First thing the next morning I deleted from my journal what I had written on Monday—many more thoughts and questions about Katagiri, Nananda, Sosan Davis, Eleanor, and the master, still more about sexuality, secrecy, student, teacher, myth, criticism, lineage, and transmission.
Expunged.
Next I emailed Ivan and Ryan.
In dokusan the master had given me explicit permission to do whatever I wanted with the personal information he shared with me, I told my two friends, but when he read my practice journal the master had called me to his room to talk again and there he had withdrawn his permission.
"So you see the awkward position I am in," I concluded.
Ivan replied.
He had not shared the information with anyone, Ivan said. He promised to respect the master's privacy and my own. The information, Ivan explained, revealed only that Katagiri and the master were human. Ivan asked what he could do to help me. The problem was neither his nor mine, I assured him. I suggested that we try just to be buddhas, wait, and see what happened.
Ryan replied.
Ryan wondered about this attachment to reputation and to secrecy. To trust a teacher he needed the sense that the teacher was transparent and open, Ryan explained, but he said he would treat as confidential the information I had shared with him. I explained to Ryan that since the master had told six or eight of us that there were things in his past that would ruin his reputation if they became public it was no secret that the master had secrets. I explained that the master had told us this to comfort us; but I added that I thought the truth just wanted out—that not even realized buddhas were bigger than the unconscious. I wondered every day if this conflict would make me quit again or get me kicked out.
From my journal for the week—
Monday, September 18.
[No entry.]
Tuesday, September 19.
"I deleted Monday's entry after talking with Kudo before evening zazen."
"Why did you do this?" the master replied.
Wednesday, September 20.
[No entry.]
"There's no entry here, Bob," the master remarked.
Thursday, September 21.
I simply listed the impressions I had received from the master regarding the feelings, thoughts, and questions I had expressed in dokusan or in shosan or in my journal over the past five years of my practice at Heartmind. I felt once more at impasse. I felt just as I had eighteen months before. On one hand the master exhorted me to be open and honest and to record unedited in my journal whatever came up for me, indeed the master mocked me and taunted me when he believed that I had not, but then when I had the master reacted as if I had done something wrong. To me it felt like abuse plain and simple.
It felt to me like this:
You shouldn't be thinking what you thought.
You shouldn't be feeling what you felt.
You shouldn't be saying what you said.
You shouldn't be wondering what you wonder.
You shouldn't be asking what you asked.
You shouldn't be writing what you wrote.
The master chose to respond to each of my impressions one at a time.
On what I thought—
"No," the master replied. "We should let things come up without suppressing them and let them go without clinging to them. Judging them or editing them is not recommended."
On what I felt—
"What do you mean by feeling?" the master asked. "Do you mean sensation, vedana, the second skandha? Or do you mean things like stubbornness and anger? These are mental formations, the fourth skandha. Whatever you mean you should let them come up and let them go. The only one telling you what to think or feel is you yourself."
On what I said—
"This depends on what you said," the master responded. "If it's an angry outburst, deliberately hurtful, or malicious gossip, or sexual harassment, or insulting or demeaning comments, or duplicitous speech, or manipulative speech, then, no, you should not have said it."
On what I wondered—
"What do you mean by wonder?" asked the master. "All mental states, the fourth skandha, are arising and passing away all the time. All mental states should be allowed to come up without suppression and to leave without clinging."
On what I asked—
"That depends on what you asked," the master replied. "What was your intention? Was it to be any of what I mentioned above under what 'you said'? If so, you shouldn't have asked it."
On what I wrote—
"What was your intention?" asked the master. "Who is to read it?"
I had thought the master understood.
My sole intention was to show the master my mind. The master was my primary reader, my critic, and my teacher. Though I sometimes failed, in my journal I tried to open completely and to reveal myself and to come clean so that my teacher could see me clearly and truly and help me.
I had no objection to anybody reading it.
I did not care.
"If you are speaking of your practice journal," the master inquired, "how about honestly putting down whatever comes up for you and just letting the chips fall where they may?"
Circles—
And maybe hurt the master again?
Why?
Maybe piss him off again?
Why?
