169 Upaya

In his dharma talk on the second Sunday of October the master had chosen to speak on a text from "Shobogenzo," one fascicle on the relationship between teacher and student, abbot and monk, master and disciple. In it Dogen urges teachers not to slap and to scold and to do so if they must only in compassion and not in anger. Dogen's defense of such tactics in exceptional cases is an explanation of what a few years ago might have been called tough love. That rationale is not sophisticated. It is the same rationale that both parents and school teachers offered sixty years ago in defense of corporal punishment—for using a paddle, for example, and spanking children. If you spare the rod you spoil the child. Dogen advises a teacher to wait until the anger subsides before he speaks or acts.

In his explication of the text the master explained that for a variety of reasons he had years ago given up using the Zen stick, the "kyosaku," to strike students; but he defended as consistent with Dogen's teaching his use of the language and the tone that others and I considered abusive.

"I correct students only in compassion," the master said. "Never in anger."

I was instantly dubious.

I had no doubt that the master wanted and wished this to be true. But it seemed to me a silly assertion, one contradicted both by my own observation and by the testimony of many others. I had heard at least dozen different people at the temple relate anecdotes of times they had been the object of or witness to displays of the master's anger. The master himself had said many times in public and had only recently told me again that anger had been an issue for him his entire life. In the memoir of their training together at a monastery in Japan his friend David Chadwick had portrayed Kudo—Norman in the book—as a man often angry and annoyed.

The master paused in his lecture.

We waited.

It seemed that now perhaps even the master himself questioned the veracity of the claim he had just made. Only after several seconds did he continue and then it was to draw a distintinction between anger and annoyance.

"I never speak or act in anger," the master said again.

He paused.

"But I do speak and act from annoyance."

Hm.

A fine distinction, I thought, one the master had not permitted me.

Double standard.

The master offered several examples of incidents which had annoyed him—students behaving improperly, breaches of temple etiquette, mistakes in the ritual forms, carelessness in the rites and ceremonies—and had evoked in him "harsh" words. The master compared himself, as Dogen had in the text, to a parent and his students to children.

Ugh.

This analogy I had always considered unfortunate.

I still do.

Often there were times, the master explained, when it was necessary for him to reprimand sharply, curtly, brusquely, in order to correct and to protect the student, like the child, from harm and to get his or her attention and to wake the student up. It was obvious from the subject of his talk and from his remarks, I thought, that the master had been thinking some more about the allegations of arrogance and anger and of emotional and verbal abuse. His talk seemed to me one part exploration, one part consideration, one part defense of self.

We students were to understand, the master suggested, that our teacher occasionally behaved this way only for our own good. The master told a story he had been told by his teacher Katagiri, whose own master, annoyed one day, intended to strike with his stick every monk in the zendo; but old and feeble from cancer he had been unable to finish what he had planned and begun to do.

"I never loved him more!" Katagiri had told Kudo.

I was touched.

The intended analogy and its implication were clear.

Our master, too, he implied, said and did only what he had to say and do in order to instruct and correct us.

"Skillful means," now the master called it. "Upaya."

Ugh.

It was "skillful means" that Dogen recommended and urged in the text the master had read and explained in his talk, and the term is commonplace in Buddhist literature, but it was a term that I would have applied only in irony to the rude interruptions and crude sarcasm, mockery, ridicule, and harangue that I had first seen the master employ with other students and had only later felt and experienced myself. It made me feel slightly sick to my stomach to hear the master apply the term "skillful means" to himself and to his methods; and my stomach turned again as I recalled and recorded the moment in my journal.

But as a child I had been whipped every day by my father—so I remember—and insulted; and more than once I had heard much the same defense from him. My father, too, I had forgiven and loved, but neither as a child nor as an adult did I nor would I ever condone his terrible whippings and cruel epithets.

Perhaps the other common translation of "upaya" would have been to me more palatable.

"Expedient means."

Hmm.

This parental conduct and intention seemed intrinsic to the relationship between teacher and student in Zen Buddhism and, yes, also, apparently, the condescension and arrogance that seemed necessarily to go with it. This reduction of student to child and elevation of priest to parent was one of the first things I had noticed about the temple and about relations between teacher and student there—the more so in sesshin—and one of the first things that bothered me.

It still did.

It was present, too, in Christianity in the language of "heavenly father" and of priest, "father," and children and in the image of good "shepherd" and "sheep." To me it seemed an incongruous analogy given the renunciation of family by both Siddhartha and Jesus and their recommendation, insistence, and even demand that their disciples do the same. The master, too, had divorced his wife, he had told us students, and he had by his own admission for years left the care and the parenting of his daughter solely to her mother.

Fetter.

I remembered, too, the master's impatience with me.

"You always walk in here acting like we're equals," the master had complained.

Agreed.

But there were times, I had to admit, that I, too, did feel I was a kind of parent to some of the younger students of my own, those only sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, who had been whirled and spun crazily out of their own dysfunctional families and had then landed for a few hours a week in my college writing classes; and my friend Billy had tried to explain to me once how the renunciation of family was just the first step towards love of the whole human family. Yet that love seemed quite different from imagining oneself a "parent" of all humankind; and I did not see myself ever as the parent of my older students, not even those in their mid-twenties, and certainly not those older still.

No.

To be simply a teacher was more than enough for me.

A responsible friend.

Now the master had concluded his remarks and he invited questions.

Charles put his palms together in gassho. He wanted to know more about the master's decision to give up the stick. Charles suggested that the possibility of lawsuits might have been a factor. He wondered if the master missed the stick the way a parent or a school teacher might miss the liberty to spank. 

"Do you feel limited?" Charles asked.

"Do I seem limited?" the master replied visibly bristling.

Whoa!

How quickly the master could take offense!

Pissed.

Charles misunderstood and he restated his question.

"I mean as a teacher do you feel restricted by not using the stick?"

"Do I seem restricted to you?" asked the master.

Indignant.

Charles thought a moment.

Too long.

"Do I?" the master insisted.

He scowled.

"No," Charles conceded.

"I've slapped you, haven't I?" the master asked.

He waited.

It was clear to everyone that the master was speaking metaphorically.

"Yes."

"I've slapped you more than once, haven't I?"

"Yes."

"Many times?" the master persisted.

"Yes."

"Am I limited?"

"No."

This question of the difference or lack of difference between metaphor and fact had come up many times at the temple. It was a distinction that seemed crucial to me. Had Bodhidharma cut off his own eyelids or was the tale no more than legend? Had Huiko cut off his arm? Yes, that seemed to be fact. Had Nananda cut off hers? The master had insisted that she had and the master would not concede that his assertion was metaphor. Did it matter? To me it did. Nananda still had both of her arms. Had Gutei cut off a boy's finger to teach him a lesson or was this tale also not history but parable? To me the difference did matter. Dean had explained in his dharma talk how the master had more than once cut off Dean's right index finger. This was possible only as metaphor and Dean had so intended it.

Had the master slapped Charles?

Had he?

Both the master and Charles agreed that he had.

"Yes."

But the master had never struck Charles.

No.

Not really.

Did it matter?

Yes.

To me it did.

Was there any difference?

Yes.

To me an important one.

But the master and I had already been over this road.

Forward.