In my journal on Tuesday I reflected once more on how the master insisted that I stop questioning and criticizing him and turn that energy on myself—which I had done now every day since he first began mocking me—but still the only negative mental state that truly persisted was my doubt about him and my curiosity about the source of what seemed to me now to be his habitual peevish, abusive behavior. It must come, I decided, from unhappiness, disappointment, and dissatisfaction. I had tried my very hardest to understand it as a method of teaching, as Kent and the master himself suggested. But this struggle to suppress my doubts, to turn them on myself, to look within for the fear, anger, and sadness that the master said he saw in me, and to stop reflecting upon and writing about the innocence, alienation, loneliness, suffering, sadness, fear, yearning, trust, honesty, courage, vulnerability, beauty, and preciousness of life that I saw every day in my students, in my family, in my colleagues, and in my friends was disrupting my sleep. Just the night before, I had woken up at 1:53 a.m. thinking about the master. I loved him, I respected him. I had learned from him, he had helped me. I knew that the master was well-intentioned, that he wanted sincerely to deepen my experience and my understanding of life. But his mockery of me and of others now had me wondering if he might not have as much to learn from me as I from him. I did not remember ever seeing the master act as if he thought he had anything to learn from his own students about intuition, understanding, and wisdom, I had seen him act only as a teacher, and I was now totally confused about what he believed I should do in my practice. His most recent advice had directly contradicted his previous counsel to me. But to student complaints of such contradiction the master quoted Whitman.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes.
There seemed such a sadness in all of this, such a sadness in its ordinariness.
Ordinary sad.
The truth of suffering.
The master had mocked and ridiculed my saying that my tears in Rohatsu were from gratitude and joy at the preciousness of life. Just as the master wished he could give me, I assumed, and the rest of his students the kind of commitment, intuition, insight, understanding, wisdom, and inner peace he felt he had, likewise did I wish I could give the master the experience I'd had and the acceptance, faith, and joy I so often felt as the result of that experience.
Tao.
It appeared to me that the master's understanding of reason was so simplistic that it was no wonder he had little but contempt for it; and his faith in intuition—what the master called "trusting his gut"—often seemed just license for the self-indulgence which issued in profanity and bitching about petty matters.
But the master said:
"Nothing is trivial to me. Everything is a matter of life and death."
On Wednesday I read again and again the comments the master had written on my journal of the previous week. I myself had written hardly anything. I could not figure out how to follow all his advice.
There was plenty of it.
Now I had woken up at 2:30 in the morning, again with the master in my head, and could not go back to sleep. I had gotten up, come downstairs, and read, marked, and graded the one student paper that still remained.
Samantha:
The cutting had become the way to release my soul and to rid myself of all the bad feelings, the anger, the shame, and the hurt, that good people aren't supposed to feel. I could let my blood run clean, and each time it was as if the act renewed my spirit. Perhaps if one day I could forgive myself for just being me the struggle would be easier. I've contemplated, on the good days of course, why it all began. On the bad days it really doesn't matter. Then it's hard enough just to get out of bed.
On Wednesday evening James, the master, and I—serving as doan—had sat at the temple. Except for my students—from the Sunday Nikki had stated at our first practice group meeting that she didn't believe me and the master had said he agreed with her—I had been able to think of almost nothing but the master, his criticism of me, and what I might possibly write in my journal. If I were not in class or reading the writing of my students, it occupied all of my thoughts.
Kudo.
With this sole exception I felt little different from how I felt at practice group meetings.
I loved my wife and she loved me. Our marriage was strong. My family was fortunate—healthy and happy. We had enough money. I enjoyed my job and I was experiencing no serious continuing conflict in my work. I liked teaching. Though it embarrassed me to say so, I loved it. I had many friends at the temple and so far as I knew not a single enemy. In my almost five years there I had met not even one person I disliked. Except for this conflict with my teacher I recalled no conflict at all at the temple with anybody ever.
I had learned to appreciate bowing, chanting, service, ritual.
Sitting I loved and I rarely missed a day.
I knew of no major obstacle to my practice, indeed in one sense I did not believe such obstacles existed other than—in Suzuki's words—as the manure with which we fertilize our enlightenment; and still in addition to all of this I had the knowledge and truth of my experience twenty-five years earlier.
The jewel I carried in my heart.
Tao.
I felt gratitude, I felt grateful indeed.
Fortunate.
Then there was the reaction of the master.
"Bullshit!"
When I had stepped into the kitchen on Wednesday evening after zazen to say goodnight, the master had seemed lonely and sad and his sadness had made me sad. All the way home I felt sorry for him.
Pity.
I wished so much, so very much, that I could see things as they really were—what the master said he wanted me to see—even if only for him. So often the master seemed to be disappointed in or displeased with his students! I had heard the master say many times that in the beginning when he was a student he had wanted to be just like his teacher Katagiri. Eventually the master realized, he said, that he could of course be only himself, but his early admiration and desire to be just like his teacher, though foolish, the master said, had motivated him to continue his practice. But I could think of not a single thing my master possessed that I wanted.
Did I want to be like my teacher?
No.
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