180 Nondiscrimination

When I got home from work I saw that I had received the master's most recent replies to my journal and I commented that in this round of replies at least I found nothing to irritate me.

"Irritation does not come from outside," the master reminded me. "It comes from within."

Yes.

In his replies the master asked many questions.

I inquired.

"Prompt answers are not necessary," the master explained. "Take what I say to heart and work with it."

I tried.

"If I ask a question I want you to consider the content of the question," he said.

I tried.

The following day I skipped my morning sitting and slept till 5:00 and I didn't get the opportunity to make it up—there was my job, my office duty at the temple, and then in the evening the visitation at the mortuary for the grandchildren of my friend. In life I had never met them.

Dead—

So still.

So mysterious and so blank.

Sphinx.

Their funeral would be in the morning and coming up for me now and then in meditation had been the thought of my own death. I did not dwell on it. It evoked no emotion in me. It inspired and motivated me. In my morning zazen before the funeral death came up again and again, the waxen faces of the two dead children in their coffins, the loud, long, heartrending moan of grief from a friend bereft of the boy—his father I guessed—and the knowledge that 160000 other people on earth would be buried this day, 160000 every day.

Impenetrable fact.

The tide of my sadness, the ebb of my sadness, the tide of its return, and its ebb.

Its eternal return.

"Life is suffering," the master responded to this meditation and reflection in my journal.

Truth.

"To be alive is to suffer," the master added. "We are constantly reminded of this over and over again."

Truth.

"There is no escape."

Truth.

In his autobiographical Chronicles Bob Dylan writes that his grandmother was filled with nobility and goodness.

"Happiness is not on the road to anything," she told her grandson.

No goal.

"Happiness is the road."

Ah!

The master rarely spoke of happiness. I could not remember his ever mentioning it except to explain that he did not emphasize the third truth, the end of suffering, because it created expectation that, unmet, might seem a promise false or broken. His recurrent themes were unhappiness and its origin, the subjects of the first truth and the second, and discipline, the subject of the fourth truth, the path, the practice, zazen, the precepts, the six perfections.

It made sense.

"Be kind," Dylan's grandmother told him, "because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

No exceptions.

In the discussion following his dharma talk, the master said that awakening, realization or enlightenment, does not necessarily transcend cultural milieu, cultural prejudices about gender, sexuality, skin color, race, ethnicity, caste, class, and nationality; that is, even in awakening one might not totally "break through" all ignorance and come to truth and right understanding in every part of living. But total liberation was the romantic idea I'd had about enlightenment—as had Nikki, too, and Edward—in the early years of my involvement in the Way; and now the more I learned of the Buddha and of the very first sangha and of the sexism, racism, and nationalism in Buddhist cultural history the better I understood my error and its magnitude. Upon awakening to his enlightenment not even the Tathagata had been freed from his prejudice and become instantly smart about everything.

Ignorance.

"It never ends," the master said.

Practice.

He taught the need for continuous vigilance, the need to wake up every moment.

Now—

Now—

Now—

The subject arose when Eleanor asked the master about the names of the teachers in the lineage she recited every morning at the temple. All of them were male, an aspect of Buddhist organization and hierarchy that repelled Ruth and had also bothered Daly. It bothered me. To my account of this discussion in my journal the master responded at length. The master first insisted that the organization and hierarchy of some schools of Buddhism had nothing to do with the teaching.

"This is not an aspect of Buddhism," the master declared.

Not Zen.

"This is the way that some people represent it."

The master explained.

"There is nothing in Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching that discriminates between a man's and a woman's capability to awaken. If one sees into things clearly one sees that male egoism and dominance are just that. They have nothing to do with the way things exist at the core. If one does not see things clearly, one blames it on Buddhism, which does not exist as an entity. Some do transcend cultural milieu. In his view of women Dogen did."

But the daily recitation of the lineage—

All men.

The question remained.

Why—

The master did not address it.

Why—

He continued.

"People do have moments of insight and do experience emptiness; but this awakening is neither complete nor permanent. It is never complete and never permanent. Some people go deep, some go very deep, some go very, very deep, some go as deep as one can go."

