The master's email at 2:30 that afternoon brought me back to earth.
Thud.
Its subject line: "Sangha Gossip."
In his message to a dozen members of the sangha the master said he had been informed that I had told some of the sangha that years earlier he and Nananda had been in a romantic relationship.
"This is true," the master said.
The master stated that it had occurred sixteen years ago before the temple opened. He said that this was his own personal business and that he was not obligated to share it with anyone. But when I had asked how such things happened, the master explained, in dokusan he had told me of his mistake.
"I felt," he said, "that it would help Bob better understand the dynamic of such a situation."
The master said that he had spoken of this relationship with both Zen teachers and Zen students.
"Eleanor has known about it for some time," the master explained, "so it is not a secret."
By my telling others of this privileged information, the master declared, I had violated repeatedly the principle of confidentiality. Only I knew why I had done this, the master stated, and only I knew why I continued to do it even though he had told me I did not have his permission to do so. The master stated that he had spoken to me of my unethical conduct and that he had intended to file a formal grievance against me but that when it had become clear that he could no longer serve as my teacher he had decided to sever the relationship.
"Filing a grievance became irrelevant," he said.
The master said that his reasons for terminating the relationship were not just this incident alone.
He did not explain.
The relationship between him and Nananda, the master wrote, had begun in 1990 when they met during his first visit to the city. The master had been living at Hokyoji Monastery in Minnesota. He had rationalized his entering into the relationship, the master said, by telling himself that although Nananda was a Zen student practicing with a group Nananda was not his own student. Their sexual relationship, the master explained, ended in just a few months.
"Nananda became increasingly uncomfortable with it," he said.
The master had suggested that Nananda speak with his dharma sister Noen Ryder, who told Nananda that the master being both her teacher and her lover was not a good idea. Nananda then told him, the master explained, that she wanted to be his student and not his lover and not both.
"I acquiesced," the master said, "and we ended the romantic relationship."
The master then educated himself in the impropriety of such relationships, the master explained, and both Nananda and the master had since become advocates of maintaining strict boundaries in such situations.
"I have never repeated," the master stated, "the mistake I made with Nananda."
The master explained that the statement of ethics which governed the temples at Laugh Out Loud and Heartmind were expressions both of temple policy and of personal principle; that the master considered anyone who walked through the temple door a student; and that he now considered romantic involvement with students he met in Zen temples anywhere to be forbidden.
The master also addressed the scandal involving the female student of Sosan Davis. I had inferred, wrongly, and had reported, falsely, that it had been the sangha that had told the master that at their temple no priest was welcome who had ever had sex with a student.
"This is not true," the master stated.
He explained that in counseling the Minnesota sangha after the sexual misconduct of his dharma brother there the master had told them of his relationship with Nananda in order to help them to understand how it could happen and what he had learned from his own transgression. The master had taught at the temple there until, "disenchanted" with the direction the sangha was headed, the master had stopped even though he had been asked to continue.
Me—
My expulsion—
I did not blame the master.
No.
The master had had enough of me and I understood why.
I did.
The part of his email to our sangha that hurt me the most was his remark near its conclusion. It began with his reference to my breaking the rule of confidentiality in dokusan.
Then—
"Bob has been engaging in malicious gossip at the temple for quite some time."
Ow—
Malicious!
"Some of which," the master added, "involves those receiving this message."
What—
It seemed a low blow.
Ow!
I looked up the word "malice" in my dictionary.
The desire to harm others or to see others suffer; ill will; spite; in law the intent, without just cause or reason, to commit an unlawful act that will result in injury to another or others.
Malice—
I had no idea what the master was talking about. In my five years at Heartmind I had met not one person I disliked—not a regular, not an irregular, not a one-time visitor—and with the single exception of the master himself I remembered not one negative nor critical remark I had ever made about any individual I had ever met at the temple. For the master to insinuate in this way that in fact I had, I considered ironic, petty, cruel, and, well—
Malicious.
