135 Depressed

When I arrived at the temple on Wednesday evening—I had temporarily switched from Tuesday to accommodate Alison—and walked upstairs to let the master know I was there and to say hello I could see immediately that something was wrong. His face lacked its usual color, it looked drawn and gray, and though I did not know what was wrong I detected a weariness and sadness in his demeanor. I thought perhaps he had dozed off reading his book and had just woken up.

The master didn't make the usual small talk.

"See you in church," he said.

When the master entered the zendo at 7:00 he stopped at my cushion to speak to me.

"I'm not feeling well, Bob," he said. "I'm going to sit only forty minutes. You can sit the whole period or ring the bell at twenty till."

"Okay."

I spent the forty minutes worrying about the master, letting go, worrying about the master, letting go, and so on. At twenty till, I rang the bell. We bowed and exited in the prescribed manner. As I sat on the couch to put on my shoes the master started up the stairs.

"Good night," he said.

"I don't work tomorrow," I said. "Is there anything I could come over and do for you if you're still not feeling well?"

The master waited.

"Run an errand or something?" I suggested.

"Nikki and Hal are coming tomorrow for ordination," the master explained, "and I have a thousand and one things spinning in my head. My intestine is not working right and I am tired of people blaming me and what they call my verbal abuse for their own inability to practice."

He paused.

"I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow!" he said.

The master looked tired, sick, and sad.

"Tomorrow if you think of something I can do to help you," I said, "just email or call me and I'll come over."

"I'll call," he said. "Thank you."

"Good night."

"Good night."

I thought of little else till Thursday when I recorded this scene in my journal. I had just entered the words in the morning when the master called to ask if I would run to the post office for him and mail some newsletters. I had made up my mind years before that I was going to express my love whenever the impulse to do so arose and felt authentic—

Embarrassment be damned!

It had become my practice and the longer I had done it the easier it had become to do.

Now my heart felt full.

"I'm glad you called," I told the master when I met him just inside the front door as I arrived at the temple. "I'd planned to stop by anyway," I said, "just to express my love for you and my appreciation for your teaching."

"Thank you, Bob," he said.

The master turned toward me and we hugged, our big beer bellies bumping.

The master explained that he had been upset by what he called a new chapter in an old quarrel with Nananda in a conversation over the phone and—as I had suspected—by his meeting first with me and then with Ryan on the issue of verbal abuse. But the master looked and sounded better than he had on Wednesday evening at zazen. About my expression of gratitude and love the master had this to say in his comments on my journal:

"Thank you for your concern," the master wrote. "I appreciated it immensely. This job gets very lonely sometimes. I have my ups and downs just like anyone else. I get depressed; I get anxious; I get sad; I get joyous. Sometimes I let people know about it, as I did with you. But by the next morning, it had all passed. After twenty-five years of practice I have learned not to hold onto things for too long. Whenever I get depressed I get sick of it after a few hours at the most and I just drop it. Years ago it could go on for days!"

Likewise—

Ditto.

The master's remarks reminded me of a passage from one of Dainin Katagiri's books.

I looked it up.

My purpose in becoming a monk was to become a good monk. I wanted to be free from suffering. I did not care about my teacher's suffering. I cared only about what I wanted. That was my energy when I was young.

What did I want?

To help.

"But my teacher did not give me anything," Katagiri added. "He just lived."