Ivan and I continued to correspond by email. We had exchanged views of practice and I had said something about "a peaceful heart" that the very next day I regretted and had to amend.
"This morning," I wrote Ivan, "a peaceful heart seems like just one more gaining idea."
From Kurt Vonnegut I borrowed my refrain.
"So it goes."
Ivan replied that in a book he had just read, Opening the Hand of Thought, its author Kosho Uchiyama compared practicing Zen to practicing archery without a target. Ivan said he remembered what the master had said at sesshin.
"This practice will transform you."
The paradox, Ivan added, is that the practice transforms us even though we practice without seeking transformation.
"Yes," I agreed. "I think that is so."
Krishnamurti—
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
But foremost on my mind were trust and sex and my most recent exchange with the master.
Transformation—
Yes.
But on the other hand, I told Ivan, men can practice Buddhism for decades—Chögyam Trungpa, Ösel Tendzin, Richard Baker, Dainin Katagiri, Sosan Davis—and still covet precious possessions and succumb to the temptation of sexual relations with their students.
Ivan had not yet read Davis's essay, he was only vaguely familiar with Davis and Baker, but Ivan did know that Baker had been the subject of the book Shoes Outside the Door.
"Is there some scandal attached to Katagiri?" Ivan inquired.
"Yes."
I told Ivan what the master had told me.
Sex.
I summarized for Ivan what I knew of Baker; I told Ivan what the master had told me of Davis; and I told Ivan that Nananda and the master had been in a sexual relationship before Nananda had become his student.
I summarized for Ivan the argument made in Critical Zen, its deconstruction of the myth of lineage and transmission—how transmission is often just an expedient, how unrealized "masters" make mistakes, how Zen discourages student doubt about and criticism of the teacher, and why teacher and student pretend that the myth is the truth. I explained that my learning of Critical Zen had helped me in my personal assessment of the master's insistence that in our conflict and our quarrel the fault—if "fault" were the proper word for it—had been mine. I told Ivan that I was uncertain if the master's romance with Nananda was in fact one of the secrets to which the master had originally alluded. But I also confessed that the secrets the master had told us he must keep to preserve his reputation—whatever they were—for me remained an issue.
Ego—
Reputation—
Ruin—
Secrets—
Were there more?
From the liberty the master had granted me I inferred that there must be still something else.
Just telling us students that he had such secrets suggested that he wanted to be free of them.
Why mention them at all?
Out!
Attachment to reputation, however common and human, seemed to me contrary to the Way.
I was just thinking out loud—and this I told Ivan. I could think of nothing I knew for sure.
Was this all just a matter of my thinking too much?
I knew not.
I believed that the master was a person of integrity. But both before I had met the master and after, I explained to Ivan, my practice was based on my own experience. That I believed in. I would continue to believe in it. For me it worked. I tried to make clear my position.
"The important thing for me is to continue to practice."
These observations I emailed to Ivan.
Hmm.
Then I thought of Ryan.
Ryan and I both had been puzzled, troubled, by what we perceived as the master's verbal abuse and by the abuse both verbal and physical in the legend of Zen. When Ryan had quit the temple over this issue of abuse Ryan and I had continued by email to correspond. I had earlier sent Ryan the link to the essays in Critical Zen and I knew that he would be interested in what I had told Ivan and in what the master had told me. I considered Ryan and Ivan caring, honest, reliable men committed to the Way.
I trusted them.
I wanted to learn their opinions of all this so I forwarded to Ryan the email I had just sent Ivan.
I was curious.
On Friday and Saturday I worked on my book. Then I sent a section of it to my old friend John, the man who had first gotten me mixed up in all this religion way back when, and I asked John if he would proof the text and correct in my many references to him any egregious distortions and errors of fact.
John promptly replied.
"Yes."
I was delighted that in this roundabout way our mutual interest in Buddhism had let us communicate again. If John and I avoided the subject of the war we might be able to correspond.
I hoped.
But the war was a big subject to avoid.
Killing.
In my final entry before I sent my journal onto the master I noted that on the morning of Sunday, September 16, there had been present at the temple the largest crowd I had seen there in a long time.
Good.
I wanted Heartmind to grow.
