The Dead Saints Chronicles: A Zen Journey Through the Christian Afterlife

by David Solomon

  “There, you go, David. Just trim the dead branches. Other than that, we are done. You can’t wire this tree during spring, because there is too much water in the bark. Enjoy the flowers when they bloom. It will become a beautiful Bonsai, but it will take years to fill in the branch I cut off. Next year you can do more.” I knew Felton was communicating something more than horticultural advice to me, but I couldn’t get his meaning.

  Paul pulled me aside, “David, the personality you put out front to people is your importance. He just pruned it off. He is suggesting you develop new branches to fill it in again, a process that will take many years.”

  I’d always wanted to be the good student,” but that came as a shock and it stuck with me. It’s something I’ve pondered for years, even to this day.

  Some of the trees were ready for root pruning, and so we spent time learning that. A few of the pines were put in clay Bonsai pots, transforming them into classic Bonsai. It was an amazing and profound afternoon. Except for Paul, it was our first encounter with this rarified and quintessentially Japanese Art. Somehow, through the fledgling trees we were experiencing conception, gestation and birth. We were no longer Bonsai virgins! They were our new babies. It was awesome.

  We were asked to put our Bonsai away and gathered inside the Library for a “talk.” Felton settled in as well for the class. It had been several years since Paul had seen him and he had told us the story of how they met a number of times. However, this was different. The Zen Master was present, in our midst.

  Paul looked to Felton, who replied, “This is your story. Don’t look at me!” He lit a cigarette and got comfortable. Paul pulled out his Meerschaum pipe, and began:

  [Paul speaking]

  In 1974, a woman approached me and asked if I wanted to meet a Zen master who taught Bonsai in Atlanta.

  She said, ‘I have a feeling what he is really teaching has little to do with these trees he is bending into shape, but I don’t know really what it is and he won’t say, so why don’t you go and see him.’

  I had always heard about ancient eastern spiritual schools dramatized by Kwai Chang Caine in the popular 1970’s series, Kung-Fu. It absolutely fascinated me. So I went to see him.

  As I recall, when I arrived at the school of Bonsai in Atlanta, I saw this six-foot-American meandering out to me. I had expected a short, white haired Japanese master. He was not at all what I expected. We walked quietly together through traditional Japanese landscaping and ponds, to shaded benches that held hundreds of these miniature trees, all of them Bonsai. Some of them looked like a little tree you would see on a mountain beside the ocean where they were bent in a windswept direction, one side bare from the salt spray and the branches moving out to the other side. The Bonsai were done so perfectly they didn’t look as if the hand of man shaped them. They were actually modeled in that way and yet they were living things. It was exceptionally fascinating. There were little forests with dozens of trees growing on a slab of rock. Dozens of trees and a perfect forest. In fact, the forest might include a mountain, a lake or a cliff, and ferns, in this little miniature world. Paul explained. As I walked through the garden with Felton, I noticed some peculiar things about him. First, he was never in a hurry. I was so excited with everything that was going on around me I would ask three questions before he would answer the first one. I couldn’t get him to move any faster. And the slower he got, the more impatient I got. But the man didn’t even seem to notice. In fact, he was so much in communication with the nature around him that I was there as an observer, and got the distinct impression he was apologizing to the garden for my presence.

  [Paul turned and looked directly at Felton sitting next to him]

  ‘I began to realize you were teaching me something, but not by pointing it out to me, and by not telling me what the lesson was. I had the option of not even noticing it was a lesson.’

  [Felton said nothing and stared into his cloud of cigarette smoke]

  Paul continued. We went to sit down and chat about what you were doing. I had heard you working with some students in forming a tree and I heard you say, ‘In wiring branches in a particular direction, you must realize this is a living being. Don’t think of it as a plant. Think of it as a soul, and this soul needs to be molded in a particular direction. These training wires are like life’s experiences that bend your nature in a particular direction so you are made more beautiful by the pressure of these wires that mold your being.’ I was listening to you give these people fantastic spiritual truths, when all of a sudden it occurred to me; you were not really teaching horticulture or botany or even Bonsai. You were teaching them spiritual growth and the laws of the universe. What a brilliant mind! So slow. So understated, acting as if he was not brilliant.

