Trapped by Life

“You can get as angry as you like, but you can’t do anything about what you can’t do anything about.” —Haruki Murakami

Of course, we get trapped by life. That is our situation. What do I mean by “trapped by life”? It's actually quite simple: there are circumstances or conditions we cannot change, no matter what we do or how we feel about them, and, despite how we craft our most authentic response, it still seems inadequate. The world is not perfect despite our best intentions. Besides prayer, what’s our next authentic move? 

I protest that I no longer call myself Roman Catholic; I say that I’ve cast my vote with my feet and walked out the door. Yet I still follow the inner political and theological turmoil and clerical machinations in hopes that it might reflect a force that can help tilt the course of events towards a more equitable, fair, and just course in human affairs. So I could still call myself Catholic. Many in my situation do. Opinions are just opinions. I honor the Teaching of Jesus as a true gift from God, although I don’t fully subscribe to the official ecclesiastic version. I do not fully participate in the life of the church because of how I have chosen to live; I do not feel it’s appropriate for me to participate in rituals or conversations where I would have to fudge the accepted or prescribed guidelines. That would be disingenuous and arrogant.

This outsider position has, over time, changed me and my perception. Where we stand matters. The Jesuit Pope Francis chose to live in a rooming house for bishops and priests. That sparked a revolt among some of the righteous, who also believed that his positions, teachings, and guidance were heretical and should be contested, ignored, or invalidated. Leo is following this M.O. by shifting from Francis’s modest rooms back to the fabulous, regal Papal apartments. Francis's critics hail this as a repudiation of his revolutionary papacy.   Cardinal Dolan has been removed—the left asserts “evicted”—from his high and mighty address on Fifth Avenue, but if I think that an address gives me permission to dismiss the filth that he spewed about Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk, I’m just deluded. The doormen of Fifth Avenue buildings have an equal voice about the course of human events, if not more than old Fattso with the red hat. They know who’s fucking who but keep their mouths shut.  

Let me confess some of my sins: I watch YouTube for an inordinate amount of time. I’ve watched Leo survey his new digs, take a day at Castel Gandolfo, or convene the Vatican Cardinals. They all wear nearly identical antiquated costumes, and, with the exception of one rather elegant woman religious, the titular head of Vatican City, are all men, ranging from older to ancient, mostly of European descent. They run the show, set the rules, and spend the money. From my perspective, it doesn’t matter how squeaky clean any Francis or Leo makes this kind of government; I would have to believe in the oracle of Delphi to trust this exclusive male coterie to offer real guidance in our topsy-turvy world. I do not. They’ve squandered whatever spiritual inheritance that was handed down through two millennia. 

Once upon a time, I believed what these men said, but then I felt that grew up and realized, “Self, you were not born yesterday. Open your eyes. This is not the world as it is, or even pretends to be. These men certainly do not represent you.” Here is a very important distinction: it’s not just individual men. These particular men have an outsized influence on the moral behavior of billions. Only men have the final say. That’s just patriarchy, nothing holy or infallible. 

But I find myself in a quandary. I am still looking for leadership and guidance about the appropriate action that I can take to help make things a bit better. I know that love is expressed in action, not words. Do I look towards “La Raza” or L’Arche? Both organizations seem to be founded on solid principles and deserve support. Without question, I say, “Yes!” But then I discover, as the world discovers, that Cesar Chavez used his power and position to lock the door of his private office to have sex with very young girls, and that Jean Vanier engaged in “. . . relationships involv[ing] various kinds of sexual behaviour often combined with so-called ‘mystical and spiritual’ justifications for this conduct.… the alleged victims felt deprived of their free will, and so the sexual activity was coerced or took place under coercive conditions ….” (from the final report of the Inquiry). Have I been betrayed? That’s how it feels.

The sex abuse by clergy was, and continues to be, horrific. I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about the predicament. Can I legitimately withdraw my support for these very human leaders who are not saints while still supporting the organization's aims? Certainly, their conduct has harmed the effectiveness and success of the organizations. Do I keep my mouth shut? Or do I interpret the words attributed to Jesus in John 8 when the Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery, "Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone," to mean that I should not condemn either Chavez or Vanier?

