A Zen reflection on Yom Kippur

 

For years, I had been hanging onto my resentment towards a person who really did abuse me mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and sexually. Something had to be done.

Then a Zen friend asked a good question: “Is forgiveness an act of will?”

Psychologists define forgiveness as a conscious decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. It's a choice that allows a person to forgive another for an offense or act that was illegal or immoral. It is intentional. When a debt is forgiven, there is a release of any expectation or commitment to repay or compensate. When someone forgives someone, they let go of negative emotions. 

In terms of the law and psychotherapeutic practice, as well as perhaps even the Talmud, these definitions are helpful; however, as a Zen practitioner, I wondered if they went far enough. I’m going to posit forgiveness as a way to move beyond the past, in the sense that the trauma becomes a complete chapter of personal history without any lingering effects in one’s present, everyday life. I’ve set the bar quite high. But it is Yom Kippur today. Forgiveness is an act of God. It is a way to follow God. We all make mistakes. We all need forgiveness.

Some people define forgiveness as a command to forget the past and simply move on. I actually find that injunction extremely annoying. I’ve been told that I didn't have to condone the act, but I had to forgive to live fully and dispel the darkness, or something like that. My instinct tells me that if the past is not fully complete, part of being compassionate is to acknowledge what happened fully, rather than simply setting it aside. 

I also hate being told what’s in my best interest. Thanks for advice I didn’t request. But now that I’ve owned up to my off-the-shelf response, perhaps I can examine why I resist this blanket injunction to forgive. I want to decide when, what, and if to forgive. If the offense or event is not in the past because it’s not in the past, that’s a limit to simply declaring something ancient history. And suppose I’m being enjoined to dispel the darkness of past events that are blatantly evil and destructive. In that case, just dismissing them and their consequences under some command to “move on” is not particularly useful or helpful simply because it’s not honest. These are the sort of events that will inevitably repeat themselves.

My friend Susan Murphy, an insightful Australian Zen teacher, pointed to the story of Jesus at Capernaum when he healed a man whose friends lowered him through the roof of a house where Jesus was with some friends—the crowd so dense that this was the only way to get Jesus’s attention. Some version of the story appears in all three synoptic gospels.

The writers of the story clearly distinguish between two aspects of Jesus' healing. First off, Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven.” That’s the most important one: the man’s faith and that of his friends have caught the attention of Jesus, and he does what he was sent to do, forgive sins. But it is, after all a teaching story, so there are objections: scribes and Pharisees, at least rhetorically present, ask, ‘How can you forgive? That power belongs only to God.’ And here are the words Jesus responded with in Mark’s gospel: "Why are you thinking these things? Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up, take your mat and walk'? “ The man stands and picks up his mat, demonstrating Jesus’s power, but it also says, compared to forgiving sins, that was the easy part. In the blink of an eye, the past becomes the past.

Why the deliberate separation of two events or two sides of the same event? Forgiveness is an act of grace and God. In the story, the disappearance of the physical impairment becomes the past. Jesus is neither a charlatan nor a soothsayer nor a fake miracle worker; the act of forgiveness belongs to God alone. However, in most cases, depending on factors we cannot fully understand, there may or may not be a sought-after, usually magical physical cure. However, this nuance is usually left for a commentator or preacher to address at a later date.

This is Susan’s observation: “When Jesus told the paralysed man who had been lowered through the roof for a miracle, ‘Pick up your bed and walk,’ effectively he was acting not in the name of supernatural power but in the name of the forgiveness he was asserting he had a right to bestow. ‘Justice is mine,’ says the Lord. What I see here is that the true miracle was not the performance of a nature-bending act. It was forgiveness. He veered away from performing miracles after that. They were cheapening his teaching. . . . Forgiveness is surely the actualising of love.”

I just let a Zen teacher provide the midrash for a Jesus story, so now I’ll spin a Zen tale from the threads of the Gospel..

A small band of Zen monks carries a paralyzed brother to meet Jesus in Capernaum and get his blessing. Like the throngs of people I see in India lining up for darshan, they’re seeking some relief for their sufferings, but following their training, our Zen monks don’t have too many expectations. There, I’ve set the stage for a Buddhist encounter with Jesus. 

