Beware of Lounge Chair Zazen

A Kamakura Zendo

I currently live in Thailand which is a Buddhist monarchy. The king and royal family enjoy the highest rank. Protocol, to my eyes, seems strictly observed despite rumors that the royals are not insistent. An American friend who works at a school in the north was hosting the older sister of King Vajiralongkorn, Princess Ubol Ratana. Only a limited number of people were allowed into the area where she was being entertained, and despite writing and rehearsing the students for a skit in her honor, my friend was not invited. 

Rank is exclusionary. It can be palpable and irritating. My friend asked me about the koan “The True Person of No Rank.” My mind went on automatic, and I remembered many times the case had come up during sesshin. Of course, we’d worked with it. Tarrant Roshi had written about it. It appears in both “The Book of Serenity” and “The Record of Linji.”  I wanted to make sure that I used an accurate translation, leaving nothing out and including no additions that might distort what Linji Yixuan (Rinzai Gigen in Japanese) taught. I looked up the Case 38, Shôyôroku, with commentary by Yamada Kōun Zenshin Roshi, published by Sanbo Zen International. 

Book of Serenity, Case 38

“Rinzai’s True Person of No Rank.” 

Instruction: 

Taking a robber for your own child, taking a servant for the master: 

Could a broken ladle of wood ever be your ancestor’s skull? 

The saddle bone for a donkey could never be your father’s jawbone. 

When bestowing land with a new branch temple, how would you discern the master? 

The Case:

Rinzai instructed his assembly and said, “There is one true person of no rank, always coming out and going in through the gates of your face.1 Beginners who have not yet witnessed that, look! Look!” 

Then a monk came out and asked, “What is the one true person of no rank?” Rinzai descended from the rostrum and grabbed him. The monk hesitated. Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true person of no rank – what a shit-stick you are!” 

1 I.e., sense organs such as eyes, nose, ears, tongue, etc. 

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In the big picture, I am no different than any other human. If King Charles or King Vajiralongkorn and I sat on cushions in my imaginary zendo, we would all receive the same data coming out and going in from our sense organs. We’d remain equal without rank even after their royal coaches whisked them home. I expected Yamada would point to the one true person with perhaps a few hints about the shit stick. 

How wrong I was. Yamada’s commentary was a long, detailed description of a “kensho zendo;” he focused on a strict level of attention or concentration he felt was required for experiencing this sudden enlightenment; I heard echoes of the contentious talk about the possibility of kensho (which is Japanese for “seeing into one's nature”) between the Soto and Rinzai Zen schools. I was shocked. 

It was also dull. I was not particularly interested in students adjusting the blinds in Zendo. For Yamada, it indicated that they were allowing their minds to stray from the single-pointed attention required to experience “kensho.” There was a long and involved story about a fellow named Kasan Roshi who threatened to throw some monks out of his temple for performing a commendable act of compassion while doing "takuhatsu" (托鉢), or alms-begging. 

How on earth did I jump from sitting on an equal footing with King Vajiralongkorn to listening to Yamada’s fussing over whether the zendo’s blinds were rolled down during seated meditation, or Kasan expelling monks who’d proven themselves unsuitable because they allowed themselves to be distracted? 

Kensho!

Then, the random nature of my laptop’s search tossed up a frothy piece by Brad Warner. He takes issue with Melvin McLeod, the editor of “Best Buddhist Writing of 2004,” in which Brad was included. McLeod thought that Brad was describing a kensho experience. Brad chides himself for not being clear enough: “I have never had a kensho experience. I hope I never do. I've never come across anyone who claimed to have had one of those who could convince me it was anything worth experiencing.”

Yamada’s position was very different from Brad's or Dogen's, the Japanese founder of the Soto sect that Brad follows. Yamada quotes Hakuin Ekaku, the Japanese reformer of the Rinzai sect: "Anyone who would call himself a member of the Zen family must first achieve kensho—realization of the Buddha's way. If a person who has not achieved kensho says he is a follower of Zen, he is an outrageous fraud—a swindler pure and simple." 

