How a blind monk might respond to my piece

After reading my last post “It is Universal" Doug McFerran posed some great questions about the language of "Enlightenment.” He closed by saying, “What I would really like to hear is how a blind monk would respond to your piece.”

I would too. His name was Zenshin Philip Whalen (October 20, 1923 – June 26, 2002). He gave me lay ordination 33 years ago. I lived and sat with him in the zendo at Hartford Street for more than 6 years. Though I loved Issan and learned from living with him as he was dying, I was formally Phil’s student. Phil was the Beat poet who was known as the poets’ poet. He read at the Six Gallery the same night that Ginsberg read Howl. He was obviously upstaged. 

Phil was legally blind when I met him. He had figured out how to get around. As with other blind people I’ve known, his sense of hearing and touch had recalibrated to some degree to make up for his loss of sight. He could go up and down the stairs to the zendo and find his seat and bowing mat. He loved to eat so he certainly could locate food on the table and in the refrigerator, though he often needed help. Vague shadows were the only information that his eyes delivered. He had glaucoma which had been misdiagnosed 20 years earlier. Being perpetually broke, I imagine that he’d gone to the cut rate optometrist who had dropped out of medical school but hung out a shingle in the Tenderloin. 

I assume that Phil had a photographic memory. If I asked a question while we were sitting in his library office, he would say, “Check out old Yampolsky, page 54, third paragraph from the top of the page. You’ll find the book in the middle cabinet, third shelf, about three in from the right.” And god dammit, it would be there. He was the most well read man I have ever met. He loved books and words. He could quote pages and pages of poetry. People were always a challenge for Phil, but he tried his level best. I suppose that I had as close a relationship with him as he had with anyone, and I learned an enormous amount, but we both had to work at it.

When I write about Buddhism and search for an appropriate English word, I often ask my memory what Phil might say. This is not reliable, and perhaps as hopeless as consulting a fake optometrist so I exercise caution. Phil distrusted Plato and would always hedge his use of any philosophical language with words of caution. When it came to Buddhist terminology in English, he would usually begin with the technical Japanese word from the Soto dictionary, then he would foray into the antecedents in Ch’an, or Chinese Zen, and then finally refer to the Sanskrit terms that were developed by the early Mahayanists. 

So yes, enlightenment is just the normal way that Western Buddhists have described the the experience of Kenshō (見性), a Japanese term from the Zen tradition. Ken means "seeing", shō means "nature, essence". It is usually translated as "seeing one's (true) nature", that is, the Buddha-nature or nature of mind. Kenshō is an initial insight or awakening, not full Buddhahood. Then Phil would have directed me to the Heart Sutra, the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya where the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara  directs Śariputra,one of the Buddha’s disciples to examine form and emptiness, and then tells him that there are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, etc. We are off into.an examination of emptiness (śūnyatā): all phenomena, known through the five aggregates of human existence (skandhas): form (rūpa), feeling (vedanā), volitions (saṅkhāra), perceptions (saṃjñā), and consciousness (vijñāna) are empty. Bad translations and advanced philosophical study aside, in Zen temples, the 100 line version of the Heart Sutra is usually chanted, sometimes in phonetic Sinojapanese, after a meditation period. 

When I finished the last piece. “It’s Universal,” I asked myself what was missing. I had tried to lay out some of the areas and things that might be perceived differently when we have some experience of kensho, or enlightenment, but that is not a definition. Then my mind went in several directions. First I remembered the many times I had a complaint about sitting and not getting something. Phil would most often get to be the strict Zen teacher. He’d say, “You’re not sitting enough.” Or if we were sitting in his library he would say look at what old Dogen says in his Shōbōgenzō: “You should therefore cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following after speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inward to illuminate yourself. Body and mind will drop away of themselves, and your original face will manifest itself. If you wish to attain suchness, you should practice suchness without delay.”

Rather than try to parse 12th century practice instructions from the monk’s hall, I will tell an old Irish joke that illuminates old Dogen. A hapless American tourist is lost in Dublin. He is looking for the Cathedral and just can’t find it. He sees a pub. Surely these guys will be able to give some direction. He stands at the end of the bar and asks “How do you get to Saint Patrick’s? The answer comes back, “You can’t get there from here.”

So we are looking for some experience in meditation. That is all the Zen means--Meditation Buddhism, but that language won’t sell soap, body oil or relaxing massage.

My friend Rob Lee lived at the Page Street Zen Center for many years. The zendo is in the basement. There are windows on the Laguna Street and Lily Alley sides and from some of the seats in the zendo, a clear view of what used to be pre Loma Prieta Earthquake the Fell Street Off Ramp. When a newcomer came for meditation instruction in the late afternoon, some bad bad zen students who were instructing them would sit them in one of those seats. At just about 5:30 cars coming off the freeway unto Fell would catch the last bit of sun disappearing over the hill and it would reflect off the windscreen. The new meditator was treated to a flash of enlightenment the first time they sat on the cushion.

Language about the experience of meditation also plays tricks. 

I will end with a memory of that Blind Monk. One morning coming up from the zendo, Phil got to the top of the stairs and a bird started chirping in the backyard. He sang out, 

The year's at the spring

And day's at the morn;

Morning's at seven;

The hill-side's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn:

God's in his heaven—

All's right with the world!

It is Universal

Some rumblings from my Bangkok hermitage.

