Food for the Moon

August 6th, 2022

In August 2019, after I learned that Father Bob Ochs had died, I tried to acknowledge my enormous debt to him. He brought the teaching of the Enneagram to some very hungry Catholic religious whose sputtering religious practices were on life support, me among them. I tried to recount as carefully as I could the story of his post-Enneagram years when I wrote about the Jesuit transmission of the Enneagram. I will revisit some of them here. Last night, a friend who was peripherally involved in the beginning of SAT and the whole Berkeley New Age psychic scene told me that Susan Diordoni, Bob’s longtime companion, died of cancer. I now feel free to tell a less edited, much sadder story.

Gurdjieff used the term “Food for the Moon” to describe some of the process of awakening and becoming a true person of the Way as if it were organic digesting and processing esoteric teaching. We, all our living and dying, become food for the moon. The process of shedding our old beliefs and habits of perception is akin to consigning this dead weight of the alleged mysterious powers of the moon: the relentless, predictable ebbing and flooding of the tides control the shifts and flow of our ingrained emotions, thoughts, inclinations, and mindsets. I heard Naranjo use “Food for the Moon” pejoratively several times to refer to a person who begins the work and, for whatever reason, just doesn’t have the stuff it takes to see it through to a successful conclusion, whatever that means. (This mystical moonshine talk offers some clues about the exclusionary tendencies of cults).

Bob Ochs was a respected member of SAT 1, the first group that gathered around Naranjo after he returned from Arica and began to teach. Ochs, along with Charlie Tart, had the highest recognized level of academic training of all the group members. He was a professor at a prestigious Jesuit seminary with a degree from one the best Universities in France. I never asked Bob how he came to know Naranjo or what drew him to the group, but when we met at the beginning of the second year of that exploration, Naranjo had already delegated him to teach the Enneagram to groups of Jesuits, first at Loyola University in Chicago, and then at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. Naranjo told me unequivocally that he’d entrusted Ochs to be his emissary, to teach the nine personality fixations and guide people in discovering their own type and subtype. Only one other person shared this responsibility, Aubrey Lundgren; others had various teaching responsibilities within SAT, notably Reza Leah Schaffer and, eventually, Kathy Speeth, though their responsibility was limited to new SAT students in Berkeley.

In that first year, a lot would change the dynamic of teaching the Enneagram in the West. Naranjo trusted Ochs, and Ochs had a knack for teaching. His presentation of the ideas behind the Enneagram was engaging and provocative. He was genuinely interested in ideas, as you might expect from the exemplary Jesuit that he was. But other forces were at work that would revoke both Naranjo’s and Ichazo’s lock on this esoteric system.

Almost everyone who teaches the Enneagram outside Naranjo’s immediate circle owes some debt to Ochs for their basic understanding, the impetus of their investigation, the outline of the nine types and 27 subtypes, their books, their students and for teachers, their livelihood. I will name a few names, but it’s by no means complete. This group has its roots in what I have labeled the Jesuit transmission. Here is a partial list of the Enneagram teachers who are linked to Ochs as the source of their practice: Father Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Jerome Wagner at Loyola University in Chicago; Joanna Quintrell at the Journey Center in Santa Rosa, California; Sr. Suzanne Zuercher at the Institute for Spiritual Leadership at Loyola University; Father William Meninger of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass Colorado; Don Richard Riso, a former Jesuit, (d.2012) and Russ Hudson of the Enneagram Institute, Stone Ridge, New York; Paul Robb, S.J., the founder of the Institute for Spiritual Leadership; Tad Dunne, S.J.; Maria Beesing; Robert Nogosek, C.S.C.; Patrick O'Leary. Father Mitch Pacwa, S.J., a very vocal opponent of the Catholic adoption of the Enneagram, was Bob’s student.

Helen Palmer also owes a debt to Ochs, which she may or may not have acknowledged, though it is not as direct as the people in Ochs's groups. She was not in Claudio’s SAT groups either, but she was practicing as a psychic reader in Berkeley at about the same time Naranjo’s groups were forming. She did readings with almost every member of the early SAT group, often multiple sessions. It was in large part through these readings that she became aware of the Enneagram and got a taste of the system’s power. When I did a reading with her almost 50 years ago, one of her first questions was about my fixation on the Enneagram. I also know she had access to some of our private notes about Naranjo’s Enneagram presentation and extensive notes from Ichazo’s 1968 talks at the Institute of Applied Psychology in Santiago, Chile. Ochs had a hand in delivering some of these materials into her hands.

This is a good jumping-off point to describe the start of the Enneagram Wars, which also marked the beginning of Ochs’s estrangement from Naranjo. The flood of Enneagram books had started before Palmer’s creation and popularization of the “kinder, gentler,” more saleable Enneagram. When I researched and compiled my Enneagram Bibliography a few years ago, there were over 150 books and studies, a huge number for such a recondite discipline. In less than two decades, more than 100 separate practitioners, experts, and authorities, claiming some insight, led groups and individuals on an inner exploration. The armies were assembling.

