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.

_______________________

* 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.

Heels Outside The Door

“I gave up the heels but kept the skirt.”--Issan “Tommy” Dorsey Roshi


My friend, the Zen teacher Roshi Susan Murphy, verbally sketched the opening shot for a movie that she was thinking about doing. I titled it for her--“Issan, The Movie.” The camera focuses on the zendo porch where people have neatly, almost formally, arranged the shoes they shed before entering the meditation hall. The camera zooms in and scans the sneakers, Birkenstocks, flip-flops, and a lone pair of high heels.

I’ve always liked that visual. There’s a whole story in those few seconds. In my mind the slippers had to be red, perhaps even some rhinestones for dual use on stage.

But there was also a reference to Michael Downing’s Shoes Outside the Door, though the title seemed to suggest, unfairly in my view, an attractive woman and a sexual tryst outside the Buddhist Precepts. The door in question was not the formal entrance to the zendo but the door of Richard Baker’s private cabin at Tassajara, where the discovery of a woman’s shoes was the beginning of the unraveling of Baker Roshi’s tenure as Abbott. Though Downing claimed to stick to an objective rendition of a major rupture in the history of an important Western Zen Temple, the story that the title references belies that it includes a bit of muckraking. It was a scandal that keeps reappearing like a bad dream in the history of the San Francisco Zen Center.

How do we exorcize or excise a nightmare? Is it even possible? Can we just forget it, or in a more Buddhist-sounding directive, lay it aside?

This question has troubled the humans who practice since Lord Buddha walked out of his father’s palace. How do we carry the past? How do we deal with the results of our actions? When I first encountered this notion in my practice, it reactivated memories of the darker aspects of my own life. In the old story, we hear that the Buddha was troubled by the sight of sick people, desperate people, and dead bodies. I think that there’s a lot of philosophical thinking involved in that presentation, as if an abstract notion of impermanence and suffering presented itself for inspection and reflection. What if Siddhartha himself had visceral emotional human responses that included all the gray shades of hesitancy, infantile and magical thinking, bargaining, even second-guessing, and mistakes? These are the kinds of human reactions that we have to deal with.

Issan, Phil Whalen, and a few other friends were at the center of the San Francisco Zen Center storm, and they were people who did not turn against Richard Baker. Issan would not have blushed at the actual or imagined nubile figure in his teacher’s life, nor did he abandon his teacher. His own life had more than its share of dark and loving moments. He did not shun, renounce, ostracize, vilify, or denounce, though I’m sure many longtime friends encouraged, perhaps even nudged him in that direction. This does not imply that he tolerated or excused whatever behaviors might have occurred. Instead, his experience of human frailty or suffering allowed him a generous and compassionate understanding that we are all human.

This history of planting Zen practice in the West is filled with stories of men and women who came to Zen after deeply troubled personal experiences. Buddhism is not a religion invented to steer sinners towards repentance, nor is it a religion that requires sainthood. Practice allows us a certain degree of freedom from being attached to the past.

Issan became Richard Baker’s first dharma heir. For me, there is no mystery or magical thinking involved.

There was a choice in the matter, but he touched as little as possible. “I gave up the heels, but I kept the skirt.”




Sweeping darkness
into a corner
only makes the room
unbearably bright.
Better for the defilements
to be left undisturbed.
Let them glow like embers
drift away like ash.


Verse by Richard von Sturmer

Phil, dreaming of gummy bears, sees angels descending.

 The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Now Phil was dying. Perhaps as long as a year before, he’d reached back for his chair which wasn’t there and fell breaking his assbone. Thus began a slow decline. I was alarmed. It’s hard to say that a Zen Master, especially one that I loved, had given up on life, so I won't. But progressive blindness had stolen the delight of seeing words on a page, physical pain made the formal posture of zazen impossible and now immobility obliterated the comforting routine of meditation, gabbing, study, jokes, and food. Not physical therapy with Baker Roshi’s student Joe Muscles, not Chinese food with taro root, not even gummy bears, could turn the tide. The ever present good cheer, except when it suddenly disappeared, felt concocted. The veneer was wearing thin. I didn’t feel the bitter resignation of a person fed up with life. It was more a sense that he’d just had enough. He invited the dying to begin, and the invitation had been accepted. It would be long and slow.

Some sages claim that this was a good way for a meditator to die, as if waving a long slow goodbye to everything that had been assembled to make you--a precious death. In a way I feel that this is a bit like sticking a smiley face on a Hallmark condolence card. It masks the uncertainty of each piece tumbling into oblivion. Phil was always so kind to those who were helping him, but on the other hand he couldn’t hide the day to day frustrations. 