27 January 2024.

This is not an argument for or a defense of the thesis that there is a universal creed under all the vagaries of the religious expressions of humankind. That's an old theosophical trope. I refuse to engage its tired argument or bask in its self-justifying cliches though I’d like to make a joke if I could. I always hope that the right words will coalesce at an opportune moment but my jokes are usually pretty lame. Regardless, all day yesterday and this morning I have been tossing around odd impressions and telltale fragments from three conversations that have cleared the horizon of my recent thinking.

The first thread of this conversation is Joan Didion, a woman writer whose creativity and imagination and skill we have rarely seen on our American continent. I was watching a documentary about her on Netflix. She said that in the 50’s when she got her first job out of college and moved to New York from California to take the coveted position as a staff writer at Vogue, she could easily identify the women executives who made the decisions at the magazine. They all wore hats and gloves. The “girls” who did the work, the staff writers, secretaries, stylists, copy editors, and mailroom clerks did not wear hats except when the weather dictated. Having just researched Saint Charles Borromeo for another piece, and seen his gold mitre and stole, I thought there might be a universal dress code embedded in human nature: you know who’s in charge by their hats.

The second thread of conversation has to do with the theological term transubstantiation. Perhaps it has been elevated to the level of doctrine, but it’s certainly not a term that would even have been recognized among early Christian believers, not even the Grecophile Paul. My twisted mind flashed to Og Mandino’s characterization of Paul as “The Greatest Salesman in the World,” without whom, according to the Think and Grow Rich crowd, the gospel would have languished in the backwaters of Judea. But I think that the credit has been misappropriated: the honor belongs to Aristotle who, mixed in with a few Neo-Platonists, really deserves credit for promoting the Jesus sayings, stories and beliefs in the predominant culture. A simple test proves my point. Would you say that in the seminary curriculum post Reformation and certainly in the Jesuit Ratio, was Thomistic theology given equal weight with textual study of the gospel texts? Clearly more. We learned more, or spent more time studying Aristotle's notion of substance than we did about the possible early forms of liturgy. This is a snapshot of Aristotle’s chokehold on our thinking, locking in definite notions about the nature of God, the divine characteristics of the Lord Jesus as Son of God as well as the continued presence of the Lord in our midst. Q.E.D Maybe Jesus and Aristotle deserve equal doses, but actually, Aristotle gets the upper hand because he allowed for science and logic to sneak in the backdoor..

And the third strand of this thread comes from a conversation that I had with my Zen teacher Ed Oberholtzer a few weeks ago. He said that he felt that our thinking about theological matters is hedged in by imagined people, places, times and events. We think that without the Lord Buddha sneaking out of his father’s castle on or about 563 B.C.E., we would not have the possibility of being enlightened. Then he said it is entirely possible, even probable that some group besides Buddhists would hit on the right conditions to produce that insight that is liberating, “maybe even that group of former Jesuits you talk about.” It is probable that this insight is reproducible, and given the realm of human possibilities, that it has already been replicated. We just haven’t heard about it. Do I nominate Bob Kaiser, Bob Brophy, Pope Francis, or Marko Ivan Rupnik for Zen Master?

Bad jokes aside, where does this lead and what are the conditions that make this experience of enlightenment or liberation possible?

The first condition has to do with those hats. It’s not that an examination of past decisions is not interesting, important or even valuable to our exploration, but let’s not be distracted by fancy hats. They are just culturally conditioned fashion. The colorful signs of power were among the first things that the Reformers cut when their movement gained traction about 500 years ago, but it was not too long before a new style was in vogue and captured the imagination of the people they wanted to win over. So in any case beware hats. Don’t hesitate to wear a rainhat in monsoon or a toque when your ears might freeze. And give the drag queens a lot of leeway. They keep us honest, but recognize that the texts that made it to the inked pages were put there by the women who wore the hats.

The second condition has to do with the limitations of human thinking. It’s always difficult to thread the needle isn’t it? It’s more difficult when you’re wearing a straight jacket but think it’s a Roman toga. So much of what I currently “think about thinking” or even “non-thinking” has to do with my work with the concepts derived from the Nagarjuna School of Buddhism that I feel a bit tongue tied. I often think that I don’t have enough time left to fully appreciate the contribution that this revolutionary thinker made in the development of the Mahayana, and that makes me feel like I’m probably missing something important. Still the lessons that I’ve learned by trying to understand the thinking of the Mahayanist, and especially the Zen guys I spend most of my time with, changed my life. I did the most difficult training, the one that I undertook in a rigorous way that young people usually do when they first start to ask the hard questions about life in a system that pretended to be open when in reality it was designed to answer objections rather than explore. That in itself allowed me to see its limitations. Following a line of thought is just that. It doesn’t lead to the discovery of truth with the big “T.” 

I also really appreciate that this use of the brain is groupthink, and I don’t mean the usual negative connotation of the phrase, but rather thinking together in a group of men and women to really get it. This makes me appreciate the many parts of managing an open conversation with lots of people contributing.

And the third condition is the one that Ed alluded to. It was in the context of some koan work that we've been doing for several years, but his point was that even if all the great Masters of the non-dual way were extinguished and their writings disappeared, it would not be forever before some other humans discovered this unique and powerful way of looking at our world, ourselves, and our interactions. Although not immediately recognized or available, It is not divinely revealed, and its discovery is not confined to a particular time and place. Given that there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of men and women, possibly including some Jesuits, who have demonstrated that they are themselves Buddhas, well you get my point. 

The joy and promise of this fact about Buddhism is often hidden or disguised. It is very hopeful. The implications of it are revolutionary: we only have this moment and this place in these particular circumstances to work with which is why the day that I have fretted over writing this and making it sound rational and cogent and persuasive might have been a waste of time, but I had some fun which is not a forbidden pleasure,

It’s a cult damn it. Nothing more.

