I arrived promptly at 4:00. Eleanor, the young woman who had just flown in from Laugh Out Loud, the temple and sister sangha in Pennsylvania, to attend the two-day sesshin, was cleaning the bathroom next to the master's room upstairs. His door was open—as usual—and he invited me in. Facing each other were two chairs just three feet apart. The master asked me to be seated in the chair furthest from the door. The master wore his rakusu and I mine. The master offered a stick of incense at the small altar on his small chest of drawers. We put our palms together in gassho and bowed. Then, in our private talk, as I mainly sat and listened the master explained and explained and explained and explained.
"In a monastery," the master warned, "it is considered an extremely serious matter for one to quit and to withdraw from the practice period and to break one's commitments."
Unmoved, I remained silent.
I sat.
The master warned.
I sat.
The master explained.
I breathed.
The master threatened.
I listened.
"I am not saying that I will do this if you break the commitments you have made," the master continued, "but in a monastery a black mark is entered beside the name of a monk who quits and leaves during training, and if he quits and leaves a second time he receives a second black mark, and he may never be admitted again."
I remained silent.
"What about your responsibilities to the sangha?" asked the master. "You're ino!"
I said nothing.
"What about the sesshin?" the master asked, his face suddenly a mask of pain and disappointment. "Do you know for certain that Irene has received your email and knows she will be managing the sesshin?"
"No," I said.
"You know that she does not always answer her email!" the master exclaimed.
True.
"Has she replied?" he asked.
"No."
"Jane is on call!" said the master. "She can't serve as ino!"
I remained silent.
"Edward is so sick that when I saw him this morning he told me he didn't think he'd be able to attend!"
Further exclamation.
I was silent but I was thinking, thinking, thinking—
Thinking.
Now the master apologized.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Bob," the master said. "I'm sorry I hurt you, I'm only human, Bob, I make mistakes, I didn't intend to hurt you, and if you will show me which of my comments on your journal hurt you I will try to explain what I meant."
I remained silent.
The master's face aged as I watched and I listened. The skin around his eyes and nose and mouth sagged and wrinkled and creased, his jowls grew heavy and sank and hung from the bone of his jaw, his color grew sallow, yellow, and he seemed to age from sixty-three to eighty-three in fifteen minutes. Before my eyes the master had become an old sad man. He placed the palms of his hands together in gassho. Now the master begged and begged and begged and begged.
"Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, attend the sesshin," the master begged, "please, don't quit, please, please, please, please, don't quit, please, please, attend the sesshin, please, push through this, Bob, please, sit with your turmoil, please, please, I beg you!"
Ho!
The master spoke urgently, his words tumbling from his lips.
"Please!"
He whined.
"Please!"
His palms pressed together in prayer, the master leaned far forward in entreaty.
"Please, please, I beg you, please!" the master pled. "I beg you, please!"
I sat still.
"Please!"
The master pled and begged like this again.
"Please, Bob, please, please, please, please, please, Bob, please, please, attend the sesshin," the master begged, "please, don't quit, please, please, please, please, don't quit, please, Bob, please, attend the sesshin, please, push through this, Bob, please, sit with your turmoil, please, please, I beg you!"
Then again the master begged and pled.
"Please!" he cried. "Please, push through this and attend the sesshin!"
I was moved.
No man had ever in my life spoken to me like this. I was touched deeply and moved in spite of what I had considered my adamant resolve. His sincerity seemed undeniable. The master had humbled himself, humbled himself utterly, before me, he'd thrown himself wide open in front of me, opened himself totally, and he appeared to me totally vulnerable and unashamed of it. Only my first wife when I told her that I was filing for divorce and my father when he realized that he would die of his diabetes had ever appeared to me so naked and exposed themselves so completely as had this crazy man in front of me now. As I struggle now to find the words to relate to my readers this scene my eyes moisten with tears at the memory. I had prepared myself for my meeting with the master, I had thought, but not for this, no, no, not for this, no, for this I had not prepared.