He would rail at the dying steps prescribed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, saying "I have to decide if I’m at the bargaining stage or the resignation stage.” But he seemed to be following them exactly, or at least that was the framework that I carried into my conversations with him. I actually felt that he’d only taken baby steps away from the anger stage, but all that is extremely subjective. Perhaps I was still angry with him for ending the Maitri experiment, or screaming at me in the hallway, or harping on that old time religion. 

Zenshin’s mind had always been clear as a bell, much clearer than his vision. His memory for words, phrases, even pages in a book, had been almost photographic. I wonder how much of this was compensatory.

Once when I was entertaining some weird questions about presumed Kundalini energy in meditation, what Phil called the “squigglies,” he said, “Ol’ Luk Luk has something to say about that.  ”Middle case, third shelf, second from the left. (I think it was Charles Luk’s “Secrets of Chinese Meditation, but it might have been “Empty Cloud.”) Page 63, middle paragraph, beginning at the forth sentence. That’s the interesting part. Read back to me. Then he gently told me that focusing on the heart might be good practice rather than chasing swirling whirling wisps of energy all over the place.

Another time when we were reading “Scenes from the Capital,” we got to a part where he talks about Gerald Manley Hopkins. He started to recite “The Windhover” not with his flat voice, not with his whimsical voice, but reverently, almost like plainchant. When he stumbled, he pointed to the first case, second shelf, 12th book from the right, page 43, “Just start reading.” 

  No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion

Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,

    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

When I was sitting with him in a bright room of the Zen Center Hospice on Page Street, he asked me, “Do you see them?”

“Who?”

“The angels.

“No actually, I don’t. Where are they?”

“Right there, floating around,” pointing towards the upper corner to the left of his bed.

“No, I still don’t see them.”

“Look, goddamn it.” His voice sounded plaintive, perhaps wistful.

“What do they look like?”

“Just like the ones on the Macy’s gift bags.”

“I can’t see them Phil, what would you like me to do?”

“Call the police, they’re reliable.”

Together we looked. I could see nothing while at the same time I wondered where his mind had gone. The Mind is a terrible thing to waste, he used to joke. What mind? Here we were using what was left to search for angels.

The angels on the Macy’s bag too “Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.”

When he died I arrived late to the crematorium in South City, Baker Roshi read a line from one of his poems about delicious raspberries. Then we filed past, bowed and placed a raspberry in the plain box that held his body. 

Contrary to Zen custom, I visualized dumping buckets of crimson raspberries gashing gold-vermillion. I couldn’t stop myself.

La Volonté de Savoir, Foucault on Sexuality

McLeod Ganj, Vesak

Revised Dewali, 2022

After all the bad press, after the astronomical settlements of lawsuits, after the decimation of congregations, Zen masters, priests, and politicians continue to behave badly--still. Recently, a gifted young teacher, Josh Bartok, resigned from the vibrant Greater Boston Zen Center amid a swirl of accusations of sexual impropriety. I took note. James Ismael Ford, my teacher’s teacher, trained him. Bartok joins a list that keeps growing.

Some blame it on losing sight of the actual teaching of the Buddha or Jesus. Others blame it on human frailty or sin or disregarding the grave precepts or teachers and priests getting power-hungry when elevated to a position of authority and taking advantage of people in their care.

However, taking a position of blame and passing judgment is not very useful. It is also distinct from creating policies and procedures for establishing protections against abuse within our communities and hearing grievances. Blanket condemnation is not, to use a Buddhist phrase, skillful means. It creates a dead end.

I want to step back and carefully examine the situation through different lenses.

When I showed the first draft of this article to various people, some of whom I did not know but who’d been involved in communities where significant damage had occurred, they thought that I was simply doing revisionist history, letting certain people off the hook, or creating loopholes for abusive behavior. After all the bad blood, they felt there had never been a proper settling of accounts. I want to be clear: I do not want to change the record or excuse anyone whose behavior has caused harm. That is the arena for those who’ve experienced the damage or insult and the perpetrators. But let’s be honest: we all take sides. In a real sense, the whole community has been harmed. 

But it is also true that taking a position, leveling blame, or feeling some degree of personal fear and exposure is fertile ground for a Zen student to practice introspection.

The list is long and includes many of the most important of the first generation of Zen teachers in the West. I have to ask myself, as a practitioner and a person who’s had important interactions with several teachers whose behavior has fallen under a dark cloud, how can I understand my own feelings in a way that might shed light rather than simply confirm a long-standing belief system? Along the way, I also want to do some excavation of persistent, compelling but useless assumptions.

Is it about sex?