He concluded.

"These people are rare."

Not two—

Nondiscrimination.

Lennon:

Imagine—

There's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine—

All the people

Living for today

Imagine—

There's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

No religion too

Imagine—

All the people

Living life in peace

Monday it snowed.

I woke and sat at 4:00—then came downstairs and turned on the television to see if the college had cancelled classes. At 6:00 I caught the announcement. When the snow stopped I shoveled the driveway, sidewalks, and back patio. I liked the purity of shoveling snow, its solitary nature, the white of it, the silence, the physicality of it, the effort, the repetition, the labor and the breathing, the visible realization of progress and completion, its practicality, its benefit to others and to myself, the absence of language and speech, its beauty. I associated the activity with Zen. I always had. I did not know why. My back and my shoulders were tired and sore but in a good way that reminded me that I had done real work. After shoveling I napped for an hour in the morning and for another hour in mid-afternoon.

A two-nap day—

Ah!

It felt so good.

I sat.

Who was annoyed?

I sat.

Did I not want to wake up?

I sat.

Was the master my teacher?

I sat.

Did I doubt him?

I sat.

Why did I doubt him?

I sat.

Had I not made him my teacher?

Why?

"I don't know what this means," I said in my journal.

I sat.

"Sit with it," the master instructed.

I sat.

I mentioned also in my journal, facetiously, I hoped, and in self-deprecation, that in spite of my best intentions I could not seem to resist snacking on chips, candy, soda, nuts, cookies, and desserts or filling my plate with a second helping.

Even a third.

I guessed this behavior was just Bob.

"Just me."

The master addressed my confession more seriously than I had tendered it.

"This is just who you are?" he asked. "Is this fixed and permanent?"

No but—

To diet was hard.

"Who is it that cannot resist?"

Who?

Like other fat people I had failed at dieting many times and like them I had not given up.

I remembered, too, the master saying once at a practice group meeting that he'd had to accept the fact that anger, resentment, and anxiety would always be issues for him, yes, always, that was just who he was, and that indeed he would probably always be that way.

Unfixed, constantly changing, impermanent, and yet—

"Always."

"This isn't about me, Bob."

179 Shock

But I had already decided to attend the entire Rohatsu at Heartmind in December; and though I still did not consider myself a person who needed help I thought that the following year I would try, as the master said, to spend the whole month of June at Laugh Out Loud.

I had mentioned at the practice group meeting that again I had been annoyed by the responses of the master to my journal. The master asked me once more to sit with his question.

"Who is annoyed?"

This I did.

But when I looked my annoyance dissipated and there was nobody home.

So who—

I did not know.

I also replied in writing to the master's responses to my journal.

But—

Then I thought better of it and I did not send them.

Enough.

They would only irritate the master, I was certain, and provoked he would respond in kind.

I had nothing new to add.

Why revisit in the very same way the very same conflict I had addressed just the previous spring?

It made no sense.

I did report that my wife had been amused by my problem.

"Two men doing the man thing," Ruth said.

I laughed.

"It's just a personality conflict," Ruth added.

Maybe.

I could see it that way.

"Both of those observations make a lot of sense really," I journaled.

I felt weary.

Tired.

The master responded.

"The relationship between student and teacher is not a relationship between two equals."

There's the rub.

"If you make it so," the master added, "you miss the point and get nowhere."

Had I made it so?

How?

Had I missed the point?

What point?

Was there somewhere to get?

Circles.

I knew we were not Buddhist equals nor had I ever considered us so. My teacher knew much more about Buddhism and practice than I. But why did he seem so often displeased and unhappy? Several of my colleagues at work shared a similar discontent. Their students were to blame, these teachers said, because too many were unprepared, unmotivated, and unwilling to exert the necessary effort. Perhaps the master, too, felt this way.

Frustrated.

"What makes me mad is when students blame me for their failure to practice!"

Emphasis on the second "me"—

"Me!"

That I had heard the master exclaim four or five times just in my first few months at the temple.

Perhaps he felt that way about me.

Bob.