I can both support the projects and condemn the leaders, and do so in a way that holds up. I recall talking to Avery Dulles several times about the abuse scandals after he was named a cardinal. He found the whole situation to be incredibly embarrassing; those were his words. He just couldn't, on some level, believe that priests or religious were behaving so badly. He also attended the American Catholic Bishops’ meetings, and it was understood that he carried John Paul 2's message to the bishops. He was not a bishop, but was listened to. The Pope trusted Avery, and he talked with men on the Pope’s staff before the meetings. (I was a bit shocked, but that is what he told me). He himself was also both ideologically and politically conservative enough to gain a hearing with that group.  

I just went back to some of my notes about the conversations we had regarding the situation. This is from something I wrote back in 2001 or so. “He said that his first response was profound embarrassment—men with whom we shared the ideals of Ignatius took advantage of their position as priests to prey on teenage boys and young adults. But then he hesitated. He said that the word embarrassed is not exactly right—he said ‘profoundly disappointed’ might be closer. He was embarrassed for the institutional church he loved and supported and, like me, was personally disappointed in the men with whom he thought he shared an altruistic spirit. In retrospect, I think that ‘disappointed’ is still a euphemism. I think he felt betrayed.” 

Avery, however, did not bury or hide from what he called a “disappointment.” I know he worked quietly with the superiors of the old New York Province as they talked with Father John McNeil before he was dismissed. Although McNeil was never accused of sexual misconduct, he was openly gay just after Stonewall, and the official position was that he was “intrinsically disordered.” Avery was insistent that every priest accused of sexual abuse get a fair hearing and be given a chance to defend himself. He and I talked about this at length. He was well aware that it was the kind of emotional situation in which people make snap judgments and act impulsively. 

Here is a link to another piece I wrote about the sex abuse scandals and the Jesuits, “Don't Ask, Don't Tell—A Jesuit Strategy” (https://jesuskoan.blogspot.com/2019/10/dont-ask-dont-tell.html).

However, I’ve said nothing that addresses Jesus’s admonition, “let the person without sin cast the first stone.” Is it possible to feel and express revulsion about sexual exploitation, standing in the shadow of my own sexual behavior? Of course. I remember Michelangelo Signorile at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in 1988, shouting at Cardinal Ratzinger when he outlined the Catholic response to HIV/AIDS, “He is no man of God. He is the devil!” Signorile said it was a spontaneous act, perhaps a reaction, “thinking about the homophobia he'd experienced as a child and the Catholic Church's decrees.” There are many sayings of Jesus where he calls out hypocrisy. As a matter of fact, that is the clear subtext of the “Cast the first stone” story: he is addressing the Pharisees, a favorite target of his anti-establishment sentiment. This was also the beginning of Signorile’s controversial “outing”: publicly identifying and shaming prominent closeted gay men and women who actively suppress gay rights. He kicked off right at the top by calling out a Pope who loved his red pumps. 

I defend myself by pointing out my attitude towards the misconduct of so many Zen teachers during the birth pangs of Buddhism in the West. The situation is not that much different than that of Chavez or Vanier if I were just weighing the consequences of calling out sexual abuse. Many people have made the argument that several highly publicized sex scandals have damaged the growth of Buddhism in the West by discouraging people of goodwill from practicing. Zen, however, was made for sinners, not saints—though the same could be said of most churches that cater to humans and not angels.

The Church has a dark record of dealing with known sinners, heretics, or enemies. But when we get to admirable men and women with skeletons in the closet, the record is mixed. Among possible solutions are denial, creating stories, or dividing our lives into distinct zones that barely touch and certainly don’t acknowledge the presence of the dark side except by disdain, avoidance, or condemnation—the gnostic world of Light and Darkness. How will the Church today, and I think more importantly, huge numbers of believers reconcile themselves to the sins of their fathers?  

The case of Saint Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás intrigues me. He founded Opus Dei, which has recently come under investigation for sexual exploitation and abuse as well as financial crimes. (investigative journalist Gareth Gore, Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church). He was canonized on October 6, 2002. Both John Paul 2 and Benedict promoted his cause. He was their kind of saint, producing a steady stream of right-thinking conservative clergy ready to undertake the rigors of celibate life. How could he have been unaware of the inner workings of his tightly controlled institute? I cannot say with absolute certainty that he directed every detail of the lives of members of the large worldwide organization, but I bet he knew and approved of most of them. Pope Leo recently invited Gareth Gore to a private interview, so he is also now aware of the inner workings of the Opus. What will be the fate of Escrivá? Can his sainthood be revoked? Of course not, though many suspect holy people have been quietly demoted by the PR wing of the church. Can they create some fiction that separates the saint from the excesses of his overzealous followers? That would be my guess.

