Maitri Hospice, Ken Ireland, an Interview with Morgan Zo Callahan

8/12/2014

This is a draft of a chapter from a forthcoming book: A Thousand Arms: A Guidebook for Buddhist Leaders, edited by Danny Fisher and Nathan Michon.

I met Ken Ireland in 2002 after sitting in a Zen meditation group he led at the YMCA in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. He invited me to visit Maitri (Sanskrit for “compassionate friendship”), a hospice for people with AIDS in San Francisco. (www.maitrisf.org). In 1987 Maitri was founded in San Francisco’s Castro district by Issan Dorsey, a Zen priest, and several friends, among them Steve Allen and David Sunseri. “The Castro was a place for the gay revolution with its arts, its parties, its style and its joie de vivre, and Issan was part of these happenings. Then, in the early 1980s, AIDS started to appear and, at first, no one knew what to make of it.” (John Tarrant, Bring Me the Rhinoceros, p.77)  Issan Dorsey had been ordained a Zen priest in 1975. By 1980, he was part of an informal group of gay Buddhists, and was invited to become the head teacher at the Hartford Street Zen Center in the Castro. Issan was appointed abbot in 1989, and his teacher, Richard Baker Roshi named him a lineage holder: he became Issan Roshi. In 1987 Issan invited a homeless student dying of AIDS into the Zen center, and Maitri was born. Issan himself died from AIDS in 1990. (Cf. Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey by David Schneider)

I was impressed that Maitri was a warm, “at home” environment where both caregiver and patient deeply listened to each other. The ample kitchen had a signed, framed photo of Elizabeth Taylor who had visited, and encouraged the residents. Golden light danced on the fresh green plants in the hallways and communal areas. I was reminded of Camus: “The great courage is still to gaze squarely at the light as it is at death.” Maitri is the first Buddhist residential hospice in the U.S. Over more than 20 years Maitri has been the final home for more than 900 people with AIDS. This is from Maitri’s mission statement: “We strive to provide the type of care that each of us would like to receive at the end of our lives—care that is dignified, non-judgmental, and unconditional. We hold dear the principle that each resident has the right to determine the degree of choice and awareness with which to experience life and death.”

Issan and his friends, Ken among them, didn’t set out to found a Buddhist Hospice. Rather he was creating a way to respond to the deadly epidemic that was ravaging his community. He was also creating a place to practice with his own death fast approaching. The result was Maitri.

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Ken Ireland has practiced Buddhism for more than four decades, first with Master C.M. Chen, then Issan Dorsey Roshi and Philip Zenshin Whalen at HSZC. In 1994 he began koan practice with Robert Aitken, and continued with John Tarrant and David Weinstein. Ken was Maitri’s executive director from 1989 through 1993. He and his partner currently spend half the year in northern India with the community gathered around H.H. the Dalai Lama.

I first interviewed Ken more than 20 years ago. I have allowed him to let his words reflect how that experience has remained with him and changed him over the years.

Morgan Zo Callahan: Wonderful talking with you. Ken, how do you relate with someone who's dying?

Ken Ireland: The short answer is “as normally as possible.” But right away as soon as I began to live with people who had a grave diagnosis and who were very close to death, I noticed that their world, and by extension mine, was quite different. It is both slower and much more immediate. I saw theorizing fall away--intellectual considerations like “What's going to happen after death? Am I going to be around?” Conversations got real and something else came forward. I heard requests such as “I want to have my relationship with my family straightened out before I die. I want to make peace with my ex before I die. I want to die on my own terms.” Somehow, even when they seemed impossible, all of us who were part of Maitri tried to fulfill those requests. What we crafted was far from perfect, but life and living life to the end changed on its own accord.

MZC: Apart from the interpersonal relationships, how do you respond to the inevitable natural laws of the process of dying? How do you stay focused and mindful without expectations about how it is all supposed to be?

KI: As hard as we, in cahoots with our medical professionals, try to fight nature and stave off death, nature always wins. All I can do is try to stay present with that process. The body begins to shut down in its own way; physiological, mental, and psychological changes move into place and take over. We're also at the mercy of those processes. We may try to defend ourselves. We experience a variety of natural human reactions in the face of uncertainty, fear, grief, anxiety, but we have no real control. We will eventually have to give up that kind of control whether we want to or not. 

What I’ve seen over and over is that our normal reaction to postpone the inevitable proves useless. There’s no way out. There’s no tomorrow. I can only take care of my own mental state--an iffy job at best--but I just say to myself, okay, I'm with this particular person at this very moment. I've decided to be here. I've committed myself to be of service, to alleviate the pain, to ease the transition.

