Tuesday on my way home from work I stopped at Immanuel to see the master. In the lot I parked in the shade of a tree and—thinking, thinking, wondering in what condition I might find my former teacher, worrying, hoping, wishing for the best—I strolled slowly across the hundred yards of concrete from my car to the front door of the hospital and through the lobby to the elevator. The email from Ivan had included the room number.
The elevator doors closed.
Eight.
Up.
The doors opened.
I asked.
A nurse pointed to his room.
I smiled.
Its door was open.
I looked.
The master lay motionless on his back in a bed near the window.
Silent.
His big bald head, a darkyellow egg blotched with red, looked fragile resting on a pillow.
Delicate shell.
Thin.
The master had not heard my footsteps.
Silent.
I paused at the door a moment to observe before I stepped in.
Breath.
"Hi, Kudo," I called.
A breath.
He turned his head to look in my direction.
He squinted.
"Hi."
He didn't respond immediately.
A breath.
Near the door where I stood the light was dim.
I waited.
"It's been a while," the master said.
Three months.
"Yes," I said. "May I come in?"
He smiled.
"Come in," he said. "Yes."
I smiled.
I walked over to a chair between his bed and the window and sat down.
I began.
"I wanted to come before," I explained, "but each time I was about to visit it seemed I would get news that you'd had a setback and were too weak to see guests for more than just a few minutes so I would decide to wait but then finally I figured I had just better come."
"I almost died," he said.
I nodded.
"More than once I heard," I said.
I waited.
He looked puzzled.
Hmm.
"May be," he said. "I don't know—I've really been out of it."
I nodded.
"The doctors saved me," he said.
I nodded.
"Yes."
He smiled.
Life.
So precious.
So precious.
The master spoke for ten minutes.
He described his surgery, his therapy, and his rehabilitation. He pushed down his blanket and lifted his gown to show me his wound. It looked to be about six inches long and perhaps an inch wide at its middle. The black stuffing, the master said, was a sponge. He showed me the tubes that poked out of his abdomen. One of them led to the vacuum pump at the foot of his bed.
He pointed.
"That sucks out all the bad stuff," the master explained.
I looked.
"Ooze from the wound?" I asked.
"Yes."
The master related more of the details of his ordeal.
I listened.
He said he had been hospitalized since the twentieth of December.
That long—
"I thought it was New Year's Eve," I said.
He frowned.
"I didn't hear anything till New Year's Day," I said.
He thought.
"You could be right," he said.
I didn't know.
"The morphine," he said. "I've really been out of it."
I nodded.
He smiled.
The last note I'd gotten from Ivan had not been encouraging so I was pleased with the master's condition. He did fade after talking for ten minutes but for the time I was with him the master was alert, lucid, and engaged; and he smiled as he talked and expressed his appreciation for all of his doctors, caregivers, family, and friends who had helped him through the crisis. The master had been told that he might be home in a week, as I knew, but also that such a prognosis was iffy given the possible ups and downs of such major surgery. Though very weak the master was hopeful and confident about his progress. I detected no hint of ambivalence, the master seemed pleased to see me, and I was glad that I had come in spite of my concern and uncertainty about the effect of my visit on his health. The master talked at some length and I did worry that I might stay too long.
"Have you seen a lot of visitors today?" I asked.
"No."
"I don't want to wear you out," I said.
I smiled.
"No," he said, "today not many."
I nodded.
Nisen popped in and then out again just before I left. She had just eaten lunch in the cafeteria and now, Nisen explained, she had a couple of other things to which she needed to attend.
Nisen didn't remember me.
"Have we met?"
"Yes, at a Rohatsu sesshin," I said. "I'm Bob."
"Yes."
"You were Margaret?"
That had been her name before her ordination.
"Yes."
We exchanged smiles and brief greetings and good wishes before Nisen quietly exited and left the master and me alone again. I felt a profound and wary tenderness for the man as I sat beside him. He rested his left hand over the railing of the bed. I reached over and carefully put my hand over his. I did not pat it or squeeze it and I did not say anything. I could not think of more to say. I just wanted to touch him, to caress him, so for a minute or two I let my palm just rest lightly there over the back of his hand.
It was a hug.
The master, too, was silent.
"You aren't supposed to touch me without latex gloves," he said finally.
"Oh!"
I jerked my hand away.
"I'm sorry!"
"The risk of infection," the master explained.
I nodded.
"I didn't know," I said. "The nurses didn't tell me."
He smiled.
"You're also supposed to wear a gown," he said.
"Oh!"
"You'll find one over there by the door to the bathroom."
"Oh!"
I hurried over to where the master had pointed and found a gown and I struggled to put it on as I walked haltingly back to the chair at the side of his bed. I felt stupid and hoped I had not further endangered his health by my negligence but the master dismissed my concern. He mentioned again the details of his ordeal. The master had been mightily impressed by the good care he had received, by the complexity of the radical surgical procedure, by the judgment and skill of his doctors and his surgeon, and by the medical technology responsible in part for saving his life, in particular the abdominal pump which sucked out the pus and blood that oozed from his wound.
Together we looked it at again.
"I don't know what happens to people like me in Africa," he said.
"They die," I said.
The master considered my reply.
I waited.
"Yes," he said. "They die."
Enough.
I told the master how glad I was to see him in recovery. The master appeared much healthier and stronger than I had expected to find him and I told him so. The master thanked me for coming to see him. As soon as I got home I emailed to the closest of my temple friends a short description of the master's condition and a brief account of my visit.
Ivan emailed.