My defenses melted and I cried.
I cried.
"Kudo, I can't, I just can't!" I exclaimed. "I have hardly slept for four days! I wake up at one and two and three in the morning and Kudo is in my head and I am totally exhausted! I can hardly work!"
I gasped.
"I do not understand your criticism of me," I explained.
The master looked distraught.
Tears.
"I cannot continue like this, Kudo, I just can't!" I said.
The master's eyes glistened with tears.
"I can't!"
"My heart ached last night, too, Bob," he said, crying, "it woke me up last night, too, you were on my mind, I was hurting, too, I didn't sleep either, because I was thinking about you!" he said. "Please, do it for yourself," he begged, "and for the sangha, please!"—and he begged some more and more and more, it went on and on and on, he was shameless—"please, please, please," he pled, "please please please come to the sesshin and sit through this turmoil, please do it, do it, please do it for yourself and for the sangha, please, please!" he begged, and he clasped his hands together, not in gassho but as if in prayer, his ten fingers interlocked, and begged some more—he wouldn't stop though I protested again and again.
"I can't, Kudo!" I said crying. "I can't, I can't!"
Four times I reached for my notes and read aloud to him the statement I had prepared:
"Until I understand its purpose I will not subject myself further to your verbal abuse."
Each time I did, the master dismissed it and he continued his begging and explaining.
"Please please please, Bob, please sit through this!"
Agon.
"Until I understand its purpose I will not subject myself further to your verbal abuse."
"Please please please, Bob, please sit through this!"
Again.
Again.
Until it was a parody of itself!
Again.
My god, what on earth was he doing? It finally made me laugh—as I cried—in amazement and tenderness. The master must be crazy, he's nuts, I thought, and I laughed, and then when my heart melted, and my mind, I surrendered, and I said I would attend sesshin.
Exhausted.
"Yes, all right," I said, "I will, okay, I'll come."
"Really?" the master exclaimed.
He burst into tears.
"Really?"
He cried.
The master cried—in happiness, for joy—and then when I cried, too, the master took my hands in his and cried with me, his whole face split in two by his wide, lopsided smile.
Health fully restored.
Now the master looked strong, vigorous, pink and happy.
Smiling broadly, the master beamed.
"Do you promise?" the master insisted. "Do you promise you will come?"
I laughed.
I thought he was joking.
Of course I would come—I had said I would, hadn't I?
But he wasn't joking.
"I'm serious!" he said. "Do you promise you will come, do you, do you?" the master asked again.
"Yes."
"Promise me!"
"Yes."
"Really, Bob, really? Do you promise you will come? Really do you?"
"Yes, yes, I'll come!" I said. "I promise."
"One more thing," the master said.
"Yes?"
"You wrote in your email that we'd be friends," he said.
"Yes?"
"I've never been your friend," he said. "I'm your teacher."
"I understand."
As I recorded all this later not for my journal but just for myself, I laughed, I cried, I laughed, I cried. Who was this man? What was he doing to me? Now that I had somehow—I did not know how—just been talked out of doing what I had been absolutely determined to do, there was the weekend sesshin to prepare for and I was still ino. Eleanor helped me assemble the dozen or so oryoki sets, the bowls, utensils, and cloths, and then she helped me to ready and set the big table where all of us would eat on Saturday and Sunday. I got home an hour later and told Ruth that I had changed my mind.
Ruth grinned.
"I knew you couldn't say no to him," she said.
I nodded.
She laughed.
Sigh.
Now I had to recant.
"Kudo talked me out of it, out of all of it," I wrote Irene, Jane, and Edward. "I don't know how, but he did. I'll be at sesshin."
Edward replied.
"I was pleased to see your car parked in front of the temple when I came by to mow the lawn," he wrote. "I'll see you in the wee hours."
Morning.
I arrived at the temple at 4:35.
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