Monday I was thinking still about all that the master had told me; though I felt nervous and uneasy about further pursuing the matter of reputation, sex, and secrecy I believed that if it were on my mind I was supposed to journal about it—so I recorded my feelings, my thoughts, and my questions about Davis and his infidelity, about Katagiri and his lovers, about the master's romance with Nananda, and about the complexity and propriety of the master's present relationship to Eleanor.
Truth—
Trust—
Tru—
I worried and thought even more when I opened an email from the master!
No!
He requested that I schedule an appointment with him.
No!
"I need to talk to you about some things."
Oh god—
"When would be a good time for us to meet in the next couple of days?"
Oh god—
My stomach tied itself into a knot.
No!
Why oh why had I put into my journal the thoughts and feelings really in my mind? Fool that I was I had now voluntarily subjected myself to yet another confrontation with the master and—it was more than likely—once more to his anger and once more to the emotional and verbal abuse that seemed to be Zen.
Ugh!
This conflict had become the source of the only serious unhappiness in my life.
Again!
Yes—
This conflict had become the source of the only serious unhappiness in my life and I knew, too—and not just because the master had told me so—that it contributed also to the stress and anxiety of my teacher. Could this increasingly painful relationship of student and teacher, this relentless psychological ordeal, this agony, ever be the midwife of my realization?
I wondered.
I doubted it.
Why had I not done what Edward so often had—just punted the daily journal and then simply confessed my failure at the next meeting of the practice group? There seemed to be no penalty for the failure and such an admission now seemed much more attractive than the psychological assault I apparently invited by my actually trying to do as my teacher asked.
Oof—
I told the master I would talk with him before evening zazen on Tuesday.
A peaceful heart?
Ha!
Dread—
Dread—
It was obvious to me even before the master sat down that he was agitated and upset. I don't think it an exaggeration to use the word distraught. His face was flushed. In one hand the master held what I quickly learned was a copy of my journal.
Reading from the single page of text he addressed each of my questions in turn.
I interrupted.
"You're upset," I said.
"Yes!" the master exclaimed. "I'm upset!"
"I shouldn't have sent it to you," I said. "I knew that it would upset you."
I felt terrible.
"It did upset me!" again the master exclaimed. "It made me angry!"
"Why did I send it?" I asked myself out loud. "Why did I send it?"
My words tumbled out.
"I thought and thought and thought about it before I sent it and I knew that it might upset you and might hurt you and I debated myself for a long time and then instead of trusting my gut and not sending it I decided that I should do what you say I should do and I sent it!"
"It did hurt me!" the master said.
I saw his pain.
"It did hurt me!" the master said again.
More pain—
Heat rushed up from my heart to my face and burned my eyes hot and red and I hung my head and I squinted and I felt tears squirt from each eye and moisten each cheek. This terrible conflict, this whole relationship now, seemed to me so confusing and so confused.
"I'm sorry I hurt you, Kudo!" I said. "I didn't want to hurt you, I didn't, yet I knew it would and I sent it anyway, I didn't know what was the right thing to do, I was trying as hard as I could to do what I thought you wanted, but I knew it would hurt you and I sent it anyway!"
I wiped away my tears.
I hurt.
"I shouldn't have sent it!" I said.
Remorse.
"I'm sorry!"
"No, you were right to send it," the master said.
The master waited.
I gathered myself and found my breath.
My calm.
The master addressed each of my questions one at a time. He explained that although, as he had said and I had repeated, Nananda had not yet formally become his student Nananda had been in the process of becoming his student and that their relationship was a violation of the precepts.
He spoke simply.
"It was wrong," the master said.
But their focus then, the master explained, was on what they could do and should do now that the precepts had been violated. They ended their sexual relationship, he said, they acknowledged their mistake, they composed a statement of ethics that they hoped might prevent such a thing from happening to them or to others ever again, and they had vowed to do better.
"Never again!"
"Ruth thought it no big deal," I said.
The master smiled.
"That's good," the master said.
He smiled.
The master liked Ruth.
For his calligraphy Ruth had recently made black paper from the master's old robes; and the master admired her handmade books. In my journal I often mentioned Ruth and often I recorded her reactions to my practice, to temple events, and to my interaction with my friends in the sangha and with the master.
I told Ruth everything.
That I characterized the praise that Nananda and the master bestowed upon one another as "effusive" annoyed the master.
