Berryman

Dead poet on dead poet: a poem by W. S. Merwin (1927-2019) about John Berryman (1914-1972); from *Opening the Hand*,

Berryman

I will tell you what he told me

in the years just after the war

as we then called

the second world war

don't lose your arrogance yet he said

you can do that when you're older

lose it too soon and you may

merely replace it with vanity

just one time he suggested

changing the usual order

of the same words in a line of verse

why point out a thing twice

he suggested I pray to the Muse

get down on my knees and pray

right there in the corner and he

said he meant it literally

it was in the days before the beard

and the drink but he was deep

in tides of his own through which he sailed

chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop

he was far older than the dates allowed for

much older than I was he was in his thirties

he snapped down his nose with an accent

I think he had affected in England

as for publishing he advised me

to paper my wall with rejection slips

his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled

with the vehemence of his views about poetry

he said the great presence

that permitted everything and transmuted it

in poetry was passion

passion was genius and he praised movement and invention

I had hardly begun to read

I asked how can you ever be sure

that what you write is really

any good at all and he said you can't

you can't you can never be sure

you die without knowing

whether anything you wrote was any good

if you have to be sure don't write

I Don't Want You to Chop Off Your Finger!

Dokusan goes Kung-an

Talking publicly about sex

Zen students don’t talk about private meetings with our teachers. “Dokusan” means "going alone to a respected one." These conversations have an aura. They take place in the context of meditation. We respect their privacy because they can be very intimate, shaking our world to its very foundations. 

I’m going to break that rule and talk about just such an intimate conversation I had with Issan Dorsey Roshi. I’m going public and talk openly about a private conversation about sex. In Zen these kinds of conversations are called koans, a term which comes from the Chinese characters, 公案, Kung-an, which literally means “public notice.” 

Issan has been dead for almost 30 years. In the traditional koan collections, the teachers have been dead a lot longer, and, as most of these dialogues were between celibate members of the sangha, most talk about sex is, how shall I say it, in a different context. You’ll also have to take my word that the conversation was one that shook me to the core, and helped me, as a gay man, focus my meditation. Issan can’t verify his side of the conversation, but if I’ve hit the mark, and done my job as Issan’s student, you might be able to use his teaching to untie some personal knots about meditation.

I grew up in a traditional Irish Catholic family, or at least I had a very traditional Irish mother. Her word was law. She taught us to avoid talk about sex in polite conversation which meant that it was rarely, if ever, spoken about. Drunken conversations were of course another matter. There politeness was optional. As drunken conversations, they carried less weight, but they were at least a time when you could talk about sex. Good Jamison could be counted on as the Irish un-inhibitor.

Fitting quite nicely with my preconceived notions, in Zen settings most talk about sex focuses on the prohibitory precepts, or that has been my experience. 

_____________

At one of my first sesshins, a long intense meditation period, hours upon hours with a few breaks to eat and get the blood flowing back into the legs, my mind began to play a nasty trick on me, or so I thought. I imagined myself in love with a very cute guy who was sitting about three seats to my left. Let’s call him “R.” R has been a Zen priest for many years. He also knew and practiced with Issan so I’m sure he would love being part of this koan, but I don’t know how useful it would be for the public to know the real name of R who was the object of my sexual fantasy.

My mind couldn’t do anything else but fantasize! When I got up after a period, I glanced in his direction to know that he was still there. Even if I managed to focus on my breath for a few seconds while I was sitting, It required enormous effort.

My obsession had totally hijacked my mind.  

On the third or fourth day, I went to see Issan after the first period. His bedroom doubled as his interview room, a few candles, a bell, two cushions set close to one another. After I bowed, I blurted out the whole story.

He looked at me, entirely present, and then we both began to laugh, slowly at first, but then louder and louder.

Finally he took a breath and said, “Oh, I fell in love with someone every practice period at Tassajara. They were usually straight so you can imagine how that went.”

Then he told me a story. 

“When I was tenzo at Tassajara during one practice period, I fell head over heels in love with a very handsome young man. I suppose you could say I was obsessed. It was hard enough to escape all those fantasies in meditation, but it even got to the point where it was dangerous--when I was chopping, I had to consciously pull my mind back to the vegetable, the knife, and the board to avoid mindlessly chopping off a finger. 

"When you’re actually in deep concentration the strangest things can happen. It got to the point that it was even difficult to concentrate when I was cooking--and that was my responsibility--so I went into the Roshi and talked about it!

“And then I discovered that I could just stop it. I mean it really stopped. I think I might have just been more able to return to my breath. Probably nothing more.”