After reading Brad very carefully, even if briefly, because he says pretty much the same thing over and over, I wondered if Dogen ever talked about a kensho experience in a way either Dogen or Brad, and Yamada or Haquin might be able to speak to one another about meditation experiences rather than shouting at one another to make a point.

I stumbled across something that Dogen said before he left China. Keizan Jokin Zenji, his dharma heir, writes that he did have an experience, an opening, that confirmed what he had learned from Rujing with whom he completed his training. (See “The True Dharma Eye,” Tanahashi (2011), p. 144). The quote suggested that Dogen did have something akin to a kensho experience despite all the howling to the contrary. Like the fool who thinks that he’ll remember everything necessary or startling, I did not make a note of either the quote or the source so I can’t include a useful footnote. 

To be fair to Dogen and Brad, emphasizing kensho might be dangerous or misleading. The Rinzai Teachers’ Bureau has supplied no map. Loose talk might create some overblown expectations. Brad says his teacher, Gudo Wafu Nishijima, sometimes talked about "solving philosophical problems" when experiences in Zazen were out of the ordinary. He claims that all states of mind that arise in Zazen are equal level thought formations, solved with simple Zen application if you’re lucky. “He calls it this because that's all it is.” It’s not required. We’re not too far from shouting at one another. 

In spring 1978, Michel Foucault met and practiced with Omori Sogen Roshi. One of the most important Zen masters of the last century met a brilliant philosopher whose work explored the way discourse shapes our reality. Their work together lasted less than three weeks, and Foucault died only five years later. Had his life not been tragically cut short, what contribution might Foucault have added to our understanding of Zazen? We’d be fools if we didn’t recognize that the way we speak about meditation, the shape of our discourse, colors our experience.

I practice in the dharma stream of Yamada Kōun and his teacher, Yasutani Haku'un Ryoko. Although I enjoy and find value in Brad’s non-doctrinal style, I intend to bolster Yamada’s case for practicing in a Kensho Zendo. I’m going to speak from my own experience, and rather than take a side, I’ll just focus on what is important to me, the conversations I’ve had about these experiences with my teachers. Please don’t take my descriptions as normative in any way. What matters is your own experience.

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Body, Mind and Breath

My body has a mind of its own.

I had the good luck to learn to sit Zazen in a Soto Zendo. I had practiced seated meditation before, but these experiences were limited to the weave and sway Siddha yoga halls or the more relaxed Vipassana practice, which has been adapted for Westerners.. 

When I first sat Zazen for a long day at Hartford Street, my body hurt by noon. By 5 PM, I could barely stand. When I sat my first three-day sesshin, I limped home. People gave varying lengths of time for the pain to disappear, though this was usually coupled with a light-hearted statement that enlightenment was a sore back and stiff knees. I was encouraged to persist. Somehow I did.

That period coincided with Issan’s final years. His body could not muster the same kind of determination as in his early training, but he still sat totally erect. I noticed when he slumped and seemed to drift off, but it was not often. Of course, just noticing that was an indication that I was being less than attentive to my state of mind.

After 80 years, my bones have shortened; the intervertebral discs' thickness and resilience show signs of wear and tear. I have to sit in a chair, usually with a small curved brace near the base of my spine, but my body automatically assumes a comfortably erect posture, the vertebrae neatly stacked on top of one another, holding my head erect with my jaw relaxed. If I discover anything carelessly out of place, a few simple self-commands plus some relaxation allow me to focus much longer than I could 35 years ago. I hesitate to describe another sensation that occurs almost automatically, other than to say I tap into an energy that has a mind of its own and, if I allow it, takes over. Of course, the tendency to fall asleep or lose concentration has not magically vanished. 

Lesson One: An alert body is the primary tool for an alert mind.

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Issan used to say, “Don’t invite your thoughts to tea.”

I can’t stop my mind, but cessation of mental activity is not the end of practice. Actually, cessation is inevitable. It’s called death and will come soon enough. In the meantime, if you can’t stop thoughts from showing up, and you can’t ignore them even though it might run counter to normal, polite or accepted behavior, you can at least observe them and watch the habitual way that your mind responds. 

