by Erik Storlie
“Now,” says Professor Conze, delighted to have insulted American young people, zen, the Zen Center, and the three officers, for whom we know he has, in fact, affection, “let’s get back to our subject. But first, someone bring me a chair so I can stretch out my legs. And a lectern. We have much matter to discuss here tonight.”
It’s an afternoon about a week later. I’ve arranged to meet Professor Conze in his office. He leans back in his chair and peers at me through his thick glasses. “Well, here I am,” he says, not unkindly. “What is on your mind? I know you’re one of those zen students.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’m living this year at the Page Street center. I’m also doing a dissertation comparing zen and American puritan styles of meditation, looking at the way in which each has a yogic discipline that catalyzes a nonordinary state of consciousness. The puritans called it ‘assurance of justification.’ Buddhists, of course, call it many things—satori, samahdi, enlightenment, what have you.”
Professor Conze grunts, leans back in his chair, then asks, “So why are you so interested in this zen stuff? Everyone in America seems crazy about zen. The real work was done in India centuries ago. You must go back in history to find great minds filled with enlightenment. A mind like that—a truly enlightened mind—hasn’t appeared for many centuries.”
“Well,” I say, “what else is one to do? Where else is one to find masters?”
Conze snorts, “Of course, no one thinks European Buddhism is important. Actually, now it is quite old. There are very good people. Very good. But everyone has to run wild after some Oriental guru. It’s absurd. Like this Trungpa.”
I’m intrigued. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is causing a huge stir these days. A number of Suzuki Roshi’s students have left Dick Baker to join him. Curious to meet him myself one evening after a lecture he gave at the Zen Center, I went up to talk. He stood, sandwiched between two large male disciples close on either side. Stepping forward to address him, I hit a wall of alcohol stench and caught myself before taking an involuntary step backward. Yet despite a high state of intoxication, he gave lucid answers to my questions in flawless English.
And one evening just a few days ago, my old roomate Ron from futon sales reappeared. As we stood talking with a group of people in the hall, he pulled aside one of the young married women and solicited her to come spend the night with the Rinpoche. To my astonishment, she went, leaving her husband to climb disconsolately to their room alone.
“It sounds like you’re not very impressed with Trungpa,” I say. “But he’s gathering many disciples.”
“A man without character,” says Conze, “an exploiter. He took advantage of the British Buddhist community. We threw him out of England and hoped we’d heard the last of him. Now your country must deal with him.”
Changing the subject, I ask, “But Professor Conze, why do you dismiss the zen schools? Don’t you think that a true understanding was transmitted from the Buddha through the Patriarchs to Bodhidharma, and through him to the zen schools?”
“Pure fantasy,” he snorts. “There never was any historical Bodhidharma. An old wives’ tale. Everybody loves, of course, their own mythology. But tell me now. What exactly is on your mind?”
“Well,” I begin hesitantly, “I want to ask you for your advice. You’re a scholar and a teacher. And you’re a serious student of Buddhism, as well. For years I’ve been struggling for some way to pull these two halves of my life together. I don’t know that it’s even possible. Do you think I can harmonize a commitment to enlightenment with a career of study and teaching? Right now I can’t give up the academic work—or maybe it’s just that I won’t. But it leaves me feeling divided, unable to pursue either wholeheartedly.”
Conze observes me intently though his thick glasses. “Yes, I can understand this problem. So you study the American puritans. They had some kind of mysticism, of course. But I think you should think about the big fish. That might be more important.”
“What?” I ask, puzzled.
“The big fish,” he says again. “The big white ocean fish. What was his name who wrote about it . . .?” He squints his eyes, trying to remember.
“Oh,” I say, “You mean Moby Dick? The white whale? Melville?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Herman Melville. There’s something very interesting there, don’t you think? A great mystery, the biggest creature on earth, and a quest. But it’s not my field. This is all I can think of.”
I thank Professor Conze and leave. On my drive back across the bay to the Zen Center, smiling to myself all the way, I think about Emerson and Thoreau and the transcendentalists—and “the big fish.”
The Zen Center stands on Page Street at the edge of the Fillmore, San Francico’s black ghetto. The residents in the few blocks around are a mix of poor blacks and whites, a few Asians, and a smattering of zen students. Most days, I jog a three-mile circuit through the Fillmore. Pedestrians, upon hearing my running footsteps approaching, anxiously turn to check out who is overtaking them from behind.
Early in the winter, I often slip away on a Friday night to a black blues joint some blocks away. The band is fine, and they bring a tall, leggy singer who dances in the center of a raucous crowd, pulling a short, tight skirt high up on her thighs.
As I’m walking there one Friday night, a gang of six teenage boys herd me into an alley and demand money. Zenned-out, unafraid, I smile and apologize, extending my arms and hands, palms up, in a gesture of embarrassed appeasement.
“Hey, guys, I’m sorry, but I haven’t got shit. You know that Zen Center up on Page Street? I live there and none of us have money. But we always try to help the folks. And you can sure have whatever I got.”