But I had been committed to the Way for a long time, I felt highly motivated, and short of quitting my job and divorcing my wife and becoming a monk I did not know how I could try any harder. I wanted to learn what the master had to teach. But except for this conflict with the master I was happy. For the first time in my life I had even enough money. The vanities and cruelties of my past I had confessed, I had apologized, and I had been forgiven; and at sixty-two I felt eager in the time I had left to be of comfort and service to others. Yet to the master, it seemed, this opinion of mine, this attitude, was my issue.

Dishonest.

Denial of my dark side.

Vanity.

An obstacle.

Fear.

The master to me was a puzzle.

I was curious.

It was March, spring was just around the corner, and I was eager for summer so I could work on my book. There in my book I thought I could think, yes, think to my heart's content, about my relationship with my teacher. In my journal I mentioned once more that in his replies to my daily entries the master had said that I was struggling, that in fact I had many questions about practice, and that it was not as easy for me to let go of my daily problems as I claimed, pretty much the same charge of "denial" that had brought me to impasse the previous spring. I did have questions about the master; but these questions, I had learned, were not germane.

"This isn't about me, Bob."

Yet the only real struggle I felt in my practice was in our relationship. When the master imputed to me feelings, beliefs, and motives I did not recognize, I explained, my tendency was to defend myself; and my teacher, I added, exhibited the very same tendency.

"My job is to point out what I see," the master responded.

Understood.

"Yours is to take it to heart and to work with it."

To sit.

I had finished reading the text the master had assigned for our dharma study on Saturday morning, "Foundations of Mindfulness and the Abhidharma." I loved Buddhist literature. It made sense to me and it always had—from the very first time I had really listened and heard the dharma. The master lectured and offered explication of the Five Hindrances and led our discussion of them. The main hindrance for me, I later reported in my journal, was obviously doubt. But my doubt was not at all about the buddha, the dharma, or the sangha.

No.

My doubt was about the master.

Kudo.

Nothing else seemed to get in my way like he did.

Why?

In our discussion of the text the master had said that the antidote to doubt was reflection and sustained thinking. To me that seemed right on target, yes. If I were "stuck" that is where I would say I was stuck—in doubt about my teacher and in my reflection and sustained thinking on the matter.

The master replied.

"If I were your teacher there would be no doubt."

Huh?

I did not know what this meant.

"Because of this doubt you have not made me your teacher," he explained.

I did not understand.

I doubted neither the master's integrity nor his intention. I did test his counsel and instruction against my experience. Maybe "doubt" was the wrong word. I had questions about the master. I was curious about him. I did not know how to let go of this curiosity or even if I should.

Should I?

If the master had a secret he felt he had to protect to preserve his reputation then the master was not free.

1  Reputation.

2  Delusion.

3  Ego.

4  Attachment.

5  Fear.

6  Suffering.

The text of "Foundations of Mindfulness and the Abhidharma" as the master explained it seemed to me an obvious product of intellect, careful observation, reflection, analysis, and discriminative thinking, in short, of reason—a helpful tool, a raft that carries us to the shore and that we must then abandon, then must use again, and abandon again, and so on.

Yes.

That was identical to reason as I understood it.

I understood.

"No."

The master said.

"You hold onto your opinions like a pit bull holding onto someone's leg."

Funny.

To evoke from the master a remark like this all I had to do was say something positive about reason—anything, no matter how slight. I had learned. It was one of the master's buttons.

Reason.

The aim of Zen training, writes psychologist Carl Jung in his 1934 foreword to An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki, is "the complete destruction of the rational intellect."

Suzuki himself writes: "Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs."

I once felt like this.

But it seemed to me that I had emerged from the other side of the mystery and that I now required the service of both intuition and reason.

"No."

Zen considers us prisoners of language and logic.

Suzuki explains.

"So long as we remain thus fettered," he writes, "we are miserable and go through untold suffering."

But not only was I not miserable I felt that my deepest spiritual needs had been satisfied.

"No."

The master insisted otherwise.

"No."

The next day a shock—

Horror.