For Friday's entry I had commented on an article the master had sent me on finding a teacher and on the relationship between teacher and student. The master had never impressed me as a man with an ulterior motive and in my comment I told him so. Even in the most difficult moments—for me—of our relationship, I added, I had doubted neither his good intention nor his integrity. The master had seemed to me solidly grounded in the ordinary. That was his strength, I said. The master had been a big help to me and, I wrote, he still was. I could not, I said, emphasize that enough. I had not ever tried to embarrass the master in public, I swore yet again, no, not ever, yet when he had told me that Eleanor thought so, I said, I could understand how to Eleanor it might have appeared that way. When I got home after the master and I had talked, I explained in my journal, I related this story to Ruth.
"Why can't you just admit you were needling him?" Ruth asked me.
Uff da!
"It was useless to try to defend myself," I commented in my journal.
Hopeless.
"Why is there a need to defend yourself?" the master inquired.
But I hadn't been needling him!
But I hadn't been needling him!
I hadn't!
I had wanted to know and to understand how concealment to preserve reputation was the Way. If needling were what Eleanor and Ruth and the master had seen in my question, well, then, so be it, I said. The master knew how difficult it was for me in shosan to formulate a question. After I had sat all day for two days, I was sorry, I said, but my questions evaporated—yes, I added for emphasis, yes, they really did—but on Sunday because of what had transpired earlier, I explained, the question I asked had come up and come up and come up and had not gone away so I had thought I would tough it out and ask it.
"These last few sentences are quite defensive!" the master remarked.
Needling.
Though it might sound disingenuous or naïve or both, I continued in my journal, the truth was that I had not known that it was even possible for the master to be "embarrassed" in the rite of shosan. Jane had explained to me that in this ceremony the teacher is a manifestation of the Buddha. I had always assumed that my part in the ceremony was to ask a sincere question and to open myself to whatever might result and that the master would respond from deep within the realm of truth. To put it another way I understood shosan as a rite in which both the master and I surrendered to the wisdom of the unconscious.
Embarrassed?
"I am embarrassed in shosan when I give a weak or lousy answer to someone's question," the master explained. "I am embarrassed when I am off and do a lousy job overall. I am sometimes bored or angry or joyful or a host of other things. I feel bad when a student is tongue-tied and I am put off or annoyed when someone asks a stupid question or tries to provoke me."
In five years I had not once seen a student try to provoke the master.
Never.
But I had seen the master annoyed.
Often.
I had seen the master try to provoke a student.
Often.
Stupid question?
Hmm.
I doubt I would know one if I heard it.
Zen.
It makes me feel sad to reread and to edit this today.
I feel sorry for all of us.
Rue.
I mentioned in my journal that I had read an article many years before—I did not remember where—by a master who explained that Buddhist teachers tended to emphasize in their teaching the particular practice that had evoked in them their own experience of realization. For the master I was sure that this practice was sitting, I reported in my journal. I was not the kind of teacher that the master was, of course, a religious teacher, but the article had made sense to me. I saw that because honesty and trying to be truthful had been the practice that opened the door of perception for me honesty was also the practice that I myself emphasized in teaching others and, more than that, ever since it had been the practice that I relied upon when I lost my way and the practice that I fostered.
Truth.
"I just come clean and bear the consequences," I had written. "I suppose that you will see this as my extolling myself," I added, "but I am just trying to explain. I regret very much the hurt I caused you."
"Thank you," the master replied.
To my reference to realization the master responded at length.
"What do you mean by realization?" he asked. "If you mean a momentary insight that is not what I mean."
That was not what I meant.
No.
"By realization I mean to make real or to manifest the awakened way," the master stated.
That!
An awakening that changes your life for good.
Yes!
"When you say 'realization' as you did in your previous sentence," the master added, "you are reifying it and making it into something concrete. There is nothing called realization that you can grab and hold."
No.
I was aware that realization was not something I could grab and hold.
I understood.
I had used the word and meant it just as the master had.
To be real.
In my journal I acknowledged that the pain I had caused the master was not the first time that by my questions I had unintentionally hurt someone and I added that it probably would not be the last.
"I hope that you will continue to be my teacher," I said.
I meant it.
But the very next day I entered into my journal still more questions about our dokusan.
Had my question to the master in shosan—"Is concealment the Way?"—been the same kind of question the master had later asked me in dokusan to make his point about secrets?
