“Don't Give Up!”

Comments on Joshua Rothman's article in the New Yorker: "Should You Just Give Up?"

Sisyphus couldn’t stop pushing his boulder—but you can.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/should-you-just-give-up

Far be it from me to enter into a debate with an astounding self-help writer. He writes for the New Yorker, so God help me, but I will call him out. Joshua Rothman seems to indicate in his latest article, “Should You Just Give Up?” that sometimes—actually, as a general rule—we should scale back our dreams to land them within the parameters of reasonable or “doable” and thus escape being disappointed or disillusioned. We’d be happier campers. 

Who am I to argue with a man with such august credentials? I am an 80-year-old failure who has faced at least an equal share of unhappiness as most living, breathing humans, but since I entered religious life as a Jesuit when I was 23 after an Ivy League education with its promise of a cushy life with lots of cash and prizes, I have never given up on my dreams. They have, of course, changed and morphed, but they are still as strong a motivating factor as they were on August 15th, 1966. What is most important, however, is that at 80, I am still living my dreams. Life is challenging, exciting, and new if I’m not careful, although when I get up from more frequent naps, I find myself remembering people and events decades old with clarity and sometimes even wonder. But the most frequent emotion is a deep feeling of gratitude. 

However, when Rothman dug up some anecdotal evidence from Kennet Roshi, I dug in my heels. He cites another self-help writer, Oliver Burkeman, who advocates “imperfectionism.”  Burkeman invokes the British Zen master Houn Jiyu-Kennett, who, instead of lightening the burden she placed on her students, made it “so heavy that he or she would put it down.” Once her charges saw their situations as “totally irredeemable,” they gave themselves “permission to stop struggling.” Burkeman counsels: “Instead of setting out to become a master meditator—and buying the requisite books, candles, cushion, and app—you should simply try meditating for five minutes today, and see what happens.”

I am at least 25,000 hours beyond the meditation time I might have logged using his five-minute rule. I also know the first person in the US that Kennet authorized to teach. We talk at least twice a week. Just standing in those qualifications, I want to ask Mr. Burkeman who the fuck he thinks he is to be telling people to give up on the dream of becoming Zen Masters so that they can settle into some kind of semi-pleasurable mediocrity? We need more Zen masters. You have examined the state of our world and, noticing that innumerable unhappy people have given up their dreams, your best advice is just to wake up and do a fact-driven pro and con list to settle on some achievable goals. Then you cite all the pop psychologists you’ve delved into in your 20-year writing career and find evidence that people have been pie in the sky and perhaps just getting real and seeing what they can reasonably do is the best way out. Jung told us just to do what’s at hand. 

I’m not giving blanket advice that talking to someone with perspective isn't valuable or that, when pursuing a quixotic project, talking to a lawyer or accountant is a bad idea; far from it. Perhaps Burkeman is drawing the wrong conclusions from his Kennet anecdote. Maybe it was not to give up at all, but rather to see the situation for what it was, head-on, with no illusions, and then change your approach and give up a strategy that is not working. Yes, of course, stop struggling, but that is not advice to give up. It just means to stop struggling and perhaps stop daydreaming. Go deeper into your dream and discover what it tells you. I am also sure Kennet said to wake up, but certainly, she did not counsel anyone to shut down their dreams.

Picking up the priest from Sacred Heart

Book of Serenity, Case 8: Baizhang’s Fox (Gateless Gate, Case 2)

Once, when Baizhang gave a series of talks, a certain old man was always there listening together with the monks. When they left, he would leave too. One day, however, he remained behind. Baizhang asked him, “Who are you, standing here before me?”

The old man replied, “I am not a human being. In the far distant past, in the time of Kashyapa Buddha, I was head priest at this mountain. One day, a monk asked me, ‘Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?’ I replied, ‘Such a person does not fall under the law of cause and effect.’ With this, I was reborn five hundred times as a fox. Please say a turning word for me and release me from the body of a fox.”

He then asked Baizhang, “Does an enlightened person fall under the law of cause and effect or not?”