MZC: In what ways is your work a natural expression of your Buddhist practice?

KI:  I can’t lie and pretend that it was all hunky dory. Living through the AIDS epidemic, being with so many people, mostly gay men who were my age or younger, was extremely painful. From the point of view of my own cherished ideas about how things should be, it was an impossible task. But on the other hand, in terms of training, in terms of deepening my own meditation, and in terms of personal rewards, it was, and is, great practice.  

MZC: How were your teachers helpful in preparing you to engage hospice work?

KI: When I met Yogi Chen in Berkeley in the early 70’s, he introduced me to the meditation on impermanence and the suffering arising from clinging. In Tibet he’d lived for three years in the charnel grounds where dead bodies were brought to have vultures strip the flesh from their bones before they were gathered up. Very specially, highly trained practitioners undertook this practice. When I first became involved at Maitri, partially I’m sure to assure myself that I was not entirely crazy, I tried to tell myself that we were trying to adapt this practice for our times. (There’s always a need for practice manuals, I suppose, both as a record of the experience of our ancestors and a kind of reassurance that we’re on the right track.) But in time I gave that up, and realized that we were just responding to the circumstances of our lives in way that made sense and arose from our own practice.  I learned from Issan and the many people we took care of. They taught me to relate to humans in any circumstance with respect and love, getting out of the way as much as possible. Over the years I’ve noticed that the experience changed something in me in terms of my relationship to people, my own life, my growing older, the physical breakdowns of my body. It's not just acceptance, and certainly not resignation. It’s more like a transformation, a noticeable change in the air we breathe.

MZC: So meditations on impermanence and encounters in hospice have changed the way you live your life?

KI: I hope so. I am definitely not the same man who moved into Maitri and cared for more than 80 people who died.  I have the same questions that I had when I was a Jesuit: What are our lives about? What do we want to make our lives about? What do we want to do with our lives in the time that we have? How can I do something that's of value? But for me this is where my Buddhist practice comes in: I'm going to do something that aims to benefit all beings because I'm not alone in the universe. If I consider how I can really take care of a person in the way in which he or she would like while at the same time taking care of myself, the world becomes different. At least that was my experience. When the point is to be of service to somebody when they're at the end of their lives, then the question becomes something like, instead of avoiding the end of life, how does life become full and complete from beginning to end? The whole process is alive and well; it breathes and pulsates, as we breathe from beginning to end. 

MZC: One night I received a call at one o’clock in the morning; it was from a member of our school board who very desperately related to me that a Japanese gentleman, a devoted Buddhist, was dying; the family wanted to take the man off life support. I was asked to call the Rosemead Buddhist Monastery and come with a monk to the hospital.  I said, my gosh, it's one o’clock in the morning. But I said I'd do it. So I called the monastery; the monks were very upset at first. But it ended up that three monks happily went to the bedside, and chanted. “We transfer the effects of the good that we’ve done in our lives for whatever journey this dying person is going on.”

KI: That's what we do. The monks got out of bed to be of service to the family and dying person.  They sat with them, and chanted, performing the rituals of the end of life. They were present with him when all this was going on. It's a wonderful practice. 

Remembering my Dad, Kenneth Ireland, Sr.

Kenneth Lawrence Ireland, Sr.

Aug. 8, 1913 - May 20, 2014

My Father was a remarkable man, and he lived a long and truly blessed life. When he died on May 20th, he was almost a hundred and one years old, and I might have entirely missed knowing and appreciating him.

I have no idea where to begin, so many stories about my Dad’s intelligence, his impeccable memory, his endless curiosity and quick wit. His golfing buddies will testify how much he loved the sport and bridge partners will swear that he remembered every card played even when he was more than 100 years old. People will tell stories about his work ethic, his writing and stamp collecting. He was devoted to his family, our mother Lee, her sister Judy, his Dad, his brothers, our Uncle Donny and Rich, Uncle Chunk, his wife Freddy, and Bill, Don’s partner, his seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren as well as his many, deep friendships.

I want to share one memory that changed our relationship. It’s also about memories. On one of my first visits to Huntington Commons, in part to hide my trepidation about not having visited for a long time (I almost called it off and probably would not have made the trip without Ashish’s encouragement and support) plus my personal fears about not measuring up, I tried to start a fun conversation--reminiscing about growing up. 

