Hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan—for the first time!

A teacher of the Law approached Jesus and tried to trap him. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life?”

Jesus answered him, “What do the Scriptures say? How do you interpret them?”

The man answered, “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind’; and ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ ”

“You are right,” Jesus replied, “do this, and you will live.”

But the teacher of the Law wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

Jesus answered, “There was once a man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when robbers attacked him, stripped him, and beat him up, leaving him half dead. It so happened that a priest was going down that road; but when he saw the man, he walked on by, on the other side. In the same way a Levite also came along, went over and looked at the man, and then walked on by, on the other side. But a Samaritan who was traveling that way came upon the man, and when he saw him, his heart was filled with pity. He went over to him, poured oil and wine on his wounds and bandaged them; then he put the man on his own animal and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Take care of him,’ he told the innkeeper, ‘and when I come back this way, I will pay you whatever else you spend on him.’ ”

And Jesus concluded, “In your opinion, which one of these three acted like a neighbor towards the man attacked by the robbers?”

The teacher of the Law answered, “The one who was kind to him.”

Jesus replied, “You go, then, and do the same.”

 

My friend, a Jesuit priest, Joe Devlin, said Mass in the Zendo at Hartford Street in the early 1990s. Joe was visiting friends in San Francisco, and I asked him to come by to say Mass for the Catholic men in Maitri Hospice. I told Issan about my plan, and he said he was happy to have Mass and very excited to meet Joe. 

It was a Saturday evening. Joe was due to arrive at 5. I was scrambling, assembling a few basics, actually just the essentials: bread, wine, and a clean tablecloth for the dining room table. Issan, who was at the time in the final stages of HIV disease, came downstairs in his bathrobe to ask when “Father Joe” was due to arrive and see what I was doing. After I explained, he said with a big smile but firmly, “Mass will be in the zendo, not the dining room.” Then he took over and directed all the preparations with the same care that he would have given to a full-blown Zen ritual: the table he wanted for the service, the tablecloth, the candles, the cup. He went back upstairs, and when he came down again, he was dressed in robes. He greeted Joe at the door with a hug and kiss, thanking him for coming and telling him that Mass would be in our chapel, the Zendo.

 

Issan and five or six of us sat in meditation posture on cushions while Joe improvised the ancient Catholic liturgy, beginning with a simple rite of confession and forgiveness. I noticed that Issan brought the same attention to the Catholic ritual as he did Zazen and Zen services. When it came time to read from the Testament of Jesus, Joe took a small white, well-worn book out of a pocket in his jacket and said that his mother had told him that the story he was about to read contained all the essentials for an authentic Christian life. Sometimes, even Jesuits get their best theological training from their mothers.

 

Then he read from the gospel of Luke, chapter 10, the parable of the Good Samaritan. For any of you who need a refresher course in New Testament studies, this is a story about a man who is robbed, taken for everything he has, savagely beaten, and left by the side of the road to die. All the people who might have helped, even those who should have helped, chose to walk on the other side of the street when they saw him—except for the Samaritan. Now the Samaritan in Jesus’ day was the guy whom good upstanding members of the community might have called the equivalent of “faggot” or “queer.” He was an outcast, but he was the only person who stopped and took some real action to help the poor fellow out. Jesus teaches us that real love is shown through actions, not words.

 

The following day—Sunday mornings were the usual gathering of the Hartford Street community—Issan began to talk about Fr. Joe and the liturgy. Catholic Mass in the Zendo was not universally welcomed. So many members at Hartford Street carried the wounds of discrimination in the religion of their parents that Christianity was rarely spoken about. And the Irish priest from Most Holy Redeemer, who came to administer the Last Rites to hospice residents who requested them, was friendly but rather perfunctory. However, Issan was exuberant. He’d fallen in love with Joe. He said that during the Mass, he had the experience of being forgiven, which allowed him to feel peace and even appreciation for his early religious training. 