Their Zen training actually adds a lot of work. They have to carry their brother a long way from a distant Eastern ashram. Then they find the materials and tools to fashion a ladder to get up to the roof. They certainly can’t steal one. After determining where Jesus was sitting, they carefully cut an opening in the ceiling, not hurting anyone in the room with falling debris. Each one of these actions is deliberate, requiring planning and effort. The work is performed as carefully and mindfully as possible. They’re monks after all. I didn’t mention that they might also have to learn Aramaic, but there’s already enough to do without that, so let’s throw in the magical appearance of a good interpreter.

Somehow they climb down into the presence of Jesus with the brother they’ve just lowered in a sling, and hear, “Your sins are forgiven.” 

They also hear the Pharisees' question: “Doesn’t forgiveness of sins belong to God?” "Good question," they say, and the dharma combat begins. The Pharisees are the fall guys in the Gospel stories, but not for our Zen monks: What is forgiveness of sins exactly? What is there to forgive? Are a misstep or an evil act the same? These monks live by the Law of dependent origination, Paticca-samuppada. Something in their brother’s past resulted in his paralysis. At least in that regard, on the surface, although Jesus does not talk about any cause for the man’s affliction, there seems to be a tacit acknowledgement that it was the result of something in his past, his sins. In Zen they were taught to chant: “All my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind. I now fully avow.” 

I promised therapy. Here is an examination of the mental results of past events.

I recognized my personal connection to this Jesus story, and I thank Susan for providing the context for me to work into. I am the paralytic lowered through the roof. Among my sins were sexual dysfunction and frustration; there was alcohol and substance abuse; there were the silly issues with partners that popped up—when I managed to find someone willing to put up with my defensiveness. I would have certainly preferred to exit the dead-end process earlier. I can imagine the possibility of having time and energy to explore other avenues, but daydreams are most often nothing more than dreams.

And yes, I regret those lost opportunities. It is not difficult to be truly forgiving and compassionate when you really comprehend the pain of your own life. But expanding the story just a bit, it also applies to another person’s life. It seems to actually spring up naturally without effort or responding to a command to move on. And, in my case, it happened in its own course after I was willing to do the work of unraveling the complex story of my abuse.

Why do intelligent people believe nonsense? Because when we’re vulnerable and in pain, we need to experience compassion. The real answer to the question about "moving on" is that the compassion and forgiveness had to be for myself. And because I’ve opted for the Zen route, it was not like just falling through a hole in the roof or being lowered into a Blessed Presence. I traveled from afar with the help of companions, and I remained angry long enough to get to the heart of the matter. That was my good luck, at least for me, that route could not be short-circuited.

The hip New Age coffee house sage will tell you that not forgiving only hurts you. There’s no one to break but yourself, so why not “Move On”? By contrast, in legendary Zen, a deceptively ordinary lady at the tea stand doesn’t order you around. Instead, she asks a simple, innocent-sounding, straightforward question: “Hey, Mr. Paralytic, is that ‘not-walking-mind’ past, present, or future?” A good answer might allow you to step into the radical present. The past is past because it’s past; the future might exist in hopes and dreams, perhaps sadly colored with regret; the only place to walk into is this moment.

If there was a tea stand in Capernaum, you can bet that there were crowds like the ones surrounding Jesus. Zen is oftentimes a lonely practice, but maybe a few stragglers found their way there after Jesus had performed enough miracles for one day. They might be lucky enough to come armed with some good questions. That might take some work, work that’s still to be done, like finding a path to forgiveness.

In Zen, forgiveness is an act of will if you refuse to settle for an easy way out. Then the Blessed Presence thing just happens. That cannot be willed.

For Jon Logan, John Piane, Eddie Logan, Lilly Logan, and their families. In deep gratitude.

