To the sangha members present at discussion on Sunday, I emailed the master's earlier comment in my journal about the truths of suffering and the cessation of suffering. At the conclusion of our discussion on Sunday I had promised to let them know the master's response.
Andy replied.
"We agree that conditions constantly change such that suffering and not suffering are always pushing their way into our consciousness. Is the master saying we need to learn to not see suffering as a bad thing? To not see not suffering as a good thing? Is this the end of suffering?"
I did not know.
To see suffering and not suffering as neither good nor bad sounded right to me so long as it was my own suffering we were talking about. But what of the suffering of others?
"If that is seen as neither good nor bad," I asked in my journal, "what is there to evoke our compassion?"
The master replied.
"Suffering is suffering. It never feels good. Katagiri-roshi told me once, 'So you are suffering; then suffer! It is a sure sign that you are alive.' The end to suffering is to suffer, to pass through it, and then to get on to the next event at the bottom of which is more suffering. We suffer because we are human beings, and suffering is a fact of our lives. Perhaps the best attitude is to stop seeing suffering as 'suffering' and to start seeing it as 'life'."
I exchanged more emails with Andy, David, and Alison about suffering and the cessation of suffering.
I also attached the chapter "Suffering" from the book The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation by Trungpa. It was one of my favorite pieces of Buddhist literature.
I used it often in class.
This is how Trungpa concludes his discussion of the first truth:
We are speeding, trying to get rid of our pain, and we find more pain by doing so. Pain is very real. We cannot pretend that we are all happy and secure. Pain is our constant companion. It goes on and on—all-pervading pain, the pain of alternation, and the pain of pain. If we are seeking eternity or happiness or security, then the experience of life is one of pain, duhkha, suffering.
Alison promptly responded.
"Surely life is not just constant pain! There is joy, too, right?"
I replied with a short description of the profound joy which at least once a day I seemed to be able to access at will—then I worried that I'd said too much in that vein and jinxed myself. Words were so slippery, so unreliable. But I included Alison's remarks in my journal.
To them the master responded.
"Joy is a cause of suffering also, because when the joy ceases we suffer. Negative events are the cause of suffering and positive events are the cause of suffering. There is no escape."
By the time I had finished responding to Alison, Esther had also responded to my earlier email.
"I experience only the suffering," Esther wrote, "and not its cessation. I know its cause but I can't let it go. I don't trust enough. Just writing this has brought up big buckets of suffering."
I responded to her with a short note, repeating what the master had told me many times about both suffering and joy:
"Each time it comes up, honor it and let it go, honor it and let it go."
I signed off with email "hugs."
Then I reread the master's comments on my journal entries of the previous week. From some of my entries the master had again gotten the impression that I sat with a gaining idea. To conclude each day's entry I had written the word "peace." To each "peace" of mine the master had responded with "no peace." So now to conclude each subsequent entry I had written "no peace." Then to each "no peace" of mine the master had replied with "peace." To my mention of this new reversal in my journal the master responded.
"In peace there is no peace and in no peace there is peace. Do you understand?"
I thought I did.
Yes.
But I preferred the new arrangement.
Days passed.
At home I took an hour nap, then at 6:00 I drove to the temple for a Ryaku Fusatsu doan lesson from Alison. At 6:45 when I left the temple, on the front walk I met Esther, coming for evening zazen. From her face—a frozen mask of hurt—I could tell she was distraught.
"Esther, what's the matter?" I asked.
Her expression was a brittle combination of pain, stoic effort, and self-defense. I thought for sure she was going to cry. I knew she was on the verge. In an email to me she had mentioned some deep suffering she was going through, "big buckets of suffering," she had said, but she had indicated nothing specific and had obliquely warned me not to pry.
"What makes you think something is the matter?" she said.
"Your note," I said.
But I should have said, "Your face!"
"It's so difficult to know how much to tell, or who, and who I can trust!"
How sad.
"A hug?" I asked.
I opened my arms.
"Sure!" she said.
We embraced deeply, warmly. When we parted and said good night there was still pain and sorrow on her face. I told Esther I would be glad to listen if she ever thought it would help. She thanked me. Then she walked slowly up the front walk in the dark to the porch.
I got in my pickup and drove home. My mind sifted the possibilities. It must be something more than illness or even death, I thought, something taboo, involving sex or drugs or crime, perhaps, or it would not be so hard for Esther to speak of it. I entered an account of this incident in my journal when I got home. I was thinking of the refrain from a wonderful passage of poetic prose in one of the master's teacher Dainin Katagiri's books:
"There's always a cry."
Katagiri:
If you really study yourself, you will hear a strange sound. There's a cry. It's the sound of the world, the sound of everyone. It comes from inside you. Inside yourself you will hear the quiet cries of the world. To hear this sound means you really want to know how to live…. Beyond our likes and dislikes, we have to pay attention to how we actually live. Right in the middle of good and bad, right and wrong, our lives go on constantly. Whatever kind of label you put on your life, or the lives of others—good, bad, or neutral—there is always a cry. If you become happy, right in the middle of happiness there's a cry. If you become unhappy, there's still a cry. Even if you say, "I don't care," right in the middle of your not caring, there's a cry. Even when you sleep like a log, there's still a cry. Whatever you do, there's always a cry.
Esther emailed and wanted to talk so we met for dinner. Her situation was far less traumatic than I had feared. Esther had become infatuated with another member of our sangha, she told me, and now her hopes had been dashed. That was the long and the short of it. Esther had just told her story, glad to have a listener, and her telling had been full of smiles and even laughter.
I was relieved.
This incident, too, as usual, I recorded in my journal for the master, believing that as the teacher of both Esther and the man who was the object of her affection the master might benefit from knowing of the situation. For Esther, I feared, there was still more pain to come in the matter, but at least I knew now that it was not the nasty stuff my imagination had supplied.
"I hope that doesn't sound cold," I wrote to conclude my entry.
"It was very kind of you to reach out to her that night at the temple and very kind of you to go out to dinner with her," the master replied. "Keep up the good work! This is the bodhisattva's mission."
Several days later as I worked in the kitchen one evening at one of my temple jobs the master and I conversed in the kitchen about Esther and her situation, about his own marriage and divorce, and about mine. The master reminisced about temple romances he'd witnessed, he explained the complications they sometimes caused in Zen practice, and together we laughed wanly, sadly, at the heartache, pain, and folly that human loneliness, yearning, sex, love, marriage, and divorce can bring to life. I had told Esther she should confide in the master. He was her teacher, I said, and the master would be able to help her in her practice. Wary, Esther agreed, and I told the master what she had said. I told no one but the master and my wife.
I hoped only that in some small way maybe I had helped.
But no.
Later the master would call all this gossip and reprimand me for it.
I don't know why.
"Whatever you do, there's always a cry."
Forward.
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