170 Shit

I was curious about another issue and when the master invited other questions I raised my hands in gassho.

"Yes?"

"I'm curious about using profanity in the temple," I said, "the words 'shit' and 'fuck' for example."

I explained that there had been a short period a couple of years prior when it seemed that the master was using the word "fuck" a lot in dharma talks, and in dharma study, and also in casual conversation; and that it had seemed to me contagious, and that soon others, too, persons I had not heard employ the word before, were using the word "fuck"—Alison had used it, Irene used it, Sally used it, Kent used it, and then a few weeks ago, I explained, Eleanor had used the word "fuck" a dozen times or more in her dharma talk. I wondered about the use of such language in the temple, I said, and I wondered what the master thought about it.

"Should we use the words 'shit' and 'fuck' in the temple just any old time we fucking feel like it?" I inquired.

"Why not?" the master asked.

He sounded pissed.

Hm.

"That's my question," I said.

"Why not?" the master asked again apparently irritated. "I'm asking you!"

I thought for a moment.

It had been the master's opinion I was interested in. Taboo language was a subject I had to address once or more every quarter in each of my classes. There were two reasons I did not want my students to use taboo language casually, thoughtlessly. One, there were always two or three people present who for moral or religious reasons found it objectionable. Under pressure from the majority of their peers they had always surrendered, eventually, but it sometimes required an hour or two of discussion and debate. Two—and by far the reason more important—my students often preferred to cuss so they did not have to think. It was simple self-indulgence. In our analysis of almost any important philosophical, social, or psychological issue I could predict that at least one student would answer "That's bullshit!" or "That's a bunch of fucking bullshit!" to the question "Why?" They liked the word "bullshit" for the same reason they liked the word "evil"—it ended analysis so they didn't have to think. Why did hijackers crash airplanes into the World Trade Center? They're evil! No further investigation necessary. Are women denied equal rights and opportunities? That's bullshit! No further consideration required. The various forms of "shit" and "fuck" were aids to the inarticulate. They closed—indeed slammed shut and locked—doors to curiosity, patience, and reason. But this argument was the more complex of the two and I knew from our correspondence and conversation that the master dismissed both intellectual curiosity and reason out of hand.

I figured I'd try the simpler reason first and see what happened.       

"Because some people find it offensive?" I suggested.

"It's just a word," the master said. "There are no good words and no bad words."

The master appeared to be mildly offended by my question still.

"Just words," he added.

The master knew that I knew his position on this issue, we had discussed it more than once, and that we had no major disagreement about it, but my curiosity about it had arisen for me again just as it had for many old liberals troubled by the apparently bottomless descent of public discourse to new depths of vulgarity. I just wanted to hear the master talk about it. I knew others at the temple had questions about it, too, and the text for the day and the subject of the master's talk had seemed the perfect opportunity to inquire.

"Zen Buddhism is no wimpy religion!" the master now declared.

People laughed.

"It's not niiice," the master whined.

Mocked.

People laughed.

I nodded.

"People want their religion and their world always to be happy and niiice and their lives to be lived in an ocean of perfect and beautiful pearls," the master said. "But the universe is not like that—it contains both pearls and shit and you can drown in the shit," he explained, "and you can also drown in the pearls. Most of my students already know of the danger of shit," the master added, "so often I must assume the responsibility of warning them about the danger of pearls."

The master ran his familiar riff on "nice" and "shit." He retold the story of the Zen master whose disciple had asked, "What is Buddha?" The master had answered, "Dried shit stick." It was one of the master's favorite anecdotes and I had heard him tell it at least twenty times, probably more. At each telling he always explained that the shit stick served the monks in the same way corn cobs once served midwestern farmers in their outhouses before the invention of toilet paper. Now with this retelling for several minutes the master digressed to discuss the pros and cons of various brands of toilet paper—fluffy and soft and recycled and sturdy and thin—and to explain the merit of the cheap industrial brand he purchased for the temple. This was only the first of a series of personal anecdotes literally about shit. When the master had concluded, Eleanor raised her hands palm to palm for permission to speak.

"Yes?"

"I don't think there are bad words," Eleanor said like an echo.

Eleanor looked across the room to me.

"There are just bad ways of using words. If certain people don't like certain words, they should simply excuse themselves and leave the room where they are being used or even leave the temple if they feel they must."