You know that you are on an intellectual battlefield when, after a Google search on the origins of the Enneagram, the “Let’s set the record straight” articles appear first. I’m not going to enter that fray. Have at it. Hope y’all have fun. The main battle, the Waterloo, was the lawsuit that Ichazo brought against Palmer. Again, I am not going to put on soul armor and take sides other than to point out that there had to be some monetary upside to winning or losing to justify the enormous costs of any litigation. My interest here is the casualties resulting from friendly fire.

As various leaders and teachers waged battle about the authenticity and effectiveness, the “truth” of their particular take on the teaching, whether it came from Pythagoras, the Sufis, or some Egyptian cult, Naranjo knew that he’d lost control. And because many of the people who had forged their versions and adaptations of the teaching he’d stolen or received from Ichazo had been Ochs's students, Naranjo stopped taking Ochs's phone calls. Although very clearly in the Naranjo camp, Ochs was ostracized.

At this point in my life, I took a clear break from any investigation and controversy. I had a host of personal reasons for my hiatus, among them caring for people dying from HIV/AIDS, but I had no personal stake in the negotiated settlement. Everybody was to lay down their weapons, carry on, and do what they’ve been doing. No one was going to corner the market for the Enneagram. The command was to leave the final judgment to the Archangel Metatron when he settles all disputes among the lesser inhabitants of the heavenly realm.

After several years hiatus, Bob and I met. I was overwhelmed by what had become of my vibrant friend. He had given up his position on the faculty of the Jesuit school, stopped seeing most of his friends, and was living in a small, Spartan, nearly windowless basement apartment in a modest suburb a few miles from the epicenter of the Enneagram Wars. His only regular visitor was Susan Diordoni. Bob was not the first heterosexual Jesuit to seek a deep emotional connection with a woman. I do not know (or care) if he maintained his vow of celibacy, but I am happy that he at least had some comfort and companionship.

He and I had started to separate from regimented Jesuit life when we shared a floor in the faulty residence at the American Baptist Seminary of the West in 1973. He, however, was a priest, 14 years my senior, and had no possible means of outside support. He chose to remain within the institutional framework. I did not. He received a modest stipend and tried to justify his seclusion as work on a book. His superiors, with some recognition of his contribution to the Jesuit enterprise, did not press him to produce.

While the people whom Ochs had trained were writing, advertising, going to conferences, producing, and leading trainings that cost thousands of dollars, he was living on a few hundred dollars a month and struggling to write. He felt that he still had something to say. I will rephrase that—he felt an obligation to say something as one of the first proponents of the system. He may have also been jealous of the money his one-time students were making on “the gravy train,” but that was never his primary focus, and ultimately he would be unsuccessful. He was an Enneagram One, and the burden of trying to frame his thoughts against the conflict of the Enneagram wars proved impossible. He could never persuade himself that he’d successfully argued his case. There would be no book, but his efforts came with all of a One’s self-recrimination and doubt. Ironically, I remember that the analysis was based on typing some famous writers, but I could be conflating a couple of conversations.

He claimed he had almost no physical energy. He was eating a stringent diet whose contents and restrictions baffled me as much as they obsessed him. We only met at a Peruvian restaurant in the Mission in San Francisco because he could eat and enjoy several dishes on their menu.

Here, he told me about another obsession. He’d become infatuated with the work of Doris Lessing. “Infatuated'' is not too strong a word. Idries Shah had introduced Lessing to Sufi teachings, and she was also apparently interested in the Gurdjieff school. I do not know whether she worked with any of Gurdjieff’s longtime English students, but she was conversant with “the Work '' and its alleged connections to ancient Sufi orders. The link here is twofold: Ochs was as obsessed with discovering Enneagram’s esoteric roots as he was frustrated in his attempts to create what he considered an adequate language to describe the teaching.

He also told me about corresponding with Idries Shah, claiming that letter writing was a revered spiritual instruction among Sufis. After Shah died in 1996, Ochs tried to initiate a correspondence with Shah’s son Tahir because Ochs was sure he had been designated as his father’s spiritual heir. When Tahir replied that he was a writer, not a Sufi teacher, that his father had not designated him to teach, and that he was not interested in the job. Ochs said, “He’s supposed to say that. It’s his job to put me off.”