His email—the names of its other recipients suppressed in my copy—had been sent to my friends Ivan, Jane, Dean, Nikki, Anthony, Edward, Irene, James, Eleanor, and Alison, and also to Nananda.
"I had been working with Bob and encouraging him to change his behavior," the master explained.
Stuck.
Transformation—
Stuck.
"But obviously I failed," the master concluded.
Stuck.
The master invited anybody who wished to speak with him privately of this matter to do so.
Ugh.
It was my turn to feel betrayed.
Out.
Next came Eleanor's commentary and, just as the master had, Eleanor prefaced her forwarded document to me with a note saying that I had been inadvertently omitted from the list of recipients. The document Eleanor sent began with an email to the master from Nikki.
"I'm sorry that all of this is happening," Nikki explained.
Nikki said that she had the utmost respect for the master and for anyone who admitted wrongdoing. Nikki was angry that the master had felt the need to defend himself when it was nobody's business but his own. Nikki concluded with the hope that it all worked out peacefully.
"Thank you for being so candid," Nikki told him.
Then Eleanor—
Eleanor wrote both to respond to gossip at the temple and to explain how Eleanor herself had processed the information the master had now shared by email with members of the sangha.
"I am very angry and disappointed," Eleanor said.
People had gossiped about the master and, without having heard all sides of the matter, Eleanor complained, to the master people had directed malicious statements. Eleanor urged everyone who had forwarded emails and gossiped to stop now and to tell others to stop. Eleanor explained that quite some time ago the master had told her the details of his past sexual relationship with Nananda. Eleanor's reaction had been much different from my own.
"I was very very hurt and upset when I first heard this," Eleanor said.
Eleanor had felt many emotions.
Deceived, disappointed—
Angry—
Self-righteous—
More.
"Why wasn't it me?" Eleanor wondered.
Envious—
"What was so special about his relationship with Nananda?"
Curious—
Eleanor had had to sit with all this, Eleanor explained, and Eleanor never had felt she had to go blab this personal information to everybody. Eleanor said that she knew that if she had it would have been from her own righteous indignation and when Eleanor had seen that in herself Eleanor had realized how much harm could be done not only to the master but to others in the sangha.
Harmed—
Hmm.
I wondered about this.
Harmed.
How—
This I did not understand.
I was myself both startled and pleased by the honesty and candor of Eleanor's assessment.
But "go blab"—
When the master had told me of the relationship I had felt nothing like this.
Not at all.
I had felt no "need" to tell anyone.
None.
Nor had I felt any "need" not to tell.
None.
I had been told by the master that the decision was mine.
Trust.
Neither had I felt deceived, disappointed, angry, envious, righteous, or indignant.
I had been only baffled by why the master had concealed it—though now the master said he had not concealed it—and amused by this umpteenth revelation of the male mind and heart and its corroboration of my conviction that we tragicomic human animals always underestimate the power of sexual desire and temptation. His "mistake" seemed to me a little thing, indeed so little that I still did not understand why it had loomed so large in the mind of the master. My sense of its insignificance—together with what I had been told by the master of my liberty to do with this revelation whatever I wished—had led me to consider the matter little more than an oddity.
Had the master feared that it might compromise the legitimacy and credibility of his dharma heir Nananda and also perhaps the legitimacy and credibility of Zen lineage and transmission?
This inference seemed to me ineluctable.
Furthermore my original question about the reconciliation of reputation, secrecy, and the Way had never been answered.
To respond as the master had—by saying that, hey, everyone does it—still seemed to me an attempt to dismiss the question, an evasion, and not an authentic and honest effort to answer it.
But in her own situation, Eleanor explained, telling people what the master had told her of his relationship with Nananda was not going to change her own feelings nor make her feel any better.
"My work," Eleanor decided, "was finding out what I was upset about."
Forward.
In her email Eleanor explained that she had peeled back the layers.
First—
Eleanor felt deceived.
Why?
Because Eleanor had felt entitled to know.