When asked what to do about pesky thoughts, Suzuki Roshi advised giving your cow a more extensive pasture. He was Japanese, so social distance from domestic animals was understood differently, even in post-Hippie California. In rural Japan, the cows might be living in the dining room. 

I grew up in rural Connecticut. Painted in crude letters on the side of the cow barn at Parker’s Dairy was the slogan: “Parker’s Cows are Parker’s own. Come and see them in their home.” As kids, we visited and quickly figured out that the sign was pure advertising and that we weren’t always welcome in the cow barn, particularly during feeding or milking. So we figured out how to leave the North Street gate ajar and then laugh when Parker and all the cowherds ran up and down Huntington Turnpike, rounding up 20 cows who had stepped beyond the barbed wire. That’s not what Suzuki Roshi had in mind when he counseled increasing the size of their pasture. 

Issan’s advice was couched in coffee house etiquette; cows didn’t roam the Castro. But the kernel remains the same: do not engage thoughts that seem to intrude, especially at quiet moments. Simple observation changes the phenomenon. 

Lesson Two: It is possible to quiet your mind. 

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Count to zero

Over the years, I’ve tried a wide variety of recommended breath-counting exercises: from one to ten, repeat or go forwards and backwards; the inhalation and exhalation counting as one breath or counting as two; 1 to 10, 9 to 2; 3 to 8, and so forth; the seemingly impossible regulation—in through the right nostril and out through the left (or was it vice versa?). I have spent hours focusing on the diaphragm, calling it the dantian ("elixir field" or "sea of qi"), to increase my lung capacity. I was told by a Master of Qigong that getting the asshole involved by conscious contraction helped boost the energy at the base of spine, so I spent months—you guessed it. I asked many teachers and got lots of conflicting advice, akin to the conflicting conversations they were intended to conquer. 

Aitken Roshi talked about “the impossibility of counting to ten.” He said that he has found the breath counting practice useful both when he began and later when his practice matured. It’s simple and cuts through. There is a point where even barely intelligible numbers following the breath also fade out, and all that remains is the breath. I am not claiming that this is an ideal state of meditation, but it seems to be an opening into that place where both body and mind could drop away. I call it counting to zero, but if you experience it, you can name it anything you like. 

Lesson Three: The breath is connected to everything. Pay attention.

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Sit like a rock; it is the pearl beyond price. But don’t charge money for the experience. 

I’ve been having conversations with people from the relatively new discipline of “personal coaching.” They usually group bits and pieces of meditation practice into a workshop format they call Mindfulness. They contend that these disciplines calm the haphazard functioning of the mind, but, given the elemental neurological composition of the brain, every technique I’ve talked about, the yogic position on the body, the calming of wayward thoughts and disturbing emotions, the training of attention by following the breath, are just that. They each have a specific goal: to become more productive, make more money, sleep better, or even experience more satisfying sex. Add these to the list of possible outcomes, and attach a price list.

Though these outcomes are possible, I fear life coaches sell meditation short if they stop there. These coach practitioners can be a bloodless, analytical lot. There is a reason why never charging for teaching has endured for more than two millennia. 

Practice can open a path to the center of everything. The Koan collection is packed with story after story about practice becoming stale and comforting but not open to much new. Repeated exercises become rote. Meditation halls are filled with advice about keeping it fresh. In some cases, with some teachers, sitting like a rock can even become a fetish, and, at least in my experience, even a spiritual fetish is not something we should aspire to achieve.

In one of his short online talks, Richard Baker Roshi says that an essential but often overlooked quality of zazen is akin to affection or love. For meditation to settle in and become part of our lives, we treat it like a lover, a constantly changing relationship that we can’t give up on or put down. It's not an easy path. We will surely have fights and rocky periods, but the rewards are immeasurable.

I have fallen in and out of love, and I have years of therapy to help me sort the wheat from the chaff. And I keep coming back to Zazen. 

Lesson Four: Allow yourself to fall in love with Zazen.

An Unauthorized Death

Originally posted Tuesday, June 7, 2022

When Maylie Scott’s mother died at home in Berkeley, she called me. Apparently, after my stint at Maitri Hospice, I had the reputation as the go-to person for dealing with Buddhist death rites. Personally, I found the designation of hospice priest slightly uncomfortable. I had done my best to distance myself from any sacred ritual after spending several of my Jesuit years fussing over post-Vatican 2 updating. But as we say, that was my personal issue.