Of course, perpetrators have to be held accountable and punished. Of course, the hierarchy has to accept responsibility. But the institutional church has not stepped out of its blame and punishment mindset regarding sexuality. Not on any level. This includes same sex relationships as well as extramarital relationships that heterosexual clergy get caught up in. 

There will always be a fall guy. There has to be, especially if the actual abusers seem to escape retribution. There are good bishops who act in the most compassionate way, and there are the old boys like Cardinal Law who wind up as the archpriest of a major Roman church after being removed. None should escape some taint of blame and censorship, but the world is not fair, and we get trapped by life.

"As night descends on a nation intent upon ruin, upon destruction, blind, deaf to protest, crafty, powerful, unintelligent. It is necessary to be alone, to be not part of this, to be in the exile of silence, to be in a manner of speaking a political prisoner. No matter where in the world he may be, no matter what may be his power of protest, or his means of expression, the poet finds himself ultimately where I am. Alone, silent, with the obligation of being very careful not to say what he does not mean, not to let himself be persuaded to say merely what another wants him to say, not to say what his own past work has led others to expect him to say." —Thomas Merton

from Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage, The Journals of Thomas Merton: Volume Five 1963-1965. Edited by Robert E. Daggy.

What would Bapuji be Doing?

Sunday, 22 March 2026

Written with Ankit Deshwal

The Coronavirus emergency in India: On the evening of 24 March 2020, the Government of India ordered a nationwide lockdown for 21 days. As of 23 March 2026, according to Indian government figures, India has the second-highest number of confirmed cases in the world (after the United States) with 45,056,126 reported cases of COVID-19 infection and the third-highest number of COVID-19 deaths (after the United States and Brazil) at 533,847 deaths

Originally posted to my blog “Buddha, S.J.” on 23 April 2020. Deep thanks to my friend Ankit Deshwal for inspiring and encouraging me.

Gandhi Jayanti 2022 in India

On Tuesday, 13 April 2021, I fasted. It was 397 days since the first Coronavirus lockdown in India. It was also the first day of Ramadan. I am not Muslim, or even particularly religious, but I’d been asking myself what Bapuji would be doing during this pandemic, and my answer was very clear: he'd be fasting. 

Since the founding of their Republic, Indians have faced many challenges. Being true to the principles that created the largest democracy on the face of the earth, each generation has to reformulate an answer in the language and the circumstances of the present moment to this question: What would Bapuji do? This question is more than lip service to the man whose compassion and courage inspire us. It is more than just a sound bite on the TV news to gain political advantage. When facing the silent enemy of the Coronavirus, a life and death situation, our answer might determine whether we live or die. 

The threat of death and the economic destruction brought on by the virus is very different from the occupation of the British Raj. There is no enemy we can point to, no foreign army, no terrorist, no General Dyer, and also no malicious government conspiracy or incompetence. The victims of this virus are not defined by the language they speak, nor the clothes they wear, the clubs where they hang out, nor the religion they practice. The virus does not obey human laws or ordinary conventions. It is a force of nature.

And the threat is extremely grave. Many people are dying in the second wave. Crops are not harvested. Shops are closed again. Temples, mosques, shrines, churches, and gurudwaras are empty. The hospitals are turning sick people away because all the beds are taken. Doctors and nurses are being overworked, getting sick themselves, and dying because they are caring for huge numbers of patients. But most Indians, some more willing than others, are following the advice of our leaders and health professionals and staying home, reducing the rate of infection.

But this comes at an enormous cost. Nerves are frayed. Families confined at home are seeing both the love that brought them together, as well as the negative traits that they would normally tolerate. And yet, we have to do what we can because our survival depends on it. 

Of course, it is far too early to begin to draw any lessons from this experience. But certain things are clear, and I think we should keep them in mind because we cannot really know how long this situation will last.

First, we are all in this together. The virus does not discriminate between Hindu, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, or secularists. Our only defense is a united front. We will only succeed if we work together. We number about 135 crores and share a relatively small section of the earth’s surface. This is a difficult situation even under the best of circumstances.

Second, we have faced other crises in the past, and we have prevailed. People know how to work together in impossible situations. We've realized that any struggle is hard work, but there is no way to avoid the pain that our human life presents us.