Entitled why?
Because Eleanor was the master's student.
But what did the relationship between student and teacher mean?
Had Eleanor idealized it?
Did a teacher have to make a list of every mistake he had ever made and for the rest of his life post it on the public bulletin board for all to read before they entered the temple?
Eleanor thought not.
"Should I pin to the temple door every mistake I've made?" Eleanor asked.
No.
Eleanor had idealized her teacher.
The master.
Then the real contradicted her ideal and Eleanor had not known what to do.
Leave?
Eleanor wondered.
No.
Her work was to understand how she had herself created an ideal.
Zen master.
Her ideal had become the source of her suffering.
Desire.
"We all do this," Eleanor concluded.
Truth.
The point is not to put people into boxes "good" and "bad," Eleanor explained, but rather to realize that we all make mistakes, to see life as it is, to see people as they are, and to accept it all.
Eleanor knew the master as a man honest and upright.
A man of integrity.
The master had embraced her shortcomings.
Her transgressions.
For that Eleanor felt deep appreciation—
Respect.
The master was her teacher, Eleanor declared.
"Next to him I stand firm."
Yes.
This was the master I knew, too, and like Eleanor I respected the master.
Yes.
I felt gratitude for what the master had taught me.
Yes.
But had my teacher embraced my shortcomings and transgressions?
How I wished he had!
Each of us had to come to his own understanding of it all Eleanor concluded.
Indeed.
Eleanor urged us all to avoid triangulation and to speak instead to the master or to her.
To her?
To Eleanor?
Hmm.
But wouldn't that be triangulation?
I wondered.
If weeks earlier I had spoken with Eleanor of the romantic relationship between Nananda and the master—just as the master himself had urged me to do—would that not have been triangulation?
When the master told me of Sosan Davis and of his married lover and of the scandal at their temple and of the young children hurt; and of Katagiri and his women; and of the relationship that Eleanor had had with a man in his sixties—
Had it been neither gossip nor triangulation?
His telling me that two sangha members were gay; that two members were mentally ill; his showing me letters he had received from students the master considered crazy—
Had all this been just Zen teaching?
True—
There had been no malice in it.
In five years the master had told me many things just in passing about members of and visitors to Heartmind and many times the master had encouraged me to speak with other students about practice. I had once mentioned to him that we students shared personal opinions of realization and enlightenment.
Triangulation?
"I'm glad students talk about these things," the master had replied.
The master had acknowledged that as almost everybody does he made in casual conversation disclosures that might be called gossip. Off the top of my head I had once recited a short list of personal matters the master had told me of mutual acquaintances and friends.
"But I try not to!" the master had exclaimed.
"But I try not to, too!" I'd whined.
We tried.
The master had defended some of these disclosures as teaching. He had mentioned them to me to help me understand some truth, the master said, or to illustrate some principle, or because the master believed they might be helpful to me as ino in my instruction and training of other students in the etiquette and ceremony of the temple—in short, because the master thought that what he told me was true and would be helpful to my understanding of practice and realization.
To me this made perfect sense.
And I—
Everything I had said in this matter of secrecy and sex I had said in the interest of greater understanding and whole truth.
Free—
I had trusted the master more than the master realized.
Open—
Nor had I ever thought much at all about confidentiality.
Why would I?
Why?
Until the end there had been no secrets.
I had none.
Of the master I had assumed the same.
The master I had questioned because I believed that as his student that was what I was expected to do and what I was supposed to do. It was what I expected of my own students. In my life—in my home, at my job, and at the temple, too—I had felt open, honest, brave, and free in the realm of the mind. It had been only at the end of my association with the master in this matter of secrecy and sex that I had felt otherwise and even then I believed that my teacher had given me explicit permission to do with the information as I wanted.
Hurt and upset—
No.
Not until the allegation of malice.
Deceived—
No.
Disappointed—
Yes—
I supposed so.
Angry—
No.
Not at all.
No.
Not until the allegation of malice.
