The Enneagram — “Histoire de Jour”

"What's your soup du jour today?" "Cream of tomato, just like every other day."

Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Yuval Harari says it would be nearly impossible to get 20 baboons to organize a coordinated effort that would produce a widespread effect. But homo sapiens has created narratives that allowed our species to organize large-scale efforts to subdue and exploit every inch of the universe we can reach. This is our propaganda for the superiority of the human race. If 20 baboons had been able to organize themselves and create a convincing narrative, we’d be living in ”The Planet of the Apes.''

In the history of religions, the creation of a supernatural narrative spearheaded the invincible superiority of monotheism. Modern scholarship has shown that the story of the Exodus was fabricated by the rabbinic and prophetic leadership after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The Narrative of the Good News was created and propagated by mostly Gentile Jews after the death of Jesus. About 600 years after Jesus, the Prophet was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and set the world on course for a more militant form of monotheism. In another part of the world, stories about the Buddha's enlightenment touch on another side of the human psyche that propelled meditation into legitimacy. The Bhagavad Gita played a pivotal role in the 19th and 20th-century Hindu revival by modernizing its teachings into a practical, accessible philosophy for social action and national identity.

The Origin of the Enneagram

As one of Claudio Naranjo’s first students when he introduced the Enneagram, the nine-pointed diagram that he’d learned from Oscar Ichazo, I’ve become very interested in what’s become known as the Western transmission of the Enneagram. I’m fascinated by competing narratives about its esoteric roots. (I’ve written about it before). This is the exact phenomenon that Harari describes: proponents of particular Enneagram styles have crafted creation narratives to bring their products to market. One universal side effect of enlightening mankind through the Enneagram is that it separates you from your money.

This brand of histoire de jour is, at best, self-serving, pieced together from bits and pieces of hearsay evidence, and in some cases, outright fraud.

Here is a preposterous statement on the first page of Helen Palmer’s website for her Narrative Tradition: With a history of centuries, the Enneagram is arguably the oldest human development system on the planet. During the past decade, the system has undergone a renewal of scholarly attention within the context of current personality typologies.

In the interest of the scholarly attention that Ms. Palmer lauds, here’s a clear, distinct, verifiable historical record of the beginning of the Narrative Tradition of the Enneagram.

In the late Spring of 1975, in a large living room of a nondescript house on Berkeley’s Arlington, Kathy Speeth organized a series of nine evening presentations about the Enneagram for the “therapeutic” community. In attendance were approximately 15 therapists interested in the Enneagram who were not members of Naranjo’s SAT group. Among them was Helen Palmer. She’d heard about the Enneagram from Naranjo’s students in her own practice of psychic readings.

I remember these presentations very clearly. They were a departure from the usual work of Naranjo's SAT group. Speeth and Bob Ochs had asked me to be on a ‘panel’ of Seven’s, ego ‘Plan’ as both Ichazo and Naranjo referred to the point “Gluttony.” This was the first time several people with the same fixation spoke in front of a group and answered questions (the identical format of the Narrative Tradition). There was one evening for each of the 9 major fixations.

Naranjo began the sessions with psychological descriptions of the 9 points. In itself, this was not unusual, but his comments were definitely tailored to an audience of trained professionals rather than the conversational tone he normally used when directing a student’s personal work in SAT. The authentic tone of self-observation may have been present, but I felt that the professional/technical language distorted the feeling of each point.

There’s the Narrative Tradition's “history of centuries” condensed to about two weeks of evening presentations, and I was present! Voila

Other enneagram enthusiasts have fabricated other stories and sources. 

The source of the Enneagram, or Enneagon, is Egyptian Gnosis. In Heliopolis, the center of worship of the Ennead, there were nine deities of ancient Egyptian Mythology about which we know next to nothing, and we haven’t yet deciphered the hieroglyphics for fixation.

Other proponents of the system trace the variations of the Enneagram symbol to the sacred geometry of Pythagorean mathematicians and mystical mathematics, but Pythagoras left no clear teachings, though he apparently once went to Heliopolis, with its nine gods, or something.

Plotinus’s Enneads. There, at last, a use of the Greek word for 9. However, we have to credit a dude named Porphyry for the somewhat artificial division of Plotinus’s writings into six groups of nine. Connecting the Enneagram with Neoplatonic thought is perhaps a stretch too far, but fear not, there are other choices.

We can cite Adam and the Kabbalistic Trees — leave no stone unturned and rope in Jewish seekers.

