They Never Get the Pleats Right

A Mondo

Master Nansen* was washing clothes.
A monk asked: "Is the master still doing such things?"
Master Nansen, holding up his clothes, asked: "What is to be done with them?"

*Nansen was the accomplished teacher of the famous Mu-dog guy, Joshu, who, when Nansen died, went into a deep state of grief that, we’re told, lasted decades. I’m not Joshua, but I will tell a Nansen-style tale to focus my own grief that reappears from time to time decades after Issan died.

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A more formal-sounding Buddhist name to this story might be “there’s nothing too small that you can let escape your attention, even if no one’s going to notice,” but “They Never Get the Pleats Right” tells the story.

When we began Maitri at Hartford St, we carried on a full meditation schedule on top of running the Hospice.

One Saturday, we were sitting in meditation from early morning till dusk. Issan was not sitting. It was during the last six months of his life, and actually, he was in bed. His fever had spiked to almost 103 the previous day; his doctor, Rick Levine, was sitting with us and monitoring his patient.

That evening, Issan had a longstanding commitment to officiate at the wedding of two men, old friends, at the Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park. Issan married same sex couples in the religious tradition of Soto Zen long before the issue of gay marriage exploded, Prop 8 passed, was then voided, the Supreme Court—well, that’s a whole other story.

After lunch, I came upstairs from the zendo and noticed that Issan’s formal white kimono had appeared on the coat rack in the hallway, wrapped in plastic fresh from the dry cleaner. The simple garment had several deep pleats around the waistline, but with the Okesa, the Buddha’s robe, worn over the left shoulder, not much of it is actually visible. It’s almost like ceremonial underwear.

I went back to my cushion in the zendo. When I came upstairs again about 3:30 to fix tea before the last block of sitting, Issan was standing behind his ironing board in the living room, in his bathrobe, wearing a little headband. Sweat was dripping from his forehead. He was ironing the kimono fresh from the dry cleaners. I stopped on the stairs and had to stop myself from telling him sternly to get back to bed--the hot iron didn’t mix with an elevated body temperature. He saw my shock. He turned towards me, smiled, and said, “They never get the pleats right.” I knew he wanted me to laugh. But he was serious about his task and didn’t want me to stop him. How could I argue with a man obviously in a deep state of concentration if I were laughing? I didn’t. I didn’t dare.

I went back to the zendo, and Issan returned to his bed. Just after the closing ceremony, we met again. Steve and Shunko, part of the ceremonial team, had packed the car, and everything was in place. Issan came down the stairs perfectly dressed. He might have been brushing off his fears when he said, “It’s such a long, complicated ceremony. I hope I get it right, but it's a Zen ceremony—When I forget what I’m supposed to do, I just bow. That's always right.” This time, we both laughed.

Everyone came home relieved. The wedding had been fabulous. When Shunko complained that the husband’s gift list of toasters and table service included nothing for the Hospice, Issan was quick to remind him that it was the couple’s special day. They were setting up house together for the first time.

Oh, that man loved to iron. He also ironed his non-priestly underwear. I saw it with my own eyes. I don’t know if the newly married couple were given a shiny new steam iron, but I do know that Issan gave them the gift of his practice.

Issan taught me ironing practice, though I am not as devoted to it as he was, but there’s another lesson here about gifts and toasters and table service. It took me a long time to digest, and I still struggle with it: There is always enough money to do what you need to do. And most likely it will be just enough, not a penny more or a penny less. When you are tight (or especially if you’re tight), it’s probably time to reorder your priorities and mindfully count your pennies.


The Verse is from the poem, “Ironing,” by Vicki Feaver


And now I iron again: shaking
dark spots of water onto wrinkled
silk, nosing into sleeves, round

buttons, breathing the sweet heated smell
hot metal draws from newly-washed
cloth, until my blouse dries

to a shining, creaseless blue,
an airy shape with room to push
my arms, breasts, lungs, heart into.


In memory of Issan Tommy Dorsey Roshi (March 7, 1933 — September 6, 1990)

Is life over when it’s over?

 

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973)

"Each one of us, not only human beings, but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does. The individual and the universe are inseparable". ~Alan Watts Sensei

Are there reasons for living and reasons for dying?

