163 Pooped

When I arrived at the temple at 6:00, I met Jane just leaving for home after balancing the books, her temple job, and she said the master was expecting me and that I should just go right on upstairs to his room. I stopped first at the main altar in the buddha hall; there I removed from its blue cloth envelope lined with purple satin my rakusu, the blue cloth bib that I had sewn in practice and preparation for my lay ordination, and then I balanced my folded rakusu on my head in the ritual gesture that looked silly to me the first few times I had seen others do it. I put my palms together in gassho and recited three times silently to myself the robe verse I had committed to memory.

How great the robe of liberation

A formless field of merit!

Wrapping ourselves in Buddha's teaching

We free all beings.

How great the robe of liberation

A formless field of merit!

Wrapping ourselves in Buddha's teaching

We free all beings.

How great the robe of liberation

A formless field of merit!

Wrapping ourselves in Buddha's teaching

We free all beings.

Had I sat my regular forty minutes at home that morning—I hadn't—I would have recited the robe verse three times then and been required to recite it only once now at the temple. When I finished, I removed my rakusu from my head, unfolded it, and stuck my head through its opening so that hanging from its straps my rakusu covered my lower chest and upper belly nearly down to my navel.

Then up the stairs I went.

The master's beautiful, big, white dog Sammy was waiting for me on the landing halfway up, wagging his tail. I caressed his head and stopped to rub him a little behind each ear.

"Hi, Sammy," I said.

The door to the master's room was open.

"Hi, Bob."

"Hi, Kudo."

His palms together in gassho, his fingertips at the level of his lips, my hands the same, we bowed from our waists in the ritual gesture of greeting and honor now familiar to me.

"Enter."

The master invited me into his tiny room.

I smiled.

He had arranged two chairs facing each other only a few feet apart and he asked me to sit down in the chair furthest from the door. The master, both serious and amused, had explained to me and to the sangha more than once that in private conference he always placed his own chair between his student and the door to make it difficult if not impossible for a student under duress to bolt for the door and to flee. On this day I felt a slight nervousness. I had no idea how I might respond if the master repeated the accusations of dishonesty and cowardice he had made in my journal and in our previous private conferences.

I hoped it would not come to that.

If it did I wondered if his namecalling would evoke in me the same reactions as before—confusion, curiosity, intense curiosity, doubt, doubt in him. To me it seemed certainly possible that either one of us or both might find it necessary to end our relationship.

The morning months before when I had first asked the master about his verbal abuse he had been obviously annoyed and at first denied even that it was abuse; later he defended it as Zen pedagogy—it was just his "way" of teaching—but in retrospect it seemed to me that it was my question about his habitual verbal abuse that first provoked the master and began the conflict which over the past eight months had preoccupied me in my moments of private reflection as I drove west on Maple to work in the morning or back home in the afternoon or as I lay in my bed at night before sleep; yes, and often when I stirred and awoke in bed long after midnight the master was in my thoughts for the few minutes before I dozed off again.

Ugh.

Yet for some reason this conflict did not often come up for me during zazen and did not trouble me then on the rare occasion when it did. There were times in zazen when I expected the conflict to arise but it did not, and I did not know why, and when it did I just returned to my breath as the master had taught me.

I let it go.

Now in the dim hush of his room the master offered a green stick of incense at the altar on his dresser before he sat. Sitting on small sturdy chairs, our palms together in gassho, our knees only two feet apart, to each other again we bowed. In my email I had cited temple fatigue as the reason for my decision and the master began by asking me about that.

"Temple fatigue?"

"Yes."

"That's new to me," the master said.

He looked disgusted.

"What's that mean?" he asked.

In the past twelve months as ino, I explained, I had attended every temple event except for the two-day sesshin I had missed so that I could attend to my wife immediately following her auto accident and I felt that I had neglected my obligations both at work and at home.

"I just feel tired," I said.

He was silent.

"Pooped."

The master was inquisitive.

Both Edward and Dean had also attended every temple event over the past year, he said, and they had not complained of temple fatigue nor had they reduced their practice commitments. The master asked why I had initially agreed to be ino for yet another term if I felt that way.

"Explain."

I remained silent for a moment or two while I thought.

Hmm.

I hardly knew myself.

"To please you," I said finally—an honest answer.

On another occasion, confused by and tired of his tactics, I had agreed that I had been—in his words—"pissed off"; but the truth was that his insults in my journal had evoked in me not anger but confusion. It had been to please him that I had conceded, after twenty minutes of his interruptions, insults, mockery, and bullying, that, yes, all right, if he insisted, then I had been angry with him about the verbally abusive comments he had written in my journal.

"Then that was chickenshit!" the master had exclaimed.

Now would he say the same?

I wondered.

I had no interest whatsoever in participating in such dialogue; and recalling it and recording it here now simply makes me sad. The master had no interest, he insisted, in reason, which he considered worthless, as he had said many times, except in the building of literal—not metaphorical—bridges. Insight and wisdom, he said, could be taught and learned only by intuition. It was in "trusting his gut," the master had explained, that he interrupted student speakers, confronted them, contradicted them, mocked them, ridiculed them, and called them names. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he had been right, the master always added, to trust his gut. When I had suggested in a previous conference that he make a greater effort to listen to his students and to me, to exercise greater patience and try to be reasonable, the master had scoffed.

"I trust my gut!"

This issue arose frequently in my classes and my students regularly defended their impulsive interruptions, their passions, sarcasm, curses, and epithets just the master did. They simply said what they felt when they felt it they claimed. Hey, when they heard bullshit, they boasted, they called it bullshit. Through study and practice I had come to prefer forbearance, patience, attentive listening, and reason; and so here I was again present for yet another talk when in fact it was less talk with the master that I wanted and felt I needed. A favorite remark of Jesus had begun to bob now and then to the surface of my mind.

When ye come into an house, salute it, and if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it, but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you, and whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city shake off the dust of your feet.

"To please you."

I waited.

The master nodded.

Ah!

Forward.

The master and I briefly discussed the personal problems both physical and mental which for the past six months had made it sometimes impossible for the junior ino to assist me with my duties at the temple. The master assured me that I did not have to be ino again, and he understood, he said, that it was a demanding temple job. The master suggested that I assume a lesser job this term—cleaning the altars, perhaps, or arranging the bouquets—and he said that I did not have to perform any job at all this term if I so preferred.

I was relieved.

Encouraged by his conciliatory gesture I agreed to do the altars.

"Good."