Third, Coronavirus is stealthy. It hides. In war, soldiers wear uniforms so that they know who they are fighting with and who their enemies are. The virus has robbed us of that luxury. It has no memory of past injustices. It does not hold grudges. It does not discriminate. To those who might say that the virus itself is God’s punishment for evil, I would just beg for humility in the face of calamity. Which one of us really knows the mind of God? It is perfectly understandable to try to blame someone else when facing an overwhelming fear. It is an instinctive reaction to lash out, and we think it helps. But the virus does not share our prejudices.

And fourth, there will be pain, suffering, and loss. These are the facts of our lives now. There is no way to avoid it. 

When I first learned about Bapuji’s fasting, as a Westerner, I was puzzled. It seems obvious that the way to fight an enemy is to use all the strength and power at our command. I thought he inflicted pain on himself to motivate others, perhaps even through guilt, to come to his way of thinking or unite against the British.

But perhaps it was the only thing he could do. There was no other defense. There was no power that he had to defeat the oppressor other than his inner strength. He nourished his soul by depriving his body. It was also his way of standing up to life's suffering, accepting it willingly. 

I feel helpless in the face of the epidemic. I remain confident that the situation will improve, but I cannot predict when or how. In the meantime, I will do my best and try to overcome my prejudice and work with everyone to defeat our faceless enemy. And I will fast.

The Road to Rohatsu

Ryutan’s Candle and Kenbosha, 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. He and 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 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 which seemed like 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

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.

The Cosmic Coincidental Control Center may be at work.

If not, let’s kick-start it.

July 1, 2025

Before the last Enneagram International Association Conference in July 2025, Jerome Wagner and Patrick O’Leary, both former Jesuits and pioneers in the Modern Enneagram movement, gave a presentation on their experiences before all the books, before Palmer, before Almas, Sandra Maitri, and Naranjo’s new, Spanish SAT groups. Along with a small cohort of Father Bob Ochs’s first enneagram students, they were the only people who had never signed either a non-disclosure agreement or a pledge of confidentiality, which became the focal point of the lawsuits that followed. This is part of my correspondence with them regarding that early history.

I have neither applied nor would I be admitted to the august halls of high-level Enneagram deliberations, but I will take your emails as an opportunity to sound off on the early days of Enneagram enthusiasm. My perspective is quite different. The “8” in my email address comes from neither 7 nor 9 being available among the addresses Google offered me when Gmail was in beta. So I’ve left it as the impetus of a strong eight-wing to cut through the inertia of a nine. 

I find myself in a very reflective period right now. I have been isolated in Asia for the last seven years, beginning during the COVID-19 lockdown in India, which was extremely restrictive. It continues. For the past two and a half years, I have been in Thailand, leading a solitary, almost monastic life. I did not foresee any of this, but things have a way of happening. I have been reflecting and writing. 

My retreat is not self-directed. Since 1988, I have been a formal Zen student. I work on the koans in a structured way—the whole nine yards, including daily meditation and frequent meetings with my teacher. I’ve tried helter-skelter, but I wind up in lalaland pretty quickly. I started zazen as a confirmed atheist, but as I said, things have a way of happening, and my current teacher is in the same lineage as the Jesuit Zen Master Father Emiyo LaSalle. So when pressed for a faith statement, I call myself a Jesuit agnostic.  Why am I saying any of this? I woke up this morning with a relatively rasa tabula, and I'm tired of watching Trump on YouTube destroy most of what I hold dear about being an American.

You will be addressing a self-selected group of Enneagram enthusiasts. And it’s an off-the-record exchange. Perfect. My views are unvarnished, critical, and extremely grateful. Of course, it is not the only perspective. This is completely off the record, but I’m presenting it to you for your use. I never aspired to teach the Enneagram, but I am now fairly adept at developing the kind of concentration that enables self-observation.  You said you were going to invite people to talk about what has remained part of their practice. The Enneagram, Naranjo, Ochs, and SAT have been an enormous part of what, I suppose, is my spiritual narrative for more than 50 years. And because it is so basic, it remains. Like being a Jesuit.

The first thing that I would say to the assembled host is that not one of them would have an Enneagram job or income without Bob Ochs. Not a one. Hameed and Sandra’s teachers are few, and they are the only Enneagram teachers who do not, in one way or another, trace their lineage to Ochs. The other exception is perhaps a person with a vaguely Sufi name, Laleh Bakhtiar. However, I would still bet that even he or she would not have written a single word or worked with a single student if it were not for what Bob did at considerable personal cost. It was enormous. 

