I edited my book.
Months passed—almost a year.
Except for embellishment and final editing I thought perhaps my book was done.
My story ended.
But before I showed it to the master I needed intelligent reaction.
I printed two copies.
Ruth.
Ryan.
I emailed copies to Billy and John.
Four.
Ruth read it first.
We had gone out to dinner at a new restaurant in downtown Benson.
"I finished it last night," Ruth said.
So soon—
"That alone is a good review," I said.
I smiled.
"What do you mean?"
I explained.
"I was afraid that you would find it so boring, basically of so little interest to you, that you'd apologize, tell me you were sorry, and say you just couldn't plow your way through it."
The book had grown long.
Ruth smiled.
"I did feel that way a couple of times," she said.
"But you kept on going—"
"Yes."
"Thank you."
Ruth mentioned repetition—three incidents she said I had repeated verbatim—and she wondered if it might somehow be possible for me to show development in the minor characters.
I thought not.
"No."
It wasn't fiction.
"The narrative is flat," she said, "especially in your dialogue with the master."
Oh."
The reality had not felt that way.
Nein.
Ruth thought that in the book I should mention the major events in my life and in the lives of my family and friends—major illnesses, accidents, deaths, births, her earning her master's in fine arts, the graduations, marriages, and jobs of our children—that had occurred in the thirty-two years of my Buddhist practice. She suggested that I introduce more detail from my experience of 1975, in flashback perhaps, instead of my later vague allusions to it.
But I had not wanted to emphasize that even as much as I had.
I wasn't sure.
"The book wasn't what I expected," Ruth said.
"No—"
"It's so cerebral."
"Oh."
"In a couple of your dialogues with the master I wished I could just shake you!"
I laughed.
"Make you see what he was saying!" Ruth said.
I laughed.
"Yes."
"But you insisted on your analysis."
"Yes—"
"You wouldn't listen to him."
"No—"
"What about that?" Ruth asked.
I thought.
"I don't care how I appear in the book," I said. "I hope I'm transparent."
Ruth smiled.
"Writers always have one main question of their own," Ruth said.
I thought.
"What's yours?" she asked.
"Does my portrait of Kudo seem fair?" I asked.
Ruth considered.
"That's all I care about," I said.
I waited.
"It doesn't seem vindictive," Ruth said.
"Good."
Ruth thought I should describe in much more detail my temple jobs, dusting and sweeping the zendo and buddha hall, on hand and knee wiping down hardwood floors with damp rags, scrubbing the tub and the toilets and cleaning the bathrooms, cleaning the altars and the koros, stocking the doan closet, shoveling snow from the walks and the driveway, mowing the two yards, raking and bagging leaves, weeding the flower gardens, sweeping the porch and steps, selecting flowers, trimming stems, and arranging bouquets for the temple altars, photocopying, stapling, and data entry in the office, writing thank you notes, stamping and addressing envelopes, running errands to the office supply store and the post office, the training of doans, shotens, and jishas, the wrapping of bowls, cloths, and utensils for sesshin, and all of the many other duties and responsibilities of ino.
I asked her once more for her impression of the book overall.
"Bottom line."
Ruth thought for a moment.
I waited.
"It's sad," she said.
I felt like crying.
"Yes."
It was not long before Billy emailed.
He flattered me.
This—
"I was teary-eyed over your careful, meticulous scholarship."
This—
"I am amazed at how you have so lovingly collected all of these materials over the years."
This—
"I am thankful that your rendering of me was so kind."
He added—
"I thought of our training with O'Malley."
Oh—
Our beloved mentor.
Yes.
"I found myself sympathizing with Kudo," Billy said.
Excellent.
Yes.
This pleased me.
Success.
"In spite of his harshness and his unenlightened neuroses," Billy added.
Yes.
His commitment.
Yes.
His discipline.
Yes.
His effort.
"Your relentless questioning must have been taxing for him."
Inquiry.
"But that is who you are and what you do."
Is it?
That sounded ugly.
Ick.