The Secret Teachings of Jesus (via the Desert Fathers) — sure, why not? But in my view, far more persuasive is the Jesuit connection: the frontispiece of the "Arithmologia" by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680), published in 1665, depicts a figure not identical to, but somewhat similar to, the Enneagram. Jesuits mucking around with esoteric religious writing lends credibility.

Many purveyors of various Enneagram systems say it was originally created by the esotericist George Ivanovich Gurdjieff via the Naqshbandi Sufi order about 100 years ago. However, there is absolutely no evidence in Gurdjieff's voluminous writings that he ever used the Enneagram as Naranjo, Ichazo, et al. do. Zero. I repeat ZERO Evidence.

Dr. Naranjo claims his source of the teaching was his mystical experiences in the Arican desert. He claims the Enneagram's historical origins are in esoteric gnosticism and occultism, based on channeled material from automatic writing, which was then verified through observation. I am particularly fond of the story that a book fell from a shelf in the esoteric library of Ocsar Ichazo’s uncle in Bolivia and opened to a page with the 9-pointed diagram. Let's just skip the verification bit altogether.

Professor Harari points to storytelling as a means of coordinating mass human efforts, but I am suspicious of lesser enterprises employing the same methodology. These people are selling snake oil. They use the “histoire de jour” like a struggling restaurant, using yesterday’s leftovers to increase the bottom line.

“Something is missing” is a constant complaint running through all these narratives. We lose our connection with the divine, have to reconnect, and, in most cases, are unable to complete the circuit without some assistance that costs money. It is one answer to a felt experience of the human condition, and one of the most accepted. There are others, but their popularizers were not as adept as those who captured humankind’s attention.

At best, these histories are "Cream of tomato, just like every day." But probably they’re closer to yesterday’s leftovers.

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

Shopping List for the Dragon King

For Bob Ochs, who told me this story

With some American devotees

Yogi Chen

Went shopping in Chinatown

For the Dragon King

Who lives off Timber Cove

In the Pacific Ocean.

Yesterday Chen bought two bags

Of Industrial scrap diamond chips

And cheap bead necklaces, all colors,

From the Woolworth Dime Store.

Today

Master Chen and the devotees go to a Chinese grocery

To look for red sea horses — need one or two per month

He says he wants a male fish with a long snout

A female who carries babies

Penis and vagina

The Yogi said

“Full Moon coming, love and good fortune,

Ghosts and demons love you.”

Next, the Chinese pharmacy

Basket by the door, dead beetles

Bulging-eyed

Chen scoops up a handful

Gives to the clerk who crushes them with a pestle.

The clerk knows all mysteries

Pours the contents out of the bowl, wraps in paper.

An American lady asks for antelope horn

She said she has a cold

Chen offers

Dristan tablet.

Yogi Chen and devotees go to lunch

Hunan Restaurant on Kearny

Chen is from Hunan, near Szechwan

He was a classmate of Chairman Mao.

As a Buddhist scholar, he fled the Communists

As a hermit in India, he meditated alone in a house for 15 years

Till he dreamt of the Big Sacrifice in California

On the Dragon's belly.

He came to the U.S., uses geomancy.

On the Dragon’s mountain spine that curls from Puget Sound to Baja California

He finds its belly button on three green hills

In Sonoma County

He buys the land

And prepares 

Big sacrifices.

Hunan waitress takes their order,

Rice and vegetables

Chen turns up his smiling face

Flirts with the waitress 

Tells devotees the next sacrifice

For Love Goddess

Will be in February

For the sacrifice, he’ll need fire

From a brothel.

Devotees giggle.

Sorry, not a laughing matter.

Afternoon

Yogi Chen said Now we need goldfish

So we won’t have another war.

Devotees pile into the Volkswagen and

Go to Lucky Dog Pet Shop.

600 goldfish cost nearly a 1000 dollars.

600 goldfish in 10 plastic bags of water

600 goldfish in the car’s back seat.

Chen directs now we must drive to Walnut Creek

Devotees drive and drive.

Eventually find Walnut Creek

running behind chain fence.

Devotees ask, “How do we get to creek?”

Chen points to a hole in fence.

The car stops. Doors open.

Devotees carry bags of goldfish through

fence hole,

climb downhill to creek.

Yogi Chen comes with bells and skull drum

Motion devotees gather round.

Chen prays that Kissinger brings peace

Rings bells, beats the skull drum

Dumps $1000 worth of goldfish

in creek

Keeps one big bag

Scrap diamonds.

That’s for the Dragon King.

“May our sacrifices find their Way

To the Big Sea Dragon.”

