On October 18, I met the master in private before evening zazen. I had run out of questions so I was nervous. It reminded me of the shosan ceremony which usually concluded a sesshin. There, too, participants were not just expected but required to pose a question to the master and there, too, it seemed, I always drew a blank and had to invent a query since none had risen from within.
"What if we don't have a question?" more than once I'd heard beginners ask.
"You must ask a question."
I could not remember a sesshin when my question in shosan had felt genuine. Each time in shosan I had to formulate something, anything, to satisfy the requirement, and I had—but only after three or four hours of silent deliberation and hope in zazen yielded nothing at all.
"Why must we have a question?" a student once asked the master in shosan.
"Ask a different question," the master instructed.
"I can't think of one," the student whined.
"Return to the end of the line and wait there until you can!"
At the past four sesshins, having no authentic question I had seriously considered simply remaining silent in shosan. In this rite the master is the embodiment of the Buddha or so Jane had informed me. The master is seated before the small table which holds his hitting stick, the kyosaku, the box of powdered incense, and the small briquette of smouldering charcoal in the koro.
In my fantasy—
When I reached the head of the line and it was my turn to question the master I would bow in gassho, kneel on the small mat, my hands together in choki, bow again in gassho, and offer the requisite two pinches of powdered incense to the buddha. Then when I placed my palms together in gassho, the mudra of prayer, and the moment of my audience with the master had arrived, I would say:
"Master, I have no question."
But I knew I would be sent back to the end of the line, just as others had been, to think some more; and maybe then some question truly mine would indeed spontaneously arise and I would pose it.
But if none did and each time I returned still empty to the master and explained:
"Master, I have no question."
Hmm.
What then?
I wondered what might happen.
To ask a question just to ask a question, it seemed to me, often made a mountain of a mole hill.
Yet every other week now I was expected nevertheless to come prepared with questions about practice issues and except for the riddle of the master's criticism of me it had been a long time since I'd had any serious question about my practice.
I felt good.
Though it annoyed the master that I used the term "practice" to describe my twenty-five years of Buddhist practice before the master, I had taken the vows, yes, as seriously as it is possible for a man on his own to do such a thing, thirty years ago. Though I knew it was immodest to say so, I felt sincerely that I did not possess any great fears or desires. I was not conflicted. I was not depressed. I lived frugally. I was addicted to neither alcohol nor drugs. I had been faithful to my wife. I was living my life free of secrets and lies. I had a modest job that allowed me to try, at least, to help people and, yes, also, I believed, to try to help people to be peaceable and brave and honest and reasonable and loving and kind.
Just to try, just to try!
I was happy.
I had also a clear vision, I thought, of the horror, the ugly, cruel, murdering human universe; and that reality—the reason for my first "entering the stream"—only confirmed me in my personal commitment to peace and to practice because given the proper conditions and causes I knew that just like everyone else I was capable of the worst.
I didn't feel special.
It was the horror which had led me to my reconsideration of the religious life and practice in the first place.
For years now I had had more, much more, than I needed and yet I also felt fully aware that all of this could and would change at any instant. Did I think I was enlightened? No, not now, absolutely not. My understanding of what that word and concept meant had changed and changed utterly. I did not think of myself as special in any important way. To the best of my knowledge I had neither saved nor freed a single sentient being—to use the language of the bodhisattva—and the industrial killing, murder, and war which inspired my initial revolt and reformation had continued unabated.
I was quite ordinary.
Because I could not control my love of snacks and sweets I got fat.
I was lazy.
I enjoyed reclining on the couch with my remote.
Hey! Is there a ballgame on?
What's the news?
Almost every afternoon it seemed I took an hour nap.
More than several times a day against my will a word I did not wish to utter—an obscenity, profanity, or vulgarity—popped out of my mouth. Just this morning on my drive to work in the rain another daydreaming and distracted driver had pulled up from my unconscious the ejaculation "Jesus!" and I knew that I would not get to bed that night before another "God damn it!" and a "Shit!" or two and maybe even a "Fuck!" came a-whispering up my throat to my lips.
Why?
God damn it I hated that!
Nor was this all.
The younger of my two sons had not long ago enumerated for me all of my many neurotic tics and in an email had argued convincingly that they constituted in fact undeniable behavioral evidence of my inner unrest.
Sheesh—
I could not and I would not deny it.
So be it.