"I wouldn't have it any other way."
Hmm.
I would.
Billy continued.
"I am not at all making light of the pain he caused you and other Zen students but for what it's worth I keep seeing this as some kind of karmic connection—and may all karmic connections whether good or bad be auspicious. No doubt his continual health problems created a background of constant emotional irritation for him. On that level he does not seem to hold back in exposing who he is."
Not at all.
"That takes great courage."
Yes.
Billy explained that the blessings of the lineage can be present even if the teacher is not all that we want him to be. The formality of the teacher-student ritual, he said, and the aspiration to look into a clear mirror at ourselves help the relationship and the practice to succeed.
"The ground longs for the path," he said.
By that the gurus meant, Billy said, that our enlightened but obscured mind longs for the way; but when ground begins to be realized then evil is not bad and all experience is indiscriminate.
"One taste."
In his email Billy apologized.
Concern.
"I hope that my careless words," he said, "have not harmed you."
Too kind.
In all our years of correspondence Billy meant.
They had not.
My friend said he looked forward to volume two.
Ha.
"If we live so long."
Yes.
Then Ryan emailed.
Ryan and I met again at a coffee shop where we talked for three and a half hours.
It felt serious and real.
Deep.
The great matter of life and death.
Urgent.
Ryan thought the book was too long by half and he suggested that I cut all the classroom material, digressions he thought, and because of its repetition half the dialogue with the master.
Ouch.
Ryan had participated in only one practice period himself and because of the abusive responses to his journal that Ryan had received from the master Ryan never participated in another.
"I don't understand why you continued to write," Ryan said.
Hmm.
I thought I had explained in the book.
"Why did you?"
"The master required it."
"But why didn't you just say no?" Ryan asked.
"Refuse?"
"Yes."
"I was determined to be a good student," I said.
"But—"
"It was a requirement."
"But why didn't you just not reply to his comments?"
"I tried that."
"And—"
"The master demanded that I write whatever came up."
"Oh."
"Yes."
"That's right."
Ryan inquired about my defensiveness in the dialogues.
In my self-portrait.
"Denial?"
"Maybe."
"Do you think it possible?" Ryan asked.
"Sure."
I was curious.
"Do I appear to you like a man in denial?"
"No—"
Ryan thought a moment.
I waited.
"I'm not sure," he said. "It's complicated."
We were friends.
Ryan asked a lot of questions about my dark side.
"The shadow."
Ryan had himself spent a year in Jungian therapy.
In analysis.
He was experienced.
Intelligent.
He knew defense and denial.
Ego.
We talked of desire, sex, taboo, privacy, confidentiality, secrecy, guilt, and deceit.
"I know shame," Ryan said.
I asked.
He told his story.
I mine.
He questioned my equanimity.
My calm.
To Ryan it seemed suspect.
Fine.
No problem.
Ryan asked the same thing that the master had asked.
Really—
Was I as happy as I claimed?
Uff da!
Had the war ended and the killing stopped?
Am I dishonest—
Angry—
Afraid—
In the end I couldn't tell Ryan any more than I'd already written 500 pages about.
My version of the truth, "my" story.
My "me."
The hero! The new postmodern Socrates! His reincarnation!
Bob!
Ryan's main reaction, though, was disappointment that at the end of my story there was not a revelation and a resolution. I just had to tell Ryan that there was not. He was intensely curious about the experience I had so many years before and I told him that I, too, sometimes wished that the plot of my story had worked backward and ended with that marvel.
Enlightenment.
Peace.
That's not what happened.
Life goes on.
War.
Killing.
Ryan spoke at length of his longing for enlightenment.
For "it."
For the mystical "religious" experience.
For "god."
"You must want to experience it again," Ryan said.
"No," I exclaimed. "I don't."
"Why not?"
"I had it," I said. "I want others to experience it."
"That makes sense."
"Good."
I told Ryan of some of the many mistakes I had made in trying to recreate for others the conditions and circumstances of my own awakening in the effort to effect a similar experience for them and of the misunderstanding, confusion, enmity, failure, pain, and futility that were the result. We traded stories of our psychological and spiritual highs and lows.