We went back to the time when he was a young dad soon to have 4 kids, a new business, and the responsibility for an extended family that included our maternal grandmother, Nana, and mother’s sister, Judy, who was suffering from TB at a time when cure was far from certain. But our family life, thanks to both Mother and Dad, extended beyond those concerns.

Our parents had a close circle of friends, other young couples in Nichols. Bif and I went up and down Huntington Turnpike, and talked about the people we grew up with and their kids. Their shared experiences included learning life’s lessons during the Great Depression and fighting a great war, raising families and building schools, bike trips on Nantucket and family summers on Cape Cod. Bob and Louise Dunning, Dick and Barbara Sargent, Les and Shirley Nothanagle, Mae West, Dave Peck, the Flemmings with their eight kids, Bif remembered everyone.

Then there was the Milford Yacht Club, our memories of the countless summer weekends when we campaigned our Lightning up and down Long Island Sound and our sailing friends, the life guards and sailing instructors who Dad had a hand in hiring. He spearheaded the first World Championship for the Lightning class in Milford, and that opened up the opportunity for him and mother to travel to Italy and Peru. When we talked about Ned and Emily Daly, their sons Ned and Jerry, he had me pick up the phone and call Ned Junior.

From the days of Ireland Heat Treating on the Post Road, we talked of his many loyal workers, his long-term secretary, Hilda Graff, who was almost part of our family, and the men who’d encouraged Dad to go out on his own. 

We drifted in and out of this conversation over the three days we spent together. For more than 60 years I believed a story I made up: that my Dad was distant, that just because we’d had a difficult time communicating (and of course that was entirely his fault, not mine), that Dad was somehow self-absorbed and not really in touch. 

Nothing could have been farther from the truth. 

He remembered details that I’d entirely forgotten or never heard before. But what really astonished me was the level of feeling, the kindness and compassion in his recollections. He talked of the happy events and the sad moments, the setbacks as well as the accomplishments in a way that made them present. It was so clear that he cherished these men and women. As we talked I could see his face change. I felt his admiration for their successes, sadness for their losses, and gratitude for their friendship. I can also tell you that if there was any funny story about any of the people we talked about, he told it with his gentle laugh and bright smile. That weekend he gave me a real gift—himself.

When I talk to my friends about my father, they are amazed that he lived such a long life, and that it was such a happy and rich life right to the end. They ask, “What was his secret?” Those of us who were close to him know that he was not perfect by any means, that he had his share of disappointments and sorrows, but when I look at his life for an antidote to life’s sufferings I marvel at the wonderful way he connected with so many people, accepting and treating everyone with an even hand, balanced with good humor and love. 

I can’t close without thanking all the people here in Kennebunk who became part of Dad’s family during his last years, the friends and admirers who welcomed me when I came to visit. I will mention Ruth, Annette and Nancy, the Chandlers, by name, and I have to include Dick and Peg, who are no longer with us. 

Julie, thank you for everything you did to make Dad’s last years so rich and fulfilling. You are a totally extraordinary woman.

It’s best to end with a funny story, and one that inspires me, as I grow older. 

When we were celebrating Dad’s 90th birthday at Elen and Charlie’s ranch up in the high Arizona desert, I told Dad that my friends who were golfers (I am not one) were really impressed that he’d cut 7 strokes off his handicap since he was 85. He looked at me with a deadly serious face and said, “Well, Ken, I’m sorry that it isn’t true. … It’s 11. “

*The photo was taken at Bif's 100th birthday party which we celebrated on Goose Rocks Beach, at the Tides Inn where he worked in the kitchen during the depression. Ruth, Dad, Annette, Julie and me.

A tribute to Julia Wilson Carroll

Julia Wilson Carroll

June 3, 1923-May 16, 2006. 

11/19/07

On November 11, 2007, Aunt Judy's ashes were placed in the earth next to her sister's, Leona Carroll Ireland, my mother, in Nichols Connecticut. I prepared this to be part of the eulogy that my sister Julie (named after our aunt) delivered at the mass in the parish church with her own additions and edits.

“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate,” the Apostle Paul.

Paul’s “Hymn to Love” crossed my desk sometime between when the medical students in Tucson had learned all they could from her physical remains and arranging this service to honor her memory and her life.  And I thought to myself: yes, this is Aunt Judy, Judy as she ought to be remembered. 

Here is a very modern translation (by Eugene Peterson) of those verses from one of Paul’s letters to the Christians in Corinth:

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

Love doesn’t strut,

Doesn’t have a swelled head,

Doesn’t force itself on others,

Isn’t always “me first,”

Doesn’t fly off the handle,

Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn’t revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always, 

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back, 

[And] keeps going to the end.

