To talk about his own concerns Ivan had met in private with the master. Then Ivan and I met for coffee and conversation. Ivan seemed reticent, wary, guarded. The master, Ivan explained, had impressed upon Ivan the harm of triangulation and the need for confidentiality.
Ah!
That explained it.
Ivan had been confused by events, he said, and concerned about me. Ivan himself seemed now in his practice to be doing well and to feel secure in it, I told him so, and I assured Ivan that I was all right. He and my friends at Heartmind, I knew, were still practicing just as hard as they could to extinguish delusion and to free all beings.
That was the Way.
"That’s exactly what I'm doing at home," I said.
"Good."
Billy emailed.
"Has your banishment affected your meditation practice?" he inquired.
It had not.
"I'm still sitting forty minutes a day," I said.
My regimen.
"I'm glad that everyone at Heartmind is practicing still," I told Billy.
Banished.
"It doesn't feel like a problem."
Evolution.
"It's just the way the karmic fruit matured," I added.
Life moved on.
I had three writing classes to bring to a conclusion and three more to prepare for the next term and my wife and I were planning our first trip ever to New York City to visit our son Michael.
"Do you think at some point you might try to connect with another teacher?" Billy inquired.
That was a possibility, I told my friend, but I had not given the matter any real thought. I did not even know yet just exactly what had really happened and I wanted to wait and see how it all settled down into me.
His question annoyed Ruth.
"Jesus!" she exclaimed. "It's been only two weeks and already he's nagging you to find a new teacher!"
I laughed.
I knew Ruth was just concerned about me.
Billy, too.
Exiled.
"If you can't practice with a teacher, it is best not to practice at all."
I had heard the master say this many times.
He attributed it to Dogen.
I wondered.
If you can't practice nonviolence, forbearance, and patience with a teacher, is it best not to practice nonviolence, forbearance, and patience at all? If you can't practice honesty and telling the truth with a teacher, is it best not to practice honesty and telling the truth at all? If you can't practice economy, frugality, and generosity with a teacher, is it best not to practice economy, frugality, and generosity at all? If you can't practice mercy, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, and love with a teacher, is it best not to practice mercy, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, and love at all? If you can't practice sitting and walking meditation with a teacher, is it best not to practice sitting and walking meditation at all?
This had not been my experience.
But to this deconstruction of mine Edward objected.
It was unfair.
"Practice Zen he meant!"
But—
Without nonviolence, honesty, generosity, compassion, love, and meditation—
What remained of Zen?
Was the teacher really as indispensable to the practice of Buddhism as its Zen teachers said? Was its authoritarianism, its emphasis on submission and obedience, part of the original Buddhist teaching? Had Shakyamuni himself taught the indispensability of the teacher? Had the Buddha forbidden triangulation? Nietzsche said that the transparent real reason that the concept of "sin" and the rite of "confession" had been taught as the essential belief and practice of Catholicism was the self-interest of the priesthood. Did the concept of "ignorance" and the rite of "dokusan" similarly serve the interest of the priests of Zen?
Thinking.
Thinking.
Thinking.
The board of directors met on Saturday morning, November 11, and following the scheduled business meeting, I learned later from Alison, the board had addressed the matter of my expulsion and excommunication. I know very little of what transpired. Alison told me that the master had explained that both student and priest were bound by the principle of confidentiality.
The master had explicitly discouraged triangulation, Alison said.
Forbidden it.
From the temple statement of ethics the master had read aloud excerpts he considered pertinent and germane.
I wished that the master in our meeting had done the same for me.
Ethics—
Hm.
I remained confused.
Edward, too, wrote to say that the board had discussed what Edward called "my departure."
Euphemism.
Out!
"The wet eyes," Edward said, "carried a solid majority over the dry."
Alison especially, he said, was upset.
"Everyone misses you."
I wondered.
I had felt open, honest, and free in my relations with my friends at Heartmind, too open and too free, I now inferred, and perhaps from their point of view their relationships with me had also felt for quite some time—to use the master's words—"rocky" and "tenuous." That possibility had never crossed my mind. But now that their teacher had impeached and indicted me it seemed certain that our friendships would be reevaluated by my friends and perhaps reinterpreted and judged in the light of "triangulation," unethical conduct, and this allegation of betrayal.
Now it was my own reputation, it seemed, that had been smeared—and by my own teacher!
Irony.
It seemed to me now that at the very least I should have been invited to be present at my own impeachment if only to hear the specific charges and evidence against me. I did not know—I do not know precisely still—what I had done wrong. Had I been invited to be present would elementary principles and procedures of parliamentary order have been in place?
Would I have been offered the opportunity to respond to the allegation of my teacher without his interruption?
Or would I have been interrupted by the master and been told that this hearing was not a debate?
In my awkward conversations with the master I had often wondered about parliamentary procedures at meetings of the Association of American Zen Masters and the Buddhist Teachers Association. Did participants there understand their meetings to be educational opportunities to teach one another the Way? Did they all—like the master in shosan, dokusan, and group discussion—"trust" their "gut" and interrupt one another if and when the pedagogical impulse struck them? Or did they at that venue abide by the same principles and procedures of order and academic discourse that my students and I practiced?
Reason.
But here I go round again.
My bond with my teacher was not contractual. I was not his employee nor the master mine. Ours was a voluntary and mutual association.
Expelled.
Out.
It felt like I had been divorced.
Dumped.
I had tried hard to honor my vows and to preserve our marriage but somehow I had gotten lost, I had misunderstood the terms of our relationship and I had unintentionally hurt my Zen spouse and made him so unhappy, sick, and mad that he had rid himself of me.
Yes.
That was just how it felt.