The terrible news that two teenage grandchildren of a dear friend—for twenty-five years a colleague of mine—had died in a fire early on Saturday morning and that a third grandchild had survived in critical condition.

I noted this tragedy in my journal.

Pain.

The master's first comment was cold.

"Suffering is a condition of existence," the master remarked. "You're alive so suffer."

God!

My other entries I had written and then edited radically to avoid provoking further abuse from the master. I no longer felt that I could tell the master what I really thought of him though clearly the master did not feel the same about me. But if I could not be honest and open with the master—and indeed I felt now that I could not be—I supposed our relationship was over.

The end.

I skipped my morning sitting and slept another hour.

I was tired.

I read yet one more time the master's most recent replies to my journal and considered again the koan the master had given me. Who or what is annoyed? It felt like reading last month's news magazine—old and stale. Now what had all that been about? I could hardly remember. Did I not want to wake up? That, too, the master had asked. Had this question been rhetorical? To me it had seemed so. It sounded as though the master thought I should want to wake up. I wanted to be peaceable, brave, intelligent, and kind so that if at all possible I might help at least to slow the killing. That was pretty much it. I had so far been a failure, the murder and war went on and on, but other than less hate and more love there was little that I wanted in the world.

The rest I had.

I thought, too, of the master's remark that my considering myself his equal was an obstacle to my progress.

He was the teacher and I was the student.

I thought.

I thought.

I thought.

Had I really not made him my teacher?

I knew not.

I questioned everything.

Him too.

Now the master had said he had secrets he could not reveal for fear that their disclosure would ruin his reputation. It was important to him, he had said, and it was obvious that it was.

Hm.

Feeling that way and with something to hide how could the master do his job?

I wondered.

I was glad that kind of thing was out of my life.

I slept.

Four or five times in the night I woke up thinking of my dear friend and of her unbearable terrible loss. I rolled out of bed at 4:00 and sat and the tragedy rose up from my mind again and again and again.

But not only that—

The mundane usual topics, too, arose like the blobs of my lava lamp, the master, my wife, my teaching, the lay initiation, and dozens of petty concerns that later I could never remember.

I just sat.

I just sat.

The master learned more details of the tragedy from the local newspaper and he had been impressed. The two dead children had thrown themselves over their helpless brother, crippled by cerebral palsy, to shield him from the fire, and by their sacrifice they had saved his life. The master called their deaths "unspeakably tragic" and he expressed his condolences.

"Life is suffering," the master said, "and sometimes tears are the only response."

I had met the mother of the dead children only two or three times many years ago and I knew the children not at all. But for days every time I was asked about the tragedy I felt a tug on my heart and a spasm in my demeanor that brought me to the verge of tears. Even one year later, as I edited this section of my book, tears rose again to my eyes. My dear friend and colleague had lived a hard life, too hard to explain even briefly here, and in spite of everything she remained loving and kind.

Her faith sustained her.

Jesus.

178 Secrets

In my commitments for this practice period I had included exercise but for lack of time I had found this commitment to be one I could not keep. Once in a while, however, I walked—half exercise half kinhin—from home up Fifty-second Street to Capitol and back, five miles in seventy-five minutes, and as I walked I tried to be attentive to my body, to my step, my rolling hips, my gait, my balance, my swinging arms, to my rhythm, my breath. I walked a mile before my lungs stopped burning and by the end of my walk my left arch hurt and my hips ached. Thoughts mushroomed up from my mind like crazy but just a step or two later or a block or two later I'd wake up and return to my step and my breath.

"Good practice," the master commented.

Validation.

I had considered this "practice" before I ever met the master but I had let him talk me out it.

"Practice without a teacher is not practice!"

On Friday I had walked five miles again. I had to return to my step or to my breath over and over again. My mind had been wild and repeatedly it had gone wandering off to one thing or another. Once or twice I had walked a full block or more without my really being conscious of where I was or what I was doing. But from sitting meditation I was accustomed to returning to my breath so I tended to do that first and then I would remember to bring my attention to my body and to my step, not so different really from sitting zazen and following my breath and checking my posture. My pace was four steps to one breath, two steps to the inhalation and two steps to the exhalation. I was trying to be more attentive to my diet, too, and I had only a bowl of cereal and milk and coffee before noon.

