The Road to Rohatsu

Ryutan’s Candle and Kenosha, Mumonkan Case 28

The original Chinese Goang

Longtan Chongxin (Dragon-Lake): Because Deshan Xuanjian asked more and more and night arrived, Tan said, "The night is deep. Sir, why don’t you go to lie down?"

Shan thereupon gathered his precious baggage, hoisted the [door] blind, and then exited. He saw the outside was pitch dark, withdrew, turned around, and said, "Outside is pitch dark."

Tan then lit a paper measuring-candle and gave it to him.

Shan intended to accept it, but Tan then blew it out.

I was driving from Santa Fe to Crestone with Baker Roshi for my first Rohatsu sesshin. It was going to be just Baker and me for the four-hour drive. I was assigned a lot of packing tasks; his instructions were very exacting. I remember quite clearly that I had to fit the large densho bell into the trunk of the car. There were other bells and zendo items that were needed to keep the schedule and turn the Wheel of the Dharma. 

It was probably between 4 and 5, and already getting dark when we drove out Cerro Gordo Road. We were due by 9 to formally open the sesshin; I thought we might be late, but Baker Roshi knew the route very well and had the trip planned to the second. I’d heard about his legendary fast driving, but felt very comfortable.

We talked about Phil Whalen, Issan, the Hospice, and food. Then the conversation turned to losing normal mental ability, Alzheimer's, and AIDS dementia. I was somewhat concerned about Issan losing his faculties during the last phase of his disease and asked about the effects of meditation and the blurring of our normal sense of time. I spoke of one guy in the Hospice who couldn’t even remember the past of 5 minutes ago and was completely unable to foresee any future. Given that he was a dying man, it actually seemed to be a blessing.

Baker told me that I probably shouldn’t worry too much. He mentioned something one of his old friends in Japan, Nanao Sakaki, the godfather of Japanese hippies, said when his memory was fading after he crossed 80 years, “he couldn’t remember what he didn’t need to know anyway.” 

I asked David Chadwick if he remembered having any more details about Nanao's condition. David pointed me to a conversation he had with Nanao before he died. David talked about a mutual friend who had colon cancer. Nanao seemed to follow the conversation but asked the same question several times, “What did he have?” "Shiri," David repeated, patting his butt, but said that he’d already answered the question.

Nanao wasn't fazed. "Kenbosho," he said. "I have kenbosho." David asked if that meant senility or Alzheimer's. Nanao wasn't exactly sure. But he was quite cheerful about it. "Ah, kenbosho is very good," he said. "No need to remember anything anyway. My mind is becoming more empty and free every day! This is a very good thing. I like kenbosho very much."

After crossing Four Corners, the last 40 miles north up Highway 17 from Amoroso to Crestone, the road becomes totally flat, level and straight for as far as my eye could take it to the edge of the car’s headlights. The night was very dark, no light for miles; the sky seemed to be painted a deep penetrating purple that went all the way to the moon, but I didn’t really notice. I thought that we must have been late, and Baker Roshi might have been driving even faster, but it also might have just been my fear. I think we were riding in a BMW, but it might have been a Mercedes. I am not interested in cars; however Roshi's love of fast cars is legendary and actually got him into some trouble. He turned the conversation towards how German engineers make sure that the mechanics of the automobile are tip top because driving on the autobahn was very fast and Germans demanded strict safety protocols, or, he joked, they at least needed the assurance of safety, even if a ruse.

Suddenly, the Roshi turned off the car’s headlights. It took a few seconds before my eyes adjusted. I was afraid. We were bolting up the highway at what seemed to be breakneck speed. After a few seconds, perhaps a minute, but certainly far too long in my judgment, Richard turned on the headlights again, and said with a little chuckle that we were lucky that no other driver had decided to turn out the headlights on their car to experience the beauty and depth of the dark night.    

I gradually regained my composure, but my perception of the night had changed. It opened up, and I was so aware of the beauty of the night above the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I was just part of a vast universe, beyond any explanation. 

