120 Rowing

In the summer of 2004, I emailed to some of my Christian friends and colleagues a news story from the Los Angeles Times about American soldiers in Iraq and the psychological trauma of combat. In the story the reporter identified by name half a dozen American soldiers and reported what they had said to him about killing.

"I'm confused about how I should feel about killing," one had said. "The first time I shot someone it was the most exhilarating thing I'd ever felt."

"Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill," said another. "It pounds at my brain."

He was hopeful.

"I'll figure out how to deal with it when I get home."

The reporter had doubts.

"I enjoy killing Iraqis," said a third. "I just feel rage, hate, when I'm out there. I feel like I carry it all the time."

Rage.

"We talk about it."

Hate.

"We all feel the same way."

Pride.

"I feel that I'm saving soldiers' lives by destroying as many enemy as I can," said another.

He felt conflict.

"I'm a Christian," he said. "At the end of each day I pray to God and I worry about my soul."

A friend of mine objected to the reporter's including in his story such personal information.

"I did not appreciate that," my friend wrote.

I addressed his objection.

"Journalists routinely ask persons they interview for permission to publish such information," I responded, "or they change their names to protect them."

"I am not in love with death," my friend replied, "but I feel like once soldiers are in war death happens."

He had served six years in the Air Force.

"To say death 'happens' in war is a euphemism," I said.

An evasion.

"In war people kill people," I said. "Death does not just happen."

For another email correspondent nonviolence was unacceptable in the war on terror.

He thought like John.

"Do Christians persecuted in Sudan," he asked, "want us to be tolerant of the Moslems who kill them?"

"I don't know," I responded. "I'm not a Christian."

I was sick of the war.

"You're a Christian," I said. "What does Jesus want?"

I had not understood the point of the article I sent as primarily political. It was about what killing and being trained to kill did to the killers. It was the questionable morality of that training, I believed, which provoked our debate. To believe in the divinity of Jesus is easy, I explained, because it demands nothing. To practice the teaching of Jesus is hard.

Too hard.

"Millions believe," I said. "Few practice."

Religion.

But my two correspondents gave as good as they got.

We three believed in the principles of academic discourse. Yes, our emotion often corrupted our reason yet we continued to aspire to it and in spite of our failures we remained friends. I liked writing, I liked email—it precluded interruption and harangue—and for the same reason in oral discussion and debate I liked the elementary rules of order by which speakers agreed to speak in turn and to be silent and attentive while others speak.

Order.

But soon I would learn from the master that this is not Zen.

In the middle of September we began the fall practice period. I had submitted the list of my commitments to the master. I was in the second week of classes and as usual they were going well. I liked my job, I explained for probably the hundredth time in my journal, I liked my students and my colleagues and coworkers as well, and I remained profoundly grateful that I had meaningful work that I enjoyed, a livelihood that did indeed feel right. In our discussion at the conclusion of the sesshin which opened the practice period it saddened me to hear a participant describe his life outside of the temple as difficult, as a struggle so unlike the cooperation and harmony he experienced in sesshin, and to hear two others second his remark.

My life was not like that.

My job was not like that.

Though I knew that I and the people I loved could be sick or dead tomorrow, my job and life were intriguing, meaningful, fun, full, and deep. My life outside the temple was no different from my life inside the temple. I was moved by final remarks at the end of sesshin. David expressed what I felt in my own heart but was unable to articulate—my gratitude for our sangha, for the dharma, for the beauty and for the truth revealed both by our successes and by our mistakes. When Martin described his hour of silent tears at the beauty of the song of the cicadas as he sat the final period of zazen I blinked away tears of my own.

I felt my eyes moisten again as I recalled all this and wrote it down.

In 1974 I had come to the Way through my friend John and through the teachings of his teacher Stephen Gaskin. In his first book, Monday Night Class, Gaskin described his joy at his own awakening.

"I woke up in this big boat on this great ocean and somebody handed me an oar and I began rowing and it felt so good I've been rowing ever since and I'm just going to keep right on rowing."

I had that experience, too.

Yes.

Exactly.