Actually, I made it up as I went along. I had to. I’d fallen into my role taking care of men dying from HIV without any formal hospice training. The crisis trained us all, often brutally. The same for taking care of the Last Things. If there was a handbook, it was untranslated or came with tons of cultural baggage. This is a story about some of what we did, why we did it, and where our hands were tied.

When Issan died, Steve Allen asked Kobun Chino Roshi to perform the exacting Soto ritual done at Eiheiji for their most revered priests. Kobun had served in an official capacity there, teaching ritual and chant. He himself had been well trained; his seemingly endless chanting was mesmerizing but certainly beyond our language ability, not to mention voice control. He could not train us. I drifted off and realized that it probably wouldn’t make any sense to translate it anyway. It was perfect for that moment, and that was enough. It had to be. Later, there were a few odd ceremonial gestures, like pouring salt on either side of the doorposts, that I understood even less. The salt heaps seemed to be a Japanese superstition, perhaps to ward off marauding Yōkai. I didn’t want to believe that they had crossed the great waters with the Dharma, but I might be wrong.

Issan had arranged for his own cremation with the Neptune Society. We followed their car to the crematorium. It was a bare, ugly industrial space; the workers were dressed for work around the hot furnace. Though not disrespectful, it was utilitarian, which came into sharp contrast when Kobun, Philip, Steve, Shunko Jamvold, Angelique Farrow, David Schneider, and David Bulloch put on their formal Okesa. The usual work of burning bodies was interrupted by our chanting. I could see that this was outside the usual practice, and it cost extra. 

Steve and Shunko returned several hours before Issan’s body was reduced to ashes. Usually, the crematorium would grind any remaining bone fragments into a powder in what looked like a giant food processor before returning them to the next of kin. Steven had requested that Issan be spared this process so that he and Shunko could sift through his ashes with ceremonial chopsticks, looking for small gem-like fragments to keep as relics.

Several weeks later, there was an elaborate funeral at Zen Center. Hundreds of people gathered; Richard Baker Roshi, Issan’s teacher, was the head priest, but Kobun, as well as Mel Weitzman, Blanche Hartman, Norman Fisher, and Reb Anderson were also present. Towards the end, Richard Schober, the chair of Maitri and not a Buddhist, turned to me and said it felt like high mass for a bishop.

Between 1989 and 94 I was part of so many services for men who died in the hospice as well as others for Issan’s friends, that I lost count. Almost 90 men and one woman died during Maitri’s first years. I tried to school myself, attempting to discover an appropriate level of formal ritual. Issan, Steve, and Phil performed the Soto memorial service, which included food offerings and chanting, particularly the Daihi Shin Darani, an invocation for Avalokitesvara's compassionate intervention. There was also a period of spontaneous sharing about the person’s life and loves, something that Richard Baker may have added at San Francisco Zen Center. Several times, I helped gather a minyan so that we could recite Kaddish, and there was one Roman Catholic Mass in the zendo. On at least four occasions, Issan, Steve, or Phil performed Tokudo for men who wanted to join the sangha and shave their heads before they died.

The Book of the Dead

In 1989, at Lone Mountain College, I attended a teaching on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö, coupled with the bardo initiation. Only six to eight of us attended all the teachings. The lama sat on a high throne in the neo-Gothic chapel for three-hour sessions twice a day for three days. Despite all this formality, he was very approachable, answering questions in an informal, personal way. I remember a long argument he had with an animated, forceful Jewish woman who said she could not forgive Hitler but felt she had to. Jamgön Kongtrül’s resolution, as I recall, was if the Talmudic-leaning woman could stop harming herself, no matter what she wanted to hold onto, opinions and positions would inevitably fall away.