God damn it I was fat!

Fat.

Both Krishnamurti and Thich Nhat Hanh thought there was no excuse for it.

My idols.

I had started reading Buddhism Is Not What You Think by Steve Hagen, the book from which Dean had read during his dharma talk the previous Sunday. I was still thinking about Dean's talk and I said so in my journal. The people at Zen Lite had told Dean what they think, I wrote in my journal, and then in his talk Dean told us what he thinks about what they think, and then I wrote what I think about what Dean thinks about what they think and next, I concluded, Kudo told me what he thinks about what I think about what Dean thinks about what they think, and now I write what I think about what Kudo thinks about what I think about what Dean thinks about what they think, and soon Kudo will tell me again what he thinks.

"All this thinking isn't that important?" the master remarked. "Is it?"

No.

Not at all.

But—

What is important?

I mentioned also in my journal that I had skipped my morning sitting and shouldn't have.

I had woken early enough and plenty rested.

"I'd just been lazy."

Yawn.

"Good that you're honest!" the master remarked.

Hmm.

It was a curse.

After zazen, service, and dharma talk we had a practice group meeting and it was there, in response to one of our group who had spoken of how hard it was to acknowledge a failing in front of us all, that the master mentioned that there were several things he had done in his life that he could tell only a very few people—those the master knew he could trust with the confidence—because the general knowledge of those past acts would ruin his reputation.

I mentioned this remark in my journal and I added that it was hard to understand.

Intrigue.

What was it was all about?

What?

Little did I know that this would be the beginning of the end.

I journaled.

"Secrets of some kind?" I wondered.

I speculated.

"For most people such secrets usually involve either drugs or sex."

The master ignored my reference.

Different topic—

"You are way overdue for a seven-day sesshin," the master stated.

Hmm.

Rohatsu sesshin, the commemoration of the enlightenment of the Buddha, always fell the first week of December, which was also the first week of winter quarter classes at the college.

"If that is a bad time for you," he suggested, "how about sitting a seven-day sesshin at another temple?"

I had no interest in that.

No.

I was way overdue, too, he added—

"For an extended period of practice in a temple or a monastery."

Retreat.

"This kind of practice would help you immensely."

Hmm.

Help me how I wondered.

Submission.

"How about coming to Philadelphia this June?" the master suggested.

No.

In the summer this book would come first.

It nagged me.

I was still waiting to learn if I would get sabbatical pay for producing a part of it.

177 Bob

On Sunday Dean had given the dharma talk. He read a passage or two from Steve Hagan's book Buddhism Is Not What You Think and then spoke about being in the present and needing a teacher. Dean also talked about his recent experience at a retreat he called "Zen Lite" and he compared it to our temple sesshins which got the better of the comparison in every regard.

"This made me feel funny," I journaled.

I had not intended the remark as serious criticism of Dean.

It was only a tiny ripple of feeling that I had offered the master unedited—

Per his instruction.

"Pretty snide, Bob," the master wrote.

Okay.

The master seemed determined once more to confront me.

So be it.

The master continued.

"Is this so unusual? Some sesshins are more beneficial than others, aren't they? What exactly do you mean?" the master asked. "Nothing makes you feel funny. Funny comes up from within. Besides, what do you mean by 'funny'? Was it Dean's attitude that you didn't like?"

Scolded.

So much for entering feelings and thoughts off the top of my head.

Sheesh!

With regard to the need for a teacher I had also mentioned in my journal that Alison once remarked that the master did not now have a teacher and that Alison had wondered about that and that I had wondered, too.

"I guess you get to the point where you don't need one," I suggested.

So it seemed.

"Or is it," I asked, "that because your teacher dies you just have to go on without one?"

I wondered.

The master seemed defensive.

"Wondered about what?" he asked in his reply.

Jesus!

Was it not obvious that because of the master's own situation we wondered if a teacher were necessary throughout life or if one eventually reached the point where a teacher was no longer needed?