Yogi CM Chen, Bob Ochs and Me

When Father Bob Ochs and I lived together on Hillegass Avenue, we both began serious conversations with Buddhists — conversations with the intense inquiry that Jesuits are well known for. In the Spring of 1974, during the SAT retreat, Naranjo introduced Yogi C. M. Chen, whom he called a high tantric initiate. Ochs told me that he felt an immediate karmic connection with Master Chen.

I recall only a few things about that talk, which, frankly, puzzled me. It was interesting. Nothing was wrong, or offensive, or gibberish, but I had assumed that Chen was going to talk about the Tibetan tantra instead of listing, condemning, and crying real tears about the number of monks and nuns Chairman Mao and the Red Guards had murdered.

Tharang Tulku had established the Nyingma Institute on Berkeley’s Holy Hill in 1969 and focused on teaching meditation. Although the Dalai Lama fled Lhasa for Northern India in 1959, by 1974, he was a high-ranking monk living in a North Indian Hill Station, almost totally dedicated to helping other Tibetans escape and creating an exile community. There were no crowds of Western followers. The number of Westerners undertaking monastic training was just a handful.

Master Chen told me that he fled Tibet with the 16th Karmapa in 1959 and settled in Kalimpong (but I may have the timeline mixed up). The 16th Karmapa had a significant impact on Master Chen as the sponsor of his three-year retreat. During that period, Chen wrote “Buddhist Meditation Systematic and Practical,” with the help of Sangharakshita (Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood). He also attracted a few Western students. It was through them that he immigrated to Berkeley, California, in 1972, and moved into a small walk-up on Shattuck Avenue.

Yogi Chen, as we called him, left his wife and son and in about 1926 (or perhaps 1929). He told me that he traveled from his native Hunan Province to Eastern Tibet in search of an authentic Buddhism that he could not find in Chinese (mostly reformed Chan) monasteries. Over the next 25 years or more, he undertook every major practice of all four Tibetan schools and actually practiced them. He’d lived in a cave, in the charnel grounds, and did the three-year, three-month solitary retreat.

Bob Ochs began visiting Chen and assisting his practice: driving him to Timber Cove at Jenner on the California Coast, which Chen identified as the Palace of the Dragon King, or to his retreat property in Cazadero, which he claimed was the navel of the Dragon. Chen had identified these power spots using geomancy.

Chen offered three traditional Tibetan fire pujas: to the Yiddam of the God of Wealth, to the Blue Manifestation of Lord Buddha for health, and to Kurukulla, a Vajrayana goddess associated with love, enchantment, and magnetic attraction. Wealth, health, and love. He also prayed for the dead, chanting while driving through a cemetery, and "Powa," a ritual for the transference of consciousness to guide the recently deceased to a Pure Land free from suffering. He also released fish and frogs back into the wild, which was associated with long life. That covers the basics that people normally pray for. Performing these rituals for people who requested them was his practice. It seemed to me to be primitive and magical, quite far from my Ignatian spiritual exercises, but it offered me an opportunity to experience esoteric Buddhism.

Bob Ochs was interested in this esoteric ritual practice. He became Chen’s assistant — a complicated affair, procuring offerings, all manner of things, flowers, incense, birthday cakes, precious stones, seeds, colored cloth, and thread; then there was the long journey to Timber Cove, or Cazadero, or a cemetery; after that was the actual preparation of the site, building the fire, or loading the boat. Bob told me that he’d hoped that participating in all these activities with Master Chen would give him a key to a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Mass. If Bob and Chen discussed this directly, he never told me about the substance of their conversations.

Bob also mentioned, almost offhand, that Chen claimed to have had visions of the Virgin Mary — and they had serious conversations about Saint Ignatius.

Bob did this for perhaps two years. I accompanied him when there was room in his car or when there was another car for other participants. Then suddenly, their relationship ended. I am unclear about the exact circumstances, but Bob, in an elliptical way, explained that perhaps Chen had understood that he was presenting himself as a serious Dharma student, but Bob was a Catholic priest and would remain a Catholic priest who was not interested in the rigorous Buddhist practice. He also didn’t know Tibetan or Chinese, and at 45, was probably not going to dedicate the years required for proficiency. Or it could have been far simpler: they were both Enneagram One. Or it might have been a cultural impasse: Chen was more comfortable in the immigrant Chinese community. (which is, by the way, where he would find his dharma hier, a young PhD student from UC Berkeley, Dr. Yutang Lin).