When on the evening of the last day, the time came for the empowerment of passing through the bardo, the audience swelled to overflowing, mostly gaunt men with HIV. I knew in my heart that many of these men were engaged in some kind of magical thinking. The fear of death was palpable. Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö performed the ritual in the manner of someone steeped in tradition. Perhaps death’s sting had not dissipated by the last chant, but if the pain of the men who lined up for his blessing was even slightly mitigated, it was a success. In my own life, the sting would linger for years, a kind of survivor's guilt. Along the way, ritual became less important, though it did not entirely vanish.

Normally, an initiation ends with some practice instruction. On that last evening, Jamgön Kongtrül concluded with a plea for everyone to live their lives as fully as possible for however many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years remained. He said that would be the best practice; that bardo practice was noticing what happened in the “in-between” gaps in our experience. Many of these men would be dead in a few months. His instruction was a kind gesture of compassion.

Joshi, Kennett Roshi, and bending the law to death’s favor

Paul Joshi Higley was the first Zen priest in the community to die after Issan. He was one of two men and one woman that Issan ordained. Paul had been a student of Chogyam Trungpa and had completed some level of Shambhala Training. He came to the hospice with a six-month life expectancy and lived for nearly two years. He became part of our community and a friend of mine. In his late 30’s, dying of AIDS, he had a strong will to live fully. Determined to take full advantage of anything that medicine could provide during that first terrible decade of the epidemic, he didn’t die in the hospice but at Garden Sullivan Hospital out on Geary Ave after an experimental treatment.

The hospital called early in the morning, perhaps 1 AM. I’d promised Paul that his body would not be embalmed and that it would remain undisturbed for at least three days before cremation, but I was not at all prepared to find a way to transport a dead body from a hospital back to what looked like an ordinary San Francisco house in the dead of night. In those days, the hospital afforded you 4-6 hours to have a funeral service to pick up “the remains.” I called Paul's father, who met me at the hospital and provided the signature required for the release of his son’s body. Then I had to convince a tiny African-American mortuary to transport his body to “a Temple.” This was not entirely a fiction, as Maitri was still part of Hartford Street Zen Center, but it was pushing the limits. It was against the law for a body, certainly an unembalmed body, to remain in an ordinary house, not a licensed funeral home, for three days.

We returned Paul’s body to his room at Maitri between 4 and 5 AM. I began to wash it carefully with sweet tea and a few drops of alcohol added, the astringent to help seal the pores; then I inserted some cotton balls into his anus. He’d been my friend, so this was both a labor of love and extremely difficult. Issan once told me that in the time of AIDS, we were at war, and the ravages of Paul's last struggle with the virus were visible on his body. I imagined that I was washing them away. It was sunrise when finally Paul’s body, properly dressed, lay undisturbed in his room, dominated by a huge Tibetan-style shrine. I turned and saw the last calligraphy that he’d done on large pieces of fine paper hanging on the wall. They read “Yes, Yes, Yes.”

Over the next three days, friends, family, and admirers came and went. It was a kind of Buddhist wake.

Phil sent me to Jiyu Kennett Roshi’s Selling water by the river: A manual of Zen training, to review what she wrote about a priest’s funeral. Together, he and I sketched out the full ceremony, where everyone would stand, the placement of the altar table, the food offerings, and the order of the chanting. Phil was a Soto priest performing the cremation ceremony of a Soto priest. He wanted to make sure that we omitted no part of the ritual performed in the crematorium in Emeryville.

Paul had kept $25 dollars in his pocket to pay for his cremation. After the ceremony, we used it to buy lunch in a Japanese restaurant. It didn’t quite cover the entire bill.

What did we keep?

A few appropriate words!

After all my experience and hard-won lessons, I might expect to be able to say something definitive about The Last Things. I cannot. As far as ritual, the first thing that comes to mind is Aitken Roshi’s counsel to Joel Katz, Ken MacDonald, and me when we carried Dan Dunning’s ashes to a long boat at Queen’s Surf to be spread out beyond the reef. The Old Man said, “A few words would be appropriate.” Dan had been a dear friend for years. As I took the lid off the urn, I mumbled, “I loved you immensely, and I’ll miss you immensely.” Joel and Ken saved the day. They chanted the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, banging rhythm on the gunwale as we rode the waves back to shore. I’m sure Dan loved that professional musicians did the honors, especially since he’d seen Phantom half a dozen times.

