In Lincon on the nineteenth I spoke from a Buddhist perspective for five minutes at an Interfaith Forum on Peace at the Unitarian Church. Present also were representatives of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism.
The first speaker, a rabbi, offered a ten-minute defense of doing "whatever is necessary" to protect Israel from its evil enemies.
I felt awkward.
The horrible ongoing wars in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq lent a political undertone even to the apolitical presentations. Representatives of the five other religions read from prepared texts, recited "holy scripture," and stated and explicated doctrine and dogma.
I spoke last.
I tried to affect a manner and tone more ordinary, informal.
Friendly.
"Buddhism has nothing at all to do with gods or holy books," I explained.
I appealed to common sense.
"Our basic practice is simply to be fully present in the present."
The wars—
I could not totally ignore what had been said.
"To Buddhists," I said, "religious belief seems more likely to be an obstacle to harmony and peace than a way to harmony and peace."
I concluded with the creed I found myself repeating ever more often.
Aunt Rosalie:
"My religion is be kind and my church is whoever I'm with."
Question period.
One man remarked—
"Rather than harmony and peace you six speakers created instead a tension."
Yes.
I thought his observation accurate.
I felt it.
"Were you all in command of the warring states—" the man said.
He paused.
"I doubt that as a whole our sad world would be any better served."
So it seemed.
Belief, disagreement, conflict, fear, defense, armed defense, greater fear, and—
War.
An old woman followed me to the parking lot.
"Sir?"
As I unlocked the door to my car she called out to me.
"Yes?" I said.
"You sound so peaceable!"
I smiled.
"But what do you do if merciless enemies promise to kill you?"
"I don't know," I said.
She extended her arms, silent, palms up, to show me her empty hands, and waited.
I did the same.
She smiled.
"Bye."
I smiled and waved.
"Bye."
She waved.
I got into my car and drove home with her question.
Killing.
Killing.
At the end of May, Eleanor and the master left for Laugh Out Loud and for the practice period there in June. Dean, too, had gone, and Martin, and Jane told me that she, too, planned to spend several days there. In June when the master practiced at Laugh Out Loud as usual at our local Heartmind Temple the monkeys now were in charge of the zoo.
On Friday, June 9, 2006, the morning humidity and heat felt oppressive. At the temple by 5:30, I unlocked the door and turned on the porch light and the table lamp in the corner. I opened wide all the windows in the buddha hall and zendo and I set out on the main altar and on the altar of Avalokitesvara the sticks of incense to be offered before morning service and then with the broom I grabbed from the entryway I went outside to sweep leaves and seeds from the front porch and front steps, the sidewalks, and the driveway. In ten minutes I was almost done and my tee shirt and trousers were wet with sweat when Edward pulled up.
"Good morning!"
His palms together he bowed.
I bowed back.
"Good morning!" I said.
Edward smiled.
"Thank you for sweeping," Edward told me.
"Sure!"
Not even one person, Edward said, had remained after service on Sunday to help James with the weeding of the flower gardens—and I learned also that there had been a recent defection. Edward had received an email from the master informing him that Martin had left the retreat at Laugh Out Loud and would not be returning at all to practice at the temple.
Edward did not know why.
No clue.
This news meant that someone else had to be found to replace Martin as doan on Friday evenings. Edward, our ino now, had asked for volunteers to help with temple tasks in the absence in June of Eleanor, Dean, and the master.
But no one had come forward.
Hm.
This tepid response had been disappointing, Edward acknowledged, but of course there were not many of us regulars to begin with and it seemed for a variety of reasons that over the past year or two even those at the reliable core of the sangha had dwindled in number.
I told Edward I would serve as doan this Friday night.
Edward said no.
"I'll do it tonight," Edward said.
He asked if I would handle the morning service by myself.
"I need to address a personal matter."
"No problem," I said.
"Thank you!"
We exchanged bows.
"Thank you!"
I offered incense in the zendo and struck the rolldown on the han.
Thwack!
Sweat continued to pour from my forehead and face and my wet tee shirt stuck to my skin. Even my loose, light trousers were damp and clung to my legs. I turned on the overhead fan in the buddha hall and the small fan near the door of the zendo. I rang the inkin to begin zazen.
Bing—
Bing—
Bing—
Sweat feeling salty and viscous burned my eyes.
I put my palms in gassho, bowed, and pulled my sweat band from the pocket of my damp trousers and arranged it properly on my head. I sat half an hour before I stopped sweating.
I could not stop wondering what had happened at Laugh Out Loud to cause Martin to quit. The question surfaced again and again and with it my idle surmise. I tried to let it go.
Breath.
Breath.
