My conflict with the master over my alleged dishonesty and cowardice having now nearly dissipated, I struggled to formulate questions about my practice for our biweekly private meeting before zazen on Tuesday. The master seemed in an uncharacteristic mood. Initially—for only a minute or two—he appeared sober, stern, and serious when he first sat down after offering incense but he then appeared self-conscious and slightly uncomfortable and, for reasons I didn't know or understand, throughout our conversation he smiled and grinned sheepishly and blushed readily and often.
I did not know what this was all about.
I ignored it.
I asked him what he meant by students blaming him for their inability to practice. I told him that I had never heard people at the temple blame him for their problems. The master explained that a former student had told him she'd left the temple because of his profanity.
This reason the master considered specious.
"We cannot avoid hearing others say things we do not like," he said. "We cannot forbid others from using words we would rather not hear."
In his voice I heard impatience.
Exasperation.
"They will use them anyway!"
The master paused to collect his thoughts.
I waited.
"That's unrealistic!" the master added. "It's going to happen."
I waited.
"Sooner or later we're going to hear them."
The master seemed to be offering a defense of his own profanity. His own use of vulgar language, the master seemed to suggest, presented an opportunity for members of the sangha to practice tolerance and acceptance.
I wondered.
This seemed to be an important issue for him.
I listened.
"Students look for flaws in their teachers," said the master, "and especially in this country it seems to me that if and when students do find flaws in their teacher students are unforgiving."
The master mentioned his friend Sosan Davis, the priest at a sister temple who two years earlier had begun and continued a sexual relationship with one of his students, a member of the sangha, a married woman. Davis, too, had been married, and he was the father of young children. He had been discovered and the affair exposed. Both the woman and he had confessed, apologized, and abased themselves. Davis had been impeached, he had resigned from his position as priest, and he had asked publicly to be forgiven by the many people he had betrayed.
But this had not happened.
"They would not forgive!" the master explained. "No way!"
No.
He shook his head slowly, sadly, no, no—
No.
"No way."
The priest should have been forgiven, the master believed.
"The man had been contrite, he had done enough."
I was silent.
Breath—
Breath—
Breath—
I asked the master what he had meant by "practice issues," the supposed subject of our practice group meetings. It seemed to me that people simply talked about the conflict they felt in job and family.
"They all just talk about what makes them unhappy," I said. "Is that what you want us to talk about? Is that the subject of our group meetings—what makes us unhappy?"
"Unhappiness is what brings people here to the temple," the master said. "They come because they suffer. That is what moved the Buddha to the path and that is what moves others to the path."
I listened.
"They're unhappy and they want to know why and they want to know how to end their suffering."
The master paused.
I waited.
"Conflict is an opportunity to practice, and to deepen practice, and to deepen our understanding of ourselves and of life."
Yes.
That I understood.
Yes but—
What had moved me to the path?
Curiosity.
What had moved me to the temple?
Billy.
Practice issues came up constantly for the master, too, he explained. Living now in the same space with Eleanor, he said, presented him with special personal challenges. This much in abstract and general terms the master had told all of us in our practice group meeting on Sunday. Now the master said that sexuality had always been an issue for him and that now it had come somewhat unexpectedly into his life and his practice again. The master spoke of his sexual life casually, openly, naturally, comfortably, as any man might broach this topic with a friend.
"Sexuality arises for me in visual images," the master said. "That is just how it comes up for me and always has and now that I share the same intimate living space with this beautiful young woman I have been presented with new challenges."
The master thought for a moment.
"It's all mental," the master said. "It's just a new challenge for me and a new opportunity for me to practice."
The master explained that in practice things come up, conflicts, sorrows, and ethical dilemmas arising from student efforts to follow the precepts.
"No one can stand up straight and follow the precepts and live upright all the time," the master said, "not my teacher, not you, not me, not anyone."
I nodded.
This was the claim my Christian students so often made of Jesus.
Without sin.
Perfect.
"No one can do that," said the master.
"I know that," I said, "but we can try all the time."
"Yes," the master said, "we try and we fail because the self, the ego, is too powerful and in spite of our good intention and our best effort again and again we act only in our own interest."
Hmm.
I wondered about the word "only."
"Yes," I said.
"I've failed," he said and paused. "I've failed many times."
"Me too," I said.
Together we thought about this.
He returned to the topic of my conflict with him and what I had said at the practice group meeting in response to Nikki's question about whether I had acknowledged that my problem was within me myself or whether I still thought the master was wrong. I had wondered if the master would mention this remark in our meeting tonight.
"You said—" began the master.
I interrupted.
"You were wrong," I said.
The master smiled.
I smiled.
"No one asked me what I thought," the master said.
I laughed.
"They were certain they already knew your opinion," I said.
He smiled.
The master didn't pursue the topic.
He explained in general that when he probed and pushed a student to an uncomfortable place it was to encourage the student to explore an area of the self the student did not necessarily want to know—an intention I had never doubted—and that as a teacher he himself had to be willing to go with the student and to be there with him. But I was not sure that I had really seen such a willingness in the master. I wanted to, I hoped I would, but I knew the master could be curt, dismissive, and cold.
That I had seen.
"I thought you were too comfortable, too smooth," the master said, "and it wasn't credible so I pushed you."
He paused.
"But when I pushed you it was no picnic for me either!" the master exclaimed.
As he uttered his last half dozen words he raised his voice and made an exaggerated and comic face that communicated in a goofy way how difficult and perhaps even painful our email correspondence and disagreement had been for him, too. It was an affectionate and conciliatory gesture.
"I know that," I said.
The master leaned forward in his chair, towards me, and made another funny face.
"I wouldn't call it fun!" he added.
I laughed.
"No," I said.
"Anything else?" he asked.
"Our conflict did not come up when I sat," I explained, "although I always expected it to; and on the rare occasion when it did I was able just to let it go like I did everything else; instead it bothers me at other times—in the car on my way to work and then again in the car on my way back home."
"You have a strong home practice," he said, "and zazen is the perfect container for what ailed you. There are things you can do to take your mind off of the conflict on your drive to and from work."
Curious I waited.
"I listen to the radio," he said.
"Oh."
Our talk was over.
We bowed and I walked downstairs to light the altar in the zendo. At 6:55 I hit the han, at 7:00 I rang the inkin, at 7:40 I walked ten minutes, at 8:20 we chanted the "Fukanzazengi," and at 8:30 when I drove home the thunderstorm and rain everyone had been expecting for several days was again delayed so I turned on the air conditioning in the pickup for my ten-minute drive home. The night was windy but the air still humid, sticky, and warm.
Too comfortable?
Yes.
I had felt comfortable in my practice.
Too smooth?
I had never been described that way before. I could not remember ever wanting to be smooth.
Not credible?
Not credible?
Jesus Christ!
I inhaled, deeply, and exhaled, slowly, through my pursed lips, smiled, just a half.
Then with my right index finger I punched on the radio.
You can’t always get
What you want
You can’t always get
What you want
You can’t always get
What you want
My wife was sitting on the couch, the television on mute, as she read one of her many slim volumes of contemporary poetry. As usual she was curious about what had transpired. I always told Ruth everything about my practice at the temple and my relationship with the master.
"Tell me."
"Nothing," I said. "It was all pretty uneventful."
"Come on," she wheedled.
I laughed.
I offered her the short version of what I have written here.
Time passed.
No comments:
Post a Comment