Then he asked, “Can you stop loving R? Would that even be a good thing? I just don’t want you to chop off your finger.”

Issan & James

Please Leave

After hearing about the ordeal that Ed Brown went through when a member of the audience sent a complaint to several senior priests about the content of Ed’s dharma talk. I felt that if I were asked to talk, I would be compelled to pass out a disclaimer to cover my ass. (Of course, I have never been asked to speak at ZC, and at least one of the reasons might become clear if you make it to the end.)

Friends, we have gathered to practice one of the most essential pieces of our work together. We listen and respond all the while realizing that the perfect dharma is imperfect in our hands. We chant a bit here and there and make some odd-sounding promises about dedicating our efforts to the liberation of all beings but then comes a presentation of the dharma. I intend to do my job. Hopefully, you will be offended; if you come with a mindset that can only hear what you’d like to hear, please leave. I am not a mind reader. I am not quite sure where my own mind will lead me, but hopefully it will be down a dark alley that needs a bit of light. If you’re at least willing to stay, sit still, and follow your own mind, you are welcome. This is a joint exploration. If not, the time is now. Please leave.

If you are willing, your mind and mine can start to dance, more like a call-and-response in the Black Church, allowing us to see ourselves. I say something, and you respond. There’s as much of a formula here as treading the well-known lyric of the "Old Rugged Cross."

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

the emblem of suffering and shame;

and I love that old cross where the dearest and best

for a world of lost sinners was slain.

If I follow the (boring) script of most Zen Center talks, I will open by telling a personal story and paint a picture of myself, the inadvertent hero of my story, as stumbling along through life. Despite my sincere training, I got distracted; I stumbled, cracked my head, stepped in shit, mindlessly crushed a frog or even a snake, heard a madperson screaming incoherent truth in the center divide on Market Street, thoughtlessly dropped in the gutter the fiver that was intended for Mother Theresa, but I use the occasion to turn my attention inward, examine myself, realize that in this fleeting instant the dharmakaya opened with unmistakable brilliance. I resolve to dive in more deeply, to apply my Buddhist principles more generously, plus any number of other worthwhile ways in which I might lessen my suffering and the suffering of others in the world. I am not disparaging any of these aims or outcomes. In a word, they are lovely. it’s all very genial. We smile over cookies and tea.

But now we come to the part in my talk where you ask, why is he saying that? How dare he go there? That tone. That language. We can talk about sex and drugs and rock and roll as long we use the prescribed politically correct language and (at least pretend) that is all in the past. We left those experiences as we emerged from the Summer of Love with a drug hangover that lasted a few weeks. Thank god it cleared up quickly. 

Most talks are, at least to some degree, commentary on some Buddhist Scripture. And if it gets real, it gets real, but the chances are minimal. I recall hearing a public talk by the Dalai Lama when he attempted to bring an esoteric distinction from a Gelugpa text into a bedroom fight between a husband and wife. He was not successful, but not because of the bedroom part. He turned it into an Ozzie and Harriet squabble, not a serious discussion about sexuality and the inequality of power and consent. He opened the door but then didn't walk through. He played it for the laugh. Ed Brown’s accuser would have little to complain about. 

I promise that if I am lucky enough to open a door, I will try to walk in. I certainly will not shy away due to some prudery or elevated sense of myself. 

Now, just to be clear, my mother taught me well, and I usually reserve profanity for private moments. I will also try to frame what I say in a way that you are at least open to listening. I certainly will not encourage you to break the precepts even if I am commenting on the “Kill the Buddha” koan, but neither will I try to explain it away or give an answer I don’t have—certainly not one that you want to believe but is just a pack of lies.

When I first started going to Hartford Street Zen Center, there was a small group of gay men who were students of one Tibetan teacher or another. They gathered around Issan because he was himself a serious student willing to talk to them about their practice while their teachers were too far away or sitting on a throne too high. One Monday night after Zazen, I met one of these men, and we struck up a tentative light-hearted conversation. That next weekend, he was headed south to LA for a White Mahakala ceremony led by the renowned Kalu Rinpoche. I mentioned that I had taken refuge with the Rinpoche almost 20 years earlier. He said come along. We would drive down to Monterey Park, where the Rinpoche’s supporters had rented a Chinese hotel for the occasion. Afterwards we would go to a seedy Hollywood hotel my new friend liked for some reason I cannot fathom other than it was gay and seedy. Coincidentally my friend Juan B. was also going to attend. We arranged to meet at the ceremony. He was going with some of his rich Chinese friends, and they had already made dinner plans. A steady stream of world-renowned chefs had turned this affluent suburb into a gourmet haven for Hong Kong cuisine before HK was to be handed back to the People’s Republic  

My new friend and I went to the ceremony, did the complicated visualization, chanted, and received what would be Kalu’s last blessing. We then went to the gay hotel for a sleepless night of incessant knocking on the door, and in the morning we drove back to San Francisco. There had been no sign of Juan and his friends. I called Juan, but he did not answer. 

