Catholic Zen teachers: Both/And

Catholic Zen teachers and the ever-present peril of heresy — whatever do you do with dogma? 

I overheard part of a recent conversation about Celtic spirituality and transubstantiation. It led me down this dark path: Original Sin vs. Original Blessing.

This is an abbreviated story of a rather well-known and certainly much-admired Canadian nun, Sister Elaine McInnes. Sister Elaine was a member of a small religious community based in Toronto, Our Lady’s Missionaries. She was also a fully authorized Zen Master. Her Zen teacher was Yamada Koun Roshi of the Sanbo Zen school. Yamada also trained several Jesuits, Father Hugo Enomiya-Lassalle, Father Wm Johnson, Father Ama Samy, and Ruben Habito, who was a Jesuit when he began his study with Yamada. Father Wiligas Jager, an Austrian Benedictine monk, also worked with him. In other words, most of the teachers in what has become a Zen practice aimed at Catholics and other Christians in the West began their Zen path in Yamada's small zendo in suburban Kyoto.

After her work with Yamada, Sister Elaine was assigned to the Philippines during its 1980s revolution, where she established meditation programs in prisons. Then she went on to lead prison projects in the UK for many years, and finally, she started another prison meditation project when she returned to Canada. She was presented with the Order of Canada. A remarkable woman. One of my teachers, John Tarrant, also in Yamada’s lineage, remembers meeting her. He said, “She was a kind, no-nonsense kind of woman.” Oh, I almost forgot, she had been a professional concert violinist, Juilliard-trained. She played in the Calgary Symphony Orchestra for five years before becoming a nun. She was already well past 80 when I tried to meet with her in Toronto; she had begun the last part of her life in a small, secluded suburban convent. When she died in 2022, she was 98. 

I’d read somewhere, perhaps an interview in a parochial newspaper, that when asked what she thought about man’s essentially fallen nature, Sister Elaine responded without a pause, "Oh, you mean Our Original Blessing.” My headline: “Canadian nun, accomplished musician, Zen roshi, walks unafraid into dangerous prisons to teach meditation, and takes on Saint Augustine with a chuckle.” What was her faith in humankind that allowed her to cross that line? An act of will, hopeful idealism, blind courage, or real experience? This is what I wanted to talk to her about.

I can find no consistency in human nature. I cannot say if men and women are originally blessed, intrinsically fallen, beset by demons, or have a latent tendency to anger and destruction that erupts from time to time. Is a belief in “Original Blessing” foolhardy, or what it takes to do heroic works of compassion? The experience of post-war Japan and Hippo in the fourth century, attacked by the Visigoths, might have some similarities, but how could followers of Jesus hold such opposing views? The weight of our tradition comes down on the sin side. It puzzles me.    

Pope Benedict, when he still went by the name Joseph Ratzinger, did a 7-day Zen retreat with another Jesuit from Sophia University in Tokyo, Father Kakichi Kadowaki. At the time, Joseph Ratzinger said he found sesshin very inspiring, but later, as Pope Benedict, he condemned another priest, Zen Master Wiligas Jager, and forbade him from publishing or teaching the same practice. I remember asking Father Pat Hawk, another Roshi, a Redemptorist who’d trained with Bob Aitken, about Jager. Pat smiled and said he thought Wiligas was an animist. Ah, again that touch of Celtic spirituality. 

My past twelve months have been filled with heresies. First, I revisited Arianism when we celebrated the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Then, studying Augustine when Pope Leo was elected, I found myself thinking about the Manichaeans, the light and darkness of gnosticism, and then, for no apparent reason, the heresy of Pythagoras, the duality of body and soul. What do any of these heresies have in common? Not much, really. But then, when Celtic spirituality came up in the conversation, it triggered something. Each heresy begins by believing but then exaggerating, or extending blanket assumptions about how the world works based on observation, not Revelation. There may be difficulties with the observation, but I think we can assume that the heretics thought they were seeing the world as it is: the gnostics saw that darkness follows light; Pythagoras observed that the sun seemed to revolve around the earth; Arius tried to reconcile the idea that Jesus was divine yet had a human body. Something earthy got mixed in with the transcendent, and then, when the official institution did its referee shtick, it always favored the transcendent. But what gets lost in the referee’s call is the observation, as well as the joy, that rocks and clouds remain parts of the wonder of our world. They are. It’s that simple. 

