window a crack, how to approach the altar, how to light the candle, how to offer a stick of incense, how to hit the rolldown on the han, how to ring the inkin to begin and end zazen, how to begin and end the evening chant, how to pull open the curtain for the master, how to perform the final bows and rings of the inkin, how to extinguish the candle, close the window, and turn out the light. Edward provided a list of the instructions that I could study at home. For three weeks we arrived early and under his supervision I practiced. When I felt ready, though I was nervous as hell, I served as doan and afterwards as we sat on the porch and put on our shoes Edward offered correction and counsel. Then I was on my own. Sunday mornings, too, I was asked to participate, first as jisha, the personal attendant who assists the doshi in offering incense to begin the service, and then as shoten, the temple aide who prepares and lights the altars, lays out mats and cushions in the buddha hall for the service, hits the rolldown on the big temple bell to announce the start of the service, and prepares coffee and hot water for tea. These little jobs filled me with intense anxiety. I did not know why. For many weeks when I was asked on Sunday to serve as jisha, in retrospect a relatively minor and simple assignment, I would sit in zazen and worry that I might commit an unpardonable blunder or totally forget some crucial task and make a gross mistake. To be shoten was even worse. This assignment, like doan, was made long in advance and off and on all week before I served on Sunday I rehearsed in my mind all of my duties and responsibilities. None of this anxiety made any logical sense, of course, as the master more than once reminded me.

"If you screw up," he joked, "we haul you out to the garage and beat you with a rubber hose."

But when others or I did make mistakes in the ceremony his frustration and annoyance were obvious and frequently he would stop in the middle of the service to express his extreme displeasure in frowns and scowls and to issue stern corrections and reprimands.

"No!" the master would remark. "Pay attention!"

It was obvious to me that all of my anxiety was just plain old ego, the result of my not wanting to embarrass and to humiliate myself in front of my teacher and the ten or twenty other people present, but this knowledge of its origin could not spare me its pain. It was clear that I had arrived at the temple with a high opinion of myself and I definitely did not want to be exposed in public as just one more dumb klutz who could not do or could not remember how to do what he had been told and shown. In my own defense I will say only that I wanted very much to please both my teacher and the members of my sangha so that their experience at the temple was a good one. Not counting weddings, baptisms, and funerals, it had been forty years since I had attended a church; and this absence and my complete lack of familiarity with temple ritual, protocol, and etiquette evoked in me an exaggerated sense of reverence. My nervousness was obvious and I made no effort to hide it. I even talked about it, hoping that my acknowledgment might alleviate it.