Independent.

Had the master reached that point?

Free.

That was certainly what I wondered at least.

Did the master have a teacher to whom he must simply listen, as I did, if his teacher so demanded?

Did the master have a teacher who confronted him as the master so often confronted me?

Did the master have a teacher who attributed to him unacknowledged fear, anger, denial, evasion, avoidance, and cowardice?

An assassin.

Was there a teacher whom the master could not interrupt whenever he so desired? When the master told me to shut up and listen, I shut up and listened. Was there anyone on earth for whom the master had enough respect to do the same?

I wondered.

His therapist perhaps?

Did anyone ever tell the master, as the master so often told others, that their conversation was not a debate?

Dharma gates are boundless, we recited every day, and we vowed to enter them all.

The master had a lot to teach, I believed, and a lot to learn. 

"I have had and still do have many teachers," the master said.

He named none.

To whom he referred I did not know.

"Besides," the master added, "I am not Alison nor am I you."

No.

"What does my having or my not having a teacher have to do with the both of you?"

How defensive the master sounded!

Why?

"Once your teacher authorizes you to teach independently," the master said, "you may."

Ah! so—

At that point it was not necessary to be any longer engaged in formal student training, the master explained, except in the sense that the teacher is training along with his students.

Understood.

"But the teacher is training as a teacher, however, and not as a student."

Finally—

Civil discourse.

How difficult my communication with the master, my teacher, had become!

Forward.

Participation in the practice period meant, I thought, that I was required to keep a daily journal.

But did it?

By his own admission Edward had often gone weeks, even months, without writing, yet there seemed to be no penalty attached to the omission. Might I do simply as Edward did? But I wanted to follow my teacher's instructions so I continued as best I could to write even though his instructions seemed to me contradictory. Write whatever comes up for you, the master told me but, when I had done so, the master acted as though I had done wrong. I had asked impermissible questions, I had confused the profound with the banal, I had denied the truth, I had gossiped, and then, when questions had come up for me about what seemed to be the master's peevish comments and replies and I had asked them in order to try to understand what the master wanted, I had been told to stop guessing what he wanted and to stop trying to please him and to write whatever came up for me. At first from these circles I had inferred that the master wanted me to stop writing and speaking altogether and to remain silent and just sit.

But when I suggested as much—

"No."

This was not so.

Hmm.

Our communication was not a debate, the master told me many times, and the master told me, too, that neither was our communication even a dialogue, and so, then, just what was it?

What did the master call it?

Teaching.

"The Tao is not furthered by contention," I wrote in my journal—

A line from Lao Tsu.

"Contention, however, is one aspect of the Tao," replied the master.

Is it?

I don't think so.

No.

Shall we have an argument?

Submit.

Try as I might, and I had tried mightily and then tried and tried again, I could not seem to avoid the conclusion that one cause of my difficulty in my relations with the master might be his own insecurity and pride. No one is free of neurosis, I had learned long before I met the master, and it did seem in his communications with me, through my journals especially, that the master worked out his own neuroses as he tried to help his students work out their own. The teacher is learning from us, too, Edward had suggested to me when I quit, and at that time I believed it was true. But the master denied such reciprocity.

Or so it seemed in my situation; and I did not know what to write.

Impasse.

My entry for Monday, February 27, 2006—

"Duh."

On Tuesday I mentioned, simply as preface to questions I had, that in his dharma talk Dean had said, as the master had often said, that Zen practice is not about being comfortable. But to me it seemed obvious that no religion practiced seriously was about comfort.

The master inferred that I didn't understand.

"What do I mean by that?" the master responded. "I mean that Zen Buddhist practice is about digging deeply into ourselves and about transformation. This process can be difficult and painful and difficulty and pain are necessary and unavoidable when we cultivate growth and awareness."

"Is it about cessation of suffering?" I asked in my journal.

"Yes, it is," replied the master.

Ah!

"But remember that the cessation of suffering is temporary like everything else."

Yes.

"Is it about being happy?" I asked.

"This is not something that we stress because it can mislead people," the master explained.