Issan had also fallen in love with Luke's parable. He turned to me and asked, “What was the little white book that Fr. Joe read from?” Startled, I said that was the New Testament. “Oh,” said Issan lightly, “it must have been in Latin when I heard it as an altar boy, but it was exactly how we should lead our lives as Buddhists.” 

 

Issan saw Maitri as much more than just a Buddhist hospice, though it was deeply Buddhist to its very roots. He shaved his head and wore a Soto priest’s patchwork robe; he bowed and chanted in Sino-Japanese, but he clearly understood that genuine wisdom, what Buddhists call prajna, is not the sole property of any religion. I think he took the Teaching of Jesus to a new, heroic level: the definition of friend included building an inn for the injured traveler when he couldn't find one in town.

 

When Joe and I had dinner together the night before he flew back to Boston, I told him what Issan had said. A few days later, the small New Testament in his jacket, which had been in his jacket for years, arrived in an envelope addressed to Issan. Before Issan died 6 months later, during one of our last meetings, he asked me to thank Joe again for the Zendo mass after he was gone. I did. And that New Testament passed from the pocket of Joe’s jacket to Issan’s bookshelf at Hartford Street to my altar. I have since passed it on to a person who asked a dharma question about one of the stories in the Gospel of Jesus.

Zen Porn

Here is a portion of the koan I was working on when I started to laugh at my porn!

Blue Cliff Record, Case 75: Wujiu’s Blind Stick 

Wujiu said, “Here is a good fellow to beat today,” and gave him three blows. The monk went out. Wujiu called after him and said, “I used a blind stick, as there is a fellow who deserved it.”
The monk turned and said, “It can’t be helped, as the stick is in your hand.”
Wujiu said, “If you need this stick, I will let you have it.” The monk came nearer, snatched the stick from Wujiu’s hand, and gave him three blows.
Wujiu said, “Blind stick, blind stick.”
The monk said, “There is a fellow who deserved it.”
Wujiu said, “It is a sham to wantonly beat a fellow.”
The monk promptly bowed to him.
Wujiu said, “You made a bow—it is right for you?”
The monk laughed loudly and went out.
Wujiu said, “Right, right!”

Zen Koans are wonderful, and no, I hate to disappoint, they are not porn. Can they be used as porn? That’s a personal decision.

I was responding to an email from one of my favorite Zen teachers in the world, a wonderful woman with whom I share a deep love for music, flashes of koan insight, and many friends. After briefly exchanging personal updates, I mentioned that a mutual Zen friend and I had lost contact since the Ice Age. I made a mental note that it was at least three girlfriends ago, but he had not faded from my world. How could he? He’d had an enormous effect on my practice.

I’d recently posted a short piece, “How do they think they can get away with it?” The teacher accused of misconduct was a friend of our mutual friend and teacher. In my post, I repeated the wording of the complaint of some female students: [he suggested that} “meditating while naked in his lap (based on the yab-yum image) would help their spiritual practice,” a bit of secret oral tradition that should probably best be kept secret.

Then I was hit by the whack of insight, seeing exactly what was in front of my eyes--let’s just call this discussion by its real name--porn. Webster’s third definition is “The depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick, intense emotional reaction.”

I started to laugh. I realized how many thousands of words I’d written to describe and analyze the sexual misconduct of teachers, as well as Catholic priests, over the course of my blogging. I decided to review some of that writing to see if it contained any of the hallmarks of pron: compulsion, obsession, titillation, mindless habitual storytelling, and being ultimately unsatisfying. Was I giving porn a bad name? I chose nine posts of over 16,000 words to review. That’s roughly 25% of a standard non-fiction book. 

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“Sex, gossip, religion? Can we talk?” The subject makes many people uncomfortable. After reading one piece, a very dear woman friend I’ve known since my days with Claudio Naranjo decided to cut all ties. She complained I was opening the door to rumor and innuendo (and maligning our mentor). She had become very protective of Naranjo as she grew older for reasons I do not fully understand. Her words were that I “verged on gossip.” After being very upset and not knowing what to say or how to address the situation, I decided to write about it.