I tried my best not to be put off by Ochs’ increasing reclusiveness, but eventually, I gave up waiting for him to return my phone calls. Looking back, I do feel some remorse for not persisting. But I also ask myself, after the truce was called in the Enneagram Wars, where were any of his former students? Did you play any role in his life? Did he shut you out? I didn’t have a lot of contact, so I don’t know if you visited, called, or offered support, but I do know that he was not included in your conferences; he was not invited to speak or write an article. I’m not suggesting that you should have included him as an obligation, like inviting a cantankerous uncle to Thanksgiving dinner, but because he had something to contribute. You missed out, yes, you, narrow-minded, parochial, greedy, war-mongering Enneagram enthusiasts. He dedicated his life, every waking minute, to making the possibility of human freedom real. If you don’t do that in all your life, relationships, and work, you’re just food for the moon.

Finally, this Midwesterner who’d learned French and earned a degree in Paris, a man who’d introduced Gurdjieff, Ichazo, Naranjo, and the Enneagram to Catholic religious, a man who’d struggled to make his own mystical experience available to others, returned to Michigan to die at a Jesuit house dedicated to the French priest who’d promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus—no food for the moon, but rather a full circle.

More Enneagram Posts:

Why choose to work with the Enneagram?

Connecting G.I. Gurdjieff with Naranjo’s Enneagram

Claudio Naranjo’s first SAT Groups in Berkeley

The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram

Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo in Berkeley

The Enneagram, the Final Reckoning, Banishment to the Darkness of Ignorance

Enneagram Bibliography

Roshi Ignatius on Planting Buddhism in the West

Planting Buddhism in the West

The early Jesuit model might be something to explore because it matches the scale of our project--creating a new cultural model, even a revolutionary one, for Buddhism in the West. It captures the enthusiasm for change, along with the scholarship and spiritual discipline required for creating new forms.

With due respect to Ignatius, who inspired the Jesuits’ operation, some other dynamic kicked in that created a genuine spiritual movement, one that would be derailed at various points by the normative Roman ecclesial culture of the day, but still persisted. I am not suggesting that we should expand the list of Jesuit Roshis, much less appoint a Father General Roshi to spearhead the endeavor, but I do want to at least examine the foundational tasks the Jesuits undertook.

There is a saying among Catholic religious, “Our founders had visions. Their disciples built hospitals.” Creating a vibrant, sustainable Buddhist culture will take time, money, and a lot of organization, but most of all, it will take talent and inspiration, the kind of religious pride that the Irish used to build Saint Patrick's or the spiritual and intellectual discipline that the Jesuits used to found Georgetown, the first Catholic University in America.

The Catholic, mostly Irish experience of planting the Roman Church in the New World was a European tradition of arriving in the New World along with European immigrants. It is different from an Asian practice taking root on foreign soil among people who do not share any cultural or family ties. Saint Ignatius parish may not easily translate into a small local Buddhist temple, but the Jesuits did far more than just lend their founder’s name to a parish church.

The Jesuits based their success on a few simple operating principles. I have outlined the ones that I think were important, but I am certainly open to hearing other points of view.

Service based on need

This may be a bit of a stretch to get “service based on need” from the Jesuits’ organizational principle that they would go wherever the Pope wanted them to go, and do whatever he directed (commanded), but bear with me. This was not always done by fiat, but with dialogue, needs assessment, manpower, as well as securing the money. Less than a year after the Jesuit Constitutions were approved by Paul the Third in 1540, Francis Xavier, one of the first companions of Ignatius, boarded the Portuguese warship Santiago bound for Goa. This unleashed a series of important historical firsts in the history of religion. More Jesuits quickly followed Xavier into Asia with their particular skill sets. In a relatively short time there were the first Indo-European dictionaries for several Indian languages, Tibetan, and Japanese; the first translations of the Gospels; the first encounter between Christians and Zen Buddhist monks; the first attempt at crafting Christian rituals in Chinese; the first seminaries in Asia; the first Christian congregations in Japan and China.

Dictionaries, translations, rituals, contact with local religions, all within a generation. Enlisting the assistance of the US or a European navy, No. Churches, check. Seminaries, partial check, after a fashion. These efforts are ongoing, but substantial progress has been made, all within the first generation of Western Buddhists.

Scholarship & Inquisitiveness

Back in Europe, the Jesuits began to marshal their considerable intellectual force to combat the Protestant Reformation (a dubious initiative in the eyes of some, but a response to the times). With their openness to the new humanistic scholarship, they attracted some of the best minds from universities but not so much from existing monastic colleges. As a matter of fact, they started to develop an alternative “ratio studiorum*.” Although heavily doctrinaire, mostly as a formulation for the Counter-Reformation that they would lead, it still laid the foundation for Jesuit scholarship and universities that would help shape the intellectual backbone of the Enlightenment.

Their scholarship forged institutions and a line of inquiry that yielded profound results.

A crop of bright, intelligent Buddhist scholars, thoroughly trained in Buddhist philosophy, linguistics, epistemology, and hermeneutics, check. Again, within a generation. This scholarship is not limited to Zen Buddhism. A huge area of inquiry has been Tibetan practices. Sometimes, Zen scholars and Tibetan scholars talk to one another when they have to. But the parochialism remains parochial. I will have more to say about Zen “our wayism,” when I draw my tentative conclusions.

