Wildflowers

Song by Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt ‧ 1987

The hills were alive with wildflowers and I

Was as wild, even wilder than they

For at least I could run

They just died in the sun

And I refused to just wither in place

Just a wild mountain rose

Needing freedom to grow

So I ran fearing not where I'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

And the flowers I knew

In the fields where I grew

Were content to be lost in the crowd

They were common and close

I had no room for growth

And I wanted so much to branch out

So I uprooted myself from my home ground and left

Took my dreams and I took to the road

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

I grew up fast and wild

And I never felt right

In a garden so different from me

I just never belonged

I just longed to be gone

So the garden one day set me free

I hitched a ride with the wind

And since he was my friend

I just let him decide where we'd go

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Just a wild rambling rose seeking mysteries untold

No regret for the path that I chose

When a flower grows wild

It can always survive

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

Wildflowers don't care where they grow

https://youtu.be/rlbDaY7UFD4?si=ENlloj6POzL_f4Ye

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Dolly Parton

Wildflowers lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Jesuit Zen Roshis, a Roster

Several questions about Jesuits authorized to teach Zen meditation led me to put together this roster:

Zen and the Birds of Appetite was my first exposure to Zen when I was in the Jesuits. Even though it seemed very esoteric to my very doctrinaire way of thinking, it made a powerful impression. When Pedro Arrupe became the General of the Society, I wondered why he did his meditation on a zafu, and that led me to discover the role of Father Enomiya-Lassalle, who, in 1979, was the first of several Jesuits to have his realization authenticated by his teacher, Yamada Kōun (though because of the time and place, it was not initially made public).

Almost two decades ago, while Tom Marshall was alive, I examined the letters Francis Xavier sent to Ignatius of Loyola between 1546-1548 describing his encounter with a Zen Master, whom he calls Nixnit. It is the first recorded meeting between a Christian priest and a Zen monk. Here is a link to my rather lengthy paper, Buddha S.J.:

At the time, I said that this encounter almost made it inevitable that a few Jesuits in the future would find their way into a zendo.

I began my list of Jesuit Zen masters with Father Lassalle, who is the first in this lineage. Four have been publicly authorized to teach. Other Catholic religious have finished their koan training, most notably Father Pat Hawk C.Ss.R., Bob Aitken’s heir, and the Benedictine monk Willigis Jäger, who was also Yamada’s student. Father Kennedy, in Maezumi Roshi’s lineage, has also given transmission to Kevin Hunt Sensei, a Trappist monk from St. Joseph's Abbey at Spencer, Mass., a sister monastery of Merton’s Gethsemani.

Yamada Kōun also gave transmission to Sister Elaine MacInnes, a member of the Canadian order of Our Lady’s Missionaries. I associate her with the Jesuit Zen Masters because of her friendship with Father Lassalle, and because she began sitting with Lassalle in his zendo at Shinmeikutsu when she first went to Japan.

I cannot even guess where their Zen practice will lead; I hope their work will open and enrich the spiritual lives of many people.

Jesuit Roshis, senseis, scholars and other meditation teachers:

Father Hugo Makibi Enomiya-Lassalle, S.J., Roshi (1898–1990). In 1956, Enomiya-Lassalle began studying Zen with Harada Daiun Sogaku. Following Harada's death in 1961, Enomiya-Lassalle became an apprentice of one of Harada's students, Yamada Kōun. Yamada authorized Father LaSalle to teach independently in 1969.

Father Heinrich Dumoulin, S.J. (1905 – 1995). Father Dumoulin was never authorized to teach the formal practice of Zen, but his scholarly work has influenced the progress of Zen in the West probably more than any other historian of religion.

Father William Thomas G. Hand, S.J. (1920 - 2005). Yamada formally accepted Father Hand as his student and worked with him for seven or eight years. However, when Hand decided not to complete his formal koan training and instead return to the United States to establish the East-West Center at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, California, Yamada gave him his “blessing.”

Father Niklaus Brantschen, S.J., Roshi. In 1988, Yamada Roshi gave him “teaching competence.” In 1999, he received "inka shōmei" from Tetsugen Bernard Glassman Roshi.