Judy Carroll would certainly be embarrassed to be remembered by quoting this famous praise of the highest love-she was a private woman who would never dream of using fancy words to describe her interior life. But even if you just spent a day with her, it was clear that her interior life, nurturing and relying on her connection with God, was part of her ordinary life, like getting out of bed. 

Almost everyday of her last years in Green Valley, she carved out time to sit quietly in the back of Our Lady of the Valley church. It was part of her routine, like having lunch with Ken and Lee, playing bridge or watching her beloved Yankees on the TV. When we visited her, she might mention, almost in passing, that we were near the church, and that, yes, this is where she parked, a spot that was shaded, protection from the desert sun, and not too far to walk to rear pews, to sit in silence in the presence of the Sacred. 

There were times in Judy’s life when she could not get out of bed, during her bouts with serious illness, tuberculosis, cancer, and crippling osteoporosis. It was then she showed us in terms of real life what Paul praises: she put up with an enormous amount of pain and suffering but she trusted God always, always looked for the best, and never looked back.

She was our mother, Leona’s only sister, her only sibling, and was always part of our family. When we were growing up, we lived together. It almost seemed at times that we had two mothers. Elen said that was her experience, and she took care of Judy with the love and care of a daughter in her last days. 

So it is from this bank of shared memories that I have chosen some stories and anecdotes that we can remember today as we pray for her, remember her with love and finally lay her to rest.

I remember, as a child, when our mother, next to whom she is now buried, would also stop into church for a quick visit. It was during the time Judy was confined to Laurel Heights sanatorium in Shelton for treatment and only a slim hope of complete recovery from tuberculosis. At some point during her confinement, her sister, our mother, was making a novena and a stop at Saint Theresa’s on Main Street in Trumbull was part of her daily routine. One day she came back to the car with tears and a smile. She said, “I am almost sure that Judy is going to be alright. I may be hallucinating, but I saw the statue of the Infant of Prague move his arm in a blessing.” Whether it was a hallucination or not, whether it was a miracle or the miracle drug streptomycin which saved her, it was clearly the work of God in the eyes and hearts of both sisters.

The story in the family was that this forced interruption in the life of a young woman, in those days, reduced the possibility of finding an eligible young man. And it was probably the case. And we as kids knew her rather dashing suitor, Joe Gurbach, who would take her out every Friday night in his sports car for close to 12 years, and we also knew that there was not the marriage proposal that she expected. Judy must have been disappointed, but whatever regret or anger might have existed was entirely gone in her later years. She simply said that some opportunities had been taken from her, but that she still loved her life as it was. Such a bright and down to earth example of what Paul lists among love’s highest qualities: that it doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.

We as kids used to call the seat next to Aunt Judy’s at the dining room table, the “death seat,” because it was there that you got a thorough training in table etiquette. As I think back to the her firm directions, “keep one hand in your lap and not on the table,” “buttocks to the back of the chair,” “look up and answer when you are spoken to you,” I remember that Paul too, before he gets to the word “love” in 1st Corinthians, talks about a lot of Do’s and Don’ts. Certainly there was a well-regulated Christian way of life instilled in Judy Carroll. 

There is a picture of her dressing as a nun when she was a St Augustine’s school in the 30’s; there was also a quiet suspicion among us that she might have wanted to enter a convent at one time, but caring for her mother took priority.

She did care for their mother, Catherine, during her last days. It was simply understood by both sisters that their mother would live out her days at home and that Judy would care for her. Judy and Nanna shared a room in our house on Huntington Turnpike and Prosper Place, and it was in that room that Nanna died, at home. We were all home when Fr. Halloran came to give Nanna the last rites, though the doors were shut to children for those events a half century ago. And in some ways this was just another expression of what she undertook as her life’s work, caring for others as a nurse, or in Paul’s words, “Love cares for others more than self.”

She did private duty as registered nurse for a wealthy man in Greenfield Hills. When we showed hesitancy in folding our napkins properly, she would tell us that Mr. H. Smith Richardson would insist that everyone at lunch fold their paper napkins properly so that they could be reused, and that he had more money than God so we had better listen up and learn. After Mr. Richardson recovered, she had a number of very wealthy clients. But at another point in her long working life, when she was an industrial nurse for the United Illuminating Company, she showed the same love and care for the more ordinary folks then in her care, whether it was a question of placing someone in treatment for substance abuse or having to tell a lineman’s wife that her husband had been killed on the job. (She told me that this was one of the most difficult tasks she ever had to perform). There is a lot in Paul’s other letters about there being no distinction among the followers of Jesus between rich and poor. Yes, Judy Carroll lived out that ideal too.