Baizhang said, “Such a person does not evade the law of cause and effect.” Hearing this, the old man was immediately enlightened.

I don’t know exactly why, but after meditating a few mornings ago, my mind was engulfed by the memory of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I was driving my Veterans cab. Late, very late one evening, I received a call from the dispatcher to pick up the priest at Sacred Heart Church on Fillmore and Fell Streets. It was a ghetto parish, not a Jesuit Church, though the devotion to the Sacred Heart was inspired by the visions of the seventeenth-century French mystic Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, who had been guided by her Jesuit spiritual director and confessor, Claude de la Colombière. They are now both saints. I was never much drawn to the devotion, as it felt too saccharine, but I did admire Blessed Claude.

It had to be about 1990. The Church was abandoned in 2004. It had been home to San Francisco’s largest African American Catholic congregation. The San Francisco Black Panthers served breakfast there, and it had been one of the centers for the Catholic anti-war movement, which I’d been part of in the late 60’s. My kind of church.

Originally, we were told the Church was being shuttered because of the huge cost of a seismic retrofit and condemned as too dangerous for public worship. But then it was repurposed as a roller-skating rink called “The Church of 8 Wheels.” Apparently, we don’t care if wild, wacky skaters lived or died. The Convent across Fell Street had already been taken over by a very small Tibetan monastery that’s now gone. 

But that night, I had been called to assist at one of the holy sacraments, a mission of mercy, anointing the dying.

The priest was waiting for me on the church steps rather than the next-door rectory. He was wearing his soutane, with a narrow purple stole beneath a cheap parka. He probably greeted me, but I just remember that he said, “Saint Mary’s Hospital.” Nothing more. At first, I took him for distracted, but I realized that he was carrying the Blessed Eucharist. “Recollected” would be a better word.  

The hospital was about 20 blocks away, across the Pan Handle, very close to Saint Ignatius, the Jesuit church. Under 10 minutes at that time of night. I am almost certain that I blessed myself; I may have even said, “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” I was now part of a holy rite. The immediacy forced all the Jesuitical arguments about the Real Presence into the background. In that moment, the Lord was real, even his Heart of Compassion. 

As we turned up Stanyan Street, past the ER, the priest said, “main entrance.” I knew the pedestrian door closer to Shrader. He was visiting one of his parishioners, perhaps an old friend, not a gang stabbing victim. One of the Jesuits would have been called for an emergency. I knew for certain that I was present for an intimate moment, the passing between our world and the universe of the Unseen. 

He tried to press a five-dollar bill into my hand. I refused. I watched him quickly climb the steps and ring the nightbell. I waited until the door opened and he disappeared. 

I may have paused for a few minutes to reflect, but not long. I had to pay more than $60 in “gate” fees for my cab before I actually put money in my pocket. There were many nights that I barely paid for dinner. I had to stay alert for my next fare. 

The Great Star Theater and the Monkey King

For about a half dozen years, several decades ago, I dated LC, who was born and raised in Canton; he loved Chinese opera, the Cantonese version. We never missed a performance by any troupe touring from Hong Kong. They usually played at the Great Star Theater on Jackson near Portsmouth Square in San Francisco, though I remember one more elaborate production at the new theater in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens.

I started going because I was invited and I was curious, especially after seeing the film “Farewell My Concubine” in Honolulu when I was at Kokuan studying with Robert Aitken. But after my third or fourth opera, I came to appreciate the artistry and stagecraft. The singing took some getting used to. Most times, I was the only caucasian in the crowd, mostly aunties and uncles from Chinatown, plus a few immigrant families with bewildered children.

At the Great Star, we always sat as close to the stage as possible. Loren thought he was getting his money's worth when he could see the faces of the protagonists up close, even their spit. One denouement involved the unraveling of a puzzling intrigue: the eight immortals, aided by Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, escaped a terrible situation. Several players and singers were swinging above the stage on harnesses. It was very dramatic. The stage engineering was pretty basic. One of the stage lights crashed down and almost landed on me. There was only a slight pause while the stage crew swept up broken glass, and the performers picked up where they’d been interrupted. The audience wanted the climax. On the way out, I was told that I was going to experience good fortune, having narrowly escaped serious injury.