Rubén L. F. Hábito (born c. 1947) is a Filipino Zen Rōshi of the Sanbō Kyōdan lineage. Yamada Kōun gave him dharma transmission in 1989 while he was still a Jesuit. After he left the Jesuits in 1989, he founded the Maria Kannon Zen Center in 1991, a lay organization in Dallas, Texas.

Father William Johnson, S.J. (30 July 1925 — 12 October 2010) was an Irish Jesuit influenced by Shigeto Oshida and later practiced Zen under the guidance of Yamada Kōun. Johnson insisted on continuing to recite the Jesus Prayer despite Yamada's contrary instructions, which ended their master-disciple relationship. He later met Bernard Lonergan, and further study of Lonergan influenced him. (I am almost certain that I was also at that summer session at Boston College that Lonergan taught in 1968). He had many Jesuit disciples practicing his hybrid Zen-Christian mystical prayer.

Father Gregory Meyers, C.Ss.R., Roshi, was authorized by Yamada’s son, Yamada Ryôun Roshi. I mention him because he took over the Zendo at Mercy Center in Burlingame from Father William Thomas Hand, S.J.

Father Kakichi Kadowaki, S.J., Roshi (1926 - 2017). Father Kadowaki practiced Zen under both Yamada Roshi and Omori Sogen. He achieved authorization as a Zen master (Roshi) from the Rinzai Master Sogen. He wrote “Zen and the Bible.”

Father Robert Edward Jinsen Kennedy, S.J., Roshi (born June 20, 1933), is in Maezumi Roshi’s White Plum Asanga. He was a student of both Yamada and Maezumi. Tetsugen Bernard Glassman Roshi gave him formal inka in 1997.

Brother Tom Marshall, S.J. (1922 - 2010). Tom was ordained a Soto priest by Les Kaye, Roshi, at Kannon Do in Los Altos and completed koan training with Gempo Roshi in Utah. Tom never formally taught; though, in many ways, like Issan Dorsey Roshi, he taught me all I needed to know to practice Zen wholeheartedly.

Father Ama Samy, S.J., Gen'un-ken, Roshi, received authorization to teach from Yamada Roshi in 1989.

Father Mathew Cyril Antony, S.J., Jnana Bodhi Ken, Roshi, is a dharma heir of Father Samy. Father Anthony runs Bodhi “Little Flower” Zendo, which Father Samy established in Tamil Nadu, India.

Mother Teresa in hotpants

Mata-Ji's Tomb

When I was at Maitri Hospice, I struggled several times with the Gift of Love, Mother Teresa’s San Francisco home for the dying. I was not alone. More than once, I got a call from a distressed mother, sister, or friend of a radical fairy who got stuck in the “Gift of Love,” where a well-intentioned Indian nun was beating the Devil out of him with a bunch of peacock feathers. There was nothing we could do to stop it because the Mother’s missions were entirely self-funded and exempt from any anti-discrimination regulation, and she was a saint. Unless we were family (which did not include boyfriends), we weren’t even allowed in to witness the loud calls to say the rosary together at 4 PM.

It fit the rumors of her Indian house for dying destitutes where baptism came before any medical treatment.  I found myself siding with Christopher Hitchens. As a liberal Catholic, at least in my history, I resented that this woman enforced heavy-handed religious demands by her saintly persona and rumors of being a living saint. A few younger, mostly Latino gay kids who really did feel that AIDS was punishment for being gay found some consolation in the care of the sisters. Most San Francisco gay men did not. I found it abhorrent. But we all kept our mouths shut. A hundred men were dying every week, and so many were homeless we needed every act of kindness that was offered.

Many years later, around 2015-16, when she was canonized, I visited Mata-Ji's tomb in Kolkata. My opinion shifted in a way I did not expect. I didn’t find myself less critical of the “loving” behavior of Mata-Ji’s sisters in the Gift of Love, but my experience of her presence at the Mother House did shake some of my preconceived ideas.