At 6:45 I got up from my cushion in the zendo to light the candles and to offer incense at the altars in the buddha hall and at the ancestors altar upstairs. When I returned to the zendo a few minutes later I rang the inkin and I balanced my folded rakusu on my head and recited the Robe Verse three times. In spite of the fans it remained still so humid and hot that I performed only the short service. I recited the morning service eko and, before the final three bows and bells, I chanted the dedication that concluded almost every service at the temple.
All Buddhas
Throughout space and time
All honored ones
Bodhisattvas
Mahasattvas
Wisdom beyond wisdom
Mahaprajna paramita
I extinguished the candles and turned off the lights and fans, shut the windows, and closed and locked the back door. From the zendo I retrieved the soft cloth envelope for my rakusu.
There was a moist, heavy, dark, leaden quality to the air and an overcast gray morning sky. My wife was readying herself for her drive to work when I walked in and told her of Martin.
Ruth knew how few of us there were at the temple.
"Uh oh," she said.
"Yeah."
Time passed.
The power of the self to idealize itself and to love itself no matter what it does is nearly omnipotent. Krishnamurti says: "The ways of the mind are the ways of the self and the ways of the self are separative." Krishnamurti warns: "Every second the self is constantly strengthening itself even in sleep." I felt I knew only too well the truth of this observation.
Ego.
Sophocles, too, understood.
Oedipus first imagines himself the wisest, the bravest, and the most heroic of men, the very best the world has to offer; then, when he is exposed as an arrogant fool, a parricide, and a motherfucker, he imagines himself the most pitiful and the most tragic of men. His realization is but another delusion and at his core Oedipus has changed little if at all.
He can imagine himself only in the superlative.
The best—
No.
The worst—
He thinks he's special.
No.
In the story of self that we all constantly and compulsively write in our minds few if any of us are not brave hero, clever, ironic antihero, or tragic victim. The story we are certain is about "me."
The protagonist, the leading role, the lead.
The star—
Bob!
The month of June passed without incident and when Eleanor, Dean, and the master returned from Laugh Out Loud I continued as always to sit forty minutes each morning, attend evening zazen on Tuesday, to attend early morning service on Friday, to attend Ryaku Fusatsu on the full moon Wednesdays of July and August, and once a week to clean the temple bathroom upstairs and the half bath down.
I had been awarded my sabbatical and I would receive full pay for the summer quarter to write a narrative essay, one chapter perhaps of my book, on the relationship between teacher and student in Zen Buddhism and on how that experience informed relations between me and my students in the college classroom. I had begun organizing my notes and rereading my practice journals of the past four years and I had done preliminary research. I had reread Monday Night Class by Stephen Gaskin, the new edition with the author's glosses on the old, I had reread Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, and online I had read articles by Stuart Lachs and others on the relationship of student and teacher in Zen and on the reality and the myth of Zen lineage, dharma transmission, and enlightened teacher. I sat, I exercised, I practiced at the temple, I read, I studied, and I wrote for the three months of the summer. For teachers like me, I told friends, the four seasons were fall, winter, spring, nirvana. But to our sangha the master's health was still of grave concern.
He'd had several colonoscopies over the past three years. I was sixty-three, two years younger than the master, and because I had never experienced symptoms to suggest that anything might be amiss I had never had a colonoscopy. At the urging of the master I asked my doctor if I should.
"Yes," my doctor told me, "definitely you should."
He immediately signed me up for one on September 1. Since now I would not be able to serve as doan at early morning service on Friday I told the master about it and, when the master inquired by email early Saturday morning about the procedure, I was touched by his concern.
"How did the colonoscopy go?" the master asked.
Friend.
"No polyps, completely normal," I replied. "Thanks for asking."
Friend.
I told the master I'd like to come over and clean the bathrooms, still my temple job, later that morning. The fall practice period would begin as usual with a two-day sesshin the second weekend of September and I emailed to the master my usual practice period commitments. My home practice would include forty minutes of sitting and devotions five days a week and my mindful housework, the laundry and the dishes and mowing grass or shoveling snow. I added one new commitment, sixty minutes of what I called exercise kinhin three days a week, foolishly hoping this promise might motivate me to exercise. I neglected this commitment almost immediately. No time. My regular temple practice included my temple job, evening zazen on Tuesday, morning zazen and service on Friday, and on Sunday midmorning zazen and service. I planned to attend every Ryaku Fusatsu and all sesshins—including the seven-day Rohatsu sesshin during the first week of December for which I would have to miss four days of work without pay—and all the dharma study classes on Saturday mornings. Though I considered meeting with the master in biweekly dokusan, the alternative to the daily journal, I finally decided to give the journal one more try. Except for my exercise kinhin, all of this I considered routine.
I had now practiced at the temple for five full years.
I felt like a veteran.
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