Honestly, her assessment had a ring of truth. I am open to listening to accusations from sources who feel they must remain anonymous because they fear for their reputations and personal safety or have obligations to their own sources. There are legitimate reasons. But the fact that these people will not, or cannot, publicly verify what they’ve heard or witnessed means that the information will always be hearsay.

I wanted to defend myself from attacking a person’s character without any factual basis. Were there legitimate reasons to rely on innuendo, rumor, or even whispers and use them to make a judgment and take action? This led me to examine a whole category of complaints I called “privileged:” class, gender, race, religious tradition, or even taboo placed them outside criticism or even discussion. 

One of my examples, a case study, was the defrocking of *Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2019. There had been, of course, rumors and speculation about his conduct for years. For the community of disaffected gay Catholic men looking for proof of the hypocrisy that had caused so much pain, we found secretly recorded conversations at McCarrick’s New Jersey beach house that left no doubt that they were gay sex parties. This evidence was circulated on the internet in the early 2000s. “Uncle Teddy’s” canonical trial would be in 2019. 

Would the world be a better place if Cardinal McCarrick’s hypocrisy had been exposed during his influential tenure as Archbishop of Washington? How many young men and priests might have been spared sexual and emotional abuse? We cannot say, but I will say truth is always the best choice. I argue that sometimes, the only way to get to the truth is through examination of gossip, rumor, and hearsay. Not only was this evidence admissible, it was necessary. I used Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple in my closing argument about the legitimacy of gossip in the search for who done it. She set the Aristotelian methodology of English mystery writing on its ear.

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However, the Catholic Church does not provide a clear view of what’s happening in real-time, even if you have a front-row seat. The internal mechanisms for deceit and subterfuge have been honed for centuries. If you are a member of a subgroup at risk, either as a victim or perpetrator, demanding transparency can also be dangerous. 

In 1964, United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart described his threshold test for obscenity: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced... [b]ut I know it when I see it ..." When I saw “Spotlight.” in 2015, I had to ask myself why I didn’t see it when it was going on? 

An old friend who is a seasoned Zen priest asked me what happened during those years covered by Tom McCarthy’s 2015 film “Spotlight” when well over 225 priests and religious were credibly accused of sexual abuse. I was very active and reasonably well-connected in the Boston Archdiocese in the late 60s, but I had to confess that I was in the dark. The very secretive church machinery kept it hidden. I went back to my experience as a young Jesuit and discovered that the evil of sexual abuse of minors had disastrous effects. I worked for a very dedicated young gay priest who was in no way involved in abuse but whose ministry was nonetheless curtailed simply because he joined the movement to oust Cardinal Law, who orchestrated the cover-up. His name was Monsignor Michael Groden. I recounted our friendship and told his story in “Pedophile Priests Ruined Many Lives.”

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And now we come to Zen teachers who have acted badly or have been accused of misbehaving and the consequences of this misuse of sexuality for our young, newly formed communities. Given the small size of these communities, the different nature of the teaching and practice, and the different tone with regard to sexuality, I was surprised that the list of teachers is so long and continues to grow.

The next two blogs that I chose, “Sex, Death, and Food,” and “Was Muktananda High-level Chicanery?” register as high-level disappointment. The conduct of both men, Katagiri Roshi and Swami Muktananda, was similar only in that they were discovered and made public when both men were dead. In Katagiri’s case, he had the reputation of a gifted teacher beyond reproach who had helped many people, including several friends, in the aftermath of Richard Baker Roshi’s departure from the San Francisco Zen Center. Katagiri assumed the public face of an ordinary immigrant Midwesterner who was also a Zen Master. I heard story after story of something he said or did to help a student during challenging times. I talk about one interaction he had with Issan, who used what he learned till the day he died. Many others held up similar stories. After his extramarital affairs became public knowledge, however, a kind of convulsive reevaluation shook the entire community with roots at Page Street and Tassajara. With few exceptions, the reckoning was that the man’s insight outweighed any human failings. I did not have direct experience, and I felt that there were valid reasons to suspect the judgment of others. Besides, I wasn’t losing anything. I had no pony in the race.