The Diamond Sutra says, “If there is even a bit of difference, it is the distance between heaven and earth.” If Deshan (Tokusan) had been a better student and actually understood before he went all out with his over-the-top melodramatic burning of the scripture, he would have saved generations of Zen students a lot of pain. But perhaps he thought that Longtan (Ryûtan) was equally dense. The enthusiasm of a teaching moment simply overwhelmed him, and I need to shed my unsentimental Jesuit training in order to catch the beauty of fire.

Within 25 minutes, we arrived on time to a waiting hall of people all sitting in good posture. I found my seat. The days rolled on; the sun came up; the stars appeared again. I heard the Temple bell ring, and I woke up.

I returned to Santa Fe with some other friends, and quickly fell into a round of gatherings and holiday parties. I called Southwest Airlines and postponed my departure several times. I was having fun. 

Then, just after dinner at Robert Winson’s house, someone handed me the phone. It was Issan. He’d tracked me down. He asked how I was doing and how my sesshin had been. I told him that I thought Santa Fe was beautiful and just amazing with all the luminaria and snow.

“Oh yes,” he said; I remember his words exactly, “all those cute little mud houses. You know that the effect of sesshin can be like a drug trip, and it’s wonderful, but we need you here. Why don’t you come home?”

I called the airport and booked the next flight to San Francisco. It was time to return to my immediate experience of day-to-day life at Maitri Hospice, where the moment of living life is always in the shadow of knowing that it will end sooner than we might have dreamed..

  

Daido Loori’s verse:

Within darkness there is light;

within light there is darkness.

If you really see it,

you will go blind.

Tarrant Roshi concurs.

Q and A Zen

 A cautionary tale plus a koan—or two.

A friend recently told me about some advice from a Taoist master. I admit that I automatically distrust some Western dude with an ancient Chinese title. It feels like a label to make him credible. I don’t fully understand what Daoism is, and certainly haven’t the faintest idea of what it might have meant in 6th century BCE China. The friend didn’t actually repeat his Taoist teacher’s advice. I think I might be required to fork over some cash before I have the pleasure. We are a gullible lot.

I investigated my initial response and discovered two basic questions: What prejudices spark my immediate response? And what would be the criteria for me to trust a teacher and what they teach? These are separate questions. It is important for me not to discover one answer and think that it provides a solution to both investigations. It is easy to conflate and confuse the answers: because I have discovered that I am distrustful for X reason, the teacher and his or her teaching must be trustworthy.

Sometimes in Zen circles, we Western practitioners get lost in a lot of talk about our way, the Rinzai Way, the Soto Way, the right way. This kind of jabber is barely distinguishable from cultish blabber.

The questions this raises are really the same: How can we recognize what we call “authentic” practice, and what makes a teacher trustworthy?

These questions bite their own tails. Some people, even trusted teachers, counsel us to trust our feelings. But when we examine them honestly, we find a twisted mess. We are told to just sit, and they will sort themselves out. We sit. Perhaps a few of the knots disentangle, but there is no guarantee that a clear direction will emerge. Judge by the solutions that appear in real time, there are no easy answers.

In 1990, when nearly 100 men were dying from AIDS in San Francisco every week, I remember talking with a bright, engaging woman who came to sit zazen at Hartford Street. She asked questions about the Hospice and Issan. I invited her to come back, perhaps become a hospice volunteer. She begged off, explaining that she was very involved in her practice at “the big Zen Center.” I remember her words exactly. “We do the real Japanese Buddhism: we bow at everything every time we turn around.” That is one choice.

I never saw the woman again. What stopped her? Did I get in the way? Perhaps there was something about the dying, knowing that you’re dying, and the emotions that stir up. I cannot say. Several of Issan’s close students didn’t visit. When he started to get sick, they actually disappeared, later explaining that they couldn’t bear to see him suffer or they preferred to remember him as the Pastor of Castro Street. Many were also gay and themselves HIV positive. There was such pain and suffering in the community; facing death head-on was hard for all of us. I met Issan when HIV started to ravage his body and mind so that is really the only Issan I knew. It was his gift and my luck. But when I listened to stories of Issan at Tassajara or at Zen Center, Green Gulch or Santa Fe, I knew that dying Issan was the same man dedicating himself diligently and completely to the practice.