My partner and I hired a car and followed the Ganges from Rishikesh towards the delta east of Kolkata where its holy waters empty into the Bay of Bengal. I’ll try to write about our trip along the Ganges another time. In almost every way, it was a very disturbing experience. For all the planning, money, and repeated efforts to care for holy Ganga Mata, every government and every Lok Sabha has proven helpless to clean its waters, making more hollow promises and postponing the drastic work required.

A few days later, when we drove through the long delta and reached the shore of the Bay, we could only spend a few hours before we had to leave; the sludge was thick and black; we couldn’t escape its foul smell; it coated everything; the volume of untreated sewage, chemical run-off from the factories along the river, discharge from the tanneries, mixed with human remains, was overwhelming. I said out loud that it was a cesspool and my partner told me to shut up. Slandering the holy ground could get us in big trouble.

We quickly decided to double back to Kolkata and spend the rest of our time there. The seat of the British East India Company since the 17th century, the central city and some of the suburbs are very beautiful, filled with lovely colonial buildings; even the typical Indian middle-class neighborhoods are incredibly clean for India.

On the last day before the flight back to Delhi, we decided to visit Mother Teresa's tomb. We either didn’t read the guidebook carefully enough or just didn’t plan well, but we arrived at the very unassuming Mother House just after 1 PM. A simple sign over the gate clearly said it was closed from 1-3. Our plane was either 4:30 or 5. We’d missed our chance. We rang the bell at the gate anyway. A lovely young nun answered and explained that the sisters needed time for prayer and rest. Their chapel was closed. But then, in the next breath, she said she could open the door for us and let us visit the shrine room for a few minutes. Of course we said yes.

A very simple, unadorned wooden door stood just to our right. Inside, almost nothing indicated a sacred place: it was a fairly large room with a low ceiling, the ubiquitous cheap floor tile that was in every Indian house, simply painted cement walls, the rough timber beams with single harsh fluorescent bulbs, a few wooden benches, and stacks of the cheap plastic chairs that were in every house, on every balcony, every restaurant. There was a nondescript altar for Mass against one wall, and in the middle of the room, her tomb. Just that, a very plain white marble box, about the size of a large dining table, with an inscription and a painted statue of the Virgin Mary, which was very nice, but something that looked mass-produced for the shops that sold icons and statues of every saint and god of India. Totally, absolutely ordinary. One sister in prayer on a kneeler in a back corner; our rule-breaking sister standing in the doorway. The only thing that set the room apart was that it was immaculately clean and absolutely unlike any other religious holy place that I’d ever visited in India.

It also felt absolutely appropriate.

I walked directly to Mata Ji’s tomb and knelt on the hard, wide step that surrounded it. I know that I touched it. I might have even lowered my forehead until it touched the top, but I’m quite sure that I didn’t kiss it. Regardless, I began to feel very different, not like I’d walked into a room with a famous person, maybe a movie star, and was in awe, but I sensed a presence. It was a very powerful sensation. It felt personal, like meeting someone. I might have been so blown away by the incredible mix of humility, love, and devotion in the way the room was set up, but the feeling went very deep, and I started to cry, softly, but the tears were there just as they are now while I’m writing about the memory. Regardless of whatever opinions I had, I knew that I was in the presence of a Great Being, to borrow a Buddhist term. After a few more minutes, our very kind nun signaled that she had to close the door and do whatever was next in her day. At the gate, she gave us some small miraculous metals, like the ones that the nuns gave us for a correct answer in catechism class, and we left a few hundred rupees in the alms box. We said goodbye and left. My memory may be tricking me, but she had a lovely smile.


During the last Companions Zoom, someone mentioned that it would be entirely inappropriate to put Mother Teresa in hotpants. Then I came across this picture of HH Dalai Lama on his first international trip after escaping from Lhasa. This is the picture taken when he landed in Tokyo. It had to be sometime in the early 60’s. The Japanese stewardesses certainly didn’t dress like nuns, but it doesn’t seem to have bothered HH a whole lot.

Christopher Hitchens vs. the Blessed Venerable Unassailable Saint Mātā-ji, aka Mother Teresa

15th December 2011

Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual ought to be is someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them."

