Tuesday.
I left home for evening zazen.
When I arrived at the temple at 6:20 Eleanor was in the buddha hall.
"Kudo would like to speak with you upstairs," Eleanor informed me.
"Thank you."
Up I went.
It was not a formal interview.
The master was in his easy chair, reading a book, and after we had exchanged bows, our palms in gassho, he invited me to sit down on the couch. I was nervous, anxious about the tone of his new responses to my journal, and I really did not now want to discuss them.
Too tired.
The master looked relaxed and he smiled.
I waited.
"Have you read my replies to your journal?" the master asked.
"Yes."
"Just let them go," he said. "Don't respond to them—just sit with them."
"Thank you!" I said relieved.
That was it.
Exit.
I walked back downstairs and set about preparing the temple for evening zazen. I tidied the mats, cushions, and sutra books in the zendo. I lit the candle and offered a stick of incense. I opened a window. I hit the han in the buddha hall. I bowed. At the doan cushion in the corner of the zendo I bowed and sat. At 7:00 sharp I rang the inkin. For eighty minutes the three of us—Eleanor, the master, and I—sat and walked and sat some more. At 8:20 we chanted for ten minutes. When I rang the final three bells we stood and bowed in the manner prescribed. My teacher first and then his apprentice exited the zendo. I extinguished the candle and turned off the light over Manjusri. I turned off the lamp in the corner of the buddha hall and then the porch light. On the porch I sat and slipped on my sandals and I left.
Respite—
No.
On Wednesday evening I arrived just shortly after 6:00 as had become my custom to help set up the temple for the precept ceremony Ryaku Fusatsu. When I arrived Eleanor had already begun arranging the two small tables, the chair, and the ceremonial objects.
Eleanor was kneeling near the doan seat, looking over the script.
"Hi, Bob!" Eleanor said smiling.
We bowed.
"Hi!" I said.
Eleanor had been struggling with a cold for almost a week and she had nearly lost her voice.
"Do you mind being ino?" she asked.
"Not at all," I said.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
"How has your practice been going?" Eleanor asked.
I thought.
In my first quarrel with the master eighteen months before, he had made me conscious of the banality of my normal replies to such a question and, since the master had now told me of matters he had talked over with Eleanor, I wondered if in private our teacher had also told Eleanor of matters he had discussed with me. As I record these memories now from my notes and journals I experience once again the discomfort and confusion that the labyrinthian complexity of relationships at Heartmind ultimately evoked in me. Naïve when first I began practicing there I had assumed that we all aspired to be as honest and open as Gaskin and my friend John had taught and insisted we should be on the Way and for four years I found at the temple pretty much what I had expected in spite of my reservations about the master's temperament and even my quarrel with him about it. It was only with the unexpected revelation of sex and secrecy that the climate had changed and I had begun to feel now the confusion and oppression of confidentiality and intrigue.
I liked Eleanor.
Her question seemed serious and sincere, more than just a simple amenity.
I decided to respond in kind.
"Everything in my practice seems to go pretty well," I said.
I paused.
"Except for my relationship with Kudo."
"How so?" Eleanor asked.
I considered my reply.
"If you don't mind my asking I mean," Eleanor added.
I smiled.
"No, I don't mind," I said. "It's mainly the journal but you don't do one."
"No," she said.
"The master says I'm dishonest and a coward."
The front door of the temple rattled and clanked and two or three people walked in, Edward, Alison, and Nikki, I think, and just minutes later Ivan, James, and Jane. We all laid out mats and cushions in the buddha hall and tucked sutra books under the front of the mats. Soon we offered incense and bows and under the master's guidance and supervision together we chanted and bowed and received the precepts our teacher conferred.
No killing, no lying, no cheating, no stealing, no harming.
Be good, be kind.
Free, save, and serve the world.
Wake.
The same old stuff it seemed I never tired of reciting.
The vow.
In my world of horror and war just naming our aspirations made me feel good.
Mantra.
It was on Thursday morning when I received an email from Eleanor that I realized that in our brief conversation the previous evening Eleanor had totally misunderstood what I had said.
Why do these things happen—
Why—
"One of the comments that struck me," Eleanor wrote, "was that you said Kudo was a coward and deceitful."
What!
No—
Oh my god!
No—
"I am curious how you came to those definitions of him," Eleanor added.
No—
Eleanor explained that she thought all beings were cowardly and deceitful at times; and that she wondered at what moment we choose to solidify such judgments and projections and why we solidify them in the first place. Eleanor said that she did respect the relationship between student and teacher and that she did understand the difficulty that could arise within such a relationship. It seemed to her, Eleanor said, that it had been a long and difficult struggle for me just as it had been for her with other teachers and, Eleanor added, even at times with the master. She would like to talk with me about it, Eleanor said, if I wanted.
Jesus!