Seeking common ground & Communication

Francis Xavier began a famous conversation with a Zen Roshi, whom he calls “Ninxit,” (whom I've traced to an actual Roshi, Ninjitsu, the abbot of the Zen Temple, Kinryu-zan Fukushoji). We can read about the encounter in Xavier’s letters to Ignatius; he describes Zen meditation practice in some recognizable detail, at first with admiration and then, when he put on his missionary hat, with an eye to finding the weak points for polemical debate.

Beginning with Father Enomiya-LaSalle, S.J, followed by several more Jesuits and religious sisters, an Episcopal priest, and Unitarian and Church of Christ ministers, there are fully trained Zen teachers with feet firmly in both Buddhist and Christian religious traditions.

The hallmark of this unprecedented exploration, coupled with a zealous missionary effort, was communication. Given the technology of the day, there were problems. Delivery of Xavier’s letters to Ignatius took at least 6 months, even aboard the fastest Portuguese caravel. Brother Tom Marshall, a great Zen adept and the archivist for the Jesuit California Province, told me about his discovery exploring the archives at the Gesù in Rome. Father Nobili had decided to follow the 49s to California; the letter from Father General ordering him to establish a mission for indigenous tribes in the Northwest arrived after he had accepted the invitation of the Bishop of Monterey to establish a college at the old mission of Mission Santa Clara de Asís. If the internet had been around in 1851, Santa Clara University would not be.

Communication also involved careful observation of the people with whom they interacted. In the 17th century, a whole new field of ethnography flourished from places as far afield as Tibet and the cultures of Central America.

Friends who have worked with teachers in Japan tell me that there are Rinzai priests who have never had a serious conversation with a Soto monk. If that is the baseline, the communication between the various schools in the West is revolutionary. There are students with experience in all the major schools of Zen, plus some training with Tibetan and vipassana teachers, even if our leadership remains somewhat parochial, given the amount of time and effort required to become fluent in the particular practice.

Seeking common ground, check. Without, for the most part, any polemical, doctrinal conversion motivations. Check plus+!

Mobility & adaptability

The early Jesuits pledged to poverty, chastity, and obedience, which helped their mobility, and with the generous support of European colonial powers to be sure, traveled to the ends of the earth. Within the first generation, Jesuits had traveled and settled in Japan, China, India, Tibet, Africa, and North and South America. Siberia would have to wait until 1814 and Australia until 1848. Even with a fair amount of philanthropic support, Zen teachers and their relatively small communities have been restricted to the major university hubs in the West as well as several well-heeled retirement communities where aging Buddhist boomers go to watch the setting sun. The mobility of our mostly middle-class senior teachers is restricted by the economic realities of middle-class life. The few attempts to foster meditation practice in marginal communities have fizzled out. I have personal experience with two.

No pass. I don’t know how or if this situation will change. Buddhists cannot print their own money. The real costs of establishing and funding practice centers are a luxury for people struggling to put food on the table.

Education, including Developing Spiritual Leadership

The Jesuits created and staffed their new Colleges to educate the sons of the elite class. They also founded a series of houses of formation for the spiritual education of their own leadership. They also changed the system for educating the ordinary clergy. In the current Zen model, again coming from the Japanese teachers who founded the first practice centers, and the resources available to them, any formal Buddhist education, sutra study, ethics, philosophy comes mixed in with meditation practice.

We don’t have the numbers to support institutions such as the Rinzai Hanazono or the Soto Komazawa Universities. Western students cannot go to Japan without fluency in the Japanese language. There are more than a few Western Zen students who have done serious work in Buddhist studies, but their numbers haven’t reached the critical mass required to staff a university, even if the other necessary support systems were in place. Here, where I live in northern India, all Buddhist education takes place in monastic colleges. There are a few auxiliary programs for Westerners, some taught in English, but for the most part, advanced training requires proficiency in Tibetan; one I am familiar with, The Lotsawa Rinchen Zangpo Translator Program, focuses on training translators for the geshes who teach in Europe, the US, and South America.

There are excellent Buddhist study programs at Emory, the University of Virginia, Harvard, and Stanford, just to name a few. However, it is a huge commitment of time and money to undertake this level of academic training as well as, for example, mastering the koan curriculum. I know only one or two people who have done both and lived to tell the tale. Most people I know on the academic scholarship side perhaps have a sitting practice, but they’re not on a Zen teacher track. Because university teaching positions for Buddhist scholars are limited and highly competitive, practitioners who opt for an academic degree are more likely to slip into a mindfulness based psychology program such as California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) where “right livelihood” career opportunities have a higher pay scale. One of the few Buddhist Universities in the United States, Naropa in Boulder, has adopted a similar program as one of the main economic engines of their enterprise.

