151 Bullying

In our group discussion after the World Peace Ceremony on Sunday, Nikki suggested we talk about peace. At first it went well. Many spoke on the subject—Nikki, Charles, David, Irene, Kent, Ben, Edward, and the master. As always when he was in attendance, the master served as moderator, inviting our observations and our questions and offering his opinion of them and then redirecting questions of his own. The master had seemed especially interested in the distinctions between peace and nonviolence, between peace and compassion, between peace and love, between inner peace and outer peace. In their dialogue the master and Kent, who taught theatre and drama at a nearby private college, explored the components of peace that an actor would have to incorporate or imitate if possible in order to portray a man or woman of inner peace. It was an interesting exercise. How would a man or a woman act if he or she truly were at peace? I would have liked to hear others explore the question—it was one variation of the question I often used in my own classes at the college—but a remark by Kent sparked a long digression.

"We're all actors," Kent declared.

This provoked a semantic squabble over the meaning of the word "actor" in Kent's dictum. At first it was unclear if by "actor" Kent meant simply anyone who acts, the agent of any action, or if by "actor" he meant one who dissembles, the dramatic artist in a movie or play, and in life the pretender, the deceiver. Charles thought that Kent intended the second meaning and that Kent was suggesting that we were all some kind of phony, all of us pretending to be characters we were really not. To make this point Charles raised his hands in gassho and the master acknowledged him.

"I disagree with that," said Charles. "I think—"

His dissent annoyed the master and he interrupted Charles.

"Why are you always argumentative?" the master asked.

Charles attempted to reply.

"I just want to make an observation about—" he began.

The master interrupted a second time.

"No, answer my question!" he demanded.

"I just think—"

"No!"

The master interrupted a third time.

He raised his voice. The master began lecturing—loudly, stridently—and he talked at length. He explained again that he agreed with Kent and that he objected to Charles' dissent. I felt uncomfortable. I had witnessed this behavior many times before. Daly had called it bullying. It did seem to me today to be bullying. The group "discussion" was over. At best it had become a lecture and at worst a harangue. Errors of interpretation and opinion had been identified by the master and corrected. Now we would hear the truth according to the master. After his ten-minute monologue the master made a perfunctory and futile attempt to restore the mode of group discussion and participation.

But now no one dared say anything.

Yikes.

We sat in awkward silence.

We waited.

In the context of what had just transpired, to me the master's next question sounded unintentionally ironic.

"Do you now better understand peace?" the master asked Nikki.

Nervous, Nikki equivocated.

"Umm…."

The master was ready to sum up.

The master enjoyed taunting us, I thought to myself as I sat and observed the proceeding, even though the master himself called it challenging people or even teaching Zen.

Now the master offered his pronouncement.

"No one in this room knows peace," said the master. "That's my opinion."

The master paused to let his judgment sink in before he stated it a second time.

"No one in this room knows peace!" the master exclaimed.

Ben, an eighteen-year-old high school student from Harlan, Iowa, who had attended only two or three Sunday services at the temple, now raised his hands in gassho.

"Yes?" the master responded.

"Do you know peace?" Ben asked.

The master thought a moment before he answered.

"I know when peace is within me," the master said, "and I know when it is not within me."

Time was up.

We adjourned to prepare for the yard clean-up scheduled to follow. But I still felt tense and uncomfortable with what had just transpired. Why did the master behave that way? He did not appear to me to be a man often at peace. As three or four of us stood by the front door gathering our things I asked Dean:

"What was that?"

"What was what?" Dean inquired.

Dean did not even know what I was talking about.

"That behavior," I said.

"What behavior?" Dean asked.

Dean was just plain puzzled.

"That peevish argumentative behavior," I explained.

"Whose?" Dean asked.

"The master's!" I said.

"I didn't notice anything unusual," Dean said smiling. "You've wondered about the way the master speaks to me, too," he said. "It's just what he does to get me to see things."

Hmm.

"Why don't you ask Charles what he thinks?"

I did.

"I didn't notice anything unusual," Charles said.

"No?"

"No."

I conceded.

"It's just me I guess."

Bob.

We walked outside.

We pulled on our work gloves, grabbed our rakes and the yard waste bags, and began raking the yard. Edward and I and others raked the leaves under the bushes and at the bottom of the fence on the east side of the front yard. Then I helped Jane rake the leaves on the parking near the driveway. Next I moved to the large vacant lot on the west and raked leaves from under both sides of the hedge near the curb of the adjacent Lutheran church parking lot. For variety and to rest the muscles of my arms and my shoulders I periodically stopped raking and stuffed the sturdy brown paper lawn bags with the leaves now piled here and there all around the yard. The whole time I worked, though I tried not to think about the master and to concentrate on my task and on my breath, I thought about the master, about his style of teaching, and about my reaction to it. Then I would let it go and just rake until the same thoughts and questions arose again. The following day as I recorded these thoughts in my journal I felt again like this issue was behind me but I had felt that way before, too—more than once in fact—and then any odd and abrasive encounter between someone at the temple and the master would evoke once more in me discomfort, curiosity, and doubt.

"Enough of this!" I wrote. "No more!"

Ha.