In Jesuit school, we teenage boys lined up in chapel on First Friday mornings to receive absolution for the sins of the flesh, or what was euphemistically called “self-abuse.” Maybe there was an occasional confession of cheating on the Latin vocabulary quiz, but we all masturbated.

The line for Father Halloran’s confessional was long because he was understanding of adolescent sex, or at least he seemed more tolerant than immigrant Father Murphy, who was Puritanical, angrily demanding manly resolve that you would never play with your penis again. Halloran might have simply been bored or realistic, or perhaps he’d just given up, but he still demanded sufficient shame before dispensing the penance of five “Our Fathers” and ten “Hail Marys.”

When the inner compulsion for shaming became intolerable, or you’d made the pious decision to try to live like a saint, you quickly ducked into Father Murphy’s booth, where all hell broke loose. I made the mistake of asking for his absolution once and never went back. I also didn’t want to be seen in that line by Saint Aloysius’s shrine because the boys who masturbated together feared that you named names when Murphy asked the prescribed question from the confession manual: “With yourself or others?” Dealing with ostracization as well as shame. Social ramifications have always been part and parcel of sexual training.

Sex, shame, purification, resolve, failure to meet the standard demanded by the Irish Catholic cult, sex, shame, repeat. Perhaps this was just how things have always worked, La Comédie humaine. We know without a doubt that some Zen teachers, priests, or politicians will continue to abuse just as surely as the same faces will be back at the understanding, tired, or just fed-up Father Halloran’s confessional the Friday before they are next obliged to perform the Sunday ritual of Holy Communion with their parents, free of mortal sin.

Shifting Zip codes

Then, some of us became Buddhists. Perhaps part of our motivation for seeking was to find a more tolerant setting for our sexual persona or nonconforming proclivities or at least an escape from the charade. This was undoubtedly part of my story. I joined a truly ecumenical movement. Irish Catholics may have a particular flavor as opposed to the Jews, but the same tales, the same quilt run through the whole sangha, and this includes the immigrant communities, the only possible difference being the level of tolerance.

However, we soon discovered that our sexual training, repression, and cultural taboos had simply shifted zip codes. They were persistent and stubborn. The public uproar at the San Francisco Zen Center around Richard Baker’s alleged misconduct has subsided. Or has it? The list of other Zen teachers who have confessed to abusing their students is long and continues to grow. Perhaps we’ve weeded out some bad actors, or maybe they have become more cautious. Some offenders might even have developed an awareness of normative ethics, but still, when we survey the landscape rigorously, we see wreckage: friends who fled practice or stayed but never seemed to make much progress; teaching careers shortcuited or ruined; persistent rumor and recrimination that harms the sangha. The evidence of unresolved trauma and hurt is vast.

To our credit, we've made our practice spaces safer; to varying degrees, people feel free enough to open up without subjecting themselves to exploitation; ethical guidelines are in place in most centers; we have even asked professional therapists to help us craft the norms. But honesty, if pressed, I do not think that most people feel that the issues surrounding sex and practice have been resolved. Some feel that we’ve just added another layer of admonition and prohibition to our norms for sexual behavior. Some say it will take a generation to heal the wounds. Others say what we need is a return to that old-time religion.

Let me be clear. As I stated at the very beginning, I am not setting out to create excuses. I do not intend to rewrite history. I will not whitewash what is clearly harmful behavior or play the game of weighing a teacher’s charisma to offset egregious failings. I won’t reduce our practice to the level of a cult. We cannot suppress genuine hurt feelings arising from past experiences because, as the saying goes, time heals all wounds. It does not. I was a victim of sexual abuse myself. Bob Hoffman raped me within a few months of completing his Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy. This story remains almost entirely in the shadows. I've been ignored or gaslighted when I’ve attempted to bring it to light. A senior teacher of the Process told me, “It was 50 years ago, so get over it.” But this New Age “Love and Light” process is a cult and costs a great deal of money, so the sweep-it-under-rug behavior is pretty much expected.

The history of sexual abuse in our Buddhist communities has been tumultuous. There has not been a full accounting of the alleged misconduct because, for the most part, sexual conversations are secret; even when we talk about them, there are some areas that remain hidden; the secrecy adds to their power, making it more difficult to dislodge. There has never been a full recognition of the depth of the abuse because it touches the deepest core of human intimacy; people, mostly women, say that they are still hurting; we should believe them. I do. The abusers have not taken full responsibility; people are still speaking up despite calls to move on. There should be more compassion for both victims and abusers. We are a Buddhist community; understanding, empathy, and compassion are the heart of our practice. 

Taboo or precept?