Masturbation?
Were our two questions—mine of him and his of me—analogous?
I wanted to know.
My doubt about all of this had only increased.
I knew it would.
I did not think what the master had asked and said in dokusan or in my journal about sexuality and secrecy and reputation had much to do with me or with my practice or with my understanding and awakening at all. It was not I who had become defensive it seemed.
It had been he.
"Everyone keeps secrets," the master responded. "Everyone thinks, says, and does things that he would rather not be public knowledge. Why? Because fear of the loss of reputation is one of the five fears shared by all beings. 'Everyone' means you, too," he added.
My last entry of the week—
"Once bitten, twice shy, I don't feel nearly as free in my journal as I once did."
Not at all.
No.
"Why not?" the master asked. "Who binds you?"
Me, myself, and I—
Yes.
I had become wary.
Very.
The master asked again why I did not just write down what came up for me and let the chips fall.
Tu quoque!
My last journal entries, the master believed, were some of the most honest I had written. There had been so much in them, he said now, that they had warranted a meeting rather than just his usual written responses. The master thought that our meeting had been useful, fruitful, and productive. He knew that for me our meeting had been painful but, the master explained, deepening and growth were accompanied always by pain.
"What are you afraid of?" the master asked.
His terminating me!
His quitting me!
Yes.
I had loved the man.
Did the master not understand why his reactions made me question whether I should say and ask what was really on my mind?
Did the master not understand why our dialogue seemed now to be more about him than me?
Nothing I had written or asked in the past seemed to me expressions that I would call—in the language of my teacher—"sexual harassment" or "deliberately hurtful" or "malicious gossip" or "an angry outburst" or "insulting" or "demeaning" or "manipulative" or "duplicitous"—yet from his comments I inferred that the master had apparently perceived them so and, if that was what by them I had indeed intended, then, the master said, I should not have said nor asked what I had—though I should continue nevertheless to record unedited in my journal whatever came up. Could such contradictory instructions be reconciled? Did the master not understand why for me this constituted impasse?
What I had written had upset him!
What I had asked had hurt him!
It had made him mad.
Sad—
It had caused him to suffer!
In buddhaspeak it had been one of the infinite and interdependent conditions and causes from which hurt, anger, and upset had arisen for the master and I could not help but worry that perhaps it had even aggravated his irritable bowel and endangered his health.
Yet still this man exhorted me to be frank.
Honest.
"Write down whatever comes up."
Raw.
"Don't edit."
Ha—
I was a mess.
Indeed I had begun to wonder if my own health might not be affected.
Concern.
In the practice journal I emailed to the master later that day I explained that his change of heart had come too late and that I had already told several people about his sexual relationship.
Help—
I wrote Billy—
I could not remember what if anything I had told Billy already but I explained to my old friend that to reassure students the master had mentioned that he had done things in his life that he could not reveal to just anybody because the public knowledge of them would ruin his reputation.
"You know me," I told Billy. "I probed."
I summarized my ordeal.
"There's quite a bit of drama," I explained, "when you interact with your teacher three or four times a week, let me tell you. In dokusan, I guess to show me that everyone has secrets after I had bragged that I did not have any left, the master asked me who I thought about when I masturbated. I laughed but it was pretty weird," I told Billy. "It made me want to call my old seventh and eighth grade friends."
In my note to Billy I added—
"I've actually had flashes that the master might beat the shit out of me! He's 6' 3" and 260. I wish you were here to help me."
I had; he was; I did; but—
In my rational moments I knew how unlikely it was that the master would ever strike me in retaliation for something I might say or write; yet it was indeed true nevertheless that my knowledge of his anger had in my mind manifested as images of possible violence against me.
How marvelous and mad the mind—
My mind.
My book was almost done I told my friend.
Ha—
That was more than a year ago.
Two.
I also wrote my old friend John.
John said the fact that the master sometimes drove away his students was in his book a recommendation.
John said he thought of teachers as personal trainers for fat and lazy people like himself. I had complained to John that my relationship with the master often felt like marriage to an ugly peevish wife. John reminded me that I was free to leave and without the mess of divorce.
"I am in favor of any teacher that gives you a hard time," said John.
Hmm.
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