In the case of Baba Muktananda, his secret sexual activity involved a steady stream of young women, many underage. It was criminal and required the active participation of his inner circle to coordinate and hide the violation of his yogic vows from his vast following in India and the West. The aftermath was denial, and the focus shifted to one of his successors, the one who did not also use the power of his position for sexual gratification. The attempted justification from ardent supporters ran something like Satguru was not a lecher. He was trying to recast Brahmacharya for the West; cultural circumstances limited his freedom to act. That argument is self-serving and frankly stupid, but go ahead and sell your Siddha Yoga hogwash. I’m no longer in the market. 

When I began to examine my feelings regarding both men, it was clear that some part of me felt some relief, justification, and even redress when I told the stories, especially about Muktananda. It feels good to yell at spiritual frauds. But beyond that, is there anything of value? Both men are dead, and their followers and disciples have made whatever choices they have and continued their lives. My reaction is my reaction or perhaps mirrors some other Zen idealist howling into the wind. It is only noise. Only complain about what can be redressed—only direct requests for a change of course to those who can act. And in the Zen world, that comes down to me.

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However, there will always be a segment of followers, enthusiasts, or disciples that will hang on despite any evidence. My revelation was that I could not change that. I can only deal with myself. These people fall into the closed set that Eric Hoffer called “The True Believer.” They share characteristics, including contempt for those without a holy cause themselves and respect for fellow fanatics. I recounted my experience attending the elaborate Shambhala funeral ceremony for Ösel Tendzin in San Francisco above the Jack in the Box on Mission Street. Our choice was to get up and walk out rather than join in the adulation of a sexual predator who had infected people with a deadly virus. 

This short post generated a lot of negative feedback: it’s ancient history; Chögyam Trungpa was a brilliant teacher, and we all got a lot out of “Spiritual Materialism.” Trungpa and Ösel marked an important, “auspicious” event for the birth of Buddhism in the West. My response: Avoid Zen Porn. Calm down and chill out. There will be others whose work will surpass Shambhala. There will be teachers who can do it sober without appeals to crazy wisdom. Throw your lot with kindness and compassion.

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However, the question of how to best respond remains open. Let down by the promise of quick bliss in the world of Zen porn, I find myself still waiting, alone, lonely at times, but as long as I stay engaged, I have not lost hope. Intimacy seems still within reach. And to pass the time, I happened to pick up Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité, 1: la volonté de savoir in French. This is where this former celibate Jesuit sought refuge. I began to turn my attention to the conversations about sexual misconduct rather than focusing on the blatant or alleged misdeeds. As Socrates said: “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” We have to be clear about what we are talking about, or we risk serious errors. 

 

In the first nine pages, Foucault lays out his thesis and methodology. He says that despite the modern liberal claim that sex has been repressed, forced into silence, or even neglected, the truth is that the level, frequency, and specificity of our conversations about sex have increased. When I moved to Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco, I jumped into a controversy with definite camps. I also noticed that, as Foucault notes, the conversations, even though ancient history from my point of view, went on and on. Some people wouldn't or couldn't shut up.

If I followed Foucault’s argument, this was to be expected. Talking about sex does not create a problem; the way we’ve been trained to talk about sex, specifically in the West since the 17th century, has created a conversation that didn’t exist before and, I would add, certainly one that didn’t exist in the Lord Buddha’s day. 

Some of the comments on the post accused me of trying to create some kind of off-ramp for leaders who had not faced up to the full impact of their actions. I was not aware of doing that. Instead, I was looking for my off-ramp in a conversation where I knew I had to take action to save myself.