“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”― George Orwell

I ask myself how, as a practitioner, I might address the situation. A Zen priest friend whom I admire and trust warned me against “starting from [a] wrong assumption... and end up justifying a foregone conclusion.” I’ll frame my question to address my friend’s fear, and I will do so directly: what are the assumptions that seem to drive me to a foregone conclusion? Let me frame the inquiry in another way. Suppose the same question is asked repeatedly, and the repeated answer continues to be unsatisfactory. Is it a bad question, a good one asked incorrectly, or simply a question not designed to reveal useful information?

My intention is to ask honest questions that shed light on our dilemma. My methodology: I will do my best to recreate the assumptions that underpin the conversation and, I would add, provide what’s been taken as demonstrable ammunition for presumptive guilt. Then, hopefully, I can challenge these assumptions to see what remains.

The first assumption is that the actions of the perp, even a Zen prep, take place in a vacuum against the stark moral backdrop of right and wrong. False. The further assumption is that we can tame the beast by simply labeling it and calling it out. False.

We haven’t eliminated sexual abuse from our practice because we can’t. The way sex manifests in each individual will be unique, but just because one enters the zendo and sits without moving does not guarantee that the sexual impulse sits quietly. It’s more likely that we notice how active it is. It’s the nature of self-investigation. Sex cannot escape our investigation, but it does not deserve a special place. Nor can we eliminate risk when we venture into uncomfortable or forbidden territory. Those may seem like extremes, but my non-professional survey points to both the exclusion of sex and evading dangerous territory, which are common in most practice centers. How often is sex directly discussed in dharma talks? My experience is that this happens rarely and then usually as a footnote. How often is it the subject of scuttlebutt and rumor? If the walls had ears. What’s the first response when people ask about what’s been done since Roshi’s picadillos were uncovered? We’ve put a code of ethics in place. Don’t worry your pretty little head.

The Will to Know.

The second part of my methodology will be to analyze the conversation itself. Is it simply a straightforward case involving sex outside of marriage or the accepted boundaries of intimate relationships? The fact that I am going to cite the work of Michel Foucault will alert you that I think there’s a lot more going on.

I have been studying the French philosopher’s first volume of The History of Sexuality, La Volonté de Savoir. It’s been a real eye-opener. He contends that the discourse about sexual behavior in the West, over the last few centuries, has been incorporated or subsumed into a larger conversation about power and control. I prefer the word hijacked, but it carries too many pejorative connotations to allow for anything close to objective analysis.

Foucault 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. These conversations are varied, complex, and sometimes thinly disguised. 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. You don’t need a hefty dose of Irish Catholicism in parochial school to take part. It’s pervasive. The Irish have merely repeated the conversation with our particular brogue, as have Jews, Latinos, Italians, and Asians, each with their own inflection.

Foucault fills three volumes with his analysis. I will focus on the first few pages of the first volume, where he defines the scope of his inquiry and spells out his methodology. I will be talking mainly about the San Francisco Zen Center situation when Richard Baker Roshi stepped down from his leadership role. It is the one that I am most familiar with. There were equally disruptive scenarios occurring in other Buddhist communities in the early history of Buddhism in the West--Robert Aitken Roshi’s interactions with Eido Tai Shimano in Honolulu and subsequently with his organization in New York are now part of the public record as the University of Hawaii has released Aitken’s letters. They reveal the conundrum of trying to shield a growing community from scandal. Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi’s dalliances have also become part of the public record, as well as Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi Roshi and the more flamboyant history of Chögyam Trungpa and Ösel Tendzin.

The sequence of events Foucault outlines fits with what occurred at Zen Center. When Richard Baker’s romance with a married woman began to tear the San Francisco Zen Center apart, they called in a triage team. Therapists and senior practice leaders counseled people to talk about it. And that they did. I was not present, but I know many people who were. A lot never stopped talking about it. They are Buddhists, so, at least on the surface, the intent to gossip, blame, or take sides was absent. Baker also removed himself, so there was no lightning rod, but most of the people I know from Zen Center were taking sides. I was trained by two men who followed Baker to Santa Fe, where he started over. When they returned to San Francisco’s Hartford Street Zen Center, both Issan and Phil Whalen established a congenial working relationship with senior people who had taken over running the San Francisco Center, but, well, let’s just say that they didn’t talk about Baker’s sexual exploits, real or imagined, in polite conversation. I will make my mother happy and not join that conversation either, though I will allow myself a few general statements about the nature of the conversation.

The Zen Speakeasy

Or a general economy of discourses on sex, or how sex is “put into discourse.’”