Then along comes a priest who reminds us that our Celtic fathers and mothers were Christians who dug their fingers into the dirt and grew potatoes. What is true is comforting, and connects us with something beyond theologians' “filioque” and transubstantiation. I say “Amen,” but the logician in me does not have to exclude anything. I can say, “Both/and,” and say it loudly. Sister Elaine may lose to Augustine in doctrinal debate, but she wins hands down when the choice is between raising children as a Blessing rather Cursed as sinful by a vengeful god. 

Go back to your cushion and wait for the next move. Or set up a meditation in prison project.

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  Sr. Elaine MacInnes in April 2016

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  Front row from left: Sr. Elaine MacInnes, Yamada Koun Roshi, and Jun Maron

• at a Zendo in Manila, Philippines, in the 1980s.

Is life over when it’s over? (Originally posted, Friday, September 17, 2021)

 

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973)

"Each one of us, not only human beings, but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable". ~Alan Watts Sensei

My friend, Michael Papas was a guest student at Tassajara during the Summer of 1980. He recalled a talk by Issan Dorey that he says was a real downer. “I can’t repeat any of it, and the memories of the specific content are vague, but I didn’t find any good news in it at all!”

Afterward, he asked Issan, “If things are so bad, why don’t we just kill ourselves ?”

Issan's answer came quickly, “Because it wouldn’t help.”

My friend is a long-time Zen student. He says, “It was a great answer, obviously. It has stayed with me for more than 40 years. I thought of it many times in 2016 when my wife left me, and suicide seemed like the only way to stop the pain. But truthfully, back then, having children was my main reason for sticking.”

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Today I read Jonathan Shockley’s post “How Druid Heights Became an Alcoholism Cover for Alan Watts,” and I did ask myself: Are there really any good reasons for living and reasons for dying?

Why should we think that Zen is in trouble simply because there are flawed people who practice and flawed people who teach? Certainly, punches and counterpunches are distracting, especially in a scandal, but they are not off-limits. In my view, idolizing revered teachers also limits the practical possibilities for anyone who sets foot on the path. This presents its own set of problems, which I might explore at another time. Zen is devised for humans, not gods.

Many years ago, I went to a meeting with several of Claudio Naranjo’s senior students on the “Vallejo,” the Sausalito houseboat where Alan Watts talked and drank, womanized and created legends. It is common knowledge that he was an alcoholic, but I have no knowledge of sexual excess. From both my reading and firsthand reports, however, I can say with certainty that he did go on and on. He wrote and published 25 books before his death; 40 more have appeared since. That is the stuff of legend, and an enormous contribution.

I also visited the couple who lived in the rustic cabin in Druid Heights near Muir Woods, where Watts died. One report is that he slumped over his desk, drunk, and died, though some say he made it to bed that night. The story is vague, as are a lot of stories about alcoholics. We will never know the truth because we don’t really need to know. But his desk was kept in the same condition as it had been when he died as a kind of shrine to assist his passage to the Pureland, or Byzantine Heaven, or some New Age version of Limbo. Hesitantly, I asked my host if I could sit in the chair where Watts sat when he wrote, the chair he might have died in. My host, a legendary craftsman, said, “Of course. This way is open to anyone.” I imagined that I heard a faint echo from the Master.

Phil Whalen told me he loved listening to Watts on the old Berkeley KPFA. Many of the people who first gathered around Suzuki Roshi did. For some, it was their initiation into Zen. Watts read widely and wisely, even if at times he speculated wildly. David Chadwick recounted in his biography of Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, that when a student of Suzuki's disparaged Watts by saying, "we used to think he was profound until we found the real thing." Suzuki fumed with a sudden intensity, saying, "You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! You should notice what he has done. He is a great bodhisattva.” Suzuki did not disparage the ox who tilled the soil, even if all the rows were not perfectly lined up. That would come later, and in some cases, the insistence on plowing perfectly straight lines got a bit out of hand.