"If that is how you truly feel about Kudo," Eleanor inquired, "then why are you studying under him?"
Oh my god!
No—
"I am pretty sure I heard you correctly," Eleanor wrote, "so if I made a mistake here please let me know."
I did so—immediately!
Now!
It was to me an absolutely stunning misunderstanding and I was deeply concerned that Eleanor might have told the master what she believed I had said. I swear I could write yet another book just on misunderstanding. I remain even now still fascinated by what Eleanor had heard in my clear and simple straightforward statement. Ear, eye, memory, mind—
Ultimately unreliable.
All.
I called immediately to let Eleanor know that she had gotten it backwards.
"Oh."
I said it twice.
"Oh."
Three times.
"Oh."
Eleanor thanked me for my clarification.
"Bye."
"Bye."
I had the journal to worry about.
Oof—
For Monday I had nothing to say. The journal was still an ordeal—for me the curse of Zen practice. Except for having to subject myself to the master in my journal I liked to practice. I liked to sit. I liked temple services and ceremonies. I liked to help maintain the temple and to care for it, I liked to contribute, I liked to do each week my little job. I liked to interact with the sangha and to sit with my friends. I had come even to like sesshin and though I could not say that I liked oryoki at least I no longer disliked it; and—except for the man he so often became when he replied to my journal—I liked the master.
For Tuesday I mentioned in my journal only that I had turned off my alarm at 4:00 and tried to sleep till 5:00 but that I had dozed and thought and dozed and thought, an experience less than rest. I should have gotten up at 4:00 as usual but I had felt tired perhaps because I found myself buried again by the papers written by my students of their sad lives.
"Suffering and more suffering," the master remarked.
I liked my job.
It felt good to be a teacher.
Paid to try to help others to be articulate, honest, brave, and kind.
Lao Tsu:
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.
For Wednesday I thanked the master for having spoken with me informally before evening zazen and for advising me not to respond to his replies to my journal entries of the previous week.
To just sit with them.
"It was a relief," I acknowledged, "to feel that it was okay to ratchet down the intensity of the dialogue."
To this benign remark the master found reason to object.
"Neither the practice journal nor dokusan nor shosan," the master informed me, "is intended to be a dialogue."
The master continued.
His dictionary, he said, defined a "dialogue," first, as a conversation between two or more persons and then, second, as an exchange of ideas, especially on a political issue, for the purpose of reaching amicable agreement.
"This is not an exchange of ideas," the master explained.
Hm.
The remark was typical of my teacher.
By my use of the word "dialogue" I had meant to suggest neither personal nor political intent. The word had been a simple descriptor. My teacher required that each day I write in my journal and that each week I submit my journal to him. The master then read my journal and wrote back to me to offer explanation, comment, and judgment and to ask questions. I read his responses in turn and thought about them, sat with them, wrote again the next week in my journal, and submitted my journal to him, and so on and so forth.
This was not dialogue?
What had the master read into the word "dialogue" that I had not? Was it not a conversation between two people? Not communication? I did not understand, really, how it could not be dialogue. The master read what I wrote and I read what he wrote. To me this was dialogue.
"Write something in your journal," the master instructed, "and I will comment on it."
Understood.
"Take my comments as practice instruction and sit with them."
Understood.
That was all I really wanted to do.
By this point, I explained, I had received so much direction from my teacher about what did belong in the journal and what did not belong that I felt overloaded. But the master insisted that the only instructions and restrictions he recalled were that I should avoid gossip and be honest and forthright.
For Monday of the following week again I drew a blank.
Nothing.
For Tuesday I wrote that my 78-year-old office mate was back in the hospital this time with chest pains.
I interrupted myself.
"I see I'm looking outward again."
"Keep looking," commented the master. "Go deeper."
I tried.
"Eventually things will come up," the master said.
I just did not see much inside of me, I said by way of apology to the master, except for the continual stream of thought and the usual ephemeral ripples of up and down, yes and no, good and bad, happiness and unhappiness, that appeared and disappeared and reappeared. I was aware of the tiny transient "me" in the infinite shimmering sphere of our being constantly dissolving and reconstituting itself instant by instant and on its surface my mixed-up and confused compeers who devised bombs, readied machine guns, shook infants, ingested drugs, got drunk, cursed their families, murdered both friends and enemies, and killed themselves. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continued.
"These mixed-up and confused compeers," commented the master, "are you."
In one sense yes.
Yes.
In another no.
No.
I saw the horror and the pain and what was there to do, I asked, but try to help and stay sane.
Do no harm.
Do good.
Serve.
It was all sooo mysterious—life, the world, the universe.
The killing.
The killing.
We emerge, we look, we see, we live, we love, we laugh, we loaf, we suffer, we cry, we die and—
The sphere of being dissolves and reconstitutes.
Bubble.
Schopenhauer: "The world is my idea."
Bubble.
Bubble.
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