My sources are my recollections of conversations with almost all the early major players, except Ichazo, plus my experience of SAT for the whole time Naranjo taught in Berkeley; I did not miss a meeting in five years. I am a Nine, though I posed as a Seven, and I think I would characterize my participation as “dogged.” I was not one of the stars -- sometimes to my chagrin. Other times I consider it a blessing.

I have maintained close contact with several members of the first, second, and third SAT groups over many years, and we continue to unpack our experiences. I cannot say if Hameed would even remember my being in the group. That’s OK. He’s as boring now that he's become an enlightened being as he was in Group 1. But to begin the list, I was very close to Father Joe Scerbo, a gay Franciscan friar who is now gone; MM; Michael Smith; Glen Lewis, who was in Arica with Caludio; Daniel Shurman; AL, very full of herself; and CD, toitally full oif herself; Claudio and Rosalyn; Catherine Thur. We all talked. Charlie Tart is still a pompous asshole. He didn’t remember me when I reintroduced myself at a talk by his teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche, founder of Rigpa, who was credibly accused of sexual misconduct. Charlie was too busy congratulating himself and kissing ass to pay me much attention. I didn’t miss much. I’ve had email exchanges with Idries Shah’s son, Tahir, who is a truly remarkable guy. He was a classmate of a friend, Cynthia Merchant’s brother. Cynthia was not in SAT but became one of Claudio’s close assistants when his teaching was mainly in Spain and South America. She is seamlessly bilingual. I got in touch with Tahir because I loved his writing and wanted to cross-check information I had heard from Ochs about Doris Lessing and Tahir’s father. I mention all these names so that you know that I ain’t just whistling Dixie.

After I left the Hoffman Institute, on a whim, I asked Claudio to allow me to interview him about a possible article I was calling “The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram.” He spoke with me for several hours a day over a week or so. I prepared a transcribed version of our taped conversations, and he gave me permission to use the material as I saw fit. Alas, I lost the whole damn thing in a computer crash and the tapes disapeared in some attic clear out between boyfriends. So I will rely on my memory and intuitive sense to recreate Claudio’s reflections. They were not very positive. I have some very subjective ideas as to why this is so, and when I get to that material, I will say so. (Spoiler alert: it was the drugs.)

Where to begin? The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram. Claudio was emphatic: there was no Jesuit transmission because “they” (you guys, Helen et al) made too many mistakes. You could not type an Eight if your life depended on it. Helen said something like “In our work, we see far more Eighths coming into the 'Work' than Claudio did. When I quoted her, he might have even used the word “bullshit,” though he rarely used gutter talk. Another thing that I remember well about this series of interviews was that there was no humor, a few nervous chuckles, and no jokes. It was all deadly serious.

Claudio asserted that he had only authorized Bob to convey his “indications” to the Jesuit groups (JSTB and Loyola), and that was it. There was to be no personal spin or interpretation. As an example, he cited the “now infamous” meeting where all of you, priests, nuns, men, and women, were to disrobe as a sign of fearless self-inquiry and surrender. He said that Ochs would not have dared give that direction on his own. AL tells me that it was she who came to the group that night in Chicago and had everyone take off their clothes in the closing ceremony; everyone did. I have just heard the story. It was more extreme than the directions or “Indications” given to any Berkeley group. Claudio told me that the idea came to him on a sudden “whim.” 

Both Claudio and Icnazo’s “holier-than-thou” shtick gets a bit heavy. When I say that Naranjo granted me permission to use the material as I saw fit, that was a significant gesture, and he delivered the statement of release or commission in a very formal tone. He made a big deal in these interviews that his notes and Ichazo’s Arica file had escaped without his permission, and their use was unethical, even immoral, because we had all pledged not to use any material without explicit permission. I think I know the source of the major leak (I’m sure, actually), although it is also the source of a lot of denial and counterargument. I can talk later about the missing 73rd (think the number is correct) that Ichazo did not retrieve when the 10-month Arica training was completed. 

(Helen also states somewhere in the court documents about her use of Osacr’s enneagon that she never saw nor used Ichazo’s confidential and, I presume, copyrighted notes. Oh, that Helen is a slippery one. She’s almost Jesuitical. Of course, she saw it, but you will never get me to say that publicly.)