“Love your kids more than evolution requires.”--David Brooks

I was just listening to a podcast by Andrew Gold interviewing Jon Atack (A Piece of Blue Sky) about Charlie Manson and Scientology. Alack describes a cult in its simplest form as a group that reveres a particular leader or doctrine. Bow down and surrender. Isn’t that the first thing you heard after you’d knocked on the door?

A general rule is that cult leaders are not necessarily brilliant, or enlightened, or even educated. As a matter of fact, very often they are none of the above, but they know how to weave a spell, to hypnotize, to create a myth, and make promises that sell themselves. The best and the worst are con men (or women) with an uncanny ability to mirror our personal insecurities and then reflect back a crafted solution that pays them usually more than its real value..

In the late 1960’s, particularly in California, there emerged a new group of high-flying self-help gurus who promised a level of personal awareness that would free us--if we worked with them. We were told that we’d been programmed by a familiar network of parents, schools, pastors, priests and rabbis, tribal culture, liberal (or conservative) political prejudices, the sexual taboos that hounded us along with innumerable generations before us. The gurus pointed to obvious evidence and we jumped at a ready solution. We’d all suffered through the deadening post war social homogenization. We’d all experienced the ever present threat of nuclear annihilation, driving under our desks since the first grade (I remember these drills today when the threat of armed maniacs in schools is very real and certainly statistically more deadly). The Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love erupted and, I think, clearly demonstrated a deep hunger for relief.

The new age gurus promised that we could be deprogrammed from this hypnotic state. This was an attractive offer. It was pretty much universally agreed among my affluent college educated peers that we were all caught in the thrall of automatic action and reaction. We also felt that our personal level of discomfort was somehow unfair. It was just hard to name the culprit. We were told that the buck stopped with us, but we had to pinpoint who we were “being” when push came to shove. A friend paid a sizable chunk of money to spend a long sleepless weekend sitting on the floor of a yoga studio asking and answering the repeated question of “Who are you?”

We were told that any possible freedom or newly discovered enlightenment would require work. We rolled up our sleeves and opened our wallets, or at least contrived alternative ways to pay for services. There were groups, and rivalry. Bob Hoffman bad mouthed Werner Erhard. Mainline Gurdjieff groups paid no attention to Claudio Naranjo’s Enneagram. Gurdjieff teachers questioned the credentials of people who set themselves up as doing “The Work.” Oscar Ichazo sued Helen Palmer, and Scientology had a very long list of defectors in the docket, including Werner Erhard’s est.

The infighting became cannibalistic. Here’s an example--Scientology sued the Cult Awareness Network which bankrupted them with the huge expense of legal fees to defend themselves. Scientology through an agent then purchased the shell of CAN for the fire-sale price of $25,000 and made it an arm of the Church of Scientology who became the resource for distraught parents whose children had become Moonies, an Osho Sannyasin--or recruits for Scientology’s Sea Org. (And the Scientologists in charge took their jobs very seriously. I was on the phone with them when a concerned family member raised concerns about the “human-development” seminar company I worked for. They knew the precise questions to ask to uncover a cult).

This kind of feeding frenzy spread like wildfire in dry grass. Not only were our leaders fighting amongst themselves, with lawsuits and unbecoming slander and innuendo, we took on each other with a righteous, determined vengeance to do the hard work of Ego Reduction. If we were not aware of our patterns of programmed behaviors, rackets, bank, negative behaviors, without lapsing into passive aggressive behavior ourselves, how could we root it out? Like good soldiers in the war against the dark side, we ganged up on each other, all with some expression of gratitude or at least lack of complaint. In retrospect our behavior was more like gang bangers than seekers after truth or truth warriors. It also served a dual purpose. It deflected attention from the leaders who were more like tribal Neanderthals with automatic weapons than compassionate enlightened beings acting for the deepest good of all humankind.

I knew one of these gurus for almost 30 years. It was an on-again,off-again acquaintance. Bob Hoffman was a very difficult man, most likely suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. I cannot say that he was dumber than a stump. I don’t know his IQ though I do know that he dropped out of school in about the 6th or 7th grade and never received a GED. For the almost 30 years I knew him, he never finished a book though he did try several times. He opened E.M. Forster’s “Maurice” when he heard that it was his gay novel, but he never finished it. He told me that the storyline was too bleak. He also tried Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man," but lost interest when he realized Isherwood was not Danielle Steel. He asked me to fill him in on the end of the story. He was disappointed. He loved a happy ending.

Hoffman channeled the Quadrinity Process from his spirit guide, his psychotherapist, Siegfried Fisher. Because it came from “the other side” Hoffman claimed the highest level of validity. He would stand in front of a group and ramble. I never saw him go into anything like a trance. Most times the sessions were recorded and Hoffman had them transcribed, edited and cleaned up by a small group of people who had had, admittedly, some rather remarkable personal experiences following this other worldly methodology. Because Hoffman tried to hide that he had actually been Fisher’s patient, the whole tale became twisted with lies and information that was “somewhat less than factual,” and it became ripe ground for manipulation. In my personal case the abuse was both emotional and sexual.

When I read some well thought out passage online attributed to Hoffman, I know that it was obviously written by a ghost. Hoffman liked it short, dirty and crude. His teaching style was in your face aggressive. On a scale of professional to barbarian, he was unapologetically barbarian. He “broke you down to build you up,” and you had to be grateful for his gifts of wisdom. You did things his way or you’d be shut out. Some of the people who succeeded him will boast they never stooped to or countenanced his crude confrontation, that they told him so to his face, brave souls. They stretch the truth. Everyone of them would have to admit to strained working working relationships. At some point everyone close to him just blocked his ranting, and as long as he got paid, he learned to live with it.