There were practical reasons for wanting to avoid the blame game. As Executive Director of Maitri Hospice, I had to work with the Zen Center Hospice Volunteer Program. When Issan, Philip Whalen, and Steve Allen returned from Santa Fe, they managed to maintain some level of civility with the senior priests who assumed leadership roles at Zen Center after Baker’s resignation. In Heels Outside the Door, I suggest that there was deliberate compartmentalization. The term usually refers to the defense mechanism of separating conflicting thoughts and emotions to avoid anxiety and discomfort, but at least in Issan’s case, there was no hesitancy to deal with consequences.

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But I also had a pony in the race. More than 20 years before I moved into Hartford Street, I was sexually abused by a New Age guru. Some of the effects still felt fresh, and as I began to learn and practice zazen, they even intensified. They existed like #metoo porn, sensational flashes of emotional memory that produced a quick, intense reaction. I knew that I would have to deal with it and that it would have to wait until I was relieved of some of the pressure of dealing with the pandemic. 

I’ve finally managed to close the chapter of my personal abuse, but it was not a simple forgive-and-forget. It is not perhaps as clean as purists might like it, and there was no magic formula. I don’t think there is. You can read about my struggle. A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman?

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The blog posts on Buddha S.J.

How do they think they can get away with it? 

Sex, gossip, religion? Can we talk? 

Pedophile Priests Ruined Many Lives 

Sex, Death, and Food.

Was Muktananda high-level chicanery? 

The funeral of Ösel Tendzin. Deliver us from cults.

La Volonté de Savoir, Foucault on Sexuality

Heels Outside the Door

A Very Personal Question: Can I Forgive Bob Hoffman? 

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*“Theodore Edgar McCarrick is a laicized American Catholic bishop, former cardinal, and former priest who served as Archbishop of Newark from 1986 to 2000 and as Archbishop of Washington from 2001 to 2006. In 2019, McCarrick was defrocked after having been convicted of sexual misconduct in a canonical trial.” 

Sex, Death, and Food.

Originally published on Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Dainin Katagiri Roshi admonishes Issan.

This life we live is a life of rejoicing, this body a body of joy which can be used to present offerings to the Three Jewels. It arises through the merits of eons and using it thus its merit extends endlessly. I hope that you will work and cook in this way, using this body which is the fruition of thousands of lifetimes and births to create limitless benefit for numberless beings. To understand this opportunity is a joyous heart because even if you had been born a ruler of the world the merit of your actions would merely disperse like foam, like sparks. —from Tenzo kyokun: Instructions for the Tenzo by Eihei Dogen zenji

Let’s talk about death while we’re still breathing. Talking about it after we’re dead might be challenging.

A dying Isaan told me something Katagiri Roshi said to him when they were both very much alive. I find myself revisiting this conversation about impermanence and death, and while I’m at it, can I also include a conversation about sex? They’re both dead and can’t have that conversation, or we’re not privy to it, but I will try to do it for them. And I’ll even stick my tongue out at you, Katagiri, even though you may only be a ghost.

And now, in reverse order, sex, death, and food

During one practice period at Tassajara, Issan ran the kitchen—the position of tenzo is highly respected in Zen monasteries thanks to Dogen weaving a spell about the cook’s practice of making food. Issan told me he’d been working night and day in the kitchen. According to the Founder of Soto Zen, this is really good practice: “Day and night, the work for preparing the meals must be done without wasting a moment. If you do this and everything that you do whole-heartedly, this nourishes the seeds of Awakening and brings ease and joy to the practice of the community.”

But Katagiri Roshi called him in.

Of course, he went. The Roshi asked him why he was missing so many periods of zazen. Issan said he felt he had to explain himself—he was terribly busy; there were a huge number of students to cook for; directing the preparations required an enormous effort; and, cut to the chase, Issan admitted that he was challenged working with some of the students as well as not complaining about foodstuff he didn’t think it was wonderful to begin with.