Like we had been married for five long years and then finally he had tired of my questions.
Divorced me.
Out!
Dumped me.
On Sunday I heard from Jane. Though we had practiced and worked with one another harmoniously our relationship had been largely nonverbal. We had never really talked at length, not even about Stephen Gaskin and her ten years at The Farm. Her job, her health, and her family responsibilities had recently limited her time at Heartmind. Jane said she was sad that I would no longer be coming to the temple.
"You are really missed," she said.
In her email to me Jane said that at first she had been somewhat bewildered by the master's email announcement of the termination of our relationship. Jane speculated as to its cause.
Jane remembered the questions I had asked in shosan.
Secrets.
"I don't think Kudo lives his life in fear that his past will catch up to him," Jane said.
Nor was that quite how I would have put it.
Puzzled.
I was still thinking.
Hmm.
"I think the important thing is that the master has dealt with it," Jane said.
Had he?
Then why all of this anxiety and alarm?
Out.
Jane said that she did not expect her teacher to be perfect nor ever to have been perfect. There had been actions in his past with which Jane did not agree—his failures as father and husband—but Jane felt that the master was well-grounded in Zen practice and that she could learn from him. Jane had seen the master get mad, Jane acknowledged, yes, Jane had seen him "blow it" and, Jane added, she kind of even liked the fact that she had seen the master mad.
"It made things more real to me," Jane said.
Human.
It had made clear to her, Jane explained, that there was not some ideal enlightenment out there somewhere nor in the teacher but rather just something we all work on, teacher and master included.
"I'm here because he has great depth to his practice and because I feel that I can learn from him."
Learn from the master—
Yes.
I felt that way.
Out.
Jane did not feel that the master was at all hung up on his past, Jane said, so she did not see why she herself should worry about it. Nor did Jane feel that the master had to tell her everything.
"People are entitled to privacy."
Yes.
Yes.
I could not disagree.
No.
It had not caused me worry.
None.
But I had been curious.
Yes.
Secrecy—
Why?
Reputation—
Why?
I wanted to know and when I want to know I ask.
I asked.
Jane seemed to believe that I had romanticized and idealized The Farm and that I had compared the master to Gaskin and then judged the master by some false notion I had of honesty and truth at The Farm. The message of The Farm, Jane explained, had been edited to make life in the commune look much better than its reality. For example the first book on midwifery had been edited, Jane said, to remove mention of action by Gaskin that readers might have questioned. But I had years before heard much worse from my friend John.
"I have no illusions about Gaskin and The Farm," I told Jane.
I had none.
I had no real disagreement with anything Jane had written about the master and I told her so in my reply. Like Jane I believed that the master was a good man grounded in the practice and a good teacher. I had learned a lot from him and I believed that he could teach me much more. But from her email I inferred that Jane believed that the termination had resulted from some objection I myself had to the master, that in some fundamental way the termination had been my own decision—so I explained to Jane what had happened between me and the master and I summarized what the master had told me of him and Nananda.
Their sexual intimacy sixteen years earlier I considered insignificant.
But his secrecy I did not understand.
It made no sense.
For as long as I had known the master he had seemed to me totally open and honest about his life. Even into this matter I had not meant to pry. I had stumbled into his secret only because I had been puzzled by and curious about his passing remark that there was a piece of his past that he could not reveal because its public knowledge would ruin his reputation. The actual secret I had not asked the master to reveal. It was the secrecy that had first surprised and then intrigued me. The master had always been open and honest about his marriage and divorce, his interest in women, his love of marijuana, his dozens of trips on acid. The master had spoken often of this past behavior—simple matters of fact in his personal history—and the master had acknowledged frankly and almost without apology both his failures and his regrets. Had the master done likewise with the fact of his past intimacy with Nananda, I did not believe that many if any of us would have cared—just as few of us cared about his divorce or about his use of illicit drugs in the past. I had wanted only to understand how concealment to preserve reputation could be reconciled with what I understood of the Way.
I told Jane that I did not know why the master had told me what he did.
Truth.
"But I could not agree to be a party to keeping his secrets to protect his reputation."
No.
"I just can't live that way."
No.
I bore no hard feelings toward anyone involved in this matter.
None.
I felt grateful to have had the experience.
I did.
I did.
Surprised by this news of Kudo and Nananda and feeling that the master should know what I had told her Jane forwarded my message to the master. I learned of this only later—but not even at the time would I have had any objection. Never had I said or written anything about the master that I considered confidential and at this point I had no reason to hide anything from anybody.
My teacher had quit me and I was on my own.
Free.
Just me—
Bob.
Jane asked if I had told Edward yet what I had learned. I had not but I told Jane that I would. I did believe that Edward should know. I had nothing new to add. It was a short note.
"Thanks for filling in the gaps," Edward replied.
Like me, he said, he considered the romantic relationship unimportant and he also agreed that it was simply human and understandable. He would not be repeating the story, Edward explained, because he considered it none of his business, because he felt its reiteration could help no one, and because he could see how it might damage Heartmind. Hope causes suffering, Edward acknowledged, but still he hoped—that we would all of us somehow be able to continue to practice together. Edward declared that his respect for me was undiminished, that his respect for Nananda was undiminished, and that his respect for Kudo was undiminished. This response evoked in me deep feeling I had so far unconsciously suppressed. I, too, hoped for reconciliation. I hoped for an overwhelming flood of mutual forgiveness, understanding, and love. Indeed I hoped for more even than Edward. Not only did I hope that we might one day all practice together again, I hoped that one day we might all extend an invitation—to all the practitioners who had left and to all the practitioners who had been asked to leave—to join us in practice at Heartmind.
It was a crazy mushy hope totally divorced from reality.
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