But the adjustments, the edits, the lies are necessary. Hoffman is still the guru face of the Process that bears his name. It is a cult. Is there something more? Is there anything that can be saved from this river of teaching? I will also try to tackle the question of whether the Western adaptation of Buddhism loses something by closely identifying with the Self-Help Industry. Stay tuned.

Big Changes for Jesuit Spirituality

Newsflash! Pope announces changes to the Spiritual Exercises

13 March 2024

Pope Francis will hold a joint press conference with Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal SJ, the Father General of the Society of Jesus to announce the first major revision of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in 500 years. This follows the discovery of a document found in Saint Ignatius’s desk with instructions not to open until the tenth year of the reign of the first Jesuit Pope. 

The Jesuit Curia has released a translation of the text of Saint Ignatius's letter.

Rome, January 4, 1556

As I near the end of my life, I pray (and worry) constantly about the future of our Company. Although it seems to be thriving, supplying extremely well trained priests to stem the tide of the reform movement and missionaries around the globe, something haunts me. The vision that I had by the River Cardoner is fading. I have been particularly troubled by the prospect of losing that vision after I die.

The administration of the Society will not suffer, there are plenty of talented men, but I fear our collective understanding of God’s will is more than slightly cloudy. .I am worried for the visionaries. Our men are certainly a cut above regular priests. We have a lot of second sons of high ranking families, bright kids, eager, many are extremely devout, but it is almost that they do everything too perfectly. The gay ones have to hide out because there are so many trying to prove themselves. Damn macho post medieval tribal culture is deadly.

Then I had an experience with a young applicant to the Society, a mestizo who came back with some missionaries from the Americas. He can neither read nor write, and his Latin is rudimentary so I had to have him work in the kitchen while he catches up, but he claimed to have had a vision of the Blessed Mother that directed him. He started to talk to me about it, and I was very moved. I have weighed the spirits carefully and it is clear to me that Mariano had an authentic vision.

Mariano says that the Virgin told him that we Jesuits place too much emphasis on earning God’s Love. I blame myself for the emphasis on love through actions and not in our hearts. (Love is expressed through actions, but it has to do with intent). He says that the Virgin told him that priests who are privileged and jealous of their position become blind to the immediacy of God’s love and can’t see that this love comes without any conditions. He’s absolutely right, but centuries of fighting have conditioned us to enforce conditions rather than seeing beyond them.

I would turn our enterprise over to Mariano if I could. I know that this is God’s will, but I can’t execute it. The Inquisition would go ballistic. The Pope’s funding scheme for Saint Peter’s would collapse. The Society would split apart with the infighting. Sometimes I am tempted to just let the cards fall where they may, those snobby Jesuits who spend years studying the minute distinctions in the writings of Avicenna and Aquinas need to do more quiet meditation, but I will have to leave that aside. I have decided to send Mariano into hiding,

This is where I am being led right now. I have to get this young man to safety and protect his vision. The time will be ripe at some point, but not at this moment. Until then we must protect this inspiration. The fires of the Inquisition need to be extinguished, and warring factions need to at least reach a detente. The church does need reform and a strong hand is necessary right now so fight fire with fire, but make sure that the proposition of “ends justify means” is discussed in the ratio. Keep an open mind. Things change.

I have authorized the foundation of a clandestine cell of Jesuits near Buenos Aires in the New World. Mariano will lead this small community. Their practice will be kept alive by recruits from the indigenous community that they will serve for as long as it takes. I want to keep the flame alive while things sort themselves out. Mariano has told me that the Virgin told him that Jesuits will begin to practice the quiet meditation that Xavier wrote about from Japan, and she approves. I find that perhaps the hardest thing to believe of all the wonders he shared with me, but I suppose it is possible.

Mariano has my permission to restructure the Spiritual Exercises. I will note them here so that anyone who reads this will know that I approve of the changes. He has turned them on their head. The first week will be the Contemplatio ad Amorem. The main meditation instruction will be the fourth method, to follow the breath as it rides on the sound of a word in prayer. Mariano says that human beings can find God in all things instinctively. He is right. In my version of the Exercises I thought I had to lead the retreatant by the nose. We don’t need to go through hell to experience the Presence in rocks and stones, mothers and babies, even in the clanging of pots and pans.

This experience will be the basis of the meditations on the events and sayings in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ during the second week which will stand as they are with the exclusion of the stories about Mary. The third week also remains as it is, but without my interpretation. We can approach the meditation on His sacrifice and death and allow them to speak for themselves, and create their own inner narrative. But again the story of Mary going to the tomb will be left for the entirely new fourth week.. 

The new fourth week is a series of meditations which Mariano received in his vision of the Blessed Virgin. She was the person who really allowed God to become human. I hope we don't have to wait 500 years to experience how Mary the Virgin can help guide us to continue the Incarnation, but 500 years is just a drop in the bucket of eternity. We can all begin to experience immediacy right now in the moment. We don’t have to wait. Waiting for the present moment is an oxymoron. However the changes in my Exercises will have to wait.

Mariano tells me that in the clandestine Buenos Aires cell, washing dishes will be part of everyone's daily practice. It should smooth out the rough edges between Avicenna and Aquinas. There may be random occurrences in the universe, but few mistakes.