Righteous, indignant—
No.
Not until the allegation of malice.
Then—
Yes.
Jealous—
No.
The master had nothing I wanted.
No.
Nothing—
Except his teaching.
Irony—
My initial feelings had borne little resemblance to those of Eleanor.
No.
I was curious.
Yes.
I was amused.
Yes.
All my past and harmful karma—
Born of beginningless greed, hate, and delusion
Through body, speech, and mind—
I now fully avow.
Bob—
From Edward that evening I received an email addressed to his teacher and his friends.
Alison had quit.
"I am deeply saddened," Edward said.
Edward explained that he was saddened also that his teacher had been put in a position where his teacher had to reveal to his students personal information that was none of their business.
Edward hoped the controversy would cease.
Enough.
The "big secret" now revealed, Edward believed, was fundamentally a personal matter, simple, understandable, and human, the controversy itself far more damaging than the facts.
To practitioners, Edward said, the matter should be of little interest. Edward acknowledged once more that truth is an important value and Edward insisted again that kindness is equally important. Kind speech is important on all sides, Edward explained, and some truths need not be broadcast.
"Sometimes," Edward concluded, "the kindest speech of all is to say nothing."
Agreed.
Edward expressed his love and sympathy to everyone involved in—
"This most unfortunate mess."
Indeed.
Nikki, too, emailed me.
"I'm upset."
To Nikki I had neither spoken nor written about any of this.
"I want to talk to you."
Nikki said that she considered me a friend.
Nikki was upset that I would not be at the temple and she had been shocked to receive the email in which the master had stated that I had revealed private information about him.
"You are not a gossip," Nikki stated.
Thank you.
"Can you tell me why you did this?" Nikki asked.
Sheesh—
I did not owe her an explanation, Nikki said, but she really wanted to know.
Understood.
"It doesn't seem like you," she said.
Thank you.
"I have never heard you badmouth anybody."
Thank you!
I replied that I did not really know why the master had told me what he had and that at first the master had given me explicit permission to do whatever I wanted with the knowledge.
Freedom.
"I wasn't smart enough," I explained, "to know this meant I was supposed to keep it secret."
Duh—
"By the time he told me he had changed his mind it was already too late."
Hurt—
Pain—
I had been comforted by her kind words.
I told her so.
I told Nikki that our friendship and her passion and courage at Heartmind had been a continuing source of inspiration and joy for me. Nikki had recently attended a retreat at a temple called Great Sky, Nikki explained, and she thought highly of the Zen masters there. If I wanted, Nikki said, she would be glad to tell me of them and even put me in touch.
Too soon.
No.
"So do you miss it yet?" my wife asked again when she got home from work.
"No."
I was still licking my wound.
Thinking—
Thinking—
Thinking—
Each day, all day, I wrote to begin a new journal no teacher would read, I felt deep, slow, intermittent waves of sadness, guilt, and regret for my part in the pain and hurt felt by my friends and associates; and I would think then that I should apologize to them and attempt in some measure to atone for my misunderstanding, and for my mistakes, but when I sat down at my keyboard I found that I still did not know how nor where nor why to begin. Until my excommunication, for five years I had tried as hard as I could to practice Zen as the master instructed and advised. To say that I was often confused is an understatement. My painful confusion I regularly acknowledged and confessed to my teacher in my practice journal, and I believed the master did the very best he could do to help me understand. About that never had I any doubt. Devoted to Zen practice and to the Buddha Way the master determined to do no harm, to do good, and to free, to save, and to serve all beings. In the last two years of our five-year relationship even in my periods of bewilderment, frustration, and inner agony not once had I ever doubted his good intention nor did I now. I considered the master honest, brave, and dedicated to my awakening and to the awakening of his many students who were my fond associates and my good friends.
Malice.
No.
I had and have no such desire nor intent.
None.
Encouraged by my teacher to pour into my journal unedited whatever arose in my mind I asked question after question about the information the master had shared with me and finally then the question of the consequence of my including an account of this whole sad affair in the book I had been writing for two years.