I feel that the bowing woman missed an opportunity to experience a man who lived out the teaching until his last breath, but I also know that Issan would never have faulted her for avoiding him and bowing every time she turned around. He was so non-judgement and tolerant not to mention how much he loved to bow. I admit to applying a little pressure on the woman—I needed help at the hospice—and I also admit to feeling slightly superior in my role running the hospice which was of course real practice. I can’t set my experience center stage for applause, but on the other hand, I need to avoid rote answers, or getting caught up in some cultural forms that I don’t understand as if they unlock some esoteric secret.

Quick change of scene

Listening in on a recent discussion bemoaning the death of Zen in Japan—so many first-son priests escaping the lifeless tedium of administering the family's temple business, my mind went back to a morning I spent looking over the library at Hartford Street, searching for a book that might unlock the mystery of the universe. Trained as a Jesuit, I hoped to find an answer, even a coded one, recorded by someone at some time in some place that might point me in the right direction.

I picked up a volume and read about the third and final destruction of Nalanda, including its vast library, and tried to start a conversation with Phil Whalen. I was more horrified at the loss of the the sutras, the Mahayana texts and commentaries, including all the works, the notes and who knows what else, of the pivotal scholar Nāgārjuna than I was by the wanton murder of thousands of monks and teachers. I blurted out something about the horror of burning books to Phil who was sitting in his chair across from me. He just looked up, smiled and said, “Don’t worry, kid. They left us enough, just enough.”

Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji is not alone in trying to destroy the dharma by burning books and killing monks and nuns. Beginning in 1950 Mao and the People’s Liberation Army systematically destroyed monasteries and burned as many sacred texts as they could lay their hands on in Tibet. In 1868, the Meiji Restoration began the campaign of Haibutsu kishaku (廃仏毀釈), literally "abolish Buddhism and destroy Shākyamuni," which led to the wholesale destruction of Buddhist temples and monasteries as well as sacred texts. The Taliban destroyed huge ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan Afghanistan early 2001 which shocked the world and was soon followed by the regime’s defeat, but it did not prevent them from reasserting their hardline earlier this year.

The burning of sūtras during the Haibutsu kishaku (unknown source).

So while I deplore book-burning or destruction of religious art, their preservation is not a necessary condition for our practice. The loss of cultural Japanese Buddhism, centuries-old beauty and tradition, including bowing to everything all the time, is a real loss, but it might have already disappeared.

How much remains? Just enough.

Issan is dying.

In the early morning of September 6th, 1990, Issan’s breaths had become very labored. Someone woke me. My room was directly above his. I went downstairs and joined the others. There were perhaps ten people in the room, most of whom had shared the last difficult months of his journey, his doctor Rick Levine, Steve Allen, Shunko Jamvold, Angel Farrow, David Bulloch, David Sunseri, Kai Harper Lee, Jakushu Gregory Wood, myself—I can’t really remember who else was present. Most of us were sitting as best we could in the posture of meditation. Phil Whalen sat in a chair.

The time had come. We waited for the end. I actually don’t know if it felt so dramatic to others, but to me it did. We were told that certain endorphins naturally kicked in to numb the pain, and of course there was palliative medication, but it was almost painful to hear the sound of his struggling for breath. His body jerked and trembled. Steve got up, lay down beside him, and held him gently. At first, I was shocked. I was sure that Steve had never held Issan in that way before, but then it seemed like a perfect, spontaneous response—Issan loved the reassuring caress of another man. Gradually, his breath became calmer but shallower. I tried to follow my own breath, to remain present and focused. It was difficult. There was a cascade of thoughts and emotions, realizing how much I’d come to love Issan and how deeply I would miss him.