He did not agree that the knowledge of his romantic relationship with Nananda might influence student perception of them. He did not agree that to continue to keep students ignorant of the relationship was a manipulation of student opinion. He did not agree that his continued silence in the matter was a way of protecting the credibility of lineage and transmission.
"No," the master said.
I waited.
"It will color the perception of some and not others."
The master stood up.
He busied himself with something near the small altar in his room as he talked. The master explained that as a member of the clergy he was prohibited by law from telling others what his students revealed to him in confidence. I had heard the master speak to us on this topic several times. This time I sensed in his familiar remarks an unusual intensity. Though the master did not say so in just so many words the master seemed to suggest that the law of confidentiality applied not only to clergy but also to those whom clergy counseled. It was all privileged communication, the master implied, both what I said and what he said.
Whoa!
This was news to me.
No lawyer, I had not studied the matter, but I felt certain that this could not be true. In the past five years there had been numerous occasions when I told my wife and children and friends, too, of remarks the master had made to me in dokusan. None of them had ever appeared to me clearly private and strictly confidential and indeed many times I had reported later in my journal that I had related them to family and friends and even to colleagues and never had the master reprimanded me for doing so nor had he even cautioned me about it.
Never.
Why would he?
Why?
Until this matter of the secret the master had never said anything to me in dokusan that he had not also told me in my journal or in group discussion or in conversation over doughnuts and coffee in the kitchen.
I wondered.
"Does the law of confidentiality bind the student, too," I asked, "and not just the priest?"
"No," the master said, "but I think it should."
He waited.
"No."
I shook my head.
"That doesn't make sense to me," I said. "I'm sorry."
I waited.
"There are times I'd like students to respect my confidentiality," the master said.
Understood.
Yes.
"Of course."
"I regret telling you about Nananda," the master said. "I wish I hadn't."
"I'm sorry."
"It hurt me," the master said once more. "It pissed me off!"
My journal he meant.
Lost—
Totally confused I did not know what to say.
Lost.
I had never told the master anything I wanted him to keep private. In fact so far as I knew I had nothing left in my life that I considered still a secret. I thought I had confessed everything.
"You have my permission to tell anyone anything I have ever told you," I said.
He smiled.
"Thank you," the master said.
Forward.
The master proceeded down the list of questions I had asked in my journal.
He returned to the issue of credibility.
I had suggested that although the master's romantic relationship with Nananda sixteen years before would in a secular context be considered so minor as to be meaningless it was the kind of compromise, I guessed, that led Lachs and other academic analysts in Critical Zen to question the myth of lineage and transmission. Yes, perhaps it did not matter at all, I had written, but should students not be informed of it so that they themselves might consider it and evaluate its importance and decide? The knowledge had in some small way altered my own understanding and perception. Doubt I had not felt before I felt. Though I could not articulate precisely how or why, I sensed it. Would it have mattered if Shakyamuni Buddha and his disciple Mahakasyapa had been lovers? Jesus and Peter? Peter and Paul? I was not sure myself—but because of the power of sex the question did for me arise. But now the master did not address directly the myth of lineage and transmission nor the possibility that sexual relations between a teacher and a student or prospective student and future dharma heir might compromise credibility and legitimacy.
"Until I read your email," the master scoffed, "I'd never heard of Stuart Lachs!"
He was clearly annoyed.
For some reason the master's exasperation struck me funny and I laughed.
"I hadn't either until just a few months ago," I said.
"Does he practice?" the master asked.
This question sounded like an accusation.
"He says he does," I said.
"No!" the master exclaimed. "I don't think students should decide!"
I just listened.
"If students were to draw that perception then their perception would be wrong! I told you of my past relationship with Nananda because of what you wrote about Sosan Davis and because I wanted you to understand how a sexual relationship can develop between teacher and student!"
Entreaty.
I had written in my journal that I wondered, too, if the master had told Eleanor what he had told me of her innocent evocation in him of sexual feeling.
Desire.
Though the experiences the master had briefly described would be considered normal, mundane, and utterly ordinary to any man I had ever met, our formal relationship as Zen teacher and Zen student and his repeated insistence in the past that we were not and could not ever be friends had complicated matters for me. The intimate details the master had shared with me had made me uncomfortable and the fact that I had recorded them in my journal and then questioned his telling me such things had made him angry. I had been bold.