Still, however, in spite of my being an old, tired, fat, and very ordinary man I could not help but feel that I was relatively free of the deep and disturbing conflicts, fears, and desires that maimed and tortured so many of my fellow earthlings. I felt privileged, fortunate, yes, just plain lucky, and now, sixty years old, I wanted only to help.
So what was I supposed to ask my teacher and Zen master week after week?
Tell me!
It felt strange to be making and keeping appointments with a man who believed it both his duty and his job to confront me.
"Dishonest."
No.
Yes, it had become unpleasant and, yes, I felt aversion.
Yes.
What epithets might I have to endure tonight?
Moron?
Fool?
Liar?
Coward?
Chickenshit?
Asshole?
Just as in zazen, I counseled myself, whatever arose I would sit and listen.
I would breathe and let it go.
Or try.
The universe was my mind, too, my big mind, and whatever arose for me within it I would accept it and no matter how terrible if I were able I would accept it in peace and calm. Over all the ups and downs of my daily life for thirty years that is what I had practiced and tried to do. I had even once written a poem, just a list really, of all the names I had been called in my life: "Then Dirty Worts pi
All right, Kudo, bring it on!
Say it.
I had finally squeezed out a question about one minor issue I had been thinking about—my growing ambivalence about devotional practices and rituals—and also one bigger question. What was it that the master felt he needed to confront me about? I would ask him to try to explain one more time. To avoid arguing again over what we had already argued too many times I decided I'd try a different avenue. I printed my two questions and sketched a few notes—just the bones of what I have written here—on a note card small enough for me to carry it easily in my pocket.
Ready.
Set.
On this evening the master seemed unusually congenial. He appeared comfortable and casual and he smiled often and employed the familiar sheepish expression that in the master suggested self-deprecation and humility. A contrast to the pompous and crude, rude, peevish, proud, and arrogant authoritarian, it was the persona I very much preferred. The master put on his rakusu and offered incense at his altar and then sat down opposite me. Our knees just two feet apart, hands in gassho, we bowed, and the master asked me what I had for him.
I explained—awkward, halting—my increasing difficulty in formulating questions for him.
The master loved to act and to perform. He screwed his face into a mask of mild exasperation and disgust to prompt me.
Okay.
Okay.
"I'm ambivalent about the devotional practices," I began.
"Hmm?"
The master looked puzzled.
"They're all arbitrary," I said. "Aren't they?"
The master frowned.
"No, they are not all arbitrary," he replied sternly. "To me they are all essential."
The master explained the value and transformative power of devotional practices and rituals in Soto Zen practice. Informed by tradition and by the intimate relation between a student and teacher, he said, the offering of incense, the ringing of bells, the bowing, and the chanting possessed a power that other activities like washing the dishes or cleaning the house or even writing poetry or playing a musical instrument did not have even if and when they were performed mindfully and carefully. Through practice and correction by a teacher, the master explained, the discipline of devotional practice and ritual could transform the practitioner.
He paused.
"You should know," the master said. "They've transformed you."
Huh?
What he was talking about I had no idea.
I remained silent.
The master continued his exposition.
I listened.
Then, just in passing, the master remarked that one morning when I had served as doan I had chipped the knob on the bottom of the wooden baton by striking it too hard on the rim of the big brass bowl.
I interrupted.
"No," I said, "I've never chipped the baton."
He frowned.
My statement annoyed the master.
He glared.
His eyes widened, he made an exaggerated face of mock astonishment, he leaned forward in his chair towards me, getting in my face, and he raised his voice for emphasis as if I were a lying child blatantly and foolishly denying the obvious. He appeared to be incredulous.
"Yes, you did!" the master insisted. "I was there and I saw you do it!"
The event to which he referred simply did not happen.
Not ever.
"I saw you do it!"
When the master insisted that it had happened and declared that he had in fact witnessed it, the thought arose in my mind that I should simply get up immediately and leave the premises.
I almost stood up and walked out of the room.
Enough.
I had never chipped the baton.
"I saw you do it!"
No.
Not ever.
The knob on the heel of the wooden baton already had one chip missing the very first time I had served as doan three years earlier.
I had no knowledge of how it happened.
"I saw you do it!"
Now at my meeting with the master when he said that I had chipped the baton I mentioned it again.
I added—
"You chipped the baton once," I said, "when you were showing me how not to strike the bowl."
The master blushed.