Father Ignatius

That’s just the way it is in Buddhism

I want to respond to Doug McFerran’s comment on my post "How this Jesuit became Buddhist.": Doug is an old friend whom I met through a group of former Jesuits. He said that it seemed to him that I always needed a teacher, and that he was the opposite. After I got over being defensive, I thought “good point: do we need a teacher and what for?” I had to give up feeling that I am just some weak ninny follower who needs a guru, but I can do that. There is almost universal insistence across all Buddhist schools that the transmission of the Buddha Dharma requires a student-teacher relationship. It’s not just a way of buying the teacher’s dinner, or maintaining a school’s stronghold on a student's mind and pocketbook. That’s just the way it is in Buddhism. 

Buddhism is not a revealed religion. There is no deposit of faith that closed with the death of the last of Buddha's original disciples. Of course there are lots of texts, many more that actually probably should be considered than what comes to us as the gospel of Jesus; there is also a lot of history, teachers fighting with each other, sects, scandals and disputes, all the usual stuff of human interactions. But ultimately only our own experience shows us the path. That is all we got. When the Buddha died (if I can paraphrase and even if I am not allowed to, I will), he said, “You’re on your own. I’ve given you 40 years of training. I hope it actually did some good. Everything is always changing. You’ll have to hold up your experience carefully and examine it. Try not to take any wooden nickels.”*

The result is that although there is a huge body of textual material, we have an oral religious tradition. It’s been sliced and diced by thousands and thousands of monks over approximately 93 or 95 generations since the parinirvana of the Lord Buddha, but if you want to do Buddhism, you find a teacher. My cab driver in Bangkok, in the West we’d call him a pious man, said to me, “I have a lama.” He doesn’t just go to church. At the very core of his personal practice is a person we might recognize as a monk or teacher whom he talks to about his life. The Dalai Lama has teachers, the best that money can buy, but there are men who are his teachers. He’s supposedly an incarnate Bodhisattva but he has teachers. Go figure. Every monk and nun, every student, most pious laymen and women where I live in northern India also have teachers. They probably don’t talk to them on a regular basis as we do in zen, but at some point when they decided to practice their Buddhism, to “take refuge,” a teacher accepted them, and usually gave them a new name. I have a Tibetan name that Kalu Rinpoche, one of HH’s teachers, gave me in about 1976 and another Japanese name that Phil Whalen gave me when I took the Bodhisattva precepts as a layman in 1991.

In Catholicism we have confession and the other sacraments as a way of making the invisible world present, an outward sign of an inner grace. In Buddhism we meditate, we might take the precepts and we talk. If you’re lucky you will find someone whom you can really talk to. Stuff happens in meditation. It just does. I wouldn’t say that we “deal with it” or as we might say in the West, “handle it” by talking about it, but the actual conversations become part of the practice. It is difficult to explain. Let me tell a story. Father Eimyo LaSalle was the Jesuit priest most responsible for the extraordinary number of Jesuits who have been trained and authorized as Zen teachers in their own right. He is the root teacher of a new lineage of Christian Buddhists. He was never publicly recognized as a teacher in his own right, but I am quite sure that his teacher, Yamada Koun, recognized him. I am in this same lineage. My friend David Weinstein was also a student of Yamada Roshi. David tells the story of often seeing LaSalle, then well past 90, at the zendo in Kamakura doing formal interview with his teacher. One morning David was standing with Yamada as LaSalle was leaving. Yamada turned to David and said, “there is the man who taught me how to practice the koans in life.” Teacher/teaching is not as straightforward as the English word suggests.

A liturgical note: in every Buddhist temple I’ve gone for teaching, there is singing before and after. Inevitably there is a chant that lists all the ancestors, usually with a lot of words of gratitude. On September 6th of each year, there is a founder’s ceremony at Hartford Street, and the names of Issan’s teachers from Siddhartha Gautama through Indian, Chinese, Japanese and American teachers (in an abbreviated form--there are officially more than 90 generations of teachers) are chanted. And then we all ask that his teaching--Issan’s--go on forever. We are not saying that Issan was “the Buddha,” but we acknowledge that he was a vehicle for the teaching and that he made it his own. 

When I first came to the Hartford Street Zen Center, every few months a group of monks, mostly from Japan but several Western Buddhists as well, would come by to visit the hospice. I would serve tea, maybe they stayed for zazen, they talked with Steve, Issan and Phil. They asked as many questions as they answered. They were not coming by to inquire after the health of Issan who at this point already had some notoriety as the former drag queen monk. They came to examine how the dharma met the real circumstances of the epidemic in that moment. They came to test Issan’s dharma. 

I work with the koans. After more than a thousand years of koan practice, there are several “Koans for Dummies” books that Japanese monks use to cheat, pass and get a cushy assignment. They were usually hidden in the monastery toilets and a few translations are floating around Western centers in various places. (My days of seeking out a rich temple gig are long past, not to say that I haven’t picked up a clue or two from the manuals when I was stuck). What is also true is that teachers who have been authorized to teach are also given another book, “A thousand years of  teacher’s notes,” including lots from the oral tradition--great responses, lines of inquiry, questions to ask, even gestures to look for. So when I decided to study the Blue Cliff Record, I went looking for someone who was authorized to teach it. My friend James Ismael Ford put me in touch with one of his senior students, Ed Oberholtzer. Ed and I have been working together every week for more than two years. Ed’s good. He encourages me. He never gives me an answer and when I want to peek at the precious marginalia, he will only talk about it after I have had some insight myself. Is this better than working on my own? Of course. Does this mean that neither of us go out check some juicy piece of modern Zen scholarship about a text, teacher, or sociology? We share it.