This morning, I got further confirmation that Mother Teresa is not what the world would like us to believe she was. As I was reading that the Missionaries of Charity worldwide are praying for the soul of Christopher Hitchens, the touching sentiment arrived within seconds of news from India that her followers rejected my then partner’s offer to teach English in one of their schools because—his words, a loose translation from the Hindi—“we don’t want fags.” Ah! Homophobes. I was not surprised, but what a loss for the kids who might have really learned something from a very smart, educated guy, fluent in Hindi and English.

I’ve had history with the Missionaries here in San Francisco, though my personal contact has been no more than smiling at some of them on the bus.

Back in 1991, when I was running Maitri Hospice, I got a panicked call from the sister of a man who wound up in the Gift of Love, the Missionaries AIDS Hospice. The woman was completely outraged: her brother felt that he had been taken captive by religious fanatics who cut off his TV, made him say the rosary, and beat the devil out of him with bunches of peacock feathers attached to the beds of recalcitrant patients.

I was never able to verify these practices because the Missionaries did not accept public funding and escaped the normal oversight required for hospice. So it’s only hearsay. I spoke with the guy who felt trapped there and moved him to the top of our waiting list. He moved to Peter Claver House and died before we had a bed.

After leaving Maitri and dealing with my own PTSD, I went to work as the Assistant Director of The Spiritual Center for AIDS Services in Oakland, soon to become just “The Center” as the street folks, sex workers, called us. A few of the men missionaries started The Center, especially one American guy with a deep sense of compassion and commitment to the poor. But he was also gay, came out, and left.

When Mātā-ji learned that a good portion of the infected sex industry workers still worked and that the majority of the injection drug users did not embrace total abstinence, she pulled her support. The Center was taken over by a ragtag group of outsider nuns, priests, gays, blacks, catholic lay people and Jews—Jacinta from the Sisters of the Holy Family was the main stay of the program, really our priest, who did the memorial services, hospital visits, and many hours of counseling; Anne who was a Franciscan ran a day care for kids with HIV and the children of women with HIV; an older Dominican woman, perhaps in her late 80’s, who sat at the door and greeted everyone warmly; a gay priest who did the reports to the CDC; a full cadre of catholic lay people from the suburbs who prepared meals everyday for about a hundred or so. The staff was rounded out with a few other gay men, a Latino Jew who was the social worker and case manager, a black lesbian who did drug and alcohol counseling, a huge, handsome, grounded brother who drove the van, getting folks to medical appointments.

So what’s my point other than my walk into the past to feel deep gratitude and love for a whole bunch of people who really did step up and give of themselves during a terrible epidemic? When I wrote to foundations for money, the board chair, a good friend, told me to milk the Mother Teresa thing as much as possible. Which I did—until we heard through the grapevine that Mātā-ji wouldn't be happy if she discovered her name was associated with the project—that we’d bowed to the idols of case-management, drug counseling, and infectious disease control.

After all, her nuns had ripped out the carpet of the abandoned convent that they’d occupied on Church St. So, of course, they had the blessing of the Most-High on her hijacking social services to covertly turn the world to Jesus.

I throw my total support to Hitchens in the controversy, and will add some Buddhist prayer that his soul winds up Nowhere, and not in a constricted heaven presided over by fanatics. It seems to me that there is more than enough evidence that “Mother Teresa makes no real effort at medical or social relief, and that her mission is religious and propagandistic and includes surreptitious baptism of unbelievers.”

And finally, from an interview with Christopher, who makes my point very concisely.
Free Inquiry: According to polls, Mother Teresa is the most respected woman in the world. Her name is a byword for selfless dedication in the service of humanity. So why are you picking on this sainted old woman?

Christopher Hitchens: Partly because that impression is so widespread. But also because the sheer fact that this is considered unquestionable is a sign of what we are up against, namely the problem of credulity. One of the most salient examples of people's willingness to believe anything if it is garbed in the appearance of holiness is the uncritical acceptance of the idea of Mother Teresa as a saint by people who would normally be thinking—however lazily—in a secular or rational manner. In other words, in every sense it is an unexamined claim.