The Institute of Buddhist Studies, a Jodo Shinshu Seminary, is the only non-Christian graduate school in Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. The ethnic Buddhist Churches of America have been in decline and face a shortage of priests. The enrollment at IBS must be low also as they have only a dean and 4 core faculty on staff, one of whom heads a chaplaincy program, non-denominational chaplains becoming a career opportunity for serious practitioners. I went to IBS as a special student, hoping to fill in the gaps in my understanding of Buddhist texts, philosophy, and epistemology. Although modest, it became an expense I could not manage while struggling with my career in a small non-profit.

Education and Development of Spiritual Leadership get non-passing marks in our examination of the core operating principles for aiding and abetting a spiritual revolution. Most serious Buddhist practitioners know the problem, but good solutions have not yet appeared. Part of the reason is that it takes time, energy, and money. Most centers are independent, small operations that struggle financially to begin with. Systematic, careful analysis of the texts and their commentaries and the history of the spread of the teaching is not seen as critical. Offer a Tuesday night class reading the latest book promoted in Tricycle. Handled. The Zen emphasis on immediate experience also leaves the troublesome side effect of an anti-intellectual bias, which is not helpful. And finally there is a “Our Way” parochialism and rivalry, not just for example, between Tibetan and Pureland schools, or Zen schools that include koan study and those that emphasize sitting practice, but also between teachers whose teachers were Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai or Burmese.

If we are to make progress on this front, the New Buddhist Universal University has to cut through these barriers and be non-sectarian in the broadest sense; it has to develop innovative programs that are affordable and available to people who work, practice, and perhaps even have family obligations; the programs have to be basically in English or Spanish, with as little academic jargon as possible; the courses have to be developed and taught by Buddhist practitioners who have the highest level of academic professional training. I know that the elements for a solution exist. They just haven’t been assembled in the workable form.

Forgive me for mixing Francis Xavier and the Jesuits into the recipe. I don’t think that the title Roshi comes with a Ph.D. or vice versa. Roshi also doesn't mean Saint, not even in the lost usage.

______________

*The Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu, often abbreviated as Ratio Studiorum, was a document that standardized the globally influential system of Jesuit education in 1599. It was a collection of regulations for school officials and teachers.

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.

______________

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, has left us a legacy. We’re already a generation away from our Asian teachers; a whole new generation of homegrown American and European teachers has 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.

______________

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 its 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 the 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 the Pacific Zen Institute were 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 teaching is not dependent on the convenience of a fancy temple, but rather on 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 freer 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 become 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.

______________

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.”

______________

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bamboozled

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

In the middle of the night in 1968 in Oakland, California, Bob Hoffman was awakened from a deep sleep by the discontented ghost of his former shrink, Siegfried Fisher. Dr. Fisher, as Hoffman always called him, stood at the end of his bed and revealed to him a key piece of psychological insight that had eluded his mentor, Sigmund Freud, and the entire Viennese school: “Everyone is guilty and no one to blame.”

Thus was born the notorious concept of Negative Love and the "world famous" Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy; both have the dubious markings of revealed Truth, and Hoffman, the awakened Teacher—literally.

I listened to Hoffman’s psychic awakening tale many times, and although the basic outline never changed, I did manage to fill in some of the lacunae over my long association with him. For example, there is a lie embedded in the narrative—he confessed that he had been Fisher’s patient and not an old family friend or acquaintance from shul. That misinformation had been manufactured for marketing purposes, and Hoffman was a born salesman. But it never occurred to me to ask how his wife reacted to the whole affair. I think that they were still married at the time, but I don’t want to make any factual assertions without some evidence, so I can’t say if they shared a bed, and I don’t want to spoil the party with more misinformation. Did she even wake up? 

So how did a Jewish tailor with barely a high school education become a healer, a channel for this occult insight, coupled with powerful results of psychological investigation? Answer: the Spiritualist Church and, if you believe the proponents of the Hoffman Process enterprise, the gifts of a highly advanced, and compassionate, “intuitive,” the new moniker that has become the cover for knowledge that mysteriously surpasses the hard-earned therapeutic work of professional psychology. 

I chronicled as accurately as I could the creation of the “Process” as a psychological tool in “The Ontological Odd Couple—The Origins of the Hoffman Process,” and I tried to give everyone I interviewed a fair hearing. At the time, I imagined that I could resolve my long-standing qualms about Hoffman and his influence in my life by simply getting to the facts, but in fact, it only aggravated my personal pain. 