  [Paul stopped speaking. He sometimes used the “pregnant silence” between sentences to make his point. Long seconds passed.]

  You acted disinterested in me, but as a perpetual student, I needed to ask, ‘I know the ancient masters had a rule, if the student couldn’t notice a lesson, the teacher couldn’t give it to him. You had to be ready for the lesson in order to receive it. You had to be able to ask the question in order to get the answer. I realize you are not going to sit here and tell me you are a teacher of spiritual growth, but I can see you are and I want to learn from you.’

  [Felton glared at Paul with a look that could melt steel.]

  You looked hurt I could make such an accusation. And in your very slow, soft way that still twisted the knife, you said, ‘I am not a spiritual teacher. I do not teach spiritual lessons.’

  [Paul grinned at Felton, ‘How peculiar. I wonder what he does believe in?]

  But I didn’t quite know how to ask. The best I could say was, ‘What do you mean?’ I know you are teaching more than how to torture these plants. It is a bigger lesson. I can hear that in what you are saying to these students. What do you mean you are not a spiritual teacher?’

  You looked a little confounded, but answered:

  ‘What you are accusing me of suggests I would separate life from its essence. What I teach is life. The relationship to the universe. Not this on a spiritual level and this on a practical level, and this on a physical level. I don’t rip these things apart. It is all one law. Spiritual growth is growth—that’s all. I don’t believe there is any such thing as a spiritual teacher. If a person separated that part of their life and tried to teach that, they would be teaching an error in the first place.’

  [Paul turns to Felton]

  Well, I was duly impressed and that’s when I asked you to teach me. A few uncomfortable moments went by, but you just shrugged your shoulders and said, ‘All right, let’s work with a tree for a few moments and then I will come back and we will talk about it.’

  You gave me a pine tree that was sort of rag-tag. It didn’t look like a Bonsai at all. It looked like something he had picked out of somebody’s garbage can and put in front of me. It had literally thousands of dead, miniaturized little brown pine needles in it. You explained the pine needles had been reduced in size by clamping its roots and cutting them back. You gave me a little pair of tweezers and told me to pick out every one of those little brown pine needles.

  [Paul stared at our class]

  I was not so dense I couldn’t recognize a lesson in patience. Everybody laughed, but Felton sat absolutely deadpan.

  So, I took those tweezers and said, ‘If it kills me I am going to do it and sat there at that table picking out those little pine needles one by one. I wondered if I really had to do this or if you thought it was just for me. But I kept plucking and plucking. Hours went by and I had just plucked one side of the tree. My mind began to think about work at my office and all sorts of other things I could be doing. I kept thinking Felton should be talking to me. He could be teaching me fantastic lessons while I am plucking these damn little pine needles!’

  You let it go on for hours and I didn�
��t think you would ever get back to me. Later on, you wandered off stopping here and there to comment on work done by one of your students. By the time you got back to my plant, and me, I had developed quite a relationship with my rag-tag little pine tree. I was beginning to see the tree in a completely different way.

  [Paul looked at Felton]

  You began to talk with me about the tree. You asked me, ‘If you were going to shape that into a more beautiful shape, what would you do?’

  1974 Atlanta, GA. Felton Jones Bonsai Demonstration. Reprinted with permission from FIL Archives.

  I looked around at some of the other trees you had shaped and looked at my tree and thought, I don’t see any way this tree can get into a shape like one of those other trees. If I bend all of these branches that way, it still wouldn’t do it. Even if I cut this branch or another, it still isn’t right. I couldn’t imagine anything beautiful in that tree. It was like a rag-tag, dirty little girl without her hair combed. You just stared at the tree while I struggled to decide about its shape and direction. Suddenly, it occurred to me, ‘Well, maybe windswept, because most of the branches go in one direction anyway.’