I waited.
"I might have," the master conceded. "I kind of remember that."
I remained silent.
The master averted his eyes from mine and looked away.
I waited.
He looked down and to his left and then lifted his gaze and met my eyes again.
I nodded.
"I might have," the master said. "I kind of remember that."
I nodded.
Without further comment from either of us he returned to his previous explanation of the importance of devotional practices and rituals and a few minutes later we moved on to other matters.
I was still thinking of the baton.
When the master said that he had seen me chip the baton he had not been lying. His memory had failed him just as mine sometimes failed me. Perhaps the master had seen someone else chip the baton—Mark or Edward—and perhaps over the intervening years he had confused one of them with me.
Many times I had struck the bowl hard the wrong way—too hard, yes, I knew now—and it was simply sheer accident and dumb luck that I had not chipped the baton just as the master had imagined and believed I had.
"I saw you do it!"
Yet I had not.
Still—
Memory is unreliable.
Mind.
This was one lesson in what had transpired.
Uncertainty.
From my own failures of memory I knew I could be wrong and would be wrong again. More than once I had accused both my wife and my children of carelessly moving and misplacing some personal possession of mine that I later recovered right where I myself had left it.
I exercised caution in judgment. In reflection I had become tentative, deliberate, and slow.
How mysterious and strange the mind!
How unreliable!
Ego.
Did it matter that the master falsely accused me of chipping the baton?
Did it matter that I had done no such thing?
Did it matter that the master had been absolutely certain that he had seen me do it even though I had not?
Does it?
Did it matter that my teacher acted as if I were lying when I said I had not done it?
I don't know.
Does it?
I'm not sure.
Just writing of this incident in such detail and at such length reminds me of Humphrey Bogart and Captain Queeg—the missing quart of strawberries on the Caine, investigation, interrogation, obsession.
It seems insane.
Yet as soon as I say so I remember what the master told me when on another occasion I said something similar.
"Nothing is trivial to me," the master said. "To me everything is a matter of life and death."
If annoyance and even anger could arise in this petty matter then they could arise, too, in matters of much greater importance. Though the master had inferred otherwise, to him I had never deliberately misrepresented myself. I had never lied to him. This was why I had once politely requested from him an apology and, really, it had been not even a request.
I had only suggested.
"No," the master had said then. "I don't think I'm wrong."
Judgment.
Now near the end of our meeting the master stated again just as he had in the past that he sensed I was afraid of something.
"I think you're in denial of it," the master said.
"What fear?" I asked.
I waited.
"I don't know," replied the master. "I just sense it."
I considered.
I said again that I was unaware of any big fear within me—just the ephemeral fears of the common garden variety. I asked again that he provide information more specific, but he said that he could not, that he did not know, and that to identify and to face the fear he sensed was my own responsibility. The master again was just "trusting his gut."
"Just sit with it," the master said.
I nodded.
"Do you have fears?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Like what?" I asked.
"Oh, little ones," he said dismissing them with a wave of his hand. "You know."
I did.
Together we sat in silence for several seconds.
I felt daring.
"I don't think I fear death," I said in a tentative tone that made my statement a question.
He grinned.
"But you very well might," he said evenly, "when you lie dying alone in a hospital bed."
I laughed.
His remark was an allusion not only to his own recent serious illness but also to the anecdote he had once told of asking his own master Dainin Katagiri if Katagiri feared death.
"No, not at this moment," Katagiri had replied, "but at this moment I'm not dying."
I mentioned to the master that I remembered this story of his teacher and for the master I recited his reply. The master was silent for a moment and when he finally spoke he sounded somber.
Sad.
There was a reverence present in his voice.
"Actually at this moment we are dying," he said, "and you and I do not have many years left to live so we had better practice as hard as we can and go as deeply into ourselves as we can while we can."
It was poignant.
I am disappointed that I cannot record it as artfully and as truly and as well as I wish.
Language.
I had one last question.
I asked the master if Zen masters ever made mistakes; and the master acknowledged that, yes, indeed sometimes they did. The master said that his own masters Katagiri and Narasaki two or three times had made mistakes with him, some slight and some serious, but that over time what once seemed to him to have been mistakes now seemed much less so and perhaps even not mistakes at all. But I was still curious about the mistakes teachers did make.
"If that happens," I asked the master, "what should one do?"
"Sit with it."
The answer to everything.
"Sit."
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