Eleanor waited.

I nodded in understanding.

"My therapist told me I need to tell more people more often to just fuck off!" she said. "I agree with her, I think she was right, and I have and I do and I think I am much the better for it!"

For a moment I thought Eleanor was going to tell me personally right there and then to fuck off.

She did not.

She just met my gaze with an even, level gaze of her own.

My own personal opinion was that no one needed to tell more people more often to fuck off—just the opposite in fact. For a minute or two, yes, of course it might feel good to have vented, but what real good could it do? It was just an indulgence, no more. What was the real origin of such an impulse, I wondered, and who were the people who had evoked it in Eleanor and what had they done to persuade Eleanor to address them so? It had been less than two years since I had told my friend John to fuck off—twice—and in retrospect it was hard to see how my curses had accomplished anything other than inarticulate release. Now I thought my silence would have been better, but at the time I could not resist the crude and selfish desire to somehow have the last word.

It was around this same time and also in order to have the last word on the very same issue, the war in Iraq, that another correspondent of mine had sent me an email with this subject line:

"Eat shit and die!"

No.

I did not believe that we needed to tell more people more often to fuck off; nor did I believe that people ever needed to be told to fuck off; nor did I believe that Eleanor, though I knew almost nothing about her personal situation, would gain any lasting and real benefit from telling people so; nor, did I believe, would they. What possible good could it do? But I didn't want to play point counterpoint and there was not time now seriously to explore the issue. Eleanor and the master were behaving as if they believed they had no more to learn of the subject.

But others present had questions.

"Isn't the word 'fuck' always bad?" asked Steve.

"Not in my opinion!" the master sternly replied.

The master had puffed himself up in the way so familiar to me.

He sounded defiant.

"Thank you," said Steve politely as he put his palms together.

He bowed.

I grinned at his reply and I laugh remembering it as I edit and tinker with my text.

Dean had his hands up palm to palm.

"Yes?" asked the master.

"I think it's bad around children," Dean said.

"In that situation it's not appropriate!" the master declared.

"No," Dean agreed.

"That's different!" the master exclaimed still clearly annoyed.

Different—

How?

I wondered—

I was curious about the master's reasons for believing so and I would have enjoyed hearing him explain. It seemed to me that the reasons for avoiding such language around children were little different from the reasons for avoiding such language around adults—but the master's dismissive tone clearly implied that the reasons for such an exception were so obvious that they needed no explanation. It seemed now that the master had grown impatient and weary of the subject. He had adopted the habitual manner that three years earlier had led Daly to complain that the master used his position as moderator of group discussion as a bully pulpit. By his body language, by his demeanor, by his peremptory tone, the master had made it clear that he was displeased with much if not all of what he had heard; indeed it felt to me as if the master were specifically quite displeased with me personally for even asking the question and that he believed the discussion was over.

The master first frowned and then, just acting, he glowered.

"Sometimes the assholes need to be told they're fucking assholes!" the master declared.

Eleanor laughed and then others laughed, too.

I laughed.

But I could not agree with this statement either although I certainly believed that people sometimes needed to be told what they did not want to hear and also that there were times when it seemed to be me who had to tell them and, yes, of course, sometimes when it was me who had to be told. It had been many years, however, since I had called somebody an asshole either to his face or behind his back and it was not a name I imagined myself ever calling a person to his face in the future. I now regretted those times in my past. I would take them all back if only I could, I thought, and apologize. I had just gotten old, I guessed, and kind of old-fashioned. It was rare that I vented and when I did I repented. Too many times in my life I had experienced and witnessed how taboo language—profanity, obscenity, vulgarity—degraded rational discourse and dragged everybody down. I now tried hard to be reasonable, so hard old friends would hardly know me. I believed in reason and in the effort to reason. There were still many times of stress and conflict when the old epithets and expletives—"what a fucking asshole"—arose in my mind and teased and tempted me to speak or to write them but it was now increasingly infrequent that I did. Instead I watched them appear and dissolve, appear and dissolve, appear and dissolve, and there was no question that I felt a happier man for it. This silent observation of my own mind was one of the things I had practiced daily for thirty years—as I write I hear the master's objection to my use of the word "practice"—and it seemed unlikely that at the master's urging or example I would now surrender to impulse and begin telling the assholes to fuck off or that I would ever again believe as I once did that such behavior was somehow more honest and more brave than my quiet reflection and curiosity about the origin of those words in my mind and the temptation to use them in my heart. But just as I had wondered only a few minutes earlier if Eleanor was about to tell me to fuck off I wondered now if the master thought I needed to be told I was an asshole. Did I have this experience to look forward to at my next private meeting with him? "You sanctimonious prick!" I could imagine him saying to me. Half grinning, half glowering, to me he did look mildly pissed even still as he closed his text and brought his hands together in gassho.