I owe Bob a deep debt of gratitude: he encouraged me to visit Chen; he was the first authentic Buddhist practitioner with whom I had actual conversations. I remember standing on Shattuck Avenue at a public phone dialing the number that Bob had given me. Chen answered right away. I asked if and when I could visit. Chen replied, “Now is the appropriate time.”

I began to visit Chen in his one-room walk-up on Shattuck Avenue a few times a month. I liked him enormously, although I didn’t feel as strong a karmic connection with him as Bob had, or imagined he had. I decided that rather than present myself as a student, I would be a friend. Of course, I helped with the preparation for the various pujas, but I also helped him prepare for the US naturalization examination.

Over 10 years, we also talked about meditation, relationships, Tibetan Buddhism, Jesus, and Ignatius of Loyola. His answers were always straightforward and unpredictable. When I asked him for meditation instruction, he began what was to become an investigation into impermanence that lasted for two decades. I was not particularly interested in ritual practice, but I helped. I took him shopping. I drove him to Jenner and Cazadero. The ethnic Tibetan and Chinese tangkas, statues of Buddhist yidams on old towels carefully positioned on turned-over cardboard boxes, didn’t drive me away. I enjoyed his company and our conversations in the car. I was awestruck that he could sleep in a moving car on a bumpy dirt road.

Ochs helped Chen publish several free booklets about various Buddhist topics. I also became involved in the publication of Chen’s Dharma books. After Chen died in 1987, I spent nearly 5 years editing his book on Zen, “Lighthouse in the Ocean of Chan,” from a transcription of the first English translation, studying it, and trying to straighten out the awkward English of Dr. Fa-Yen Kog, a monk from the Thervaden tradition who did the first English translation. Eventually, Chen’s dharma heir, Dr. Yutang Lin, dissatisfied with my efforts, undertook a completely new translation from Chen’s original Chinese manuscript. He thanked me for providing an English rough draft to work from, and I paid for printing the first 500 books.

At some point, Yogi Chen seemed to focus on his ethnic Chinese students, devotees, and turn away from the few Western practitioners (with one notable exception, Juan Bulnes, a Chilean whom I knew from Naranjo’s groups). When I first visited him, most of the requests came from people in Hong Kong associated with D.T. Shen, an uber-wealthy Buddhist mogul who owned a huge shipping line. Later, they were mostly Chinese who’d immigrated from Taiwan. I suspect that Shen had died and his support had dried up.

In the early to mid-80s, after helping Chen for a week — gathering all the offerings for a fire puja to the God of Wealth, setting up, being his assistant during the burn — as we gathered around the dying embers, the time he usually gave some dharma remarks, he said, “There are so many Chinese people here today, I will speak in Chinese.” The wealthy Chinese owners of several gas stations in the Central Valley were offered some teaching that was off limits to the rest of us because we were not rich and Chinese. That marked the point at which I began to withdraw.

But Chen continued to have a profound influence on my life and practice. I no longer visited, but I knew one Western lady, also from Naranjo’s groups, who cleaned his room and acted as a kind of secretary a few days a week. He dictated thoughtful and helpful responses to my written notes and questions. My assessment: he was the real deal, and of all the religious practitioners I’d ever met, he was most likely to have had real visions of the Virgin Mary.

Yogi Chen lived in a shabby SRO hotel on Shattuck Ave. It may have even been called the Shattuck Arms. But the residents were not grad students or junior faculty, rather indigent Hispanic day laborers, mostly people of color, sex workers, drug addicts, some with obvious mental issues, and a few retirees. Chen was equally beaming and courteous to every resident, though he avoided one or two. He told me they’d threatened him. I never felt entirely safe visiting him. I always called beforehand or came for a set appointment.

The walls had not been painted in a decade; once white, they were now brown, and there was a faint, musty odor. The shared toilet was clean; it smelled of disinfectant, but it was grey and brown rather than shiny porcelain. Chen’s room was clean, but the chairs were cheap cast-off yard furniture from the nearby Goodwill Store. The piles of threadbare towels were clean. He used them for everything, even as altar cloths for the elaborate Tibetan shrine that occupied a quarter of the living space. He could have easily asked DT Shen for more money to rent a more comfortable apartment, but Chen was a true renunciate; I have met others in India. If they exist in America, I have not met them.

I had several very powerful experiences with Yogi Chen. I am writing about these separately at the end of my story. They are so far outside what most Westerners consider normal that taking them as anything other than aberrations or hallucinations might lead people to discount the power of Master Chen’s teachings or my sanity. However, they affected my life profoundly. I hold them in a category labeled “I don’t know what the hell was going on and perhaps never will.”