To get Claudio to share, I let him control the conversation. There was a clear, definite subtext: he was deeply upset (I’ll use a gutter expression, “pissed off”) about the huge number of Enneagram titles available. I didn’t press the question. Market share was the true source of the upset. That he considered many of the interpretations to be misdirected, if not entirely flawed, was secondary. Believe me, he didn’t read many (if any) of your books; rather, he heard reports about the typing and might have cross-checked here and there. The issue was that he’d lost control. Although he always spoke of Oscar in a guarded, slightly disapproving way, it was always couched in the mystery that Ichazo was the link between the Enneagram and Gurdjieff’s teachings. With that link was some (to me) weird, esoteric, almost mystiical connection. Ochs had no authorization to pass on that imprimatur or seal of approval because Naranjo imagined Bob had bungled the job, which was unforgivable.

Let’s pick up the timeline again. These interviews happened after Naranjo had stopped returning Ochs’s phone calls; it might have been when I was still at Hoffman, but before 9/11. The serious and hurtful blaming had begun and was taking its toll. Bob had stopped teaching at the JSTB, or anywhere. He moved out of the small faculty residence that I found on Hillegass Avenue at the American Baptist Seminary of the West. Perhaps he had been asked to leave. When we talked, he was evasive. He told me that he’d rented a tiny, dark in-law apartment in a converted garage, in a very Asian neighborhood up the hill in El Cerrito. The Jesuits had given him a leave of absence, or sabbatical, plus a small stipend. I was not clear about his canonical status, but his connection to the Society was tenuous at best. He told me that he told his superiors he was working on a book, and they were (how shall I say this?) eager to see results which would never materialize. I surmised that they really didn’t know what to do with him. 

As I said, Claudio had stopped returning Bob’s phone calls, which upset him terribly, and he was no longer visiting the tantric Master Yogi Chen. His only visitor was Susan Diridoni, a lovely woman from either my group or the one directly after mine. I knew Susan and knew that she and Bob had a romantic connection. Susan has also died. I would never have mentioned their intimate connection while they were alive. I am not even sure if I should now, at least publicly, though Bob would not be the first heterosexual Jesuit to develop a strong, exclusive, romantic relationship that at some point included sex. Theilard apparently had a lover, and I knew the woman who filled that role for Avery Dulles, though I am absolutely sure they never had sex.

I called Bob at regular intervals for perhaps a decade. Sometimes it would take him a week or more to respond. We would meet at a particular restaurant where he could eat, particularly a Peruvian one on Mission in San Francisco. He complained that he had no energy; he found a doctor/dietician who prescribed a matchbook-sized piece of protein to be eaten between 1 and 4 in the afternoon. Or something that crazy, so crazy that it would drive a One off the rails. 

He told me that he was trying to write. At the time, I found hundreds of titles, which had increased to more than 300 the last time I surveyed them in 2019. https://enneagrambibliography.blogspot.com/2019/07/all-things-enneagram.html

He was not jealous, though he did mention that all these (his) teachers were generating good incomes and he was living on less than 2,000 USD a month. It didn’t feel like jealousy. I recognized a burden in the way of One’s, to compare and contrast his output very critically. It paralyzed him. It was a sense that he had been the source of so much good work, but every time he started to write, he would produce a few pages and then mercilessly throw them in the waste basket after a week. He felt obligated to produce something unique, worthy of the guy who kicked the ball into play, and he couldn’t do it.

I asked him what he wanted to say. He would respond vaguely that no one had ever looked at the major authors of the Western canon from an Enneagram perspective. However, somehow typing Tolstoy and launching into an analysis was not working out. I didn’t know how to respond, but my gut feeling is that, as with some of the more extreme Enneagram enthusiasts, he was asking the Enneagram to do something that it is not designed to do.

He was obsessed with two writers, Camille Paglia and Doris Lessing. How he lumped them together, I don’t know. With Paglia, I sensed some vindication that he’d been treated badly, even excluded for unjust reasons, and with Lessing, he was obsessed with finding another path to Gurdjieff. He told me that part of his practice was to write to Idries Shah — that letter writing was a revered Sufi practice. Shah might have sent a sentence or two back. When he died in 96, Bob wrote letters to his son as he was sure that Tahir had inherited his dad’s mantle. When Tahir responded that he was not a Sufi teacher, Bob continued to write his letters. He told me: “That’s what he’s supposed to say.” 

