182 Chains

After zazen, World Peace Ceremony, and group discussion on the first Sunday of April we held our practice group meeting. There, when I suggested that any criticism of our teacher, the master, seemed to be discouraged, there was quick and unanimous dissent. Dean, Eleanor, Irene, James, Ivan, and the master, all stated, or agreed with those who did so state, that, no, it was fine to criticize the master—it was invited, encouraged, welcomed.

No problem.

But to me it appeared still very tricky and later in my journal I reported that I believed it not unfair to say that from his students the master neither invited nor welcomed criticism.

"According to Bob," the master replied.

Yes.

According to Bob.

The master had warned me previously that on anyone who accused him of verbal abuse he would come down hard.

I had not forgotten.

"Hard!" I remembered. "Boots on!"

Reprisal.

Waking at 4:00 on Monday, April 3, I sat. At the college I had my annual job performance evaluation. It was routine—there were no surprises. If I did not lose my life or my health I would be back for another year, my twenty-seventh at the local community college and my fortieth in college teaching.

40!

I could hardly keep up with my student papers. For them there seemed always less than enough time.

I still had lots of thoughts and feelings about the master's recent replies to my entries in my journal, about our practice group meeting, and about the confessions of my friends in the sangha, but they were just thoughts, and I realized now, I reported in my journal, that the idea was not—as it was in my job—to exchange opinion and criticism with the teacher.

"Finally!" the master exclaimed.

I laughed.

I could certainly understand the master's relief. I knew I was a difficult student and I cared intensely about our subject and about the practice. But I did not have time now to find the appropriate words for my thoughts and feelings. Some of our discussion, however, I wanted to record in language, even if only in notes, because the discussions on Sunday after World Peace Ceremony and then later in our practice group meeting I knew would enhance my book.

The week passed.

Forward.

At service on Sunday, April 9, there was a lot of "religion" to honor the birthday of Shakyamuni Buddha. There were colored eggs, Tibetan prayer flags, special bouquets, extra religious icons on the central altar, and by the sangha, the congregation, a continuous chanting of the Heart Sutra during a water and tea purification ritual, I reported in my journal, during which each celebrant poured a teaspoon of purifying solution over a small statue of the infant Buddha.

"A kind of baptism."

"No," the master wrote to correct me. "It's an abhisheka, a water purification."

Hm.

"Doesn't the master realize that baptism is a water purification ritual?" I asked my wife.

Ruth shrugged.

Hm.

In his dharma talk the master related the fanciful stories and legends of the Buddha's birth, all far removed, I concluded, from the realism, simplicity, and practicality of the teaching.

No.

This observation, too, the master corrected.

I was wrong.

"Not so far removed at all," he replied.

There are countless stories and parables in Buddhist scripture, the master explained, that are neither realistic nor simple nor practical. Shakyamuni spoke of this himself and, the master said, there was also much mysticism in his teaching. Anuruddha, one of the original thirteen disciples, had been a psychic of the first order, the master explained, and Shakyamuni himself, the master added, was reputed to have great psychic power.

"Have you read any of these early sutras?" asked the master.

No.

I had not.

Or if I had I'd not remembered the mysticism.

It had not been mysticism that initially attracted me to the teaching and to the Way. Though in my year of heaven I had experienced mysticism I had not sought it. To seek it, even just to want it, Gaskin and John and Billy and I had concluded, was not the Way. We had focused almost exclusively on ethical conduct and on the three fundamental vows to do no harm, to do good, and to serve all beings.

I had climbed aboard the mahayana.

The big boat.

Only a curious skeptic I had not sought the mystic.

Not at all.

It had come unbidden.

The master, misunderstanding, thought I denied it.

No.

"What about all the mahayana sutras that deal with mystic elements?" he asked.

Oh.

How to begin—

Far removed, I should have written, from the realism, simplicity, and practicality that I myself personally loved most in the Buddha's teaching. I had not meant to deny the mystic in it.

Not at all.

I just felt that its emphasis misled, much, perhaps, as the master felt an emphasis on the third truth misled. In my journal entry I mentioned, too, that in his dharma talk the master had acknowledged that, like Jesus, the Buddha would probably be surprised if not shocked by many of the superstitions, myths, and doctrines promulgated in his name.

I agreed.

Yes.

"After all that," I reported, "it felt sane and real and good to me just to wash dishes for half an hour at the kitchen sink."

No.

Replied the master:

"Everything we did for Buddha's birthday felt sane and real and good to me."

Sigh.

Fool that I am in my journal I had not stopped there.

I wish I had.

In my entry I had added that several Buddhist teachers whose books I'd borrowed from the temple library had written that the teachings of Buddha were not a religion but rather a philosophy and a psychology and that the "religious" elements—temples, icons, candles, incense, chanting, bowing, prayers, and priests—were introduced only later to appease the laity who insisted upon them because of their familiarity with the ceremonial observances of Hinduism.

No.

To this observation, too, the master objected.

"In their view," he said.

Yes.

"Common sense," I had added, "tells me this is so."

No.

"What do you have against mysticism?" the master asked.

Huh?

"Because you do not see and do not experience things," the master explained, "does not mean that they do not exist."

Understood.

"Others do see and experience them."

Understood.

I did not know how even to begin to correct the misunderstandings that had arisen from my innocent remarks. I understood everything the master had written. It all made sense to me. Had my remarks not made sense to the master? Had there been no truth in what I said? I had nothing against mysticism. Had I said or implied otherwise? Indeed in one sense I considered myself a mystic. I had experienced the mystic. But my own experience of mysticism had not been linked to what in my journal I had intended by the word "religious." For me those two things were altogether different. I was a rationalist, too, and I loved and trusted reason. How to explain—

The irreconcilable.

At such times I well understood why my wife sometimes called herself a pacifist atheist and explained that she preferred her nonviolence pure and uncontaminated by ideology.

Language.

Was it a means of communication?

Or an obstacle?

Dylan:

The words that are used

To get the ship confused

Will not be understood

As they are spoken

The chains of the sea

Will have busted in the night

Will be buried at the bottom

Of the ocean

I wished, frankly, that I were free of the journal requirement. When I had questions I asked them. When I had observations I offered them. But my teacher's demand that I write daily in my journal and submit it each week to him even if I had nothing really to say seemed only to invite contention.

It wearied me.

I could not suppress the suspicion that the master was an unhappy man who—by his repeated insistence that my own experiences of joy, purpose, and equanimity were both specious and spurious—was in our relationship himself simply working out his own neuroses.

I did not say that.

I supposed the master thought the same of me.

Mirror.

Mirror.