"I often wonder if I should continue," I said.

"Everyone who practices wonders this from time to time," the master remarked.

The master often said that people come to the temple because they suffer, that if they did not suffer they would not come, and that because they suffer they return. I had always wondered if I should even be at the temple.

"You never suffer?" the master replied.

Never—

Never—

Here we go again.

"Did you not suffer last Sunday," the master inquired of me, "when I told you that you were responsible for setting up and checking the altars before we began lay initiation?"

Hmm.

I had been annoyed.

Unknown to the master I had been assigned three other jobs which had given me more to do than just one person could perform at the ceremony—but in my opinion my frustration in that instant hardly warranted the name of "suffering." But then in Buddhist literature the meaning of the word dukkha, usually translated in English as "suffering," is problematic.

Was it to this kind of petty annoyance that the master referred when he said people come to the temple because they suffer?

Daily mundane turmoil.

No.

I thought not.

Would Zen practice free them from such suffering?

I thought not.

No.

The master himself seemed far more often frustrated and annoyed by petty matters than anyone else in the sangha.

So—

This did not seem likely.

I had meant by the word "suffering" in my original remark something much different from the ripples of minor frustration and petty annoyance that every human being experiences moment by moment in daily activity. I had meant the deep suffering I saw in my students—chronic dissatisfaction, boredom, discontent, lack of fulfillment, incompletion, the sense that something critically important is missing in their lives, unhappiness, depression, despair, the yearning and ache that so many of them sought to escape in parties, sex, alcohol, drugs, sleep, self-mutilation, and what Krishnamurti calls "feeble amusements."

For me that suffering had ended.

For good.

"I have no history of mental illness, clinical depression, or panic attack as so many in the sangha do," I reported in my journal. "I have never taken antidepressant medication and I have never consulted a therapist nor ever thought I needed one."

"You have told me some things about your early life and your wild years," the master replied. "Don't you think in retrospect that at times you might have benefited from counseling or from therapy?"

No.

I did not see myself as a person ever in need of that kind of professional help.

I do not.

But, hey, I was not dead yet, anything could happen, and I could not rule it out. I had family and countless friends who benefited from counseling and from therapy and prescription. 

"I sought out the master," I said in my journal, "because my friend Billy said I needed a teacher."

I felt almost immediately that sitting helped me—teacher, too, and sangha.

Yes.

That is why I stayed.

"You came on Billy's advice?" the master asked.

Yes.

"Didn't you feel as if you needed a teacher?"

No.

No, I write now as I edit this book, no, I did not feel I needed a teacher, no, not at all until Billy suggested that I did; but after he had said so, I did—then, immediately, I, too, felt that I did. I trusted Billy. I still do. He was right. Instruction helped me. The master helped me.

Kudo.

"Doesn't sitting, having a teacher, and practicing with the sangha still help you?"

Yes.

Sitting, teacher, and sangha helped me very much.

Yes.

I had said so many times.

Yes.

"Why are you here?"

The master had asked me that question more than once in dokusan.

Hmm.

"I don't know why," I said in my journal.

I tried to explain.

"I want to do what I can to foster nonviolence, kindness, and generosity."

Tao.

The practice and the fixed standard that the master provided helped me do this.

Yes.

I felt it did.

"Don't you want to wake up?" the master asked.

"Want"—

No.

I felt no "want" like that.

Should I?

I felt I had everything I needed.

This.

This.

Until the master asked this question I would have said that I did not want anything. But if pushed I supposed I could say I wanted the virtues we named and recited in the precepts and vows.

Was this what the master meant?

Not even thirty years earlier when I first stepped onto the path had I any desire to "wake up" and today I had still no desire to wake up—none at all—unless my waking up would help me to foster nonviolence, mercy, and kindness.

Would my waking up help me to stop the killing?

To end war?

To be honest I did feel awake—at least compared to the man I once had been. But I understood, too, what the master meant by our having to wake up every instant, moment after moment, in order to be fully present in the present, and of course I wanted that; that, obviously, would help me help others. From the master I had learned to sit and how better to let go; and that had helped me more than I could say; but I had not come to Heartmind and to the master because I suffered and sought an end to my suffering. That had not been my motive.

