131 Stupid

The issue of pride, arrogance, and verbal abuse grew to become the most serious conflict I had ever experienced with the master, my teacher Kudo. I began keeping notes on the matter. I had learned a lot from the master, I often acknowledged, and I knew that I had a lot left to learn from him. But I did not think the feeling was at all mutual—and I was not sure how I felt about that. Did the master believe he could learn from his students? I did not know. On the first Sunday of February, during our usual group discussion following the World Peace Ceremony, I had decided to ask the master to address the issue of his teaching style and what appeared to me to be his natural tendency toward ridicule and verbal abuse. When we had all brought our cookies and cups to the buddha hall and had settled on our cushions, the master invited our questions.

I raised my hands in gassho.

"Yes?"

"The question I want to ask I'm a little nervous about," I began.

"Go ahead."

"Do you think the way you often respond to students," I asked, "ever warrants the name of verbal abuse?"

Immediately the master stiffened and frowned.

"Be specific!" he demanded.

I was startled by the passion of his response.

I'd had no intention of instigating an argument—in fact so sure had I been of the answer to the question I asked that I had actually anticipated a concession from the master and even perhaps a cursory apology.

"I don't want to proceed in that fashion," I demurred. "I've already stated the observation I wanted to express."

This remark appeared to make the master even madder.

"No," the master sternly replied. "Let's have this out right here and now!"

I made an unhappy face hoping without further words to communicate pain, confusion, reluctance, and even regret that I had raised the issue. But the master apparently could not now be appeased. He glared at me and waited. The silence of the group felt palpable. I wasn't afraid, I was sorry. I took my time. I followed my breath in, I followed my breath out, breath in, breath out, breath in, breath out. There seemed no other option.

"Mockery, ridicule, sarcasm—calling people stupid," I said. "Do you think that kind of response to students ever warrants the name of verbal abuse?" I reluctantly asked again.

"No," said the master—and he paused and thought for a moment.

"Don't you like the word 'stupid'?" the master asked me sarcastically. "I do!"

He raised his voice.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!"

The master was clearly angry. He raised his voice until he sounded strident, and he now talked at length about his not being the right teacher for every student. If any student did not feel Kudo was the right teacher for him, the master explained, then that student should look for another teacher, one who did feel right. There was nothing wrong with that, the master said. Indeed, the master added, that was just as it should be. There was a reason for the things he said and for the ways he said them, and it was frustrating to him and counter-productive, too, the master explained, when students tried to comfort and console other students whom he had just corrected.

The master imitated the kind of concern to which he objected.

"Oh, my!"

The master whined in an exaggerated parody of entreaty and concern.

"Are you okay?"

There was both awkward silence, from some, and a titter of laughter, from others, that sounded to me like an expression of discomfort. Encouraged, the master twisted his face into a comic caricature of sympathy and concern.

The master enjoyed this kind of acting.

"I'm sooo concerned," the master whined again. "You pooor thing!"

More laughter, more silence.

"It would be better if you did not do that," the master stated. "It just ruins the lesson that I have presented."

Silence.

"Does anyone else here feel that I've been abusive?" the master asked, clearly still angry.

"Yes, I do!" Edward said instantly without hesitation. "I think I've witnessed several instances of what I'd call verbal abuse."

This definitely pissed off the master.

"Be specific!" he demanded.

Like me, Edward was not prepared to document his allegation. As Edward thought for several seconds, the master glared at him and waited. When Edward said something—too quietly for anyone but the master to hear—the master responded, and they were quickly engaged in what appeared to be a private quarrel. As the two of them talked between themselves—in a way that did not invite other participants—others present also began talking among themselves in semi-private conversations. I could make out none of them, exactly the kind of situation I detested when it occurred in my college classes. The master had lost track—and control—of the discussion. Six or seven people were speaking at once, their voices one on top of another, while the master engaged in intense dialogue with Edward.

I don't think the master even noticed.

He had been busy trying to bat down the critical comments coming his way. I couldn't help but remember the reports I received from Daly and Alison of the discussion I had missed three years earlier when Edward had excused himself. Now several minutes passed before the master turned his attention from Edward and back to the group.

Everyone got quiet.

Ryan raised his hands in gassho.

"Yes?"

"I agree with Bob," he said, "and just now when Bob raised the issue of abuse your first reaction was to attack him."

The master thought only a moment before he responded. He had regained his calm and seemed no longer angry.

"I've attacked Bob before," the master replied. "This isn't the first time, is it?" the master asked.

He looked directly at me.

The question was rhetorical. It was an acknowledgement that he had attacked me not only now but also more than once in the past. But until Ryan had used the word "attack," I had not considered myself "attacked" by the master in the discussion, nor could I remember ever really feeling attacked by the master in the past. Now, however, I felt stunned by the master's remark. The master had attacked me? What was he talking about? What possible reason could he have for attacking me? It had never even occurred to me that the master would do such a thing. For what purpose? To what end? Had I been naive?

I hardly knew what to say.

"I don't feel attacked," I said.