Looking for Faith, a Contrary position

I carefully read Ross Douthat’s New York Times article “Looking for Faith? Here’s a Guide to Choosing a Religion” several times. Though he is sympathetic, Douthat claims he’s not a card-carrying member of Opus Dei, but it seems certain that he is close to the right-wing Catholic apparatchiks who have seized control of the American Judiciary. Looking at his theological position in the article, I find little evidence to shake my conviction that he is an Aristotelian rather than a Christian as I understand the word.

I will frame my argument against him with the same non-denominational slant he espouses. He begins with an evocative description of a second-hand bookstore where long treatises by Dun Scotus were piled on top of Wiccan texts. There was a vegetarian restaurant attached. I lived in Berkeley at about the same time as Douthat was growing up there. I knew those bookstores well. He might have been describing Moe’s or Cody’s; I’ve been trying to remember the vegetarian restaurant. They were like our Dunhuang Caves, and I sympathize with his motivation. I’d just left the Jesuits with certain knowledge that the church to which I’d dedicated myself had no lock on the truth, but “[b]ut it’s harder, in a pluralist society, to pick just one religious option as more likely than all the others to be true.”

I will follow his line of argument. He proposes that all men and women, if they look deeply enough, have a basic need for some experience of transcendence and, thus, the need to rationally choose one of the basic religious formulations floating around in our universe. People are somehow less human if they neglect this basic need. And, not accidentally, he can help.

This is a lousy predicate floating on a raft of unproven assumptions.

Let me flesh out my argument by reframing it in the context of the current Super Bowl hoopla. We could posit that most humans need to get excited, eat hotdogs and cheese wizz, get caught up in a bit of national excitement, and root for a team. The evidence for this position is right in front of us. We might also extrapolate that this need is universal because sporty expressions ripple out into cricket, rugby, and even table tennis. If I can learn the basic rules of American football, turn on the TV, and watch a game, I might also admire some feats of physical prowess. Even if I do not find it very interesting, and I object to the high level of serious bodily risk involved, it could be argued that I have ticked enough boxes to support the claim that there is a basic human need to be “sportive.”

Almost two decades ago, I met an Australian Zen teacher, Susan Murphy, who is also an accomplished filmmaker, TV producer, and writer. It was an upsetting period of my life. I was struggling with my koan practice, and, not unsurprisingly, this was coupled with huge knots in my emotional life. I sat next to her for the final seven-day meditation retreat before she received her authorization to teach independently, a very powerful connection with her both as a Zen teacher and a human being, enough to travel down under for a few months to see if I wanted to uproot myself and figure out a way to live in Australia and work with her. 

She and her partner, David, lived in a Sydney suburb, a small town called Balmain. I jumped on a ferry near the famous opera house, and 15 minutes later, I was helping prepare dinner in their sprawling, comfortable home. 

David is a minister of the Australian Uniting Church and an academic whose specialty is religious cults. I liked him immediately. He was the pastor in Balmain, and his church was a coffee shop near the town center during the week and a congregational meeting hall on Sunday mornings. The arrangement appealed to my Yankee sense of thrift. I discovered that David’s actions were always close to his intentions. I stayed with them for perhaps a week in a small upstairs room until the flat I’d sublet closer to Oxford Street opened up. 

One evening, in a light-hearted conversation while cooking dinner, David asked, “Do you have a team?” I told him that I was not very interested in sports but that in San Francisco, I had followed the 49ers. He was firm, “You gotta have a team, mate.” If this were a condition for friendship, I did some research that evening and decided that I could back the Sydney Swans Australian football club. I liked their name and their logo. David approved of my choice. He thought that, at some point, we could go to a match together. 

On Sunday morning, I went down into the coffee house to help rearrange the furniture for the religious service. I was to be directed by a young Iranian immigrant who was in charge as much as anyone was in charge. He was extremely handsome. I suspected he was gay. He was clearly a newcomer to Christian worship, and his participation was as serious as it was studious. Over the next three months in Australia, I met at least a dozen other young gay Iranians. One cut my hair. He confirmed that there was a kind of underground railroad for gay men in danger of being executed in Iran. Australian denominations were allowed to sponsor men and women who faced persecution in their homelands. I am unsure of the exact way that gay men found welcoming congregations in Australia, but if they were able to book a flight out of Tehran and had the name and number of a sympathetic pastor when they landed, they would not be returned to the hangman’s noose. This checked one huge essential box of my subjective qualifiers for transcendental experience.