Today's mass, lovingly officiated by Monsignor Shea and St. Catherine's parish in Nichols, a town she called home and loved very much, is to pray for Judy and to honor her life. It is taking place almost 16 months after she died in hospice care on May 19 of last year. The reason is that Judy was firm in her wish that her body be given to a medical school so that she could, even after her physical life was complete, make a real contribution to educating the next generation doctors and perhaps relieve the suffering of disease and illness. Judy did know suffering in her life and had a deeply kind regard for others she only knew as fellow humans who shared her lot. The generosity of the final gift of her body cannot be overlooked and is a bright example to all of us. Thank you Judy from the bottom of our hearts. Looking at the whole of Judy's life, I would offer an additional line to close Paul's hymn: Love goes beyond life as we know it. You will always be with us Aunt Judy.

And so AJ, although your ashes have already been set alongside those of your sister very near here in the Nichols cemetery, I will close with the hymn that is usually sung when the casket is taken from the church to grave:

May choirs of angels welcome you and lead you to the bosom of Abraham; and where Lazarus is poor no longer, may you find eternal rest.

How to Move Forward Once You’ve Hit Bottom

BY PEMA CHÖDRÖN

OCTOBER 21, 2016

Pema Chödrön tells the story of when, having hit rock bottom, she asked her teacher what to do.

Photo via Image Catalog.

I thought I would tell you this little story about Naropa University’s founder, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and my very first one-on-one interview with him. This interview occurred during the time when my life was completely falling apart, and I went there because I wanted to talk about the fact that I was feeling like such a failure and so raw.

But when I sat down in front of him, he said, “How is your meditation?”

I said, “Fine.”

And then we just started talking, superficial chatter, until he stood up and said, “It was very nice to meet you,” and started walking me to the door. In other words, the interview was over.

And so at that point, realizing the interview was over, I just blurted out my whole story:

My life is over.

I have hit the bottom.

I don’t know what to do.

Please help me.

And here is the advice Trungpa Rinpoche gave me. He said, “Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and knocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your nose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can either lie there, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out to sea.”

So, basically, you stand up, because the “lying there” choice equals dying.

Metaphorically lying there is what a lot of us choose to do at that point. But you can choose to stand up and start walking, and after a while another big wave comes and knocks you down.

You find yourself at the bottom of the ocean with sand in your nose and sand in your mouth, and again you have the choice to lie there or to stand up and start walking forward.

“So the waves keep coming,” he said. “And you keep cultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to relate to this situation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going forward.”

This was his advice to me.

Trungpa then said, “After awhile, it will begin to seem to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller. And they won’t knock you over anymore.”

That is good life advice.

It isn’t that the waves stop coming; it’s that because you train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in your heart, the waves just appear to be getting smaller and smaller, and they don’t knock you over anymore.

“Fail better” means you begin to have the ability to hold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability” in your heart.

So what I’m saying is: fail. Then fail again, and then maybe you start to work with some of the things I’m saying. And when it happens again, when things don’t work out, you fail better. In other words, you are able to work with the feeling of failure instead of shoving it under the rug, blaming it on somebody else, coming up with a negative self-image—all of those futile strategies.

“Fail better” means you begin to have the ability to hold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability” in your heart, and see it as your connection with other human beings and as a part of your humanness. Failing better means when these things happen in your life, they become a source of growth, a source of forward, a source of, “out of that place of rawness you can really communicate genuinely with other people.”

Your best qualities come out of that place because it’s unguarded and you’re not shielding yourself. Failing better means that failure becomes a rich and fertile ground instead of just another slap in the face. That’s why, in the Trungpa Rinpoche story that I shared, the waves that are knocking you down begin to appear smaller and have less and less of an ability to knock you over. And actually maybe it is the same wave, maybe it’s even a bigger wave than the one that hit last year, but it appears to you smaller because of your ability to swim with it or ride the wave.

And it isn’t that failure doesn’t still hurt. I mean, you lose people you love. All kinds of things happen that break your heart, but you can hold failure and loss as part of your human experience and that which connects you with other people.

Adapted from Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better: Wise Advice for Leaning into the Unknown by Pema Chodron. Copyright © 2015 by Pema Chodron. To be published by Sounds True in September 2015.