In my answer I stressed the word "attacked" to indicate that the basis of my dissent was the connotation of that particular word. But neither did the master act like a person who thought he had much—if anything—to learn from the people around him. Frankly, the master often acted like a know-it-all really, I thought. In our monthly group discussion at the temple the master's job was to act as moderator—or so I had been led to understand his role—yet, as soon as I had offered criticism of him, he had dominated the discussion, he had spoken much longer than anyone else, he had interrupted me and others—especially if they were critical of him—and he had acted defensively, even aggressively, essentially holding court. To me it did look like an act of self-aggrandizement. I could see now why in the past the term "bully pulpit" had arisen in this connection.

The master turned his attention back to Ryan.

"You don't trust me," the master said to him.

It was half assertion, half question.

"Not entirely," Ryan conceded.

"You've held back," the master continued. "You've not fully committed yourself to practice with a teacher."

Ryan nodded.

"That's true," Ryan said. "Yes."

Now it felt to me like an interrogation and it made me uncomfortable. Was there no better alternative, I wondered, than the defensiveness I believed I had witnessed in this exchange? Why could the master not just say: This is interesting, I can learn from this—let me hear what the rest of you have to say about inappropriate speech, taunting, mockery, sarcasm, namecalling, and verbal abuse. You talk and I will just listen. Who wants to begin? Perhaps, I thought, the master could convene the sangha to discuss this issue and be present but not permit himself to speak—just listen only—so that he heard what others had felt and perceived.

The master continued—

"Zen isn't nice," said the master with his voice twisting the word "nice" so as to mock it. "I'm not nice," the master added—again mocking the word. "If you don't like it, then I'm not the teacher for you. Go somewhere else," said the master. "Find a different teacher. That's all right."

I'd heard the master say this more times than I could count.

Another member of the sangha had told me in private what he heard in it:

"Shut up or get out."

I hadn't known what to think of it.

"Who is the most verbally abusive member of the sangha?" he had asked me.

About that I didn't have to think long.

If anyone was, it was the master—by far. No one else was even close. I could think of no one else to whom the criticism could be applied. The master, I believed, would not long tolerate others using at the temple the same language and epithets he himself used—a mixture of taunts, mockery, sarcasm, ridicule, namecalling, and cursing—nor could I think of anyone else at the temple who habitually used such expressions to the degree that the master did. Was this kind of language just Kudo the person? Was it Zen? I didn't know. Even before I had come to the temple I'd read enough Buddhist literature to know that from a Zen master I should be prepared for anything—including assignments that might seem to make no sense and, yes, verbal abuse—and yet I had found myself unprepared for this. In his defense the master seemed to offer the argument that these habits of speech were teaching techniques employed only to wake students up. Was this a rationalization—an attempt to justify inappropriate behavior? The color had drained from the master's face, his smile had evaporated, he had gotten an uncomfortable look on his face, and he had defended his behavior, it seemed to me, as some kind of Zen pedagogy.

Was it?

What did I know?

Nothing.

It seemed now that we were all spent.

It was almost 11:30, half an hour past our usual dismissal. We adjourned. The master took his cup to the kitchen and went upstairs to his room. The rest of us rinsed our cups and one by one gathered our things and made our way out the door. Alison spoke to me semi-confidentially in a low voice as I was tucking my rakusu back into its soft cloth case.

"It took a lot of courage to say that, Bob!" she told me.

"Do you think so?"

"I do."

"Yes, I appreciate your bringing up that topic, too," someone else said—I can't remember who. "It needed to be said."

"Thank you."

Before I left the temple I sought out Ryan and Edward and thanked them for their support. I felt slightly nervous. The feeling reminded me of times as a child when I had annoyed my father and didn't know why. It seemed to me that others felt and acted that way, too. What had we done wrong? Why did the master seem so displeased? What should we have done? This tendency in Zen—at least I assumed it was in Zen—to reduce the relationship between adult and adult, between teacher and student, to a relationship resembling that between parent and child had risen to my awareness and disturbed me many times.

It still does.

Late the next afternoon the master called me at home.

Surprise.

"How do you think the discussion went yesterday?" the master asked.

Hmm.

"I think it's good that the issue was raised and discussed," I told him.

"Do you think it was resolved?" he asked.

"No," I said.

We agreed to meet in private late on Tuesday afternoon and to talk some more. I was not optimistic. Over the past three years eight or ten different people, maybe more, had asked me about the issue. They had been curious and simply wanted to know my perception.

I emailed Ryan.

"I've been trying not to rehash yesterday's discussion in my mind," Ryan replied, "but it's hard to stop."

Like the word "stupid," Ryan went on to explain, the word "attack" might have been too forceful, but when he'd gotten home Ryan had checked his thesaurus for synonyms and the words "impugn," "berate," and "reprove," he said, did describe exactly the behavior he had witnessed.

"Did you feel impugned, berated, or reproved?" Ryan asked.

I did.

"We can call it a Zen method," he added, "and perhaps it is—and perhaps Zen methods are abusive."

This question remained.

"I'm trying to let go of the event," Ryan concluded, "and to keep living moment by moment."