Looking back, I have to consider that Bob, a truly important person in my life, had suffered a psychotic break. He lived in a cave and entertained bizarre obsessions. His superiors were helpless. Bob was a solemnly professed member of a religious order with a track record of involvement in a significant spiritual movement. That credential has no value in the real world of academia and job applications. Thank God they did not cut him off. He would have been helpless. He told me that Susan had a profitable therapy practice and helped him out. (She also probably watched out for his mental state.) I was not in any position to help. I was also on a marginal income. Part of me wondered where all the people he’d helped were. Why didn’t he receive invitations to speak or contribute articles? Of course, by the time we had our Peruvian dessert, I realized that it would have been impossible to work with him. He gave us the Enneagram, and when it chewed up his life, we had to stand by helplessly.

Eventually, my calls became far less frequent, and he stopped responding. My own life was in deep shit. After going to meetings and quitting crystal meth, I did a year of intense traditional psychotherapy at Langley Porter. I had tried to trick myself into believing that the Enneagram, or Zen, could do the work of healing. In some ways, it made things worse, or maybe just brought them more into plain sight, while leaving any corrective actions for another time. I’m a Nine so you know how that went. 

I’m a recovering addict. I’m coming up on 15 years clean and sober. I’ve managed to travel the world; I write and tutor English, primarily to Buddhist teachers who want to work in English — that is where the money is for them. They do not pay me. I’ve worked on translating a Zen sutra into Tibetan that has been missing from their canon since approximately 950 C.E. I call myself the executive translator, getting the right materials to the right people at the right time, raising money and organizing the work. I know the Sutra well, but I do not know Tibetan. I have no temple. If I manage to return to India, I will be one of only three or four Zen teachers (and two of them are Jesuits) in a population of over a billion. Lots of Buddhists, though not many Indians. My teacher and I think that I might try to start a meditation hall near the Jesuit houses of formation in Delhi. There are 4000 Indian Jesuits now, more than in either the US or Europe. My boyfriend went to one of their colleges in Bihar.

So, how did things with the early Enneagram get so fucked up? I have a simple answer that is pretty straightforward, but one that is not talked about for good reason — it was the drugs. I didn’t use any drugs during SAT, not even during “Lines,” when it was recommended. Later I took LSD once with supervision, but I became addicted to crystal meth for amost 6 years. So I have to be careful with my judgmental One wing, but the first of the Steps is admitting that life with drugs had become unmanageable and out of control. 

The drug use in SAT was out of control, though everyone claimed that it was normal, or even a privledged state of mind. Almost everyone used drugs pretty much continually. Every weekend a new drug was passed around. People were always high, coming down, or recovering. There were drugs to summon the angry protectors, drugs to calm them, drugs to invite the Virgin to drop her viel of protection, LSD, MDA, MDMA. It was also illegal. Claudio could have lost his license if he had recommended any of these drugs, as several members later did, notably Speeth.  

Naranjo was perhaps the biggest abuser. He taught when he was high; he avoided teaching when he was high; he eventually had to quit SAT to dry out. He was brilliant, and he was a fucking mess. He was in no state of mind to conduct any solid or useful experiments. SAT was not a pharmaceutical spiritual testing ground. There were no controlled debriefings; there were no sober monitors. And of course, we couldn’t talk about it. Ochs was involved, perhaps not to the degree that most people in SAT were, but he experimented. I know because we shared the same floor at the faculty residence at the American Baptist Seminary of the West. Ones are not good drug addicts. Save that for Sevens. He tried to hold down a position at a Jesuit house of study; he failed. I left the Jesuits, moved to San Francisco, and drove a cab. 

I have more to say.  I'm not sure what to do with this, but thank you for allowing me the opportunity to say it. I have a few things to say about the Gurdjieff cult and how Helen obtained her information. You may have some suggestions. I think that this information about SAT and drug abuse does need to be said, but I am not clear enough to know how to do it effectively. You see, what you guys did was in so many ways some of the most valuable of all the Enneagram work. You saved it from the cult. Bob always told me, “Ideas make a difference. Good ideas can be a source of good action.” The Enneagram is such a source.

Going to button this up and call it a day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfjgO2amPSY&list=PLBqkQmExk0GJ_UdSxaSzbR_BDjcw1xGVR