123 Winter

But still there was the war. I mentioned to the master that I had been bothered for quite some time by my falling out with my good friend John. I explained that we had tried to resume communication a couple of times, after a hiatus of several months, but that each time we tried our exchange quickly degenerated. Two weeks earlier we had argued again.

"We both had to let go of each other," I told the master. "I'm sad about it."

"You must miss your old friend a lot," the master said.

Yes.

"He has died," the master suggested.

No.

I didn't like this doctrinal hyperbole.

"It hurts," I said.

Though not so much in zazen my love and concern for John arose again and again in my daily thoughts, I explained. It was a big loss and I missed him, which was to say that I missed the "him" that I thought I had known for forty years, as I learned once more the lessons of impermanence, suffering, and no self.

"There is no 'him'," the master wrote.

I felt sad.

"What we call 'him' is merely a coming together and a falling apart of the five skandhas."

More philosophy and dogma.

I felt sad.

"There are no guarantees in life," the master stated. "People think, speak, and act positively, negatively, or neutrally. Positive actions bring positive results, negative actions bring negative results, and neutral actions bring neutral results. We live these results."

Karma.

Yes.

I felt sad.

Yes.

On the way to work I watched the sunrise off and on in my rearview mirrors. Waves and thick ripples of clouds shone with a bright glorious glowing golden amber light. As I drove west it gradually evolved into orange and then yellow with pale pink and lavender highlights so radiant and beautiful I recorded it in my journal. It took my breath away.

Had I been able I would have stopped along the road to watch.

The next morning I was tired.

I had stayed up till Ruth got home at 10:00 from her night class and then we had talked teaching for an hour as she wound down. But I got up at 4:00 and sat just the same. On the way to work I drove directly toward the huge yellowing ivory moon full just above the western horizon.

It was stunning.

On our weekend drive to Independence to visit her mother, Ruth and I listened to the presidential debate on the radio. It sounded like Lucifer and Moloch in the Parliament of Hell in Milton's "Paradise Lost."

"I will hunt down and kill the terrorists," vowed Kerry.

"I will hunt down and kill the terrorists," vowed Bush.

Kill.

Kill.

Listening tied a knot in my stomach.

Kill.

In class my students practiced the forms and conventions of written academic discourse in their analysis of Einstein's little essay on war, god, and mystery. To teach felt good.

Yet all day I felt blue.

I felt sad.

There had been my short night and uneasy sleep, then the sad news of the death of Christopher Reeve, and finally my brief but ugly email exchange with my former friend John which had got me thinking about terrorism, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and what seemed the inevitability of their eventual use. Our correspondence had stirred up in me the dread I felt in the mid-60s during the Cuban missile crisis and the Vietnam War and then again in the early 80s during President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative against the Evil Empire. I could not shake the feeling all day long and I was sure that my students felt subliminally the dark, vague sadness I carried in my mind and heart and the knot it tied in the pit of my stomach.

"Sometimes we get in touch with the first truth, the truth of suffering, in a deep and profound way," the master said. "What Shakyamuni Buddha awoke to is that human life is characterized by suffering."

Blue.

"No matter how things go we always come back to this," added the master. "Sometimes it's very deep."

Katagiri-roshi, the master said, called this "radical suffering," the suffering that arises neither from external events nor from our personal lives but from the human condition itself.

Impermanence.

Suffering.

Death.

"Sit with this sadness and with the knot," the master advised. "Go as deeply into it as you can go."

I tried.

"The way through it is to face it directly and to penetrate it."

Always!

Yes.

That I knew.

When I left work for home the sky was gray and there was a winter chill in the air.