The room became very quiet. Then Phil got up from his chair and bowed one last time to his old friend. Was he leaving? I was startled. It felt important to me to stay to the end. In a soft voice, Phil said, “I’m sorry, but I have to excuse myself. I will open the Zendo in the morning, and I need to sleep.” Then he left while life remained.

  

Love rides on the breath,

Labored, easy, 

When the breath ends 

It stands up, walks out,

And saves itself.

1 comment:

• 

• Voice and Opera TrainingDecember 10, 2021 at 6:06 AM
  Oh! Gassho, Ken.
  ReplyDelete

Sex, Death, and Food.

March 1st marked the passing of Katigiri Roshi. Were he still with us, he'd be 98. 

Originally published on Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Dainin Katagiri Roshi admonishes Issan.

This life we live is a life of rejoicing, this body a body of joy which can be used to present offerings to the Three Jewels. It arises through the merits of eons and using it thus its merit extends endlessly. I hope that you will work and cook in this way, using this body which is the fruition of thousands of lifetimes and births to create limitless benefit for numberless beings. To understand this opportunity is a joyous heart because even if you had been born a ruler of the world the merit of your actions would merely disperse like foam, like sparks. —from Tenzo kyokun: Instructions for the Tenzo by Eihei Dogen zenji

Let’s talk about death while we’re still breathing. Talking about it after we’re dead might be challenging.

A dying Isaan told me something Katagiri Roshi said to him when they were both very much alive. I find myself revisiting this conversation about impermanence and death, and while I’m at it, can I also include a conversation about sex? They’re both dead and can’t have that conversation, or we’re not privy to it, but I will try to do it for them. And I’ll even stick my tongue out at you, Katagiri, even though you may only be a ghost.

And now, in reverse order, sex, death, and food

During one practice period at Tassajara, Issan ran the kitchen—the position of tenzo is highly respected in Zen monasteries thanks to Dogen weaving a spell about the cook’s practice of making food. Issan told me he’d been working night and day in the kitchen. According to the Founder of Soto Zen, this is really good practice: “Day and night, the work for preparing the meals must be done without wasting a moment. If you do this and everything that you do whole-heartedly, this nourishes the seeds of Awakening and brings ease and joy to the practice of the community.”

But Katagiri Roshi called him in.

Of course, he went. The Roshi asked him why he was missing so many periods of zazen. Issan said he felt he had to explain himself—he was terribly busy; there were a huge number of students to cook for; directing the preparations required an enormous effort; and, cut to the chase, Issan admitted that he was challenged working with some of the students as well as not complaining about foodstuff he didn’t think it was wonderful to begin with.

Katagiri sat stone-faced. Then he said, “Yes, we work hard long hours. Then we die.” That was it. And as they say in the koans, Issan bowed and left—a true koan exit.

Issan told me this story just months before he died. In both his smile and the bright tone of his voice, I could sense his gratitude for the decades-old warning. The certainty of death added urgency to his story. HIV was ravaging his body. He knew he was dying. His body felt it. Denial was no longer possible, but I didn’t hear even the faintest note of resignation in his voice, but rather a note of surprise that seemed as fresh as the day of that meeting. Past and present seemed to merge.

He never forgot those few words. They changed his life. They were a blessing. They shook something loose. They turned every excuse and explanation upside down and released unexpected wonders.

A conversation about food ended in death. Issan spoke honestly. He was dying as the direct result of a sexual encounter with his longtime boyfriend. What did he have to hide, and how could he hide it anyway? Despite the fact that many people loved Issan, they also found his relationship with James troublesome, not particularly because it was gay love, but because the love of his life was a man addicted to methamphetamines.

I began to look for other things Katagiri might have said about death and found several. The old horse always found his way back to the barn. The words of a beloved and respected master have a way of creating their own currency. In Zen, the phrase “turning word” is a phrase that helps a student refocus his or her attention and perhaps even prompts a realization. In turn, students circulate a good turn of phrase.