Washing the body

Frank Ostaseski taught me the practice of washing a body for the final time. It is an intimate gesture of love and respect. It is also a difficult practice. When not left to morticians or hospital nurses, it can be an act of friendship. It is also a physical act, reminding us that death is real. Thank you, Frank.

Don’t touch anything for a while

I had a Japanese friend whose partner died of AIDS. Yoshi wanted to keep the man’s body undisturbed for three days. He bought all the dry ice available in his small Marin town. Early on, we decided that Maitri should also allow a resident’s body to remain untouched for three days. Cultural conventions certainly did not influence me, nor do I have any particular beliefs about the soul traversing to a nether world, but I did sense that trying not to interfere with a natural process was probably a good thing, akin to not interfering with the natural process of thought in meditation. 

I certainly wanted to be respectful. Working in the hospice, I'd become keenly aware of a delicate balance between pushing to get something done and leaving things alone. Although it may feel like a good idea for personal relationships to be as loving, complete, and even as robust as possible as death approaches, there may have been damage that requires more healing time than what’s available. On the other hand, having a formal will in place as well as written instructions about funerals, etc., is something that has a definite time frame. Sometimes I had to push through denial and procrastination to get papers signed. Thankfully, I had the assistance of highly trained social workers from Visiting Nurses and Hospice.

But more of a problem was the legality of not removing a body immediately. The law required that we not keep a body more than 24 to 48 hours without refrigeration or embalming. Luckily, I found a funeral director who helped with the legal forms, the death notice so that we could keep a body in the hospice for as long as possible. After some experience, we realized that though we didn’t need dry ice, we did need a lot of ventilation. We always seemed to be pushing the limits.

One of the social workers called it “lying in state” when she would ask patients how they wanted their bodies treated after they died. Many, if not most, chose our Buddhist wake. Their friends did come by. It always took its own form. Sometimes there was chanting or some spiritual practice, but it didn’t have the religious formality of visiting hours with the obligatory rosary of my upbringing. Most of the men in the hospice would have rejected that anyway. In almost every case I can remember, it just seemed to fit.

As I sat with many bodies, I began to notice that dying is not instantaneous. Like any process of saying goodbye, life doesn’t just end when the breath stops. It’s not like walking out and closing a door. The legal definition of death may be that the heart no longer beats, but hair and fingernails continue to grow. The skin seems to continue to breathe. Bodies actually change. Over the course of several days, I could actually see life taper out. I was not imagining something. It is a reality that I can no longer escape.

Full Circle

After Maylie Scott’s mother, Mary, died, I'm sure Maylie washed her body with love. Then she called several of us who’d been close to her mother during the last years of her life. We came and sat up with Maylie through the night. Three days later, she called the Neptune Society. Within the hour, they arrived, accompanied by two cops because there had been an “unauthorized death.” Maylie thought that her mother would have been very amused by the ruckus she caused.

Mary’s ashes are kept in the ancient Malling Benedictine Abbey south of London, where her other daughter, Sister Mary John, was the abbess. From Eiheiji, through Kaddish and The Book of the Dead, to a small Buddhist Hospice in San Francisco during the time of AIDS, and onto a small abbey of cloistered Anglican nuns. Perhaps a bit wobbly, but full circle. Life and death continue to circle on and on.

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Honolulu Haircut

 

After the sesshin with Bob Aitken where I met Ken McDonald, one afternoon Ken and I found ourselves cruising around Honolulu doing a drop-in-the-local-Temple kind of tour.

At the Soto Shu main temple in Nuuanu Ave, the head priest was cheerfully spending the afternoon with his wife trimming the hedges that abutted the parking lot. He looked up and smiled, acknowledging us. Then he said: “Giving haircut.”

We asked if we could sit zazen in the hall, and, after what I took to be a strange look of puzzlement, he took a key out of his pocket and opened a door to what appeared to be a closet filled with racks of folding chairs where there were three or four zafu’s placed facing a concrete wall.

If we had dreamed of an Eiheiji styled zendo, it was not to be found. But we had just completed 7 days of intensive zazen so the bare room was welcoming. All there was was sitting. There was no need for liturgical trappings,