The doan—Charles today—struck the rim of the keisu, the big bowl, with the baton and, our hands raised palm to palm in gassho, we all recited together the universal dedication and the transfer of merit.

May this merit extend universally to all so that we together with all beings realize the Buddha Way.

Then the master slowly untied his legs and got up carefully from his cushion, he softly brushed off his mat, he fluffed up his zafu, he bowed to the buddha and to the sangha, then he walked the five steps to the bowing mat in front of the main altar to offer his three prostrations—because of his sore knees and sore leg today he was able to perform only standing bows—and, before the final two bells on the inkin and we adjourned, together the sangha and the master recited the four vows.

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them. Buddha's Way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it.

We fourteen students—"practitioners" the master often called us—stacked our black mats and black cushions neatly in the corner of the buddha hall, then stacked our sutra books neatly on the bottom shelf of the built-in whatnot, extinguished the three candles on the two altars, and repaired to the kitchen for informal conversation and the usual pastry and our cups of hot coffee or tea.

The kitchen conversation was about dogs.

The master and Eleanor planned to visit the Humane Society in the morning to find a second dog for the temple. To the smiles, chuckles, and laughter of the six or eight people in the kitchen the master and Eleanor told story after story about temple dogs and their pissing in temples to mark their territory. Alison's dog had one day lifted its leg and pissed on the main altar, Nananda's dog had pissed on Nananda's robe, Kent's little dog had regularly pissed and left puddles of piss in the buddha hall, and recently, Eleanor explained, to mark its territory at Laugh Out Loud in Philadelphia the new dog there had been pissing all over the temple. Dogs will be dogs, the master concluded, laughing, and the master loved dogs, often more than people, I had heard him say and I had come to believe, dogs definitely more than children. I was still thinking of taboo language. It was the discussion of taboo language following the dharma talk that had inspired the topic in the kitchen. I thought of my mother and father. I had never heard my mother cuss, ever, and my father only rarely and even then only mildly.

"Damn it!" Dad might say under his breath once in a blue moon.

"My stars!" Mom might exclaim. "Dear me!" Or—

"For goodness' sake!"

To my knowledge neither of my parents had ever spoken the word "fuck" nor—I would bet—ever wanted to. To my father the people who so casually uttered the dirty words "fuck" and "shit" and "asshole" in a temple would have seemed little better than dogs, pissing to mark their territory with the odor of their anger, unhappiness, and unrest and also with their arrogance and indifference to the sensitivities of the fastidious, here a "shit," there a "fuck," everywhere a "shit fuck." To my father, I knew, to use the word "fuck" was to not give a damn, to not care, to piss on the world. I had heard the master cuss the computer, "motherfucker," and the presumptuous and condescending note, "shit," that the anonymous Christian had left in his mailbox, and the Christian who wrote it, "asshole," and on too many other similar occasions of irritation, "shit," and annoyance, "fuck," to enumerate. I'd heard him cuss and swear in the buddha hall, cuss in the kitchen, swear in his dharma talk, cuss in dharma study, and swear in the backyard at the picnic table, and dozens of times in both anger, "fuck," and fun, "shit," I had heard him cuss and piss on the name of sweet Jesus, and, well—

Why not?

I was still thinking about all this, and of the reverence I remembered in the church of my youth, when I arrived at the temple on Tuesday evening for zazen. I turned on the porch light and the table lamp and the light in the zendo and I checked the mats and the cushions. I had just sat down on the bench in the buddha hall—the new big white temple dog Buddy checking me out—when the master came down the stairs and stopped to talk. The master had obviously been thinking of the topic on Sunday, too. He bowed and I bowed and we said hello and then for my benefit the master puffed himself up in the manner to which I had become accustomed and put on the stern face of moral and religious authority.

"I will not censor the language people use in this temple," the master said.

"I understand your position," I said.