I will follow Foucault as closely as I can. “The central issue . . . is not to determine whether one says yes or no to sex, whether one formulates prohibitions or permissions, whether one assets its importance or denies its effects, or whether one refines the words one uses to designate it; but to account for the fact that it is spoken about, to discover who does the speaking, the positions and viewpoints from which they speak, the institutions which prompt people to speak about it and which store and distribute the things that are said.” [Page 9]

He says further that his primary interest is locating “the forms of power, the channels it takes, and the discourses it permeates in order to reach the most tenuous and individual modes of behavior…” I will try to use these questions as prompts for my self-investigation. When I was coming into my sexual maturity in the Jesuit school, I learned that even the solitary pleasure of masturbation has a structure in public conversation. All the boys at my prep school knew that Father Halloran would be less judgmental about adolescent sex just by the length of the line formed by his confessional. Foucault does not claim that this examination will yield some correct position or reveal the truth about sex and power, but rather bring forth “the will to knowledge,” la volonté de savoir, which serves our inquiry.

My questions are from the point of view of being on the meditation cushion and not as a leader or poobah of a practice center. Different sets of concerns yield different answers. Though the institutional response shapes my concern, it’s not my job to polish the defense or the rebuttal, nor is it to clarify the language to designate it.

Historically, what do we know about the history of the sexual ethos in the early days of Zen in the West, specifically among the first generation of Westerner students and their interactions with their Asian teachers?

From the very beginning, there was a lot of sex going on at the San Francisco Zen Center, at least among some groups. It was an open secret. This was equally true when Suzuki Roshi was alive, and after Baker Roshi assumed the helm. I assume that Suzuki Roshi knew about his students’ trysting, but he said nothing publicly to my knowledge. He surely did talk about it in private practice conversations, but we only have anecdotal evidence and no way of knowing what he said. He was also steeped in Japanese temple culture, which influenced his attitude in ways we will never fully understand.

What’s also true is that there was a lot of negative judgment about sexual behavior at the Zen Center. We can all trace the outline of the public conversation. I can recognize the “orthodox” public judgments simply by listening to persistent conversations. But there is also evidence of personal struggle, admonitions, and conflict about sex that people struggle with. Issan once said to me, “People call all the time. They need to talk.” One of the reasons why Issan was such a popular teacher was that you could talk about sex openly with him. He did understand. Not being judgmental gave him the ability to listen. When sex presented a problem in our adolescent lives, we lined up at Father Halloran’s confessional, the priest who at least pretended that he understood your plight. How much better a priest who really did understand and could be compassionate?

Here’s what one student told me when I asked him about the sexual culture of the Zen Center. “There was definitely a Puritanical aura about the place, “a disciple of the Buddha does not misuse the senses.’ . . . It was like being Catholic again, though in a small community full of the smart, good children in the front row of the class who love to click their tongues at others and rat them out in senior student meetings. It was kind of an unwritten rule that you had to be in a committed relationship to have sex, but sex was never really mentioned.” This student found his way to Father Murphy’s confessional box by the Saint Aloysius shrine.

Deconstruct!

The Case: Phil blurted out, “The Presbyterians got the upper hand.”

Foucault says that it is legitimate to ask why sex was associated with sin for such a long time and question how this pervasive attitude was formed and why it persists. Of course, partial blame goes to the scriptures and the taboos of our Abrahamic religious past, but close examination will show that the Sabbath celebration has roots in the celebration of sex, and most taboos single out specific sex acts. Foucault notes that the association with sin comes part and parcel with the religious power structure; they define the taboos. Phil exploded, slurring a notoriously staid religious sect while berating a particular group of senior students in the same breath. The ascetic discipline is “especially careful in repressing useless energies, the intensity of pleasures, and irregular modes of behavior.”[Page 9] If I didn’t know better, I might label John Calvin a hidden Zen master (or an extremely strict, Western image of one). The confusion might have its roots in history, but it continues to exist in the heads of some zennies. And, in answer to Phil, the Presbyterians did not need to stage a coup d’etat when the war was going on in peoples’ heads.

In Buddhist ethics, the precept cited is the Misuse of Sex, whereas Foucault’s analysis is to observe and trace the use of power. It’s a tricky distinction. We’ve enlisted sex in the service of domination, or that is Foucault’s assumption. Let me cite an example. If a person wanted to assert his or her position in the hierarchy, why does an expensive dinner at Green’s pass under the radar, while sex is a red flag? What if, perhaps, what we took as a sexual violation was a consensual sexual encounter that we couldn’t recognize, and I underline, “we couldn’t recognize.”

