96 Who

I explained to Mark one Sunday morning that at the temple I felt like the cowboys and cavalry in old western movies who in their arrogance and their ignorance violated ancient taboos and mistakenly led their party across forbidden and sacred Indian burial grounds.

"I'm afraid I'll desecrate something."

He understood.

Mark told me that on the days he was assigned to be doan he felt the same anxiety I felt. I wondered if there were a Buddhist equivalent to mistaking the Christian communion wafers and sacramental wine for a snack. Slowly ever so slowly and gradually with practice and repetition this terrible anxiety passed and eventually, finally, in my fifth year at the temple I was able without nervousness to serve on Sunday not only as jisha and shoten but even as doan. But all of this was way way off in the future. In November just a month after the end of my meditation class I had filled out a form and become a member of the Iowa Zen Center and I was now paying monthly dues. In January in an email to the membership the master said that there was one temple job—doing office work two hours a week—still unfilled and the master invited volunteers. I signed up. Now on Tuesday at 4:30—for the two hours before I readied the zendo for evening zazen—I wrote thank you notes to donors and contributors, stamped and addressed envelopes, photocopied temple brochures and materials the master needed for his dharma classes and workshops, made changes to the temple data base, and occasionally, if there were no other office tasks for me to do, with feather duster, broom, and dust mop I cleaned the office and wiped down the floor with a damp rag. During these months there occurred one unusual incident the full significance of which I did not understand until later.

One weekend I had been out of town and missed the Sunday service. Alison first emailed me and then called to fill me in on what had transpired. Following the World Peace Ceremony, held the first Sunday of each month, the master moderated group discussion in place of his usual dharma talk. During discussion, Alison told me, there had been a political argument and in the course of the debate the master had so sternly reprimanded Edward for a comment he made that Edward had felt insulted, had excused himself, and simply left.

"Right in the middle of the discussion!" Alison said.

Now she worried.

"I'm really concerned," Alison said. "It was bad, really bad."

I just listened.

"I'm afraid that Edward might not come back at all," she said.

The following Sunday the master was out of town on business and absent from the temple but Edward was in attendance. Daly, not only one of the temple regulars but president of the temple board of directors, had been asked to give the dharma talk and, because of what had happened the previous week, in her talk Daly addressed the subject of "right speech," one of the precepts of the Eightfold Path, the fourth of the Four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha after his Enlightenment. After reviewing a list compiled by the poet and monk Ryokan of bad speech habits to be avoided, Daly concluded her talk by suggesting that the sangha consider new procedures in its group discussion. The master had abused his authority, Daly implied, and she recommended that the sangha invite someone other than the master to moderate discussion. Then out of the blue Daly said that because I was a teacher the moderator of our group discussion each month might be me.

"Me?"

I was not unwilling but I didn't really know what this was all about.

Daly explained.

"The moderator of our discussion should not use the position as a bully pulpit."

Edward remained silent.

He asked to be acknowledged only after everyone else had spoken.

"Edward."

"I don't think we should change our normal procedures just because I lost my temper and got mad," Edward said.

That seemed to most of us an enlightened concession.

We adjourned.

For me the most awkward moment did not come until the next Tuesday afternoon when I reported as usual to work in the office. The master had returned to the temple on Monday and he was eager to know what had happened in his absence on Sunday. It was not unusual for the master to ask me about events at the temple when he had been absent but this time there was an edge to his inquiry.

"What was the subject of Daly's talk?" the master asked.

"Right speech," I said.

"What inspired it?" the master asked.

I did not like this line of questioning. I was still new to the temple, I had little knowledge of how things worked or how they were supposed to work, and now I had been somehow pulled into a dispute between persons I had known only six months. Was any of what little I had been told confidential? I did not believe so but I was not entirely sure. Though I had not requested lay ordination I already considered the master my teacher and I knew that my new friends Alison and Daly and Edward also considered the master their teacher. So far at least I saw no need for secrets and certainly no need for lies—anathema to me for twenty-five years—yet neither did I want to betray the confidence of the several people who had confided in me and asked for my help.

"What inspired it?"

"I'm not really sure," I stammered.

The master waited.

"I was absent the previous week," I explained, "but I gathered from her talk and from the discussion afterwards that on the Sunday before you'd had a disagreement with Edward?"

"What did people say about it?" the master asked.

Oh man!

I wish at this point I had declined to say more but—

"Several people questioned, I guess, the manner by which you asserted your authority."

"Who felt that way?"

Whoa!

"Two or three," I said though the number had been twice that.

"What are their names?"

No!

I did not like this interrogation at all. It did not feel right to me. I should have said how I felt but at the time I did not have the presence of mind to do so. Time passed, a minute perhaps, as I considered my situation.

The master waited in silence as I thought.

He was our teacher—

A priest.

"People were mainly concerned about Edward," I said finally.

"Who?" the master insisted.

"They worried that his feelings had been so badly hurt that he might not return at all."

"Who?" the master insisted.

I hesitated.

"What are their names?" the master demanded.

I decided to trust him.

"Alison and Daly expressed the greatest concern for Edward," I said.

The master nodded.

"I'll talk to them," the master said. "I'll call tomorrow."

"Good," I said.

"Was Edward present?" asked the master.

"Yes."

"What was his reaction to all this?"

I repeated what Edward had said.

The master grinned.

"It sounds like Edward handled it all better than anyone!" he exclaimed.

I hoped for the best.

The master very briefly summarized for me then what had provoked him to reprimand Edward in the discussion I missed. In an exchange of opinion about politics and the military, the master said, Edward had directed a disparaging remark about homosexuals to one of the gay members of the sangha. That, the master explained, had been the reason for his stern reprimand. I nodded. The master returned to his room. I returned to my job on the data base.

I heard nothing more of the matter.