When my friend Stan Stefancic cautioned, “Remember that there's a lot of Claudio in the Process,” I thought long and hard to determine if Naranjo’s input was enough of a justification to accept Hoffman’s preposterous story. In a long rambling piece, Bob Hoffman, The First Encounter, I tried to understand why Naranjo took Hoffman to be some kind of modern-day shaman, and supported his work—I will not deny that Claudio did support Hoffman and tried to plant some professional practices in the Process. But it was a relationship fraught with jealousy on Hoffman’s part as well as a good deal of passive-aggressive behavior, all the while seeking Naranjo’s imprimatur. I asked myself the question, why do intelligent people believe nonsense, but again, I couldn't really find a good answer, nor in any way understand Claudio's infatuation with Hoffman.

 

To complicate the investigation, as if it were not already cloudy enough, Hoffman was a sexual predator. I had firsthand experience, and the effects of his abuse have lingered for decades. I tried to exorcise that demon by writing what became a long series of posts on my blog, beginning with Bob Hoffman—#GayMeToo. If the criteria for resolution is that I can forgive and forget, it has not been satisfied. At 77 I am resigned that his selfish and unethical behavior will be a trauma that I will carry for the rest of my life. I have given up looking for some reason why it happened. It makes no difference to me that he was a closeted, homophobic queer man and that it was a severe impediment to his happiness. It was. Yes, everyone is guilty, but I will continue to blame him. I have also given up trying to see some “wounded healer” motivation as a factor in his psychic therapy.  What’s the word? Bunk, as in complete nonsense.

So how was I bamboozled? When I read Henry Miller’s account of his experience just looking at a photograph of Madame Blavatsky, I understood him completely. Miller writes: “Now I don’t know if that had anything to do with what happened next, but I had a flash, I came to the realization that I was responsible for my whole life, whatever had happened. I used to blame my family, society, my wife . . . and that day I saw so clearly that I had nobody to blame but myself. I put everything on my own shoulders, and I felt so relieved: Now I’m free, no one else is responsible. And that was a kind of awakening, in a way.”

In October of 1973, I had such an awakening over several weeks of psychological investigation in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT group. It changed my life, and I will be forever grateful to Claudio for providing the platform for the experience. But I had the bad luck to have had Bob Hoffman standing in the room, shouting nonsense. That was almost 50 years ago. I gave the charlatan power over me, but damn it, I’ve taken it back. 

To the ghost of Bob Hoffman, if you’re still lingering around, there’s an open invitation to state your side of the story at the foot of my bed in my flat in the Himalayan foothills. It’s 12 and a half hours ahead of Oakland time, but if you can’t figure that out, Google has a nifty world clock application. 

Other Posts regarding Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

Bob Hoffman was a Lunatic, a Liar, a Criminal, & a Fraud

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

The Truth about Bob Hoffman

The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. 

It’s a cult, damn it. Nothing more

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman 

Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple 

An Unauthorized Death

Originally posted Tuesday, June 7, 2022

When Maylie Scott’s mother died at home in Berkeley, she called me. Apparently, after my stint at Maitri Hospice, I had the reputation as the go-to person for dealing with Buddhist death rites. Personally, I found the designation of hospice priest slightly uncomfortable. I had done my best to distance myself from any sacred ritual after spending several of my Jesuit years fussing over post-Vatican 2 updating. But as we say, that was my personal issue.

Actually, I made it up as I went along. I had to. I’d fallen into my role taking care of men dying from HIV without any formal hospice training. The crisis trained us all, often brutally. The same for taking care of the Last Things. If there was a handbook, it was untranslated or came with tons of cultural baggage. This is a story about some of what we did, why we did it, and where our hands were tied.

When Issan died, Steve Allen asked Kobun Chino Roshi to perform the exacting Soto ritual done at Eiheiji for their most revered priests. Kobun had served in an official capacity there, teaching ritual and chant. He himself had been well trained; his seemingly endless chanting was mesmerizing but certainly beyond our language ability, not to mention voice control. He could not train us. I drifted off and realized that it probably wouldn’t make any sense to translate it anyway. It was perfect for that moment, and that was enough. It had to be. Later, there were a few odd ceremonial gestures, like pouring salt on either side of the doorposts, that I understood even less. The salt heaps seemed to be a Japanese superstition, perhaps to ward off marauding Yōkai. I didn’t want to believe that they had crossed the great waters with the Dharma, but I might be wrong.

Issan had arranged for his own cremation with the Neptune Society. We followed their car to the crematorium. It was a bare, ugly industrial space; the workers were dressed for work around the hot furnace. Though not disrespectful, it was utilitarian, which came into sharp contrast when Kobun, Philip, Steve, Shunko Jamvold, Angelique Farrow, David Schneider, and David Bulloch put on their formal Okesa. The usual work of burning bodies was interrupted by our chanting. I could see that this was outside the usual practice, and it cost extra. 