For my teacher I think, certainly for me, these weeks were agony.
Pain.
Pain.
After the termination of our relationship and my expulsion and excommunication I explained to my associates and to my friends as best I could why it had all happened. It was then that the master my teacher and perhaps his most eager and committed student Eleanor attributed to me malice, the desire and intent to harm others and to see them suffer.
This hurt.
I respected their opinion.
This hurt—
Bad.
They were educated, intelligent, generous, kind, honest, good, deeply religious people; and I was certain that neither of them would have said of me what they said if they had not believed sincerely that it were true. Because of my trust in their perceptions and observations and conclusions my heart ached and ached and off and on all day long I argued with myself and searched myself and questioned myself and my motive and my desire and my intent and, though off and on I was able just as the master had taught me to let it all go and to follow my breath, I could not stop thinking of all my past and harmful karma born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion through my thought, my word, and my deed and of the suffering, pain, and hurt that I knew now I had caused my teacher and my friends.
All this now I fully avowed.
I bowed.
I sat.
I made sure that for forty minutes every day I sat.
I chanted.
I did not want to use my expulsion and excommunication as an excuse not to sit. Once a day every day I climbed the stairs to my room and lit the candle on my altar. I bowed. I offered a stick of incense to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. I bowed again and bowed once more at my mat. I turned and I bowed again. I sat and turned on my cushion to face the wall. I rocked left and right and forward and back to vertical. I set my timer for forty minutes. Palms up I laid my hands in my lap, my left hand resting in my right hand, thumb tip touching thumb tip.
Until my timer beeped I sat.
Breath.
Breath.
Breath.
I chanted the Heart of Great Perfect Wisdom Sutra or three times each the Repentance Verse, the Three Refuges, the Vows of the Bodhisattva, and then, once, to conclude my sitting, the Transfer of Merit and All Buddhas. Hands in gassho, I bowed, turned, and rolled off my cushion to my knees, and kneeling I brushed my mat and fluffed my cushion just as the master and Edward and Mark and Alison had taught me. I rose and I performed three full prostrations. I bowed, I turned, and I bowed again. I stepped to my altar where I bowed.
I extinguished my candle and I bowed.
I needed a friend.
Daly, who two years earlier had experienced something similar to what I had now experienced, I met at a coffee shop in Dundee where we talked for an hour of our former teacher.
Triangulation.
Yes.
"There seems to be a permanent place in my brain where the master and I still argue, endlessly, and we go round and round and never stop," said Daly, "so now I just don't go there."
We hugged.
Just a day later I met with Ryan at another coffee shop where we talked for two hours.
Yes.
Triangulation.
"I have just had to let it all go," Ryan told me, "and move forward."
We hugged.
Triangulation.
Yes.
How it comforted me!
From Alison and then later also from Edward I learned that there was now some confusion about my position on the board of directors. The master had told me that he would not be comfortable with my coming to the temple and that I would not be welcome there. I had returned my key and the master had not sent me the email announcement of my termination nor the invitation to members of the board to discuss the matter at their upcoming meeting; but Edward informed me that the master could not remove anyone from the board. Edward had not discussed this issue with me because Edward had not wanted to ask a painful question of me while the matter seemed to him, too, still so confused. Edward knew the rupture had been painful.
"For the master and for you," Edward said. "For others as well."
Yes.
"I'm not taking your side," Edward said.
Understood.
"I'm not taking Kudo's side."
Understood.
"I won't muddle things further by adding my opinion."
Understood.
Edward was not asking me to resign.
Understood.
But Edward said just as a practical matter it would all probably be simpler if I did.
Vice president.
Sure.
I understood completely and I promptly replied.
Yes.
"I hereby resign."
Out.
Billy emailed.
"How are you?" Billy asked. "I know you're okay but sometimes it hurts anyway."
Yes.
"I'm okay," I replied, "but it hurts anyway."
Friend.
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