129 Rohatsu

For my temple job the previous six months the master had assigned me to be the junior ino to Alison, the senior ino, and though I found the many responsibilities and duties to be stressful I learned a lot. Now I was senior ino and one of my jobs was to train Irene, the new junior ino. I met with Irene at the temple one afternoon to go over the list of duties with her, to offer necessary clarification, and to answer any questions Irene might have about what would be expected of her. Irene had been attending temple activities regularly for over a year and she was already familiar with temple routine. We sat on the porch as we worked our way down the list.

"Basically," I told her, "inos are expected to attend every event and to know how to do everything."

Irene grinned.

"Have you attended every event?" she asked.

"No," I said, "but this past year I didn't miss many."

"Can you do everything?" she asked.

"Not even close," I said.

In December 2004 I participated in Rohatsu Sesshin, the annual seven-day meditation retreat commemorating the Enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha 2500 years ago.

There would be eighteen people participating in the weeklong sesshin, five from Nananda's temple in Philadelphia and thirteen from our local sangha, and I knew there might be as many as five more who would come only to the early morning zazen and service or only to evening zazen. To help myself and Irene I had designed miniature schedules and agendas for each day of the week so the two of us could keep track of the assignments for each service and for each meal and involve as many participants as possible.

Two days before the sesshin would begin I had been at the temple to check with the master to see if there were anything else he wanted me to do for him before the members of the Philadelphia sangha arrived on Tuesday and the sesshin officially began on Wednesday. After a quick check of the downstairs I walked up the stairs to find the master.

"Is there anything special I need to be aware of?" I asked.

"You need to be aware of everything," the master replied. "You're ino."

Right.

I had never minded the part of the master that some at the temple complained about—what at first I called his being a curmudgeon. But a couple of times the week of Rohatsu the master exhibited what seemed to me a superior, condescending arrogance that aroused my curiosity.

What was it?

After his dharma talk, I had wanted to ask a question about my bad eye, my weeping eye, and, because I was ino, also about physical problems two other participants were experiencing.

"If there is a physical reason I can't perform my duties," I started to ask the master, "do you want to know?"

But the master interrupted me after I had said only eight words, then interrupted a second time, when I began again, after only three words, then interrupted me a third time, and repeatedly after that.

Jesus!

The master saw my exasperation.

"I'm answering your questions before you ask them," he said peremptorily.

He smirked.

"I'm answering the questions that lie behind your questions."

No.

The master read the expression on my face.

Incredulity.

"You don't like this, do you?" he asked.

It was a taunt.

The master smirked again.

"I do like this," I said. "I want to learn."

I did.

It was the master's showing off, his preening for his students gathered round him in a semicircle, that disappointed and puzzled me. Nor was I the only one disturbed by what had transpired. One of the women from Philadelphia, wanting me, the ino, to overhear, whispered loudly and anxiously to her friend as in the course of my duties I hurried past.

"There's so much tension here!"

It passed.

"I survived Rohatsu," I wrote my friend Billy.

Day after day I had one intense learning experience after another. I repeatedly experienced auditory hallucinations in which I distinctly heard people in a loud whisper call my name.

"Bob!"

"Bob!"

"Bob!"

I heard my name when people brushed and cleaned their mats of lint and dust, when the dog sighed or wagged its tail against the floor, when other practitioners breathed deeply or sighed; and there were also people often whispering my name in reality because I was senior ino, the student manager of the retreat, and they needed to know something about temple etiquette or scheduled sesshin activities. But most of the times I heard my name whispered I turned around to find no one there. Intense experiences of various kinds continued throughout the retreat until on the sixth day of Rohatsu I had two culminating experiences sitting zazen. In the first there was no me, just the cool dry empty void and this statement:

I want to die.

After I sat for a time with the statement a seed of gratitude and joy began to expand in my heart and to spread outward first in a slow tide and then in a flood until joy filled my whole being and then spilled over and out and flowed beyond my skin and formed and surrounded me in a sphere of golden light.

During both experiences I was able as I had been taught by the master to remember that all dharmas are empty and to just let go and return to my breath. The zazen period ended and, because I was ino, it seemed I had a hundred sesshin details to attend to so I hustled on to the next event. To be ino at Rohatsu was to be Mickey Mouse in the movie cartoon of his stint as the sorcerer's apprentice.

The next day, the last day of Rohatsu, I awoke at 3:00 to my alarm and got up as usual to get ready to be at the temple by 4:30 to do what had to be done.

But at 4:00 out of the blue I started to cry—from gratitude and joy.

I couldn't stop.

It went on and on. I would regain my composure for a few minutes and then the weeping would begin again. Somehow—half blind—I managed to drive to the temple and stumble upstairs to the master's room.

I knocked on his door.

"Yes?" he asked.

"Can I talk to you?" I sobbed.

"Come in."

I entered and put my hands together in gassho and prostrated myself and when my forehead met the floor I stayed there weeping and trying as hard as I could to weep quietly.

"What's wrong?" tenderly the master asked.

"I can't stop crying!" I said.

"Do you know why you're crying?" the master asked.

"Joy!" I exclaimed through my tears.

"Gratitude?" he asked.

"Yes!" I exclaimed.

"Good!" said the master. "Just stay here. It's all right."

Eventually I somehow regained my composure temporarily and after a few reassuring words from the master I got downstairs to address my many jobs and responsibilities.

But I wept all morning till lunch, regaining my composure only for short periods and then weeping some more and then more still. I had to reassign people to jobs I had assigned to myself but now could not perform.

Finally I was spent.

In the early afternoon the master took me aside.

"Are you all cried out?" the master asked.

"I think so," I said. "Yes."

"Was there some specific thought or realization that brought this on?" the master inquired.

"Yes."

I told him of my two experiences in zazen.

"Why didn't you come to me and tell me that you had experienced these things?" he asked.

"I remembered that all dharmas are empty," I explained, "and just returned to breath."

"Good," the master said.

I nodded.

"Your crying wasn't about the loss of a loved one, was it?" he asked.

"No."

"Good."

He started to walk away.

I remembered that in his dharma talk two days earlier the master had said that he could sometimes see golden auras around people who had been sitting in meditation all week.

"Kudo?" I whispered.

"Yes?"

"I was inside a golden sphere of light."

"Oh, that's not important," he said. "It's meaningless."

The master waved me off and continued on his way.

I whispered after him.

"I've also been having auditory hallucinations in which I hear people calling my name but when I turn around there's no one there!"

"Oh, that's nothing," the master shrugged. "I have those all the time."

I had jobs to do.

Forward.

When Rohatsu had formally ended, we all gathered on our cushions and mats in a semicircle around the master for our informal final conversation about our personal experience.

Ino, doan, I was the last to speak.

My turn.

I thanked the friends who substituted for me as I cried.

Question—

"Why were you crying?"

I didn't hesitate.

"The preciousness of life!"

Again—

"The preciousness of life!"

"Thank you."

I smiled.

We bowed, we stood, we stacked our mats and cushions in the corner, and we gathered our things. In pairs and small groups participants reminisced, hugged, and said goodbye.

"Bob?"

Nananda approached me.

"Yes?"

"What you said about the preciousness of life?"

"Yes?"

"That's it!"

I emailed this account to my friend Billy.

He liked it.

"Your Rohatsu account was touching and inspiring," Billy replied, "and Kudo did his job beautifully."

"The goal of meditation," says Huston Smith, "is not religious experiences but the religious life."

The test of meditation is not what happens when you're meditating but what happens, how you behave, when you get up from your cushion and go about your daily life.

Days passed.