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.

Response to a homophobic book--Don't even open it.

My friend David Chadwick sent me a pdf of the draft of a book by a Buddhist practitioner filled with homophobic rantings. He was distressed and didn't know what to tell his friend and didn't even want to ask other gay friends for fear of being associated with it. We've known each other a long time, so he came to me. I will not cite the author or quote the book for reasons that will become obvious.

David, I tried to read a bit of your friend’s book as you requested to see if there were something that I might be able to say to diffuse the homophobia in the "gay" poems. Sadly I can only tell you of my personal reaction. I am filled with sadness. There was a time in my life when I would have felt anger, and my reaction would have been to protest, even burning the damn thing. But I am almost 80 now. I was a Jesuit for 11 years, I have been practicing Buddhism diligently for almost 40 years. I have heard some version of your friend’s argument since I was very young, certainly since the time I started to realize that I was gay. It is a script. It doesn’t change. I am not sure of its origins, whether sexual taboo, or repressed homophile feelings, but I do know that control and power play a role. Gay people make an easy scape goat which makes publishing, reading and promoting this garbage sinful. It foments violence and hatred.

Every gay person I know has heard this rant. Believe me, we have taken it to heart, listened to it, considered it, and reacted to it. We’ve been forced to. It is painful. Some protest, some hide in a closet, some try to change creating more pain and suffering, some commit suicide, but most of us simply come to a level of acceptance with who we are and try as best we can to create a way to live our lives with dignity, compassion and service to others, and yes, even love.

I have nothing to say about the actual substance of your friend’s argument other than it has no place in Buddhist practice. It is a hindrance. It clouds the mind and seeds hatred, the very things that we are trying to mollify, to clear away the debris of our karmic actions. This is the only way I can deal with it--to set it aside and go on with my life. But there are also times when I have to comment, and this is one.

I have two stories that I would like to share. I now live in Dharamsala, India. This is a community of as many as 14,000 monks and nuns with HH the Dalai Lama in residence about 200 meters from my rooms. We are a very conservative community. I practice Zen and follow some classes with Tibetan geshes. There was a monk here who took off his robes and began living as a woman. She is now known as Tenzin Mariko. She is not in hiding, nor has she withdrawn from spiritual practice. She goes to teachings and initiations. And like some men who discover the trans-nature of their sexuality, she is quite stylish. She stands out, and, after a good deal of rejection, she is accepted, even admired. I attend class with one of HH's translators, Kelsang Wangmo, a ground breaker herself as the first woman to attain the degree of geshe. At some point when discussing karmic imprints, Geshe-la used Mariko as an example of a person who discovered their true nature and has the sheer gumption to live it out. I invite your friend to be inspired by Mariko's (she/her) courage.

Then there is the story of Tommy Dorsey, whom you know David, but whom your friend may not know. Tommy, or Issan as he became known, was a very much a gay man. He could not pass as straight so he never tried. And he did face vicious homophobia, and suffered some side effects, drug addiction, poverty, ostracization. Then he discovered the Buddha Way and totally dedicated himself. He did not stop being gay. That was impossible. When circumstances gave him the opportunity to live out his life heroically, he did not shy away. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, when hundreds of men were suffering and dying in his neighborhood, he used all his energy, every bit of what he learned in practice to take care of them with compassion and love, plus a few chocolate bars and drag shows. I had the honor and the blessing of working with him, helping him, learning from him, serving him. It changed my life. There are people now who honor him as a Bodhisattva. For those of us who knew him, of course he was, there is no question, but he will never fit into the straightjacket myth of a heavenly being. Perhaps we just have to change our view and allow him to take his rightful place.

I hope your friend can at least find the courage to use a big red pencil on his draft even if he cannot personally give up his preconceived notions. It is a stain on our practice.