Monday, February 12, he forwarded to me a message from Nisen. The master had been expected to come home to the temple on the Wednesday or Thursday of the previous week, Nisen reported, but unfortunately the master would not be discharged from the physical rehabilitation unit until the fourteenth.
Time—
Patience.
That same week I received from Irene, writing on behalf of the board of directors, a fifty-dollar gift certificate to Borders and a card. In the master's calligraphy was the Japanese character for Buddha. Inside were the gift and an expression of gratitude for my years of service to the temple and for the help I had given Irene and other members of the sangha. The card and the gift were standard procedure for members of the board who had resigned.
Irene added a note.
"Your energy and questions are missed."
Ah!
"Thank you."
In my reply I explained that at home I still sat forty minutes every day and that I continued to practice the Way just as I had for thirty years. I told Irene, as I had often said in the meetings of our practice group, how grateful I was that I had stumbled onto the Way.
"I cannot imagine my life without it."
Dharma.
I mentioned my hopes for the master.
My devotions.
My expulsion.
"I'll request the atonement ceremony if I ever figure out what I did wrong," I said.
Mal—
"To me it's still a mystery."
Days passed.
I hadn't heard any news of the master for over a week so on Monday I stopped at the hospital on my way home from work and spoke with him for fifteen minutes. When I arrived the master was awake and reading one of the quarterly newsletters from sister sanghas. The master told me about the small pulmonary embolism that had kept him from going home the week before and of the blood thinners that his doctor was giving him to treat it.
"Just a small bump in the road to recovery," his doctor had called it.
The master had just returned from physical therapy so he was tired and after ten minutes or so he dimmed, slightly, but it was strangely comforting to see him yawn widely and almost doze off in my presence. His sleepiness appeared natural, good, not at all unhealthy.
It touched me to hear the master apologize for it.
He smiled.
"I'm fading," he said.
"Rest."
Yet the master related still more details of his physical therapy, the progress of his wound, his trip home with his therapists one day the previous week to survey the temple and to plan adjustments for his eventual return. A chair had been installed in the tub to aid in his bath.
"But I'm not much of a bather," the master joked.
He smiled.
The master had regained some of his appetite and he said he had been eating breakfast. The nurses were feeding him lots of protein, he said, including meat and fish, to help him regain his strength. He spoke often with Eleanor and she was doing well at Tassajara, he said, where every month the center held a seven-day sesshin. Eleanor was halfway through her retreat, he explained, and he hoped that by the end of the week he would be released.
Home.
"But of course that depends on a lot of things," he added.
Health.
It had been a pleasant visit with the master, I informed my dharma friends, and I had been encouraged by his appearance, demeanor, and confidence and by his words of appreciation and gratitude for his doctors and nurses and caregivers and for his students and friends.
"I'm happy you two are communicating again," Alison replied.
"Yes," I agreed.
I thought.
"It is communicating and it is polite."
I thought again.
"But we both studiously avoided any mention of our divorce."
Friday, February 23—
Jane forwarded to me an email to the sangha from Nisen. On Wednesday, Nisen said, the master had arrived home at the temple. His doctor had removed the retention staples from his belly. He was now independently ambulatory on all steps and surfaces. His home health nurse was scheduled at the temple on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Nisen reported, and his physical and occupational therapists would be at the temple the following week when his vacuum pump might be removed, his home health care discontinued, and his outpatient physical therapy at Immanuel begun. Nisen thanked all who helped.
"In this life," Nisen wrote, "I can never repay that debt of gratitude."
Ten days more passed.
Monday, March 5—
In an email addressed to his "dear friends," the master said that he had been back at the temple for two weeks. He explained that he was slowly regaining his strength and that his recuperation was progressing, too, though too slowly, he added, for him. He thanked Nisen, Nananda's disciple and a novice priest, who served still as live-in caregiver, then his therapists, his nurses, and his doctors, all of whom, the master reported, had told him they expected his full recovery.
Health.
"I am so grateful," he said, "to all of these wonderful people."
Life.
The master conceded that he had a long way yet to go but his surgeon's assistant had told him just the previous week that for a man his age he had made a remarkable turnaround.
"Hell," the master remarked, "I'm only sixty-five!"
Appreciation.
The master thanked friends for their messages and cards.
"Amazing!"
Their number had caused him to think that over the years maybe he had done some good.
They comforted him.
"Especially when I was flat on my back in the hospital."
Gratitude.
"The warmth of the sentiments expressed frequently brought tears to my eyes."
Counsel.
"Please take care and be well!"
The master prefaced his customary closing, "hands palm to palm," with two new words.
"Love and peace—"
Prayer.
"It was nice to see an email from you in my inbox," I promptly replied.
Dialogue.
"I'm glad to hear the good news of your recovery," I said.
Hope.
"I appreciate your including me among its recipients."
Relief.
"Thank you," I added.
Every day for weeks in my daily devotions, to honor my former teacher and as a gesture of hope for his recovery and return to good health and happiness, I had recited the "Robe Verse," I had worn my rakusu, which I had not worn since my excommunication, and I had recited seven times the "Enmei Jukko Kannon Gyo." Now the master was home.
In gratitude and relief all this I now did one last time.
Kan ze on!
Na mu butsu
Yo butsu u in
Yo butsu u en
Bup po so en
Jo raku ga jo
Cho nen kanzeon
Nen nen ju shin ki
Nen nen fu ri shin
Then when I had extinguished the candle on my altar I removed my rakusu and pushed it into its case and returned it to its position on the shelf below my table of boxes and spheres and iconic trinkets. To the bald head of my former teacher in the photograph of my lay initiation with my index finger I applied one last symbolic kiss. I closed the album.
I laid it atop my rakusu.
Forward.