Steve Allen told me that when Katagiri visited Suzuki Roshi just before Suzuki died, Katagiri cried out, “Please don’t die!” Another version of his plea is more personal and direct, “I don’t want you to die.” I had also heard that Katagiri’s last words were, “I don’t want to die,” but that may just have been some sincere student either misquoting, conflating, or confusing time and place. I can find no solid confirmation, but none of these statements are what you might expect from a Zen master. They certainly don't fit any sentimental notions of a master’s death poem.

But each version of the story rings of something real, gut emotion crying out. I accept the invitation to get real.

Onto Questions about Sex!

Dosho Port quotes you, Katagiri, as saying: "After my death, I will come back and haunt over you, checking on your practice."* Yes, for me, Roshi, even though I was not your student, you have come back to haunt my practice, but not checking it as you did Issan’s work as the tenzo. I find myself weighing the value of your words. They have some punch, but is it a strawman? If I deflect the impact of your admonition about dying with the volatile ammunition of sexual scandal, am I ducking the question?

"But I kept my mouth shut."

How can I take you seriously? Revelations about your sexual misconduct have come to light after your death. I am unsure if you lied about your relationships with women in your community, and there was no accusation that you were abusive. But keeping your mouth shut is not entirely honest, either. I get that your reputation did depend, to some degree, on the perception of your being a steady family man. Perhaps you felt that if you were not directly confronted, your silence would serve the dharma. You are often quoted as saying that a good Zen student kept his or her mouth shut, followed directions, and sat upright. Roshi, I am told you were a good sitting monk, that you followed directions, well mostly; your form was good; and you certainly kept your mouth shut.

I have also tried to keep my mouth shut. I have not commented on your sexual dalliances, Roshi. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even judge them—if it were left to me, I would allow you any sexual expression you felt drawn to as long as it didn’t hurt others. But you were not fully transparent about your affairs. Did you really think that they would not come to light? Your naivete has come back to haunt us.

I am obliged to add your name, Katagiri, to the list of teachers who have abused their position. Of the more than 450 Zen teachers in the United States, the amount of oxygen taken up by the small proportion who have been involved in sexual scandals is enormous. The distraction alone gravely harms the teaching.

Po-chang and Huang-po: "The Buddha-Dharma is not a small affair”*

When the hurt goes away, does it mean that we have understood? I’ll stick out my tongue!

One day, the Master [Po-chang] addressed the group: "The Buddha-Dharma is not a small affair. I twice met with the Greater Master Ma's 'K'AAA! ' It deafened and blinded me [for] three days."

Huang-po, hearing this, unconsciously stuck out his tongue, saying, "Today, because of your exposition, I have been able to see Ma-tsu's power in action. But I never knew him. If I were to be Ma-tsu's heir afterward, I'd have no descendants."

The Master Po-chang said, "That's so, that's so. If your understanding is equal to your teacher's, you diminish his power by half. Only if you surpass your teacher will you be competent to transmit. You are very well equipped to surpass your teacher."

Roshi, you were saved by the queer guy! Issan fished some sound practice advice out of a muddy pond and passed it on. He wasn’t blinded or deafened by a few words. but he wasn’t blindsided either. He carried them in his heart for more than three days. In fact he used them till the day he died.

Your dharma heir, Teijo Munnich, quotes you, Katagiri, “Please don’t call me ‘Zen Master.’ No one can master Zen.” And you also said, “Do not make me into a god after I die.”

Don’t worry, Roshi. I won’t. Thank you.



The Maori people of New Zealand have created a ritualistic dance, the Kapa Haka,in celebration of light triumphing over darkness.

_______________________

* Tenzo kyokun: Instructions for the Tenzo by Eihei Dogen zenji
*Dosho Port, Me in Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri
*following the Ming version as translated by Cleary. Also quoted in Zen's Chinese Heritage
The Masters and Their Teachings by Andy Ferguson

Gazing into the heavens for what was right under my nose.