On the second or third visit, I asked him for the meditation instruction that I’d missed at the SAT retreat. I sat down and listened attentively. He may have said something about paying attention to the breath, but suddenly, in a flash, I seemed to disconnect from my body. I could have sworn that he was speaking in Mandarin, and I understood perfectly. He was smiling at me broadly and laughing. The feeling was euphoric. I also knew that I was still connected to the reality that presented itself in that room that morning. It ended, though it’s hard to pinpoint precisely when, and he continued his instruction. The euphoria lingered for several hours. Somehow, asking him about what had happened seemed inappropriate, like handing back a gift.

In 1975, when I was doing the 19th Annotation Adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises while weighing whether or not to leave the Jesuits, Chen and I had several long conversations about Ignatius and the prayer life of the Jesuits. I remember him telling me quite clearly to study Ignatius and pray to him. I think I said, Don’t worry. Our SAT group finished the last exercises of Naranjo’s version of the Arica Training, Lines and Crossing Over, which was a three-day meditation done prostrate, face down. By the end, I was more clear that I would leave the Jesuits rather than be ordained. I decided to move to San Francisco with Hal Slate, who was also in SAT, and we rented an apartment on Frederick Street with easy access to the Castro. In other words, I gave up trying to be a saint.

I was still meditating every morning, keeping a journal, and trying to make some sense out of the Gay Liberation that I’d fallen into the middle of. One morning, as I sat, I looked down the long corridor that opened onto the busy street, and Saint Ignatius stood in the doorway. I really mean Saint Ignatius appeared and stood in the doorway. This was not a dream. It was Ignatius, luminous and brightly colored, dressed like the famous Rubens painting in the Gesù, though my memory tells me that there was something slightly reminiscent of a Tibetan teacher or saint around his halo. He was very tall, eight or nine feet up to the ceiling.

I wasn’t frightened, though more than slightly intimidated at first. There was no message, no reprimand for quitting the Jesuits, no instruction about how to conduct my life. I don’t remember that he exuded some heavenly kindness. That would fit the cliche. He just looked at me directly, almost just checking in, letting me know that he had not and would not abandon me. Then he vanished. I’ve told very few people about this vision, and might edit it out if I publish this account to my blog. Truly super-normal activity usually comes with expectations of saintly behavior that I am unwilling to commit to and don’t think is required. And it may have been a powerful hallucination. I am willing to keep that question open.

Yogi Chen died in 1987. I was one of only a few Westerners at his cremation in a small mortuary in El Cerrito. I was overwhelmed with emotion. I promised to return to a serious practice. I found a small neighborhood Zen temple in the Castro and began a regular meditation practice.

In 1989, I lost a very dear friend, Nancy Storm, a woman who’d been like a mother to me. The day she died, I called Yutang Lin and asked him to perform Powa. That night, in the middle of a very deep sleep, I suddenly woke, sat straight up in bed, and opened my eyes to watch a vivid sequence of events: Yogi Chen swept into Nancy’s hospital room. He was flying. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her naked body out of bed. Then they both disappeared. I was stunned; I could not fall back to sleep.

Early the next morning, Nancy’s daughter phoned and asked me to help her donate the hospital bed that Nancy had bought for her room in the retirement home. I made a series of phone calls; none of the local AIDS hospices wanted it unless it came with a warranty, which I didn’t have. Then a gay friend who was doing design work for the Zen Center Hospice Project gave me the number of the director, Frank Ostaseski. Could the Hospice use the bed? Frank said, Of course. How could we move it across town? I had a truck. Frank said, Let’s meet and be delivery men. We set a time.

Frank was not my picture of a deathbed priest. I liked him immediately. He was also very persuasive — between the time we loaded the bed onto my truck and unloaded it at Zen Center, I was signed up for the upcoming Zen Center Hospice Volunteer Training Program. By the end of that initial Training, I’d met Issan Dorsey Roshi and Zenshin Phil Whalen.

Within 24 hours of requesting the Powa ritual for Nancy, I’d laid the foundation for my return to serious Buddhist practice. I could not have known that this simple trip would lead to directing the first residential Buddhist Hospice in the United States. I would leave the work I’d been doing for 20 years, live in a Zen community, and spend 30 years of serious work with the koans. I was just helping a man carry a bed across San Francisco.

陳健民 Chen Jianmin (1906–1987)
aka Buddhist Yogi C. M. Chen