  [Felton suggested Paul begin working on his Bonsai]

  ‘Why don’t we just work on it and see if anything comes out of it for you?’

  I watched you take the pruning shears, cut, wire them, and push them around. It really didn’t look all that gentle, in the way you did it. I didn’t see how the trees survived it. So, I picked up the shears, held my breath, and started to cut one of the pine branches.

  At first, I thought you would go through the ceiling, ‘Don’t do that! You didn’t ask for permission first!’

  I said, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You have to talk to the life in the tree so it understands what you are going to do to it, so it will cooperate with you. That’s how you are going to find out what direction it wants to go in.’

  I wondered, ‘Oh, you are going to tell me how to talk to the spirit in the tree. I see. Alright, how do I do it?’

  [Felton explained]

  ‘Talk to it.’

  I sat there looking at this ridiculous little scruffy pine tree and had no idea how that pine tree was going to talk back to me. There is nothing harder than trying to talk out loud to a tree feeling it is just a tree. But I tried. I asked it what direction it wanted to go and it was so ridiculous I almost giggled. You watched you and me didn’t smile. I could see little fleeting glimpses of a sense of humor at my discomfort in trying to communicate with the tree.

  Sighing, you said, ‘If you could see the tree as a human being, what would being look like?’

  I began to describe this dirty, skinny little girl with combat boots and uncombed hair.

  You urged me, ‘Close your eyes and see that little girl standing before you.’

  I thought that was easy enough. ‘I closed my eyes and I could see the little girl.’

  [Felted prompted Paul on]

  ‘Now talk to her. Don’t talk to the tree. Talk to her, the spirit of the tree and ask what she would like.’

  With my eyes closed, the image began to come. ‘First of all,’ she said, ‘you’ve already washed my face.’ And I saw her face differently after that.

  ‘My hair is ready for combing and shaping.’

  As the images came, I opened my eyes and looked at the tree again, and saw it with brand new eyes. It was a different tree, and the tree was excited, as I was to cut it. It no longer felt that I was going to cut a branch and it was going to bleed. It was more like a girl who was going to get a haircut and when she was finished, she knows she is going to look beautiful. There was a spirit coming from the tree, and both you and I began to communicate with it.

  Before we finished late that afternoon, we had pruned and wired the tree into an exquisitely beautiful, little Bonsai that was windswept and had the bark missing on one side. You showed me how to paint the bare part of the pine with sulfur, which turned it white so it looked as if it had been bleached by the sun and salt spray. You could almost smell the ocean by looking at it.

  I was thrilled! I really felt as if I had seen the transformation of a soul from something uncontrolled to something beautified by nature itself. It didn’t look like the hand of man shaped it.

  [Paul began speaking to Felton]

  After this experience, I said, ‘I would like to study with you. I have an idea you can cause me to learn more than I can learn by accident. You can take me in a short time and teach me more in one year than I can learn in five years on my own. Will you take me on as a project and shape my mind like yours?’

  You looked at me and said, ‘This is not a part time job. Could you leave your Fellowship church, close its doors, wash my teacups in my kitchen, make my bed, sweep my floors and pick the pine needles off the dirty, scruffy pines and do all of these things if I never say anything wise to you?’

  It hit me like a ton of bricks. I had started the Fellowship in 1972. It was like my child, a living being, something that was a part of me, and to close it would be like closing a part of my life. However, at the same time, there was this great opportunity to study with a great Zen master. These two highly valuable things were being weighed in the balance for me, and it seemed to me the life of the Fellowship would continue even if its doors were closed. I made the decision. ‘Yes. I will come here and be your student.’

  You turned to me and said, ‘That being true, I cannot teach you.’ I was not expecting that sort of reply. I thought I had sorted it out and had done exactly the right thing. And I said with tears running down my face, ‘Why?’