At that dinner in Mandala House, I remember a lively conversation with a beautiful woman who was very close to a dear friend who was also present. The woman's son by another marriage, a bright, handsome guy, had driven across the Santa Cruz mountains to be with his mother. Not long after, he died in a car wreck on a treacherous part of that same highway. His mother chose to join him. She took a huge number of sleeping pills and never woke up again in the same house, perhaps the same room where Watts died.

I never met Alan Watts, but I met his ghost. I also carry with me the memories of many other men and women who left life with a troubled past. Though I might think I understand some of their reasons for living, I cannot claim to know the reasons for their dying.

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Issan Dorsey, Roshi, died on September 6, 1990. He was 57 years old. I can think of no good reasons for his dying. If he were still alive, he would be 88 years old today. Watts was only 58 when he died, and his legend spans decades. I might complain that they both died too young with so much left to contribute. I might sing that tired old tune “only the good die young,” but I’d add that sometimes the good die young because they were bad, or at least not as good as we would like to believe.

Michael, thank you for sharing Issan’s kind answer. It still has life.

A Mistake of Immense Proportion

by Jacob Needleman

Since the beginning of recorded history, man has been haunted by the intimation that he lives in a world of mere appearances. In every teaching and spiritual philosophy of the past, we find the idea that whatever happens to us, for good or ill, is brought about by deeper forces behind the world that seems so real to us. We are further told that this real world is not accessible to the senses or understandable by the ordinary mind.

But, and this is a point that is not usually understood, we live in a world of inner appearances as well. We are not what we perceive ourselves to be. There is another identity, our real self, hidden behind the self that we believe ourselves to be.

It is only through awakening to this deeper self within that we can penetrate behind the veil of appearances and make contact with a truer world outside of ourselves. It is because we live on the surface of ourselves that we live on the surface of the greater world, never participating—except in rare moments which do not last and which are not understood—in the wholeness of reality.

It is this all-important second aspect of the ancient wisdom, the aspect that speaks of our inner world, that modern thought has been blind to. And the question about the meaning of life is inextricably linked to the need for contact with the real self beneath the surface of our everyday thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

Without this contact, the external world of appearances assumes for us the proportions of an overwhelmingly compelling force. We cannot see the real world because we are not in contact with the deeper powers of thought and sensing within ourselves that could perceive it. Because of this, it is inevitable that we experience the external world as the strongest force in our lives. This is the meaning and the origin of materialism.

The error, or, to use Christian language, the “sin” of materialism, has at its root nothing to do with greed or possessiveness. Nor does it involve, at its root, some philosophical view about matter and spirit in their usual meanings. No, the error of materialism is an error of reality perception, based on a lack of experiential contact with the inner world. What we know as greed and possessiveness, with their attendant traits of cruelty and human exploitation, are results of this ignorance of the inner world. We turn to the superficially perceived outer world for that which can only be obtained through deep access to the inner self.

Materialism is not a “sin”; it is a mistake.

But a mistake of immense proportions and with deadly consequences. It is like searching for water on the surface of the moon to search for meaning in the external world. Like grasping a picture of food and trying to eat it. Not only meaning, but also health, safety, service, love, and power can be obtained only through turning to reality. The unreal world can never yield these things to man.

Jacob Needleman is an American philosopher, author, and religious scholar. This reading was excerpted from his book, Money and Meaning of Life, which is also summarized in this interview on Bill Moyers. 

https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=1088

Why I hate Hemingway

A friend whom I admire and love very deeply once suggested that Hemingway was perhaps the greatest of American writers, but in danger of becoming unappreciated. He used spare language. I hadn’t read him in two decades, so I went out and bought The Sun Also Rises at the Green Apple second-hand book store in the avenues, and began. I have a confession: after page 12, I began speed reading, hoping to end the pain as quickly as possible. I gave up drinking years ago, but if there'd been a bottle handy, I might have begun self-medication.