Katagiri sat stone-faced. Then he said, “Yes, we work hard long hours. Then we die.” That was it. And as they say in the koans, Issan bowed and left—a true koan exit.

Issan told me this story just months before he died. In both his smile and the bright tone of his voice, I could sense his gratitude for the decades-old warning. The certainty of death added urgency to his story. HIV was ravaging his body. He knew he was dying. His body felt it. Denial was no longer possible, but I didn’t hear even the faintest note of resignation in his voice, but rather a note of surprise that seemed as fresh as the day of that meeting. Past and present seemed to merge.

He never forgot those few words. They changed his life. They were a blessing. They shook something loose. They turned every excuse and explanation upside down and released unexpected wonders.

A conversation about food ended in death. Issan spoke honestly. He was dying as the direct result of a sexual encounter with his longtime boyfriend. What did he have to hide, and how could he hide it anyway? Despite the fact that many people loved Issan, they also found his relationship with James troublesome, not particularly because it was gay love, but because the love of his life was a man addicted to methamphetamines.

I began to look for other things Katagiri might have said about death and found several. The old horse always found his way back to the barn. The words of a beloved and respected master have a way of creating their own currency. In Zen, the phrase “turning word” is a phrase that helps a student refocus his or her attention and perhaps even prompts a realization. In turn, students circulate a good turn of phrase.

Steve Allen told me that when Katagiri visited Suzuki Roshi just before Suzuki died, Katagiri cried out, “Please don’t die!” Another version of his plea is more personal and direct, “I don’t want you to die.” I had also heard that Katagiri’s last words were, “I don’t want to die,” but that may just have been some sincere student either misquoting, conflating, or confusing time and place. I can find no solid confirmation, but none of these statements are what you might expect from a Zen master. They certainly don't fit any sentimental notions of a master’s death poem.

But each version of the story rings of something real, gut emotion crying out. I accept the invitation to get real.

Onto Questions about Sex!

Dosho Port quotes you, Katagiri, as saying: "After my death, I will come back and haunt over you, checking on your practice."* Yes, for me, Roshi, even though I was not your student, you have come back to haunt my practice, but not checking it as you did Issan’s work as the tenzo. I find myself weighing the value of your words. They have some punch, but is it a strawman? If I deflect the impact of your admonition about dying with the volatile ammunition of sexual scandal, am I ducking the question?

"But I kept my mouth shut."

How can I take you seriously? Revelations about your sexual misconduct have come to light after your death. I am unsure if you lied about your relationships with women in your community, and there was no accusation that you were abusive. But keeping your mouth shut is not entirely honest, either. I get that your reputation did depend, to some degree, on the perception of your being a steady family man. Perhaps you felt that if you were not directly confronted, your silence would serve the dharma. You are often quoted as saying that a good Zen student kept his or her mouth shut, followed directions, and sat upright. Roshi, I am told you were a good sitting monk, that you followed directions, well mostly; your form was good; and you certainly kept your mouth shut.

I have also tried to keep my mouth shut. I have not commented on your sexual dalliances, Roshi. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even judge them—if it were left to me, I would allow you any sexual expression you felt drawn to as long as it didn’t hurt others. But you were not fully transparent about your affairs. Did you really think that they would not come to light? Your naivete has come back to haunt us.

I am obliged to add your name, Katagiri, to the list of teachers who have abused their position. Of the more than 450 Zen teachers in the United States, the amount of oxygen taken up by the small proportion who have been involved in sexual scandals is enormous. The distraction alone gravely harms the teaching.

I will name names: Issan’s teacher, Richard Baker,* Joshu Sasaki, Taizan Maezumi, Eido Shimano, Dennis Merzel. High-profile Tibetan teachers whose names have been dragged into the same mud include Sakyong Mipham and Sogyal Rinpoche. These men, and they are all men, truly hurt us in real ways.