The blinders of religious doctrine and superstition.

Recently, a person who uses the name “Zapp” commented on my post, “The funeral of Ösel Tendzin. Deliver us from cults.”

Originally published Saturday, July 24, 2021, in my other blog “Koan Conversations.” https://www.koansconversations.com/2021/05/the-funeral-of-osel-tendzin-deliver-us.html

Zapp says, “The AIDS epidemic of the mid-eighties was an unprecedented catastrophe, a deadly mystery that blindsided the world. In that climate of sheer ignorance and terror, no one possessed a cure or truly understood the virus. To condemn a spiritual leader for attempting to combat the unknown with the only tools he had—faith and practice—is to project modern understanding onto a time of global panic. Hindsight is 20/20. The Vajra Regent did not kill anyone; the AIDS pandemic did. To claim otherwise is a wrongheaded and infantile simplification of a devastating historical reality.”

Zapp, I would like to defend myself from the accusation of being “wrongheaded and infantile.” Let me refresh your memory with a few facts. 

Regarding the known, published scientific knowledge about HIV, your statement “no one possessed a cure or truly understood the virus” is inaccurate. The medical community recognized AIDS as sexually transmitted in late 1982/early 1983. The CDC reported clues in March 1983 that AIDS could spread through sexual contact, and issued guidelines noting transmission via sexual contact and blood, solidifying the understanding of sexual transmission alongside other routes like contaminated blood. They confirmed their findings in 1984.  I was actually in conversation with the research team at Moffitt Hospital, UCSF, which developed and publicized the safer sex guidelines at about the same time. I was dating one of the doctors. They didn’t waste time. So respectfully, you’re wrong. 

With respect to the Vajra Regent, by his own admission, he knew he was infected with HIV and did not take measures to protect his partners.

“. . . [I]n December 1988, the most harmful crisis ever to strike an American Buddhist community unfolded when Vajradhatu administrators told their members that the Regent had been infected with the AIDS virus for nearly three years. Members of the Vajradhatu board of directors conceded that, except for some months of celibacy, he had neither protected his many sexual partners nor told them the truth. One of the Regent’s sexual partners, the son of long-term students, was infected, as was a young woman who had later made love to the young man.

“Two members of the Vajradhatu board of directors had known of his infection for more than two years, and chose to do nothing. Trungpa Rinpoche had also known about it before his death. Board members had reluctantly informed the sangha (community) only after trying for three months to persuade the Regent to act on his own.

“‘Thinking I had some extraordinary means of protection, I went ahead with my business as if something would take care of it for me,’ Tendzin reportedly told a stunned community meeting organized in Berkeley in mid-December.” (Katy Butler, Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America, Common Boundary Magazine, 1990 May/June) 

So, Zapp, I hate to break it to you, but Thomas Rich was responsible for the death of at least one person who had put their trust in him as a Buddhist teacher. Given that he was known to be sexually promiscuous, this is a low estimate. I took care of one man who died of HIV/AIDS complications, who’d spent a lot of time at RMDC, and the Regent’s sexual activities were well known. I have compassion for the man.

For me, there is a deeper question and concern: what do we do about it? I have been practicing for almost 50 years. How do I serve the community and friends I love? I have to be honest. I try to be very careful when I speak about abuse, as well as observing the precepts as faithfully as I can. I take no joy in reporting the massive failures of those who have willingly assumed the burden of leadership in our communities. 

However, sexual abuse and exploitation of students haven’t stopped. A young woman I know well was raped last year by a Nagpo Lama in Dharamsala, India, where I have been living and practicing for more than a decade. She was in great pain, and her practice was harmed. She filed charges, and the lama wound up in jail until some rich students bailed him out. His students are also aware of the rinpoche’s sexual habits, but choose to remain silent and enable him. 

I hesitate to call you out, but I cannot allow the blinders of religious doctrine and superstition to let you either lie or remain ignorant. We have to be honest. Let’s try to continue our practice as best we can.