Foucault also notes that “[t]oday it is sex that serves as a support for the ancient form--so familiar and important in the West--of preaching.” [Page 7] I would note that we are not talking about a sermon about The Joy of Sex, popular in the heyday of the California New Age, but sin, hell and damnation. (Foucault also notes the “solemnity” that pervades most public conversations about sex. [Page 6] This rings true. How often have we heard a sexual joke in dharma talk?)

It is just not possible to remain unaffected by this discourse. Most of the automatic response in the West, across the board, would be for the sin and damnation side, or, if we are in a rebellious mood, a swing towards The Joy of Sex’s happy sermon. Both positions are simply reactions within a set of cultural and sexual norms.

If we define the relationship between sex and power as repression, Foucault points to what he calls the speaker’s benefit. “If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets the established law; he anticipates the coming freedom.” [Page 6] He goes on to analyze the way that early psychiatrists in the 19th century felt compelled to make excuses when they broached the topic of sex.

Taking a position is getting your feet wet, even if the position is against what appears to be repression. I noticed the same pattern of apology in the initial unmasking of a Zen teacher’s sexual transgressions, and I noticed in myself a kind of self-approval when I sided with the accusers. But then these speakers quickly pivot to a broader condemnation, including teaching style, politics, spending habits, and other things they might find objectionable. Taking the high seat, it is a short leap from sex outside of marriage to fast cars and expensive suits, even though there is zero logical connection. This is also the speaker’s benefit and a tough one to catch because it is shielded by the righteousness of “correct” sexual behavior.

This extends to the tone and even the content of practice instruction. I noticed that when I was talking to a teacher and stumbled upon some strong inner objection to what was being said, I dismissed it with an inner notation that he or she is a hot mess, so why pay attention? When teachers can’t be saints and control their penises, nothing they say has any value.

Blurring the question

“Only in those places (the brothel and the mental hospital) would untrammeled sex have a right to (safely isularized) forms of reality and only to clandestine, circumscribed, and coded types of discourse. Everywhere else, modern Puritanism imposed its triple edict of taboo, nonexistence, and silence.” [Page 5]

What happens when I realize that I’m just following or reacting to a set script, that there is a conversation that has shaped what I hold to be true? It is a cultural creation, perhaps not entirely specific to the West, but in many other ways, entirely a creation of Western culture.

Reading and studying Foucault, even when I didn’t fully understand the analysis (one could have hoped that he was easier to understand, but he was a French academic), I realized that there is a script. It exists outside our zen communities and does not have its roots in Buddhist precepts. Foucault has shown that this is a creation, a “mental reaction” in a particular time and place, so it might be possible to break free.

Can I use this analysis to discover a hidden treasure? I am obliged to thread the needle carefully. I can see that I am part of a particular conversation, and, necessarily, I will remain part of that conversation. But perhaps if I can follow it carefully, I will become less enmeshed. There may be echoes in psychotherapy, but it seems broader. It is not just my sexual proclivities and an analysis of their root cause in my unconscious but the context where I first learned about sex.

I used to say about several of the men I know whose careers have been the subject of accusation and lots of scuttlebutt: they and their partners were consenting adults. End of conversation. But this is using the “Get Out of Jail Free” card. If I am going to be rigorous, I must also examine this statement. I began this discussion by mentioning Roshi Bartok and never said another word. I don’t know Josh, and I can’t comment. However, I bet that the conversations in the Greater Boston Zen Center contain many of the elements that Foucault describes. Does that excuse anyone? No, but it might provide insight for the people who struggle with what occurred.

Were there repercussions of those First Friday lineups of shame and guilt, barriers to experiencing sexual pleasure? Of course. Has the barrier between me and the joy of sex vanished? Not entirely, but I am much happier than I was when I was obliged to stand in line for Father Halloran’s absolution.

The Myth of the Zen Roshi

Myths, Super Heroes and Real People

The issue is making something new available in our multi-dimensional, weirdly disconnected world. Buddhist practice predates Christianity by several hundred years, but really it’s little more than a generation old in the West. If it were a product like the iPhone, proponents might apply Apple’s high tech marketing tools though I fear we might misfire the synapses and get a ham radio set instead of a shiny device with the cool logo. What we expect and what can be delivered--will they match up? It might be helpful to cut through some of the zigzags that are already visible in the landscape.

James Ford recently posted a fairly detailed précis of the various conventions and forms that have been handed to us for labeling our Zen teachers, and perhaps identifying their skill set, Holders of Lineage: A Small Meditation on Leadership in Contemporary Western Zen Buddhist Sanghas. If you’re in the market for a Zen teacher, you will quickly learn about Roshi and Sensei, but as with any title there are hidden meanings, nuances and misunderstandings attached. I suppose that we could call Roshis Bishops, and from a certain perspective it makes sense. The crossover from East to West has been littered with misunderstandings at both ends. In the Western Jodo Shinshu, the presiding priest in a jurisdiction is in fact called Bishop, but is Pure Land Buddhism some version of Methodism? Where does that leave Zen? In the Pennsylvania wilderness?