Po-chang and Huang-po: "The Buddha-Dharma is not a small affair”*

When the hurt goes away, does it mean that we have understood? I’ll stick out my tongue!

One day, the Master [Po-chang] addressed the group: "The Buddha-Dharma is not a small affair. I twice met with the Greater Master Ma's 'K'AAA! ' It deafened and blinded me [for] three days."

Huang-po, hearing this, unconsciously stuck out his tongue, saying, "Today, because of your exposition, I have been able to see Ma-tsu's power in action. But I never knew him. If I were to be Ma-tsu's heir afterward, I'd have no descendants."

The Master Po-chang said, "That's so, that's so. If your understanding is equal to your teacher's, you diminish his power by half. Only if you surpass your teacher will you be competent to transmit. You are very well equipped to surpass your teacher."

Roshi, you were saved by the queer guy! Issan fished some sound practice advice out of a muddy pond and passed it on. He wasn’t blinded or deafened by a few words. but he wasn’t blindsided either. He carried them in his heart for more than three days. In fact he used them till the day he died.

Your dharma heir, Teijo Munnich, quotes you, Katagiri, “Please don’t call me ‘Zen Master.’ No one can master Zen.” And you also said, “Do not make me into a god after I die.”

Don’t worry, Roshi. I won’t. Thank you.



The Maori people of New Zealand have created a ritualistic dance, the Kapa Haka,in celebration of light triumphing over darkness.

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* Tenzo kyokun: Instructions for the Tenzo by Eihei Dogen zenji
*Dosho Port, Me in Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri
* Bivins, Jason C. “‘Beautiful Women Dig Graves’: Richard Baker-Roshi, Imported Buddhism, and the Transmission of Ethics at the San Francisco Zen Center.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, vol. 17, no. 1, [University of California Press, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture], 2007, pp. 57–93, https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2007.17.1.57.
*following the Ming version as translated by Cleary. Also quoted in Zen's Chinese Heritage
The Masters and Their Teachings by Andy Ferguson

The Road to Rohatsu

Ryutan’s Candle and Kenosha

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 that we might have been 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 reasonably comfortable.

We talked about Phil Whalen, Issan, the Hospice, and food. Then the conversation turned to losing normal mental ability, Alzheimers, and AIDS dementia. I was somewhat concerned about Issan’s losing his faculties during the last phase of his disease and asked about the effect 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, “I can’t remember what I didn’t need to know anyway.” 

I asked David Chadwick if he remembered if he had any more details about Nanao's condition. David pointed me to a conversation he had with Nanao before he died. 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 becoming 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, with 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 and no speed limits. 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, perhaps 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, and the enthusiasm of a teaching moment simply overwhelmed him. It was I who needed 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 Sante 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 was 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.

Issan’s Jesus Koan

 

Memories in a shoe box

23 April 2010

This story is really about the moment I realized what I always knew—that even my own meditation doesn't belong to me.

The line from the dedication in the Soto Zen service at a temple founder’s altar, “May the Teaching of this school go on forever,” is almost a cliché. Are there even answers to the obvious questions, “What is the Teaching of this school?” “How, or even why, should they go on forever?” The founder’s teaching is treated like an assumption. I knew Issan as a friend, a man dying of AIDS, a hilarious prankster even when he was in great pain, and a teacher who opened up a vast, new exploration for me. Of course, I harbor assumptions, and if I were to examine his life as if he were the token gay Buddhist saint in drag, that might be more of a blinder than an opening.

