But I was also concerned about the master's health and I said so in my journal. His color was still not right—the skin of his face appeared to have a waxy surface to it—and I suspected that his acute diverticulitis had been brought on by stress. The master himself had told me as much. On the Wednesday night before his colonoscopy on Friday he told me that his talk with me about verbal abuse and then his talk with Ryan about verbal abuse and finally a quarrel by phone with Nananda over an old issue—the master didn't say what—had made him sick. He said he knew that his condition was aggravated by stress.
"Yes, probably," the master replied to my speculation. "Stressful situations in my life come and go and how I handle them affects my physical state. Body and mind are not two. But infections and inflammations are not caused by stressful situations and how we handle them; they are, however, aggravated by them."
I mentioned all this to my daughter.
"It seems weird that a Zen master who meditates twice a day for twenty-five years," she said, "would suffer from irritable bowel syndrome caused by stress."
I included her remark in my journal.
In his response the master explained that irritable bowel syndrome is a condition in which the intestinal tract does not function properly. Many professionals, he said, feel there is a genetic component to it. Flare-ups, however, can be precipitated, the master conceded, by how we handle stressful situations. Other physical problems, too, he noted, can be aggravated by stress.
"Body and mind are not two," the master remarked. "I have found that stressful situations affect people in different ways. If we handle them well there is little physical involvement. If not, the weak or problem areas of our bodies take the hit first."
Handle them well?
Hmm.
I wondered what this meant.
"If stressful situations persist or regularly recur we should probably get out of them if we can," the master said.
At the time the significance of this remark escaped me. But it was not long before, first, I would quit for the reason mentioned and, then later, for the same reason the master.
"Sometimes we can't get out," added the master, "and we pay the price."
I included in my journal entry on the master's illness and on stress a remark by a Zen master—I could not remember which—that I had read in a book from the temple library.
"Not even fully realized buddhas can avoid daily mundane turmoil."
"Yes, indeed," the master replied.
"Writing this has made me sad," I confessed.
"This is called the truth of suffering," said the master.
On Sunday morning the master expressed affection, longing, for Huiko's lone disciple who served his master for eight years. His service obviously touched the master's heart. The master had spoken several times in the past of his own loneliness and of the loneliness of clergy in general. The master mentioned individuals who asked him about becoming a Zen priest.
"I tell them," the master said, "to think about whether they could live with me at the temple for six months."
It would be hard for sure I thought.
It is not easy to share an intimate space with another person, even family. The master's remark made me think of marriage. Ruth and I had loved and served each other for thirty years. We had shared glorious highs and painful lows and more than once we had wondered if we might be better off going our separate ways. We remained loyal. In my four years of study under the master I thought often of how the relationship of student and teacher in Zen resembled the relationship of child and parent. Now I was struck by its similarity to marriage—having to hang in there and persevere even when your companion seemed peevish, brusque, fastidious, annoying, vulgar and—yes—even unlovable. But years of shared experience deepen both intimacy and love. To this reflection the master replied.
"One of the things I admire most about Nananda is that for so many years she lived with me in such close proximity," he said. "I never did that with my teacher Katagiri-roshi."
The master added a saying he said was Tibetan.
"If you are too far from the teacher, you don't get enough heat. If you are too close, you get burnt."
In my journal I returned to my argument with the master—to the comments he'd made and to the questions he'd asked in the past.
"Why haven't you come in and talked to me about these issues?" the master asked.
Huh?
"There's a larger issue here," the master said. "How many times have we interacted one to one in private interview over the past four years? How many times have you seen me in dokusan during sesshin? Email is not dokusan. Face to face means face to face."
I'd not even known I was expected to request dokusan.
"You once explained in discussion," I wrote to the master, "that dokusan occurred at any time teacher and student spoke together in private. Since that happened often, I did not realize that I should request dokusan."
"Casual conversations and conversations when others are around are useful," the master replied. "They are not private interviews, however, and certainly not dokusan. These two terms also mean different things and, though all interactions between teacher and student are useful, some are more useful and productive than others. I repeatedly say that students should regularly see me privately—by that I mean formally in my room—and I certainly encourage students to have dokusan during sesshin, which is the only time I offer it."
This was all new to me.
"But you once ridiculed students," I reminded the master, "who requested dokusan even though they regularly talked with their teacher alone in the temple just as a matter of course."
"I ridiculed or criticized students who were repeatedly requesting dokusan over and over," the master explained.
Okay.
I had misunderstood.
But neither had I ever felt the need for any private communication with my teacher. I felt I'd had ample opportunity to ask any question I wanted and I could think of no question I might object to my teacher asking me even in front of my fellow practitioners. Nor could I imagine anything the master might want to tell me in private that he could not tell me in public if indeed he had not already done so.
Anything.
"I don't have many questions about practice," I said. "Obviously you think I should. I did not know that. Zen practice makes sense to me," I explained, "but when a question comes up I ask."
To this the master replied simply.
"Good."
I continued.
"In email I can't be repeatedly interrupted."
"This is a good excuse for not speaking with me privately face to face," the master replied.
Was the master suggesting that I was afraid to speak with him?
I felt no such fear.
I wasn't inventing excuses.
"If you want to talk, I'll listen. If you want to listen, I'll talk," I said. "If you invite me to talk so you can then interrupt, I decline."
The master asserted his authority.
"You do not set the conditions for either private interviews or for dokusan," the master declared. "You either enter or do not enter. If you have a private interview or dokusan with me or ask me questions in a formal practice setting you may be interrupted."
"I don't interrupt," I said.
"In formal practice settings," the master stated, "I do."
More correspondence with the master followed—more journal comments, replies to journal comments, replies to replies. I began to wonder if indeed I could continue at the temple. The master attributed to me beliefs that I did not hold and then he criticized those beliefs. The master attributed to me simplistic statements I had never made and then he criticized those statements. The observations I did offer, the master said, were my subjective misperceptions. The beliefs I did hold, the master said, were false. The statements I did make, the master contradicted. To observations of mine, the master replied that some things I knew intellectually, by reason, but not experientially, by realization. To my professions of my deepest commitments, to nonviolence and to service, and to my confessions of my deepest feelings, the flood of gratitude for the teaching, for the Way, and for life, that arose at least once every time I sat, the master simply replied:
"Bullshit!"
I laughed as I wrote the first draft of this summary of our correspondence and at other times I was annoyed. I also observed this alternation from annoyance to amusement and back again. I had felt just the day before that perhaps I should not write anything more at all and that this was in fact the lesson the master was trying so hard to teach me, but the feeling passed.
So do they all.
I had not requested dokusan because I'd had no question—the questions which did arise I asked at dharma talk or dharma study or in conversation—and I hadn't wanted to contrive a question just for dokusan.
But I felt reassured by the master's replies, I said in my journal, since now at least I did have a question.
Stuck how? What did that mean?
How do I get unstuck?
"Good question!" the master commented.
Ha!
How funny.
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