"I don't understand what you get out of it," Ruth tells me often.

"I don't either," I said in my journal.

"Is getting something out of it why we practice?" the master asked.

My point exactly and yet—

"When Zen is thoroughly understood absolute peace of mind is attained and a man lives as he ought to live."

D.T. Suzuki.

"What more may we hope?" Suzuki asks.

His question and the master's were rhetorical; but bodhisattvas, it seemed, would perhaps not hear them so. Each month on the night of the full moon in Ryaku Fusatsu the master asked us if we would receive and maintain the ten prohibitory precepts and the three pure precepts. Kneeling we promised—one precept at a time—to be unselfish, nonviolent, honest, frugal, modest, and kind, and in general to do no harm, to do good, and to serve all beings.

In this way each precept is conferred.

Truth.

Peace.

Love.

"Will you receive and maintain this precept?" the master asked.

"Yes, I will," in unison each of us answered.

Is getting something out of it why we practice?

What more may we hope?

"May all beings understand fully the wisdom of the teaching and the Way and, free from hindrance, may all beings support harmony in the community."

Every morning the bodhisattvas pray.

"May all beings embody the great Way, resolving to awaken!"

I tried.

The Bob I am today, I wrote in my journal for lack of anything better to say, rereads, evaluates, and edits the Bob I was yesterday, and the Bob I was the day before that, and the day before that, and the Bob I am now edits the Bob I was just a few seconds ago, and now this Bob even newer still edits Bob and Bob and Bob and Bob and the red red robin goes bob bob bobbin along.

"How about giving this up?" asked the master.

Editing?

Oof!

I had tried before to write in my journal and to submit it each week without editing but to do so was for me extremely difficult. The scholastic habit developed over a lifetime of writing and editing died hard and on the rare occasion when I had been able to submit to the master my journal unedited I often found myself criticized and even attacked for expressing what many times I myself recognized as an "inverted view," the term, I gathered, for Buddhist heresy, though I was not sure the concept of heresy even existed in Buddhism, or as Buddhist "error" or misunderstanding, or as politically incorrect, or more often as an observation or remark likely to provoke the master and which I could easily have rewritten or deleted; and so the usual result was a muddle, part "first thought best thought," in Jack Kerouac's mot, and part polished document. Even now as I write this account of my experience and practice with the master and the sangha at Heartmind I remain confused about the purpose of the practice journal and feel certain that in my case at least it was not only ineffective but also in fact counterproductive and unnecessarily provocative.

Yes.

I felt about the journal just as I felt about student evaluations of me in my job.

Yes.

They were counterproductive.

To what—

Mutual respect? Cooperation?

Harmony?

Instruction? Learning? Understanding? Reason?

Love?

All of the above.

Yes.

"I require the journal," the master had told me on more than several occasions, "because students do not communicate with me otherwise and I need a way of finding out what is going on in their lives and what they feel and think."

"Why don't you just wait until students tell you what they need to tell you?" I had inquired.

I was curious.

"Or until they ask of you what they need to know?"

"They're afraid of me!" the master had exclaimed.

Fear.

This was true for some of the students at the temple. They felt intimidated—but although the master had more than once either stated or implied that this was also true of me it simply was not so. I did wonder why the master did not try harder to appear less scary to his students, the new ones in particular, but then maybe the master did try and just did not know how. Students of Suzuki and Katagiri had remarked that, although both teachers were little men, when students were in their presence both seemed big. Kudo on the other hand was a very big man and more than once it had occurred to me that as a teacher he might have found it useful to seem small—but then at six feet three and two sixty how might the master accomplish that?

I wondered.

Billy and I both had worked to develop sophisticated academic tactics by which we tempted students, lured them, seduced them, intrigued them, drew them in, engaged them.

Cunning.

Art.

In the master I had seen nothing comparable.

Just the opposite.

Alas—

"They're afraid of me!"

Had the master ever asked himself why?

I did wonder but—

Forward.