A student from New York Zen Center’s Contemplative Care Program contacted me about unearthing information about Issan’s legacy. He had been referred by Rev. Rusty Smith, the Executive Director of Maitri Hospice, or as it’s now called, “Maitri Compassionate Care.” Since the separation of Hartford Street Zen Center and the Hospice, I feared that a lot of material had been lost. Adding to the predicament, Issan loved the phone, but the written word was not so much: there were no notes from the dharma talks. There were a few snapshots from Del Carlson, a close friend, one dharma talk that had been transcribed, and, of course, David Schneider’s wonderful “Street Zen.” As for the rest, the kind of stuff that you don’t really know what to do with, the sentimental gifts stored in an old shoe box, personal memories of the way that he interacted with each of us as his students, his jokes, the outrageous stories that you might not want to share with your mother—and there were plenty of those, where could we begin to look?

In early Spring of 2010, I ran into Bruce Boone, a longtime student of Issan, outside the Café Flore, which is only a short walk from the Hartford Street Zen Center. After the usual “bring me up to date” conversation, which, sadly, included news of his longtime partner’s death, we began to talk about our friend. 

I try to be on the lookout for any expression of his teaching that feels genuine and not anecdotal gay-feel-good Buddhism. I turned the conversation to gathering Issan’s old students together and beginning to record our memories of how our friend really taught us. I cannot remember if Bruce thought the gathering was a good idea, but he shared a story that moved me.

One morning in North Beach, he’d walked into a quiet church, the shrine of Francis d'Assisi, with his teacher, a gay man who had HIV and knew that he faced an inevitable painful death. Bruce might have been trying to offer Issan a place of rest, or maybe peace and comfort, or he might have been acting as a kind tour guide to the hidden shrines of San Francisco.

When Issan saw the image of Jesus crucified, he turned to Bruce and said, “Oh, that’s me.” Bruce, a former seminarian, said it brought tears to his eyes, but as he told the story, Issan spoke in almost an off-handed way. His tone was flat, and Bruce knew the remark was entirely serious. He called it “Issan’s Jesus koan.”

I knew that Issan had been raised as a Roman Catholic in the traditional Irish-American way, and as a young adult, he’d left the rank and file of practicing Catholics. I think that “reject” would be too strong a word. “Neglect” might be better, as in “hardly enough time” for the more pressing things in his life, running a commune, cleaning house, finding the perfect dress with the right hairstyle and make-up, and eventually drugs. But I had no idea how he held his inherited beliefs. Now facing pain and suffering, he was confronted with a familiar image from his impressionable years in a suburban catholic parish in Santa Barbara, and there it was—just recognition. It sounded almost matter-of-fact.

Bruce’s words kicked something loose in me—the cross as a koan? It had been almost 20 years since Issan died, and Bruce still held this story about Issan, one for which he had no ready answers or explanations in a loving way. Then he said, “Even those brief moments while I sat facing the wall when everything seemed clear as a bell, those few deep experiences have only begun to open up what he might have meant.”

Then I got it: Bruce has been sitting right next to me and meditating for me. He’d handed over the fruits of his zazen without a second thought. They were mine. How generous. Generosity is a necessary condition for sharing my meditation with the person sitting next to me, but I don't want my thinking too much to get in the way. It just happens. It is the path that the Zen ancestors have always used to transmit their experience to us. If it's a mystery or even a slippery slope, so what?

Hakuin Zenji’s hymn in praise of meditation contains the verse: “From dark path to dark path,” which seems an inescapable part of our human experience. But we can also sing “From bright path to bright path!” I’ve had moments when I saw clearly that the meditation experience is not a solipsistic self-generated enlightenment. I would be more than willing to congratulate myself for all the good effort that I have been making over many years in practice, but what if it weren’t necessarily so? What if the work has already been done or is always being done? Bruce has been working on Issan’s koan for more than 20 years, and all I did was stand next to him on the street for a few minutes. The Teaching of Issan's school has lived on for almost 30 years. Wrapping my mind around “forever” seems just a step away.

My friend Ken MacDonald added more lyricism to the Soto dedication at the closing of the founder's service:

"These teachings go on forever;

on and on they flow,

without beginning or end".

To read more reflections about Issan's life, see some photographs, and listen to a dharma talk, go to my page, The Record* of Issan.