"We have talked about this issue before," he continued.

"Yes."

"There will be no further discussion of the subject."

"No problem," I said.

"Good."

"I understand."

"Good."

Understand I did.

Had his position been the exact opposite of what it was, I probably still would have been curious and wanted to explore it. I had no legitimacy on this issue. Indeed, I had been a big cusser most of my life. I'd had a famously foul mouth; and not ten minutes after I'd gotten home from work—the first time I had written so critically of the master and of dogs, piss, shit, and fuck—I caught myself, time after time again as I went about my housework and my kitchen chores, with the word "shit" or the curse "goddamn it" at my lips in an audible and sharp, bitter whisper when I dropped a towel, misplaced a wash cloth, splashed a little dishwater on the floor, or bumped my sore elbow on the fridge. From where or from what within did those taboo words come—not just unbidden but so contrary to my conscious will—and why?

I wondered.

The master had moved on.

"What happened Sunday morning," the master inquired, "between you and Edward?"

"Huh?"

At first I had no idea what the master was talking about.

"Nothing."

He asked about a misunderstanding he'd been told I had with Edward before zazen.

"Oh."

I remembered.

Twice in quick succession I had committed a minor breach of temple etiquette. So as not to interrupt Edward's instruction of a new shoten, going to and from the zendo I had passed between the bowing mat and the main altar, and a new zazen student of mine had innocently followed me in my error. Edward, in a tiny spark of disappointment in me, had reprimanded me. Later somebody—the master didn't say who—had tattled on Edward to the master.

Now the master was checking it out.

Inquiry.

"I was told Edward was out of line."

"No."

"I was told he got angry."

"No."

"Do you think I should speak with Edward about it?"

"No."

"I will."

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"It was nothing."

"Okay."

Nikki showed up to sit. I had not seen her at Tuesday evening zazen before. She and the master chatted of dogs and soon Eleanor came down and joined them. At 6:50 I turned the thermostat down to 60 and opened the zendo window a crack and lit the candle and offered a green stick of incense to Manjusri. I knelt to brush off a little hair and dirt the three temple animals had left on the master's mat and on one other. At 6:55 I bowed, hit the rolldown on the han, and bowed, and took my place in the zendo. At 7:00, just as the master entered and closed the curtain behind him, I rang the inkin to begin zazen. I sat fifty-five minutes before I got up and walked kinhin out in the buddha hall. At 8:05 I returned to my cushion in the zendo and sat until 8:20, when I began the chant. It was nice to hear five voices on a Tuesday evening, two more than usual. At 8:30, I rang the inkin, I pulled open the curtain for the master, and I rang the inkin twice more and performed the requisite bows. When people had exited the zendo, I extinguished the candle, closed the window, turned off the light in the zendo, removed my rakusu and folded it back into its soft case. Eleanor stopped near the bench before she went up the stairs to bed.

We smiled and bowed, hands palm to palm.

"Good night, Bob," Eleanor said smiling, sweetly.

I smiled.

"Good night, Eleanor!" I said.

Ah!

I felt happy and rested.

Good.

The master was still busy in the kitchen, tending to the food and water for the two big white dogs, Sammy and his new buddy Buddy. Their dry cereal rattled into their plastic bowls and their toenails clicked and clattered on the hardwood kitchen floor. The two big dogs ate noisily, crunching cereal between their molars. I turned off the table lamp in the corner, and in the entryway I flipped the switch on the wall to turn off the porch light before I left. I closed and then locked the heavy front door with my key. I closed the storm door, I pushed it shut, and then I carefully turned the broken door handle until it latched so the night wind wouldn't blow it open and damage the door. Nikki still sat in one of the deck chairs, putting on her shoes in the dark. I reached down to the bottom shelf of the shoe rack and retrieved my sandals and into them I slipped my bare feet.

The night was beautiful and mild and as usual I felt good, grateful, glad.

The world felt sacred.

Holy.

I spoke quietly, nearly whispered—and Nikki did, too.

"Good night, Nikki."

"Good night, Bob."

The cool fall air and dark kissed my skin.

On my silent and slow winding way home, coasting in and out among the many twinkling lights of commercial signs and the blinking signals of moving vehicles, the rubber tires of my car seemed gently to roll me and to rock me in my firm cushioned seat over the uneven and undulant paved city streets.

Amen.