Stuart Lachs has written persuasively about the role of the Roshi, and this blurry area where East meets West. (Cf the provocative title "When the Saints Go Marching In: Modern Day Zen Hagiography"). I hesitate to blur the edges of his argument. I concur that making any Roshi into some kind of irrefutable font of wisdom is a sure way of setting up for disappointment, but my thesis is that we in the West have set up our own set of expectations that can be equally debilitating.

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With many westerners interested in Buddhism, committed to self-inquiry and practicing meditation in the various forms that have been carried to these shores by our Asian teachers, we have already seen new forms of practice and support for the teaching as well as senior practice leaders. And more will continue to emerge. Our communities, our teachers and practice centers will be distinctly Western. It’s inevitable. We have to create our own practice places and support our teachers.

As James points out, different skills and talents may or may not be present in all teachers; or they may be available to varying degrees which may or may not overlap. Let me add a footnote to James’s piece: time, place and circumstance call forth a particular skill set. In our brief history, we have so far relied on the genius of a few pioneering teachers who were, and are, to varying degrees charismatic, skilled in directing people in meditation practice, and very resourceful in using the materials at hand, building out zendos in their garages.

The first generation of teachers, both Asian and Western, have left us a legacy. We’re already a generation away from our Asian teachers; a whole new generation of homegrown American and European teachers have authorized a new crop of dharma heirs, and although I think for the most part that they’ve served the dharma well, there have been a few who would give a bathtub full of bodhisattvas pause.

From my reading Suzuki Roshi was a fairly ordinary temple priest from Japan who blossomed in America and became the stuff of legend. His successor, Richard Baker, is a particular kind of entrepreneurial genius. If he’d left Harvard a few years later and hit the golden shores of California when the Silicon Valley was being born, he might have become a Gates or an Ellison. He’s certainly much smarter than Zuckerberg. Instead we had the luck of his finding his way to the Sotoshu in Japantown. His personality, charisma and skill set created the San Francisco Zen Center as a platform for Suzuki. He matched the role Suzuki Roshi entrusted to him. Acknowledging this, old time students still call Baker “Roshi'' instead of the familiar first name basis adopted by the second wave.

Lachs deconstructs the enlightenment myth of transmission in terms of something added, and misunderstood, during the dharma’s transport to the Western shores. There is a lot to consider in his analysis, but I am equally interested in Richard Baker’s seemingly endless creativity for adapting traditional forms. Old wine in new skin. I don’t think that there is any Westerner who is more careful of traditional Japanese priestly rituals while at the same time being extremely resourceful, creating innovative ways of combining livelihood and practice. Some ventures were more successful than others, but Baker built a large, successful center with several campuses, and he opened the first secluded Zen monastery in the West. Maezumi and Glassman also created large and important institutions, but, at least from my reading, they relied more on some very creative people who were attracted to the practice. Not that Suzuki and Richard didn’t attract bright and creative people, but they were always in Baker’s shadow which, in my view, was as much the source of the upheaval at Zen Center as any alleged sexual impropriety.

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I’ve had direct experience in many different American Zen Centers with several authorized teachers; some felt a bit tangential while others quite settled and profound (again this is subjective for sure). While each was distinct, there were always certain features that held constant which was in a way reassuring. They are all led by American or Australian second and third generation teachers. None of the centers were even close to the San Francisco Zen Center in terms of wealth, number of students, or notoriety, but each reflects the personality of their leadership. Hartford Street Zen Center was a small tight knit family, very much dependent on the charisma of Issan Dorsey. Issan relied on many people to do the work of paying the water bill, keeping food in the refrigerator, and taking care of young men dying from HIV disease, while he did the heavy lifting of directing and inspiring us. Mel Wietzman’s Berkeley Center was more formal, focused on sitting practice. Though certainly not unfriendly; I got the sense that there was a definite inner and outer circle. It was Mel's center. It fit him. It really fit Maylie Scott who maintained a separate residence with her mother and several students, me among them, and at that point in my practice being separate from the day to day hubbub of a practice center was what I felt I needed.