Steve and Shunko returned several hours before Issan’s body was reduced to ashes. Usually, the crematorium would grind any remaining bone fragments into a powder in what looked like a giant food processor before returning them to the next of kin. Steven had requested that Issan be spared this process so that he and Shunko could sift through his ashes with ceremonial chopsticks, looking for small gem-like fragments to keep as relics.

Several weeks later, there was an elaborate funeral at Zen Center. Hundreds of people gathered; Richard Baker Roshi, Issan’s teacher, was the head priest, but Kobun, as well as Mel Weitzman, Blanche Hartman, Norman Fisher, and Reb Anderson were also present. Towards the end, Richard Schober, the chair of Maitri and not a Buddhist, turned to me and said it felt like high mass for a bishop.

Between 1989 and 94 I was part of so many services for men who died in the hospice as well as others for Issan’s friends, that I lost count. Almost 90 men and one woman died during Maitri’s first years. I tried to school myself, attempting to discover an appropriate level of formal ritual. Issan, Steve, and Phil performed the Soto memorial service, which included food offerings and chanting, particularly the Daihi Shin Darani, an invocation for Avalokitesvara's compassionate intervention. There was also a period of spontaneous sharing about the person’s life and loves, something that Richard Baker may have added at San Francisco Zen Center. Several times, I helped gather a minyan so that we could recite Kaddish, and there was one Roman Catholic Mass in the zendo. On at least four occasions, Issan, Steve, or Phil performed Tokudo for men who wanted to join the sangha and shave their heads before they died.

The Book of the Dead

In 1989, at Lone Mountain College, I attended a teaching on the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö, coupled with the bardo initiation. Only six to eight of us attended all the teachings. The lama sat on a high throne in the neo-Gothic chapel for three-hour sessions twice a day for three days. Despite all this formality, he was very approachable, answering questions in an informal, personal way. I remember a long argument he had with an animated, forceful Jewish woman who said she could not forgive Hitler but felt she had to. Jamgön Kongtrül’s resolution, as I recall, was if the Talmudic-leaning woman could stop harming herself, no matter what she wanted to hold onto, opinions and positions would inevitably fall away.

When on the evening of the last day, the time came for the empowerment of passing through the bardo, the audience swelled to overflowing, mostly gaunt men with HIV. I knew in my heart that many of these men were engaged in some kind of magical thinking. The fear of death was palpable. Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö performed the ritual in the manner of someone steeped in tradition. Perhaps death’s sting had not dissipated by the last chant, but if the pain of the men who lined up for his blessing was even slightly mitigated, it was a success. In my own life, the sting would linger for years, a kind of survivor's guilt. Along the way, ritual became less important, though it did not entirely vanish.

Normally, an initiation ends with some practice instruction. On that last evening, Jamgön Kongtrül concluded with a plea for everyone to live their lives as fully as possible for however many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years remained. He said that would be the best practice; that bardo practice was noticing what happened in the “in-between” gaps in our experience. Many of these men would be dead in a few months. His instruction was a kind gesture of compassion.

Joshi, Kennett Roshi, and bending the law to death’s favor

Paul Joshi Higley was the first Zen priest in the community to die after Issan. He was one of two men and one woman that Issan ordained. Paul had been a student of Chogyam Trungpa and had completed some level of Shambhala Training. He came to the hospice with a six-month life expectancy and lived for nearly two years. He became part of our community and a friend of mine. In his late 30’s, dying of AIDS, he had a strong will to live fully. Determined to take full advantage of anything that medicine could provide during that first terrible decade of the epidemic, he didn’t die in the hospice but at Garden Sullivan Hospital out on Geary Ave after an experimental treatment.

The hospital called early in the morning, perhaps 1 AM. I’d promised Paul that his body would not be embalmed and that it would remain undisturbed for at least three days before cremation, but I was not at all prepared to find a way to transport a dead body from a hospital back to what looked like an ordinary San Francisco house in the dead of night. In those days, the hospital afforded you 4-6 hours to have a funeral service to pick up “the remains.” I called Paul's father, who met me at the hospital and provided the signature required for the release of his son’s body. Then I had to convince a tiny African-American mortuary to transport his body to “a Temple.” This was not entirely a fiction, as Maitri was still part of Hartford Street Zen Center, but it was pushing the limits. It was against the law for a body, certainly an unembalmed body, to remain in an ordinary house, not a licensed funeral home, for three days.

We returned Paul’s body to his room at Maitri between 4 and 5 AM. I began to wash it carefully with sweet tea and a few drops of alcohol added, the astringent to help seal the pores; then I inserted some cotton balls into his anus. He’d been my friend, so this was both a labor of love and extremely difficult. Issan once told me that in the time of AIDS, we were at war, and the ravages of Paul's last struggle with the virus were visible on his body. I imagined that I was washing them away. It was sunrise when finally Paul’s body, properly dressed, lay undisturbed in his room, dominated by a huge Tibetan-style shrine. I turned and saw the last calligraphy that he’d done on large pieces of fine paper hanging on the wall. They read “Yes, Yes, Yes.”