  [Felton looked unmoved]

  You gave me two reasons. ‘For one thing you are too emotional about it, and secondly, if you could close your Fellowship and come here, then I have need of learning from you because I couldn’t close this Bonsai school and come stay in your Fellowship.’

  Well, I felt I had learned more in that short exchange in those few seconds than I could have learned in a lifetime out there looking for it. The experience affected me profoundly. I asked Felton if I could meet his teacher someday. He said, ‘the teacher only makes that decision…. if he wants to meet you.’

  I asked, ‘How will I know?’

  [Felton looked at Paul as if it were the most absurd question he had ever asked]

  I realized it was, so he dropped the subject. We parted with a handshake and a smile and he left for the day to go about his business. It wasn’t long after that I moved the Fellowship headquarters from Atlanta to Virginia Beach. I got a call one day from a man at the Norfolk Botanical Gardens who said he knew Felton, the Bonsai teacher from Atlanta. He said, ‘I’ve studied with him for quite some time and I have a tree here I would like to bring to you. Perhaps, you could work with it and see if you would like to continue learning Bonsai like you did with Felton some time ago.’

  I asked him to come out and he brought a stunning black pine Bonsai that was still in training wires. I noticed the man was oriental. He sat down with me and we looked at the tree together. After a few moments of conversation, he left the tree with me, giving me the impression it was a gift from Felton. Later in the day, I thought I’d call Atlanta, assuming Felton had sent me the tree. When I spoke to Felton, he said, ‘I didn’t give that tree to you.’

  I questioned, ‘Who did?’

  ‘He did.’

  I wondered, ‘Why should one of your students want to give me a tree?’

  That’s when you told me, ‘That wasn’t one of my students. That was my Teacher.’

  I was incredulous, ‘My God! I spent ten minutes with that man and hadn’t asked him a single question! All these years I waited to meet him, and I don’t even have sense enough to recognize the presence of this teacher! How could I have missed it?’”

  [Paul got on the phone to Norfolk Botanical Gardens and asked if the oriental man was
still around]

  I finally got the Teacher on the phone and told him I was not quite sure how to take care of the Bonsai he left and asked if I could see him again. He very graciously consented to come back out and talk to me about the care and feeding of the little Bonsai tree he had left. I found myself sitting with this gentle man, peering at the little Bonsai tree. This time, I was captivated by every word and gesture from him. How could I have missed the signs? The sharpness and clarity of his presence, his slow and purposeful movements?

  Then the most spectacular thing happened; as we sat there, he began to refer to the tree sitting before us. ‘As I was training this branch, instead of bending in a new and beautiful direction, it was stiff and ready to break.’

  He explained softly, ‘That was the period when you decided to teach instead of publish your work.’

  I stammered, ‘What do you mean? How did do you know?’

  He quietly said, ‘This tree was put in training wires at the time my student told me of you. Since then, I have watched you in the branches of this tree. Everything you have done has been reflected in this image of you. If I met resistance in a branch, I knew you were experiencing resistance in what you were doing, in your work or in your personal life.’

  I was astonished. This Teacher, who I had never even met, had been participating in every experience of my life for the past three years. Looking at the Bonsai, I realized every branch had been a point of communication between the Teacher and me. He had been teaching me through the tree. He never forced me to learn anything. He never manipulated me by bending the branches in ways they did not want to go. He only made gentle suggestions to me through the tree, to grow in a more beautiful, harmonious direction.

  I knew he had come very, very close, and had somehow been allowed to touch the periphery of a genuine school of ancient mysteries, much like Kwai Chang Cain in Kung-Fu…but without the Shao-Lin Temple. I asked the Teacher the question that persisted in my mind. ‘Are there places, perhaps in China or Japan, where priests and priestesses provide instruction to students who become spectacular individuals who know how to respond to every situation in life?’