That old goat—he was young then—used Paris as a stage set. Maybe that whole Lost Generation did. America was getting too complicated and too heartless to coddle their mixed-up lives. They were starved, and America was getting too greedy to slow down enough to read and take in the complexity of words, much less their lives. Their words. Gertrude, herself of few words, and her clique have trained those of us who love words to visit Paris as often as we can afford the luxury, so we can feel guilty, and, always facing that thick and solid writers’ block, continue to be stymied because we’ve used every excuse money could buy to avoid the language of our hearts. All over again and then again. Guilty for using too many words for love. Make sure to buy those overpriced cards with sticky colors that hang from the revolving racks along the Seine. That is really as close we’re going to get to the Parisians because we can never really be French—we’ve been warned over and over. They won’t let us, but we can still dream. When we hit the grand lotto and buy that flat, we can wake up every morning, knowing that we don’t belong, but if we could belong, this would be the place to do it. Be stymied in style.



In the end, I feel like you and all you self-righteous ex-pats have bullied and flattened my emotional life. But back to Hemingway, that all-American bullied my emotional life. Me, personally, when I opened his book. I repeated myself. I must be carrying a grudge. I used too many words. It struck deep. What is it? I love Paris too. I’ve visited many of the same places. The tour guide in me can pull up some data or hearsay that explains why this is there, and that there seems somewhat off because it’s where someone whose name will never be forgotten, but I can’t remember, was murdered or made a saint or perhaps both, while over there is that famous view that one of the kings so fancied that he made sure that only those he favored could join his viewing party. Until he lost his head over there. And this is where De Haussman needed to keep the line straight. If you think that’s urban beauty, do I have a surprise for you. The man had only a ruler and a straightedge on the desk when he laid out the plan; he couldn’t add up numbers when it came to paying the bills, but I shouldn’t make the story too complex. Before we let it get too real, let’s distract ourselves: here is the best place to buy the authentic onion soup because the real cheap guide books assure us that the owners are actually not crafty thieves and pickpockets; there are some who need to steal from you to pay the landlords, who are the only people making a buck anyway. And the writers of those cheap tourist guides need to pay for dinner too. Maybe we’ve just lined up for an endless game of emotional pickpocket to keep our fantasies alive.

It’s like that, Paris. Emotions run deep. If you don’t believe me, go visit the home of Balzac in the 16th, which was way out of town when he himself tried to throw up a wall to escape the tyranny of the French. But don’t read him. It gets too real at a slow and leisurely pace.

They’re like that, the words. Back to Hemingway, M.F.K. Fisher famously observed that Ernest used words with such precision that each one seemed "to have been savoured and then spat out," as if he were testing their weight and texture like a piece of food or wine. I’ll go with the spat-out part. Writing in the most legendary part of the Left Bank, carefully, meticulously, that’s the way he treats language. He claims—I hesitate to use the word protest, although that’s accurate, but I needn’t be too fussy, maybe a bit too theatrical for a man who preferred bull fighting over opera: he says he was looking for the simplest, most direct word pointing. He would spend hours circling, underlining, substituting, crossing out, never satisfied, questioning because “it’s not exactly right,” but give him time, while he, the perverse old pickpocket, is frisking you for that last centilla of emotion he can rip off to throw in the ring. No wonder I think I have to speed-read his books. Anything less would be a death sentence.

I imagine he lined up poets, read them, and pronounced sentence.

Lorca, that silly little queen. He had no guts; he cowered. Just shoot the little pansy. But my enemies did it for me, which should give me second thoughts if it doesn’t exceed my word allotment.

Whitman, falling in love with ambulance drivers, glad I missed you and your mystical perversion of the mother tongue. Who the fuck gave you the right to make up so many words to show that it's all one world? You get hung. May you sputter and teach us all a lesson.

Dali, a total weirdo, Gertrude kept him around to keep the rest from wildly exuberant explosions of self-indulgence. He should be choked with coarse pubic hair.

This has stopped being fun, which is what Hemingway must have said at some point, too.

Ernest Hemingway, 1952.Photograph by Earl Theisen/Getty