I practiced with Bob Aitken on Oahu. Aitken Roshi had the most diverse international crowd though nowhere near the size of San Francisco Zen Center. Besides the Manoa zendo. I sat in the Palolo Valley Temple before construction was complete, and in a way that was perfect--my work with Bob never felt really finished. Officially he was the most scholarly of all the teachers I worked with. He could be uncomfortably rigid when lecturing; then in the blink of an eye, he became very personal, even vulnerable, but the feeling was not disconcerting. I always felt that if I were a good student I'd be part of his next chapter. His students were dedicated; everybody had their job, did their work, and seemed to maintain their own autonomy. People were building the temple around him. By contrast, I also sat several sesshins at Crestone Mountain Zen Center when it was in its infancy. It was clear the minute you took your seat that it was Baker Roshi’s project.

John Tarrant’s California Diamond Sangha and then the Pacific Zen Institute was very dependent on Tarrant Roshi’s inspiration. Like many of the early Diamond sangha, we depended on rented halls or members’ living rooms for a floating zendo with sesshin conducted in a ramshackle, drafty Episcopal retreat campus. One of my tasks when I was president of PZI was to find a site for a retreat center in the north country. I failed. I learned that the teaching is not dependent on the convenience of a fancy temple, but having a comfortable, reliable place to put down a zafu. In a very real sense, John more than any other teacher allowed me to disconnect from whatever ties to a cultural Japanese religion remained.

A marginal note, not meant to disparage any particular teacher, it seems that when I hold impermanence close and real, not becoming obsessed with real estate or dependent on income from student housing fees, my practice becomes more free and expansive. That might be just my experience. As I age, schlepping cushions up and down country roads has lost its Dharma Bums romanticism. However, holing up in cheap rooms in a gentrifying ghetto might even lead Roshi to becoming a Grumpy Old Man. Some facts of life are inescapable.

I am grateful to the many Buddhist teachers who have done everything they’ve done to plant dharma seeds here in the West. In my estimation all the teachers I mentioned above deserve the revered title of Roshi. Each very willingly shared their meditation experience. Each was unique, some even quirky truth be told, but I revere their teaching. They helped me in ways I didn't expect. They made a difference in my life, and I don’t know if they were enlightened.

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No one is perfect. Richard Baker with his knack for envisioning and accomplishing huge projects could have done things better. He admits it, and it is even possible that had he the chance to redo a few things, he might entertain the prospect. But owing to the nature of karma, that is not going to happen. And so there are stories and conversations that saddle us on the one hand with the myth of “Super Roshi,” he who can keep the coffers full, invent delicious yet simple foods for the sangha’s table, procure awesome religious art for the zendo, interest important and influential people in the possibility of Zen, deliver talks that inspire as well as calm emotional storms and say the perfect turning word at the exact moment required. For contrast or in opposition is the “Teacher of No Rank.” There are several versions of this I’ve heard over the years, but the one I chose to poke gentle fun at here is the “Lady in Sneakers,” a Miss Marple Roshi who lets the path take whatever twists and turns are in the cards, all the while quietly and stealthily watching out for Truth, Justice and the Buddha Way. (And of course never getting involved in any sexual intrigue).

Although I had to pick and choose from my heap of memories to create this SNL Zen sketch, each of the characteristics I highlight I’ve overheard in Zen centers. I confess to making up the character of the “Super Roshi,” but the “Lady in Sneakers” comes from a dharma talk by a woman who has received transmission. I intended for them to be funny, but blog posts don't allow for hearing feedback chuckles. These myths are also the stuff that fuels expectations. We’ve all heard some variations of these myths, and I submit that they stand in our way as much as “Transmitted Enlightenment Roshi.”

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One renowned teacher described the task of planting Buddhism in the West like “holding a lotus to a rock” (also the title of another piece by James). I hold that it ain’t necessarily so. Even if disguised as a koan or a fragment of poetry, what does the feigned impossibility of a project do other than inflate the person doing the work? To be fair, it might point to the difficulty of the task, but I’ve done the work, not perfectly by any means but it got done. I’m just an ordinary guy, and my mistakes will keep me in that category, but I know that it’s not impossible. It’s not heroic. It’s just a task that the dharma requires, a task the world sets in our path.

Buddhism is Buddhism, and Zen is a particular flavor. It is as Bodhidharma pointed to, a transmission outside the scriptures. We trust our practice to guide us, but first it directs us to go deeper and dig for real solutions to all the problems that we didn’t even realize we had. Maybe they are problems that we only imagine that we have. Maybe the solution is there already and will find us. It all began for me when I started to contrast Super-Roshi with the Buddhist Lady in Sneakers, but I made those up.

I also know that we can do this. With apologies to Bobby McFerrin, I will close with a tune that Issan used to hum with a little sing along ,“Don’t worry. Be happy. Do the best that you can.” He sang while he was creating a way for Buddhists to continue to practice until they took their last breath...He did that while he was taking his last breaths. Remarkable.