I returned to a flood of horrific news. Juan and his friends had been seated at a choice table facing the street when a driver lost control at high speed, jumped the curb, and crashed through the large plate glass. One of Juan’s party was killed. They were all taken to hospital. The emergency room and morgue became the shrine room of the White Mahakala. After we clean up the blood, comfort the grieving, and arrange for the cremation, what else is there for us to do? Some might ask why the occasion of a great blessing turned into a nightmare. Can a lama spin a tale of hidden karma and honorable intentions to help us escape our fear of pain and death? Is there any satisfactory explanation beyond the pious lie machine? I say no, not within the realm of our understanding. 

The choir invokes the image of the old rugged cross. It is imaginary. It makes no sense. In our case, the only part that does make sense is that it is an emblem of suffering. Somehow the hymnist manages to drag love into the picture of sin and shame. I’m sorry. That is the best I can do with it myself without wandering into a make-believe world of elevated lies. Sometimes the dharma is like that, rudely breaking into our world with no formal introduction, not making any sense.

It seems hit or miss. I will not ask you to forgive the pun. Sometimes a teaching will get you to first base, and sometimes the fly ball will be caught and you’re out. But we still honor the dharma. We cannot retreat. It is in the very nature of the dharma. If you can't hear that and are going to feel affronted, please leave.

Zen Bland!

Originally posted December 21, 2011, revised during the Coronavirus lockdown, March 25, 2020.


In the Spring of 2011, I did an eight-day, totally silent Zen retreat at a former Catholic Convent, the Angela Center, in Santa Rosa California. As I was unpacking my bag, I thought to myself that my “cell” was just a slightly less Spartan, more feminine version of the one where I was isolated from the outside world for two years as a Jesuit novice 45 years earlier, the same bland institutional architecture thrown up to accommodate the large numbers of men and women who were entering religious life after World War II.

In a Jesuit house of formation, we got up at 5:30 and went to bed at 9. During this retreat, my 10-hour meditation day started an hour earlier and lasted an hour later, but it seemed to re-stimulate both the ecstatic and painful memories of my novitiate, a period that was for me an extremely difficult initiation into religious life. For the first few days, I couldn’t stop a flood of memories, tastes of prayer, study, and feelings that soon included my 11 years of Jesuit indoctrination as well as the aftermath.

After breakfast on the morning of the 4th day, as I was walking back to the room, my actual perception of the building suddenly shifted. I was just walking on a linoleum floor that was just a floor, the walls of lightly plastered-over cinder block were just walls. Nothing more. No sounds but the sound of my feet, no visions but what I saw through my eyes—just pictures on a wall, just a door, just a room, just a grey carpeted floor with black cushions. There was nothing else in that moment but the moment. This was not the dramatic, flashing-bright-lights insight, no angels descended from heaven with all the answers that I was hungry for, or had told myself that I really sought. Rather bland for a mystical experience.

But then I began to notice something very powerful open up inside me—every burden that I had been carrying since my Jesuit training was gone. It was extinguished, not conceptually but actually. My past life as a Jesuit was gone, completely gone. Not that it didn’t happen, not that it had no effect on me, but I understood in a non-intellectual way that anything I carry into the present moment was for me to carry. It doesn’t drag itself along. There’s nothing there. It’s not real.

Suddenly in that moment of bland Zen, I was totally and irrevocably free—no one, no thing, no outside authority, no god, no doctrine, no experience could ever enslave me.

Three cheers for bland Zen!


Outside My Window


The light rain
clears momentarily.

Cold.

A bird's three bare notes—
infinite variations
flood over me.

Red Camilla blossoms
fall
upside down.


*The title of this reflection comes from a piece my friend Laurence Platt wrote, “Zen Bland,” which was not at all bland but very juicy. He argues that simple and unembellished language is the only authentic way to describe deeply moving, transformative experiences—living life here and now, speaking about it simply, not altering our experience trying to make it into something else!



Dedicated to Chris Wilson, head of practice at Spring sesshin, a generous, guiding spirit and friend.