Why should we think that Zen is in trouble simply because there are flawed people who practice and flawed people who teach? Certainly, punches and counter punches are distracting, especially in a scandal, but they are not off limits. In my view, idolizing revered teachers also limits the possibilities in practice for anyone who sets foot on the path. This presents its own set of problems, which I might explore at another time. Zen is devised for humans, not gods.

Many years ago I went to a meeting with several of Claudio Naranjo’s old Seekers After Truth students on the “Vallejo,” the Sausalito houseboat where Alan Watts talked and drank, womanized and created legends. It is common knowledge that he was an alcoholic, but I have no knowledge of sexual excess.  From both my reading and first hand reports, however, I can say with certainty that he did go on and on. He wrote and published 25 books before his death; 40 more have appeared since. That is the stuff of legend, and an enormous contribution.

I also visited a couple who lived in the rustic cabin in Druid Heights near Muir Woods where Watts died. One report is that he slumped over his desk drunk and died though some say he made it to bed that night. The story is vague as are a lot of stories about alcoholics. We will never know the truth because we don’t really need to know. But his desk was kept in the same condition as it had been when he died as a kind of shrine to assist his passage to the Pureland, or Byzantine Heaven, or some New Age version of Limbo. I asked hesitantly if I could sit in the chair where he sat when he wrote. My host said, “Of course. This way is open to anyone.” I imagined that I heard a faint echo from the Master.

Phil Whalen told me that he loved to listen to Watts on the old Berkeley KPFA. Many of the people who first gathered around Suzuki Roshi did. For some it was their initiation into Zen. Watts read widely and wisely even if at times he speculated wildly.  David Chadwick recounted in his biography of Suzuki, Crooked Cucumber: the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, [that] when a student of Suzuki's disparaged Watts by saying "we used to think he was profound until we found the real thing", Suzuki fumed with a sudden intensity, saying, "You completely miss the point about Alan Watts! You should notice what he has done. He is a great bodhisattva.” Suzuki did not disparage the ox who tilled the soil even if all the rows were not perfectly lined up. That would come later, and in some cases the insistence on plowing perfectly straight lines got a bit out of hand. 

At dinner in Mandala House I remember a lively conversation with my host's wife who was very close to a dear friend who was also present. The woman's son by another marriage, a bright, handsome guy had driven across the Santa Cruz mountains to be with his mother. Not long after he died in a car wreck on a treacherous part of that same highway. His mother chose to join him. She took a huge number of sleeping pills and never woke up again in the same house, perhaps the same room where Watts died.

I never met Alan Watts, but I met his ghost. I also carry with me the memories of many other men and women who left life with a troubled past. Though I might think I understand some of their reasons for living, I cannot claim to know the reasons for their dying.

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Michael Papas was a guest student at Tassajara during the Summer of 1980. He recalled a talk by Issan that he says was a real downer. “I can’t repeat any of it, and the memories of the specific content are vague, but I didn’t find any good news in it at all!”

Afterwards, he asked Issan, “If things are so bad, why don’t we just kill ourselves ?”

 

Issan's answer came quickly, “Because it wouldn’t help.”

 

My friend is a long-time Zen student. He says, “It was a great answer obviously. It has stayed with me for more than 40 years. I thought of it many times in 2016 when my wife left me and suicide seemed like the only way to stop the pain. But truthfully back then, having children was my main reason for sticking.”

Issan died on September 6, 1990. He was 57 years old. If he were still alive, he would be 88 years old today. Watts was only 58 when he died and his legend spans decades. I might complain that they both died too young with so much left to contribute. I might sing that tired old tune “only the good die young,” but I’d add that sometimes the good die young because they were bad, or at least not as good as we would like to believe.

Michael, thank you for sharing Issan’s kind answer. It still has life.

Occam’s Razor of Emotional Discernment

Novacula Occami

Asking another question of Occam’s Razor

In the process of doing his own spiritual work, my friend Daniel Shurman carefully teased out another layer in my understanding of Saint Ignatius’s Discernment of the Spirits by insisting on a dimension that is perhaps overlooked--seeking the Truth. 