Over the next three days, friends, family, and admirers came and went. It was a kind of Buddhist wake.

Phil sent me to Jiyu Kennett Roshi’s Selling water by the river: A manual of Zen training, to review what she wrote about a priest’s funeral. Together, he and I sketched out the full ceremony, where everyone would stand, the placement of the altar table, the food offerings, and the order of the chanting. Phil was a Soto priest performing the cremation ceremony of a Soto priest. He wanted to make sure that we omitted no part of the ritual performed in the crematorium in Emeryville.

Paul had kept $25 dollars in his pocket to pay for his cremation. After the ceremony, we used it to buy lunch in a Japanese restaurant. It didn’t quite cover the entire bill.

What did we keep?

A few appropriate words!

After all my experience and hard-won lessons, I might expect to be able to say something definitive about The Last Things. I cannot. As far as ritual, the first thing that comes to mind is Aitken Roshi’s counsel to Joel Katz, Ken MacDonald, and me when we carried Dan Dunning’s ashes to a long boat at Queen’s Surf to be spread out beyond the reef. The Old Man said, “A few words would be appropriate.” Dan had been a dear friend for years. As I took the lid off the urn, I mumbled, “I loved you immensely, and I’ll miss you immensely.” Joel and Ken saved the day. They chanted the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, banging rhythm on the gunwale as we rode the waves back to shore. I’m sure Dan loved that professional musicians did the honors, especially since he’d seen Phantom half a dozen times.

Washing the body

Frank Ostaseski taught me the practice of washing a body for the final time. It is an intimate gesture of love and respect. It is also a difficult practice. When not left to morticians or hospital nurses, it can be an act of friendship. It is also a physical act, reminding us that death is real. Thank you, Frank.

Don’t touch anything for a while

I had a Japanese friend whose partner died of AIDS. Yoshi wanted to keep the man’s body undisturbed for three days. He bought all the dry ice available in his small Marin town. Early on, we decided that Maitri should also allow a resident’s body to remain untouched for three days. Cultural conventions certainly did not influence me, nor do I have any particular beliefs about the soul traversing to a nether world, but I did sense that trying not to interfere with a natural process was probably a good thing, akin to not interfering with the natural process of thought in meditation. 

I certainly wanted to be respectful. Working in the hospice, I'd become keenly aware of a delicate balance between pushing to get something done and leaving things alone. Although it may feel like a good idea for personal relationships to be as loving, complete, and even as robust as possible as death approaches, there may have been damage that requires more healing time than what’s available. On the other hand, having a formal will in place as well as written instructions about funerals, etc., is something that has a definite time frame. Sometimes I had to push through denial and procrastination to get papers signed. Thankfully, I had the assistance of highly trained social workers from Visiting Nurses and Hospice.

But more of a problem was the legality of not removing a body immediately. The law required that we not keep a body more than 24 to 48 hours without refrigeration or embalming. Luckily, I found a funeral director who helped with the legal forms, the death notice so that we could keep a body in the hospice for as long as possible. After some experience, we realized that though we didn’t need dry ice, we did need a lot of ventilation. We always seemed to be pushing the limits.

One of the social workers called it “lying in state” when she would ask patients how they wanted their bodies treated after they died. Many, if not most, chose our Buddhist wake. Their friends did come by. It always took its own form. Sometimes there was chanting or some spiritual practice, but it didn’t have the religious formality of visiting hours with the obligatory rosary of my upbringing. Most of the men in the hospice would have rejected that anyway. In almost every case I can remember, it just seemed to fit.

As I sat with many bodies, I began to notice that dying is not instantaneous. Like any process of saying goodbye, life doesn’t just end when the breath stops. It’s not like walking out and closing a door. The legal definition of death may be that the heart no longer beats, but hair and fingernails continue to grow. The skin seems to continue to breathe. Bodies actually change. Over the course of several days, I could actually see life taper out. I was not imagining something. It is a reality that I can no longer escape.

Full Circle

After Maylie Scott’s mother, Mary, died, I'm sure Maylie washed her body with love. Then she called several of us who’d been close to her mother during the last years of her life. We came and sat up with Maylie through the night. Three days later, she called the Neptune Society. Within the hour, they arrived, accompanied by two cops because there had been an “unauthorized death.” Maylie thought that her mother would have been very amused by the ruckus she caused.

Mary’s ashes are kept in the ancient Malling Benedictine Abbey south of London, where her other daughter, Sister Mary John, was the abbess. From Eiheiji, through Kaddish and The Book of the Dead, to a small Buddhist Hospice in San Francisco during the time of AIDS, and onto a small abbey of cloistered Anglican nuns. Perhaps a bit wobbly, but full circle. Life and death continue to circle on and on.

=