And now for the last question that I see at this point: Does anyone need any of this to be happy, or to get enlightened?  As you might have guessed, several Buddhists have already considered the question and formulated an answer. Doug, you are an Arhat, a category and description for men and women who have gained their own enlightenment. They looked at the world of samsara and they got it. They found the key and unlocked the door, and achieved a high state of inner peace. They are also called Shravakas, but I think that refers more to the library/self-help stage. But tradition also says that they still haven’t really fully got it. At least in the Mahayana, they are still not bodhisattvas, that is beings who are dedicated to the enlightenment, the freedom of all beings. There’s still too much self there, and for the Mahayanist there is No Self. If you want to figure out what that means, you might need a teacher.

And one last knot in this thread: Having a teacher, at least in my experience, is still very rich. Times are changing.  As I said I still work with a teacher. It’s part of Buddhist practice. Since I began to practice meditation, study the scripture and, most importantly, work with the koans, I have had several teachers. I do better than if I were working on my own. I know that from experience. I would describe it more like a mentor relationship, but that seems to describe a higher and lower position. Some of the people that I have talked with have less experience than I do. At this point they all are younger, but in the relationship I consider myself on equal footing. There is always something to learn. 

* *Buddha  gathered with his monks encouraging them to continue practicing everything he taught them long after he was gone. His words, translated into modern English: “I was only able to point the way for you.” He furthered: “All individual things pass away. Strive on with diligence.”

Pedophile priests ruined many lives.

Many people have asked me about how I reacted to the ongoing scandal of priests sexually abusing children in their care. I knew one or two who were dismissed from the priesthood, and one who stood on the right side of history but whose ministry was nonetheless ended..

I was a Catholic seminarian in Boston when the pedophile priest scandal was brewing. I use the term brewing because the whole stinky mess was happening in the dark. I had no inkling that anything was amiss. When I saw Todd McCarthy’s film “Spotlight” 50 years later, I wondered how I could have missed it. The priestly caste loves dark rumors, but the priestly veil of secrecy is also thick. Apparently we all missed it. Of the 2,324 priests who served in Boston during the last half of the 20th century, 162 were credibly accused of abusing more than 800 children and minors. Those numbers are staggering. I remember reading the original stories in the Boston Globe in 2002, and then Cardinal Law’s quick removal to Rome where John Paul II promoted him to the cushy sinecure as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore with a stipend of $12,000 a month, a substantial raise above his salary as the Archbishop of Boston. That seemed like a reward and left a terrible taste in the mouth of everyone who had been incensed by his willful blindness. It inflamed those who had actually been injured by the abuse.

Although I was a Jesuit scholastic, I had strong connections with Boston’s regular clergy. In the summer of 1969, the final year of Cardinal Cushing’s era, I started working for a young diocesan priest. Mike Groden had started The Planning Office for Urban Affairs for the Archdiocese. This was a very unreligious designation for an official arm of the Catholic Church because Mike set it up to do some very innovative work outside ordinary parish life. I liked that.

Father Mike was only a few years older than me. He was boyishly good looking with a great Irish smile. He was very much a priest but also a social activist with sharp political instincts of a Democratic ward boss. After the Boston race riots in the summer of 1967, he became committed to racial equality. He did Saul Alinsky’s training for community organizers.

I had finished my two years as a Jesuit novice, completed an abridged philosophy requirement at Boston College, and had just been accepted into The Graduate School of Design at Harvard for a degree in architecture and planning. My mentors at the Boston Architectural Center told me that a young priest was looking for an intern to work on a low income housing project. I had the summer off. Several other young Jesuits and I had rented a small house on Oak Street off Inman Square. We were all grad students at Harvard. I called Mike and he hired me immediately. This was a great match.

Every morning I rode my bicycle from Cambridge down Massachusetts Avenue to an office in a small older building near The Old State House. Sister Faine McMullen, a sister of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who was also a lawyer whom Mike had met during the Alsinky training and I shared two small rooms in the back. The office administrator was the daughter of one of the wealthiest Jewish developers in Boston. A conscientious objector, Mosik Hagobian, worked under the auspices of the Office although he spent most of his time in a young architectural office on the floor below. Our small team seemed perfect for a liberally educated anti-Vietnam War activist post Vatican 2. It was also a reflection of Father Mike’s instinctive ability to assemble an effective team.

I mentioned that Mike was politically well connected. Lyndon Johnson’s HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) was flush with cash administered by a cohort of bright young people who were convinced that the change promised by the War on Poverty was possible. Mike had secured a promise for a million dollar grant, seed money for a community development corporation with a program that Mike designed. In the 1960's a million dollars was a lot of money. He had identified a low income Italian community in East Boston who were fighting the encroachment of Logan International Airport into their community. I never asked and was never told the way that he had secured the HUD money or picked East Boston whose leader was a fiery Sicilian priest, Monsieur Mimi Pitaro. After one dinner in the rectory of Holy Redeemer Church I had no doubt who was in charge, but I was also very impressed by his careful listening to the needs of his community and commitment to help. I joked with Mike that Mimi seemed like a Don who actually took care of his folk. Mike agreed that I was not far off.

In my role as Mike’s deputy community organizer, I told Mimi that the development corporation could engage in a variety of businesses to alleviate the impact of the airport’s rapid expansion. Mimi was insistent: Thank you very much but we need housing. This single mindedness was to shape the future of the East Boston Community Development Corporation as well as The Office for Urban Planning for years beyond that first summer. My job was to write the proposal tor HUD. In real terms, dollar and sense terms, I’ve ever had a more productive 2 or 3 months. I didn’t write the founding documents for a community development organization but my proposal did secure seed money for an agency that would develop 600 units of low income housing over the years. It also set Mike on course to develop three thousand units of low income housing working with parishes of the archdiocese over the next decades.