Ryan was a gentle man, thoughtful, diffident, kind.
Educated.
He reminded me of Billy.
Sensitive.
"I am hoping my portrait of Kudo doesn't appear vindictive," I said.
"Not at all."
"Or my story an attempt to settle scores."
"No."
"That's good," I said.
"I would be more negative than you are," Ryan said.
"I'm relieved."
I handed Ryan the four books I had brought for him.
Ryan returned mine.
We hugged.
We agreed to meet and talk again.
Friends.
John did not reply.
Forward.
I let Alison read a section or two of my book, Edward another section or two, and David the same, and then to get an even better sense of what I had accomplished so far I changed the names of its characters and posted on my blog pieces and parts of my book as I edited it. My blog had fewer than a dozen readers, just my two brothers and my nephew, the rest strangers to me and to the temple. Then one day I saw that Jane had replied to my blog. She had been mildly disturbed by what she had read there. Jane thought she remembered the original comment the master had made about secrecy and his reputation.
"I never really took it the way you took it," Jane said.
Huh?
That I did not understand.
Took it?
"I just wondered what it was all about," I said.
That's all.
The master meant simply that we all had issues in our lives that might make us "not look good," Jane explained, and that had also been the point of his question about masturbation.
"Everybody has something that he doesn't want to share with the world."
I did not disagree.
My inquiries had to do with how a practicing Buddhist should deal with such issues and, as I told Jane, I received from the master confusing and contradictory responses.
Was his relationship with Nananda something in his life which would make him not look good?
No one I talked to seemed to think so.
"I never thought it was the 'deep dark secret' you thought it was,” Jane said.
Huh?
"It didn't seem 'deep' or 'dark' to me," I explained.
Not at all.
I had never used either of those two words to describe it.
"I still have trouble seeing how you think it would impact his reputation," Jane said.
"Would it?"
That's what I had wondered.
The master thought so.
I guess.
That’s what the master had said.
Jane explained that it had just been something they thought was their private business. It would have been different if it were in violation of the temple ethics statement, Jane said, but a relationship between two consenting adults was not a big deal.
Right.
"Unless there is some violation," she added.
Hmm.
"I suppose there was concern that his dharma heir being his ex-girlfriend might look bad," I said.
Jane thought I should not report what the master had said about Eleanor.
It was personal.
"Intimate."
The master had told me only to make a point to me.
Or so Jane believed.
"It seems extremely disrespectful to share such comments," Jane said.
Hmm.
"Tits and ass turn men on," I said.
Hormones.
"No big deal."
But I had wondered, I told Jane, if it had been "disrespectful" to Eleanor for the master to tell me what he had; and I explained again that for me it had gotten even more confusing when the master then asked me to speak with Eleanor in private about his sexual relationship with Nananda.
"I would not," I explained.
Jane said also that she felt extremely uncomfortable with my writing about practice period group meetings as I had. If the ethics statement did not say that these meetings were confidential, Jane explained, then the ethics statement should be rewritten. People should feel able to speak freely, Jane believed, and for many practitioners that would be harder if they thought that their statements might later be published on a blog or in a book.
Jane inquired.
"Do you feel that anything anyone tells you can be shared with the world?"
"No," I said.
I had no idea what the statement of ethics should permit or forbid.
I explained.
In general the more "confidential" the practice the less interest I had in it.
I felt free.
Open.
"It doesn’t matter to me if people report what I say."
For Jane I tried one more time to explain.
My tale—
I had been a practicing Buddhist for thirty years, five years at the temple, when the priest terminated our relationship, expelled me, excommunicated me, and impeached me before the board at a meeting I was forbidden to attend. There the priest accused me of violating religious precepts. My family and my many friends still ask me why he did this.
"How should I answer them?" I asked Jane.
I wondered.
"What would you say?" I inquired.
I was curious.
"I'm writing a book," I told her.
Forward.
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