Had he told Eleanor?
"No!" the master exclaimed. "I did not tell her!"
He was pissed.
He read aloud from the page he held in his hand each question I had asked in my journal.
Why had the master told me?
I wondered.
"To help you understand how a teacher can become involved!" the master declared.
I remained silent.
"Human life is complex and a teacher is human!" he exclaimed.
The master paused.
I waited.
"It's hormones!"
Uh—
The master had said we could not be friends.
Understood.
Only student and teacher.
So be it.
But the intimate detail—
Was this kind of communication also a part of the teaching?
He was angry.
"Yes!" the master exclaimed. "It is!"
I listened.
The master repeated again what he had already said about his wanting me to understand how a sexual relationship could develop between a teacher and a student. Though I was at first astonished and then puzzled and finally amused that the master believed I needed instruction in this mystery I did not interrupt.
One word in his discourse the master repeated like a refrain.
"Hormones!"
I had never seen the master so upset.
Distraught.
"So then everything you do and say is a part of the teaching?" I inquired.
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "It is!"
Hm.
"By example?" I suggested.
"Yes," the master agreed. "Everything I do is teaching by example."
He paused.
"Even if," the master added, "as in the case of Nananda and me it is a bad example."
I laughed.
"But in that sense then it is true of everyone!" I objected.
I smiled.
"Yes," the master said. "Everyone teaches by example."
He paused.
"That's true of everyone," he said.
Understood.
He proceeded down my list of questions.
Next—
What he shared with me seemed the kind of thing two friends might share—
Yes?
"No."
The master disagreed.
"No."
But the master did say that at the annual meetings of the American Zen Teachers Association men and women gathered in separate groups to discuss issues that were gender specific.
Had the master told other students in the sangha the same kind of thing he told me?
"If useful in teaching," he said.
Would it be all right if I told Eleanor what the master had said about her?
"No!" the master exclaimed.
Would Eleanor think it okay that her teacher felt this way?
"I don't know," the master replied.
Would Eleanor think it okay that the master had told other students how he felt?
"I don't know," the master said.
I had speculated that perhaps every man had to tell somebody such things.
Maybe I had just happened to be that guy?
"No," the master said. "It was teaching about human failing and redemption."
Ah!
This subject I liked.
I waited.
"Eleanor has told me," the master explained, "that she thinks that in shosan you asked your question about reputation and concealment deliberately to embarrass me in public."
"What!"
I must have looked shocked.
Jesus!
I was shocked.
God!
Eleanor had made an accusation like that to the master behind my back?
Jesus!
Never—not even once in my five years at the temple—had I ever tried to embarrass the master.
No.
In spite of what Eleanor and now the master, too, apparently, had perceived, the thought had never entered my mind.
Never.
Why had Eleanor not spoken to me of this?
Jesus!
More temple tattling!
"Kudo, that is not true!" I exclaimed. "That is absolutely false!"
I found my breath.
I inhaled.
I exhaled.
I inhaled.
"Never in my life have I ever done anything deliberately to embarrass you!"
Trust.
My sincerity moved the master.
Trust.
"Eleanor thinks you should have asked such a question only in private."
More—
Behind my back.
Trust?
I felt totally confused.
I felt physically sick with confusion.
I felt ill.
The master continued.
"I've told Eleanor that she should tell you herself but Eleanor did not want to do that."
Ha!
I was speechless—
Stunned.
"I urged Eleanor to talk to you," the master said.
Hm.
But Eleanor had not.
No.
"I think you should talk with Eleanor," the master told me now.
"No."
"Yes," the master insisted. "I really think you should."
I listened.
"I think it would help you to understand," he said.
I listened.
"Eleanor has known of my sexual relationship with Nananda for quite some time," the master said. "We have talked about it and more than once Eleanor has asked me questions about it."
Ugh.
"I want you to talk about it with Eleanor," the master repeated.
No.
No.
This was not going to happen!
No.
I knew the instant the master asked me that I was not ever going to broach this subject with Eleanor.
I had been told too much.
Discuss with Eleanor the master's sexual relationship with Nananda?
No.
Discuss with his student Eleanor his sexual relationship with his former student Nananda herself a priest and master?
No.
Eleanor had been once the student of Nananda.
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