We secured the money within weeks of submitting our proposal, and The Planning Office had an MOU with HUD to establish the agency. We immediately began looking for an Executive DIrector. Mike told me that if I wanted to submit my name, I would get “favorable consideration.” I loved the work and I considered it. Briefly. This was the summer of 1968. The assassination of Martin Luther King followed by that of Bobby Kennedy, the disruption and protest against the War in Vietnam had radicalized me, and rather than disrupt the long course of Jesuit studies, I decided that I would apply to begin the last part of a Jesuit’s training before ordination.

I moved to Woodstock College in New York City for my first year of theology and then onto the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley California, but I would call Mike from time to time. The work of the Planning Office was thriving; he loved being a priest and sometime in the 1980’s he was made pastor of a church in Boston’s Back Bay, Saint Cecila, a cavernous building whose old time parishioners had mostly feld downtown Boston. Mike set about reviving the parish through music. Of course he could raise funds to restore its three organs, organize choirs and hire choirmasters, but knowing Mike, it was also an opportunity to engage a community in conversation about the things that mattered. He reached out to the LGBT community in a way that circumvented the official stance of the Church. Back Bay was one of Boston’s gay neighborhoods. Mike himself was also gay. He succeeded brilliantly.

Then came the investigation of the Boston Globe's “Spotlight” and calls for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Francis Law. Of the hundreds of priests and religious in Boston, only about 70 signed the petition demanding that Law be fired for the coverup. And Mike’s name was there, the highest ranking priest on the list. He was on the right side of history.

Richard Gerard Lennon, Law’s auxiliary bishop and the placeholder after public pressure forced Law out of Boston, put the screws to Mike. Apparently doing two jobs does not allow a priest to collect two salaries that amount to not much more than $40,000 together. Mike had not collected any salary as pastor of Saint Celia, but for two years after the church could afford to pay him, he was still compensated for his work as the director of the Planning Office. There was some barrier in Canon Law prohibiting priests from being excessively paid. In 2003 Mike resigned rather than fight. It was clearly retribution. He moved to his family home in Scituate Massachusetts where he lived out the rest of his life. I have no idea how much money he had for retirement, but certainly Cardinal Law's $144,000 per year was considerably more. In about 2010 I called for the last time and we had a long conversation. I could not find a trace of resentment in the hour that we spent looking over the years.

Cardinal Law died in 2017 in the embrace of one of the oldest of Rome’s churches dedicated to the memory of the Virgin Mary. Though he had been removed from the Archdiocese of Boston, people who had petitioned for his removal did not see any real progress in addressing the scandal. The Church of Benedict had shielded him. Father Mike died in 2018 on the shores of a windswept beach town south of Boston. His supporters and admirers who had protested his removal gathered in Saint Cecilia to say goodbye. They felt no satisfaction either.

If there was any regret on Mike’s part, it might have been that the church he loved and served had taken away the possibility of official ministry, but I am sure that he found a way. He always did.

Mike was certainly not involved in any sexual abuse, but his life as a priest was deeply effected by it.

Mimi Pitaro became the first priest elected to the Massachusetts Assembly shortly after we set up the East Boston Community Development Corporation. https://archivesspace.library.northeastern.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/307157

Sister Faine McMullen RSCJ spent her long life working and advocating for the poor and disenfranchised. She lived to be 101 years old.

https://www.cny.org/stories/sister-faine-moira-mcmullen-rscj,13533?

East Boston Community Development 

https://www.ebcdc.com/

Priest Who Spoke against Law Resigns

https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2003_01_06/2003_05_15_Paulson_PriestWho.htm

Msgr. Michael F. Groden

https://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.php?ID=181182

I have dinner with an Old Church Bishop

Hocus Pocus! My dinner with a bishop of the Old Catholic Church was right out of Buñuel.

I had dinner with the Bishop of the Western Diocese of the Old Catholic Church in America who by chance or grace, had recently been transferred from a laundromat South of Market to a substantial house in the Forest Knolls section of San Francisco, west enough to be deep in the fog bank, high enough to be swept by the same winds that blew the fog down from Twin Peaks into the Castro.

Out of the Jesuits for less than a few years, I had moved to San Francisco, and started my almost 2 decade relationship with TR. We lived at Haight and Fillmore on the fourth floor. It was just about the time that I began venturing into the Castro. Terry and I were in a relationship and, though I can’t remember if he was sleeping around, probably he was, I was trying very hard to have as respectable a relationship as my mother would have approved of, which was of course totally impossible.

I had begun to lead groups in the 13 week version of the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy. Money was very tight; we charged something like $400, perhaps as much as $500 for the 13 week session, and each one of the partners had 3-4 clients. I needed supplemental income.

Terry was a cook and I was the night janitor at the Bakery Cafe, a hip eating place of “the new Castro” about 5 doors down from Harvey Milk’s Camera Shop. I would arrive at about 10:45 in the evening, just before closing. If I worked quickly, and the cooks had not spilled too much food on the floors, I could finish up between 2:30 to 3 AM, and would be headed home just about the time that the last of the forlorn cruisers would be tramping up and down Castro searching for a hookup. The scene was sexually charged even if a bit desperate and sad. It scared me a bit, but I tried to convince myself that it was part of our liberation movement.