Over the next month, through Susan, David, and a Catholic religious who’d converted to Thai Buddhism and taken the Precepts, Bante Tejadhammo, I discovered a strong network of active Buddhists, all the flavors with lots of cross-cover, robust practices, and a very open and supportive gay sangha. I was asked to give a dharma talk about how Issan founded Maitri for a huge (to my mind) group of Zen practitioners at “The Buddhist Library” in Camperdown. That led to another talk for Bante’s group at the Sangha Lodge in another low-key Sydney suburb. The topic of hospice seemed to generate a lot of interest and enthusiasm, the kind that was looking for a project, and it was an overflow crowd. As I recall, there were well over a hundred people in attendance, including many ethnic Thai, Cambodian, and Vietnamese families, along with many gay men. Something that I’d never experienced in California.

Over the next few weeks, I met with several individuals and small groups who’d developed work proposals for hospice care. One man, an architect, had drawn detailed plans for a residential community in a remote location for individuals who were seeking a conscious death. Others were more community-based care, closer to home. All the plans, to my mind, were feasible with the right financial support. Everyone who came to see me was aware of this and looking for that extra push to help them realize their dreams. At this point, I began to realize that I did not have connections to the Australian resources that were required, but on a more fundamental level, I had worked with Issan founding Maitri but did not have his skill in guiding another’s practice when it came to living and dying, totally present and serving others. 

Sydney was also interesting as a thriving international hub of gay culture. I liked Oxford Street and the clubs, though there was a preponderance of very ordinary drag. The shows were not Priscilla, Queen of the Desert--more like Madge Makes Coffee with Complaints. I knew that there had to be a more intellectual and cultured gay life, but that would take time to discover. I developed a brief romantic fling with the lead singer in an ambient techno band that had just released a CD that shot up to number one in the local club scene. I had a few lovely, intimate experiences. Gay life seemed to be filled with rich possibilities. 

Back in San Francisco, my internet sleuthing uncovered an organization called the Sydney Gay Buddhist Sangha. I was on the steering committee of a San Francisco that shared the name. We met weekly on Sunday afternoons at the Hartford Street Zendo. I made contact with the Sydney group. There was a membership list, but it seemed to have faded due to a lack of leadership and a regular place to sit. Here was my chance to see if it were possible to develop a practice group closer to the heart of gay life rather than on the University of Sydney campus. At Hartford Street, the gay community welcomed straight friends. In Sydney, it was the other way around. This was perfectly OK, of course, but I wondered if there was a segment of interested gay people who might feel more included if the meditation hall were closer to the gay ghetto.

David told me that my team, the Sydney Swans, rented rooms to outside groups in their downtown clubhouse, a few steps from Kings Cross and Darlinghurst, Sydney’s Castro district. 

I forget who made the initial contact, but yes, they had a room for rent at a reasonable price and would be delighted to host a Sydney gay meditation group. They also invited us into the club's dining room for a buffet meal afterward for a nominal fee. They would be grateful if they had some idea how many would be eating. I didn’t press for vegetarian options. During the simple negotiations, I tried to imagine the San Francisco Giants opening their downtown headquarters to a gay meditation group. Even though English was a common language, I realized I was light years, or Kalpas, away from my cultural home.

I ran a small announcement in the local gay rag. We began our group there once a week, with about 10 people sitting. It was very egalitarian, without a dharma talk. Instead, I had some basic meditation instruction and time for sharing after two periods. I found one of the participants particularly annoying, so I considered it a win.

Now, I started to realize what David meant. I’d arrived at making some choices about my spiritual life, but not with Douthat’s Neoplatonic model. Instead, I was living my life and letting the traces of my choices leave a clue about its direction. I realized living in Australia would be too expensive, so I had to return to San Francisco.  However, I had learned that I needed a team. It is not an easy path. Although the alternatives seem more straightforward intellectually, they lead to a straight-jacketed position. Thank you, David.

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