When we studied scholastic philosophy, our Jesuit masters teased our intellects with an absurd question posed by Thomas Aquinas, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” It’s a question ad absurdum because it was designed to demonstrate that the time and space between heaven and earth cannot be measured no matter how hard you try.

Daniel tossed out the rigid philosophical reduction, and in its place created a generous space for the spiritual dimension of joyfully watching The Dance of Angels. 

Here’s how he did it. Daniel loves an elegant solution, and this pointed me back to William of Ockham’s Law of Parsimony.1 Occam’s Latin is of course succinct and worthy of a renowned philosopher: Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate, which translates as "Plurality ought never be posited without necessity.” Precise but also misleading—the word “parsimony” throws truth into a dustbin for the stingy. I prefer a more generous interpretation. Let’s try this: “The simplest, most beautiful solution is probably true.” A logical problem arises because non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate cannot be a tight fisted rule. Sometimes there is more than one reason or argument. Still a more elegant line of argument points to the truth. It also gives angels the freedom to dance.

Ockham actually gives us a tool rather than an ironclad rule; its metal is called “Occam’s Razor.” It shapes a proposition: whittle away the random thoughts; pare down your idea, the plan, the problem by shaving off unnecessary words, feelings, resentments, withholds, and you get closer to the truth of the matter. Wittgenstein said: "If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam's Razor" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: 3.328).

While stuffy old Aquinas was puzzling over his absurd question about the quantity of angels,  Daniel invited Steve Jobs, along with Ockham, to observe the angels dance. Daniel and Steve zoomed out to watch a multitude of angels dance on the razor’s edge, and make connections. Then Daniel with his relentless and unflinching honesty zoomed in to observe the single angel pointing to a solution or, at least, marvel at the graceful lead dancer in the choreography. (And I’ve watched him dance with one very beautiful angel. He is masterful).

I was alerted to the emotional ambiguity of the discernment process by the renowned Jesuit Cardinal, Avery Dulles. In one of our last meetings, he held up the small volume of the Spiritual Exercises, and said, this is a book to be used, not just read. Then he said that there was a tendency to assign the simplest of feelings to the weighing of what Ignatius called “consolation and desolation” which tended to reduce it to a kind of “feel good” spirituality. He confessed that he was more inclined to be directed by reason than feelings, but still he thought that Ignatius’s recommendation of inclining towards the solution of what feels best pointed to perhaps something far deeper than one that just feels good in the moment.

Like Jobs who would “zoom out to connect the dots, then zoom in and simplify,”2 and Ockham who used a process of simplification as a rigorous arbiter between candidate models, Daniel examined the panorama of his own feelings to see a clear line that led to an elegant solution. 

Daniel reminded me in the most beautiful way that if we bring all of ourselves into the process of discernment, with patience, compassion and rigor, we true up our course of action.

 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."3

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1The Law of Parsimony is attributed to William of Ockham. And perhaps here he’s Plato to the genius of many schoolmen which is why I dragged Aquinas into the battle.

2“Steve would zoom out to connect the dots, then zoom in and simplify.” [John Sculley’s quote].

3 From “Ode on a Grecian Urn” By JOHN KEATS.

I’ve used William of Occam’s principle to discuss the use of condoms to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa in my blog Buddha S.J.

Honolulu Haircut

 

After the sesshin with Bob Aitken where I met Ken McDonald, one afternoon Ken and I found ourselves cruising around Honolulu doing a drop-in-the-local-Temple kind of tour.

At the Soto Shu main temple in Nuuanu Ave, the head priest was cheerfully spending the afternoon with his wife trimming the hedges that abutted the parking lot. He looked up and smiled, acknowledging us. Then he said: “Giving haircut.”

We asked if we could sit zazen in the hall, and, after what I took to be a strange look of puzzlement, he took a key out of his pocket and opened a door to what appeared to be a closet filled with racks of folding chairs where there were three or four zafu’s placed facing a concrete wall.

If we had dreamed of an Eiheiji styled zendo, it was not to be found. But we had just completed 7 days of intensive zazen so the bare room was welcoming. All there was was sitting. There was no need for liturgical trappings,