Two brothers, one gay and one straight, had started their business in the neighborhood’s old Italian bakery. Looking over old floor plans that I found online, I remember the kitchen along the north wall just as drawn; the tables looked out into a well kept garden. It was idyllic, maybe even a bit hippie. Later in its history, the space would grow in fame and notoriety as the Patio Cafe. New owners took out the antiquated baking ovens in a futile attempt to modernize the kitchen and bring it up to code. Along the way they sacrificed the original name.

We had a general staff meeting once a week. At one meeting, a lawyer who was doing all the permitting work for the restaurant introduced himself, a smart handsome man who assured everyone that he was straight. He then told us that he had only one testicle, but it was very large, could do the work of four, was very well proportioned and not at all an embarrassment in the ritual of the California hot tub.

As we continued around the room with our introductions, not to be outdone by tales of a robust testicle, I volunteered that I had been a Jesuit for 11 years, and was beginning a new career in the human development industry. The lawyer started to smile widely, and, leaning into the table, told me that he was the Chancellor of the Western Diocese of the Old Catholic Church in America. I asked if he were ordained, and he responded that no, all that was required was a law degree plus good, or lucky, connections. Two of his clients, the owners of the notorious Slot Hotel South of Market, had discovered that the manager of the laundromat in the basement of their building was a legitimately consecrated bishop of the Old Catholic Church. I certainly cannot retrace the intricate web of intrigue that landed his excellency dead center in San Francisco’s gay leather community other than one thing leads to another. A broke gay bishop made his way from Utrecht to San Francisco with thousands of other gay men and women; the owners of a gay hotel had used their influence in the Episcopal Church to find a liturgical slot in the crypt of Grace Cathedral for their wash-spin-dry bishop; my lawyer friend became the diocesan chancellor for the Old Catholic Church; and an extremely skeptical Jesuit night janitor was slated to dine with a successor of the Apostles at a posh address.

My second hand orange VW Beetle was slightly out of place in the neighborhood, but I arrived on time, parked and was led into a small dining room, with a few other guests. It was high church, pressed linen tablecloth, matching cutlery, bright glasses and polished plates. We chatted until the bishop came downstairs in a flowing French style purple soutane. It was beginning to feel like a Buñuel film. We were introduced and then stood uncomfortably for the recitation of a rote prayer. I was seated next to the bishop across from the chancellor. The bishop with his very gay mannerisms was almost a caricature, but I actually found him very engaging. He was not the brightest marble ever to don a miter, but there have been far worse.

He meandered through pretty mundane “getting to know you” kinds of questions. When he asked me several questions about my Jesuit training, I mentioned that I had been at Woodstock College in New York before coming to Berkeley. He smiled and asked, “Oh, do you know Frank D.?” Of course I knew Frank, an extremely handsome Italian who was also gay. We were in the same year, and had a close, hesitant relationship that included a lot of flirtation. I’d lost track of him during my years at the Berkeley Jesuit Seminary. I was stunned.

“I ordained Frank and he’s now the Abbot of a small Benedictine monastery that I’m starting in Colorado.” Before I could say anything, he grabbed my hand and motioned for me to get up. “Do you want to talk with him?” In the seconds it took to mumble my assent, we were in the kitchen, and the bishop had taken the receiver off the wall phone and was dialing a number.

“Brother Frank, I have a surprise for you. Woodstock College, your class, here’s Ken.”

Then he handed the phone to me. Some awkward back and forth--we were both shocked--but in general a very friendly hello. From the whole exchange of words nearly 50 years ago, I remember one phrase quite clearly: “the bishop and I disagree about several things, but I love him.” I imagined that the monastery was for celibate monks and the bishop was more tolerant of same sex relationships than my gay Jesuit-Benedictine crush. Their love was not imagined.

Frank and I said goodbye with real heartfelt good wishes, and though I knew that I would soon lose track of him again, there was no regret. A sweet connection.

I never got to ask my question about the formula for the episcopal consecration that the Romans insisted the Anglicans got wrong and severed their connection to the Apostles. My Jesuit research had led me to the conclusion that it was a political move disguised in theological language. I suspect that the Bishop’s response would have been some reference to Utrecht. Formula, mode, substance might have been reduced to magic words, like hocus pocus. But he was far better than that. His instincts led him to uncover the hidden love between a man he’d made a priest and a stranger who’d appeared at his table, and this bishop followed his instincts.

The evening ended at 9. The bishop excused himself, explaining that he had to teach about the “Filioque Controversy,” and, because it dated from the 11th century, he had to brush up. It was at least important to know who said what, and what the consequences were. I thought that was a pretty solid theological procedure. Then he disappeared to probe the existence of the Holy Spirit, seeming to float up the stairs as lightly as he’d descended them. Could this have been a surreal sleight of hand with a touch of magic realism?

Some time later, maybe months, maybe years, I had some very pricey tickets to hear Gore Vidal in the Masonic Auditorium atop Nob Hill. I found a very tight parking space for the VW on Jones right behind Grace Cathedral, and, as I was rushing to my seat, I turned and looked through the glass door into the cathedral’s crypt. There was my laundromat bishop with full Roman style miter and regalia at the end of a procession. I remembered that his Slot sponsors had found an altar and chapel for him, in exchange for ensuring that the fundamental line connecting the Apostles of Jesus to the Episcopal Bishop of San Francisco remained unbroken. I remember the coincidence of the two events quite clearly though my timeline is foggy; if the event at the Masonic Hall was connected with Gore’s run for the Senate, the date of sighting the bishop might have been as late as 1982.

Could I be accused of gonzo journalism, as if I were writing a report of a spiritual night out while on dope or some New Age high? I stand accused. It really did happen, and Gore’s “Live from Golgotha” is far more gonzo than I can muster.