Originally published Monday, January 16th, 2023; edited Monday March 2nd, 2025

My starting point is simple. I imagined that the heart of religion must be belief in something, some god or hierarchy of gods, or at least some guiding theosophical philosophy. Listening to theological debate and, from time to time, participating with zest in these conversations in churches and seminaries, synagogues, temples, mosques, and Buddhist centers, people seem to be arguing about something. In fact, where you stand regarding that “something” is what really matters: Does God exist, and if so, how does this entity or reality function in relation to life and relationships?

Late on a very dark night, I stood on the deck of an overnight boat in New Zealand’s Milford Sound, looking into one of the deepest views of the Milky Way possible from Earth, though the view seemed upside down. They were so clear, I imagined I could count them had I enough time. I tried to hold this “god-question,” and just wait. I practice in a Zen Buddhist school, so I waited a long time. Eventually, I headed back to bed with no answers but strangely refreshed.

As I lay back down in my bed, it hit me: the reason I even entertained the question at all was that my grandmother Catherine’s sister-in-law, Aunt Edna, gave up her opposition to my mother marrying my father, who was neither Irish nor Catholic. That decision produced me. Then, after a predictably angry Irish adolescent turmoil, followed by a thoroughly liberal education, I found myself working through the post-Vatican II version of the Jesuit ratio studiorum, and voila, that produced both my questions and their answers.

I’d assumed that these questions, or a constellation of questions, had been honed down to a few targeted inquiries about a set of principles that undergird the universe and life itself. Among possible solutions, there is perhaps a group that can be labeled monotheist, another animist, others atheist, generally Buddhist or questioning, and purely scientific (my list is not exhaustive). We imagine that, by exercising the revered technique of careful, reasonable debate, time and again over many generations, we come to something at least closer to the way things really are.

We all know that any objective observer has to take their personal proclivities into account when formulating an argument. The point is to be as objective as possible and remove all the personal bits. But my personal questions seemed to be leading in another direction.

Here’s a hypothesis: the questioning itself carries a kind of genetic code.

It is not as if we had a set of mathematical problems that the best brains in the universe had been puzzling over forever, never arriving at a solution. If I could remove the set of assumptions and prejudices that shape and distort my peculiar take on the world, the questions themselves would be fresh and appropriate to the situation that arose. But that never happens. What if they are not designed to do that? The questions themselves are not useful because their answers are totally predictable. 

I was trying to find out how many Christians exist in the world. I came across a pretty straightforward analysis of the percentage of people who currently belong to one of the world’s religions and how many are expected to follow those beliefs and practices by 2065. The Changing Global Religious Landscape was produced by the Pew Research Center, so the science behind the analysis is reasonably reliable. Belonging to a religion covers a multitude of sins, but it at least sorts out the proportional weight my fellow humans will be giving to the current ways that the god-question is being addressed in broad strokes. It also provides some predictors, given current demographic information on the social, racial, and cultural makeup of the populations in question. There were some startling predictions: that Muslims and Christians would be numerically equal within 40 plus years; there would be no major religious conversions, lateral shifting due to marriage and other circumstances only; that Buddhists, one of the smaller demographics, would continue to diminish. I’d cast my fate with a non-aggressive sect without much clout.

My beloved “none's” would neither increase nor decrease. Their proportional strength can be predicted by statistically estimating the birth rate among "none” mothers, in the same way that scientists determined the relative number of children born to spiritualist mothers. It was shocking to see that the “none's” were treated the same as any other category. To my mind, their choice not to follow a religion was perhaps the clearest of the intellectual/philosophical positions with regard to the god-question. But the Pew researchers said with confidence their numbers would not increase.

My precious questions about the nature of reality, the existence of god, and the virgin birth had their origin in the moment that Edna gave up her opposition to my mother marrying my father. This is also predictable: in 2065, the same questions will be asked with nearly identical responses. The genetic code does not tolerate innovation or dissent. Perhaps we can apply Darwin to the genetic code of the "god-question": our environment is changing, pressures are shifting, and this will favor different adaptations. However, this will require thousands or millions of years.

Or you could try Zazen and tear apart these questions on your own.