They grumble, mutter curses, begin to mill about—and then one says, “Ah, fuck ’im,” and they scatter on up the darkened street.
My post as rear entry garbage sentry gives me another window on the neighborhood. I come to know an old, near-sighted, and pathetically obese white woman who lives in a deteriorated basement apartment across the steep, narrow street from my doors. How, I wonder, does this helpless old creature survive here? We talk occasionally from sidewalk to sidewalk.
She says she has little money to care for herself and eats whatever food she can laboriously carry home from a tiny and expensive neighborhood grocery nearby. I begin bringing her leftovers from the kitchen. She seems confused about her own history and family—a vague story of different cities, different jobs, a husband who’s dead, children who don’t visit. She doesn’t seem sure what cities they live in.
One evening, setting trash and garbage out for the early morning collection, I see her walking home with two teenaged black boys. Each carries a small grocery bag. As they approach, they eye me uneasily. Clearly, I’m a complication.
As she fumbles for her keys, I shout loudly across the street, “Hey, how’s it going? So you got some help tonight?”
Nervous, flustered, she says, “Oh my, I got so turned around today. I don’t know how it happened. It’s never happened before. But these boys,” she nods to each one, “said they’d walk me home. I was so tired I didn’t know how I’d carry my bags.”
I linger outside my doors, the officious janitor, conspicuous, checking locks, rattling knobs, picking up and crushing a beer can and throwing it inside my back door. I stand stolidly with arms crossed and toss more pleasantries across the narrow street. I chatter, wondering. “Will these guys split or try something?” I’m ready to sprint for the phone.
She tugs on the heavy wooden door to her cave. Encrusted with seventy-five years of paint, the last layer a glop of gray, it creaks open and the bottom scrapes heavily along the sidewalk. It takes her whole weight to move it. She turns and fumbles in her purse, then hands each of the boys a dollar.
Taking their dollars, the boys hesitate at the door, eyeing me again. Breathing heavily, she carries in her small bags of groceries, one at a time. Suddenly the boys turn on their heels and dart swiftly away up the steep stree
t.
By now she’s disappeared into her basement rooms. I lock my own doors and follow her in. A stench of dank, fetid bedclothes, uneaten food, and ancient rancid grease hits me full in the face. I gasp, sickened.
Breathing through my mouth, I find her in a little dimly lit kitchen area. “Weren’t you afraid?” I say. “You’ve got to be careful, you could be hurt!”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she says, looking up. “Don’t you think they were nice boys?” Bent and obese, her face floats below mine in the dim light, matted strings of greasy gray hair flying in all directions—a crazy old sunflower. “You know, I get so tired and there’s nothing else to do. I have to go out every day, you know. I’ve got to get something to eat. I don’t think they meant any wickedness.” She breaks into a toothless grin.
Returning early one evening, I park my car behind the building and, at the corner, meet a corpse face down in a puddle of blood. His throat is slit. Down the street ten feet is another puddle, red gouts thickening on the hard cement surface. Then I see dark pools continuing on down to the middle of the block. With horror, I realize that spurts from his jugular struck the pavement as he made a last run for his life.
When the police arrive and he’s turned over, I recognize him—a slender, handsome young black man with a neat goatee that makes him look Ethiopian. He came often to sit evening zazen.
I follow the trail down the sidewalk to the rear entry of his apartment. Two detectives are photographing glass scattered below a broken second-story window. Large crystalline sheets lie atop one another, smeared with his darkening blood. He was pushed through the window, his throat sliced by a shard that fell edgewise just ahead of him.
It’s spring. I join the first practice period led by Baker Roshi. For three months, some fifteen of us will sit intensively morning and evening throughout the week and attend all sesshins. Each morning after breakfast we gather for tea, an informal occasion when Dick answers questions about practice. I like him. But can he help me with the questions I’ve carried across the continent for the old Japanese master? He’s only a few years older than I am. And he’s not Japanese.
Nevertheless, at the end of the practice period, during dokusan at five o’clock one morning, I open up and tell what drives me—a doctorate, teaching, writing, wilderness, and ultimately enlightenment. I want to achieve mastery of zen. He listens carefully in the quiet, dim room, the only sounds the occasional whine of a garbage truck making early morning rounds.
“Erik,” he says finally, “your house has too many rooms in it.”
“I know, I know,” I interject. “But it’s all one house!”
“You can’t live in them all,” he shoots back. “When will you shut some doors and turn the key?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Are you going back to Minneapolis at the end of this year?”
“Yeah. If I don’t return to teach, I’ll lose my job. I’ve been gone three years. And I’ve got to finish my thesis.”
Chuckling, Dick says, “We’ll give you a doctorate here. Not the usual kind, but it’ll be genuine.”
“I know what you mean,” I say, “but I’ll have to think about it. My roots are in Minnesota. I love the bay, but zen in Minnesota is real, too.”
“Maybe,” he says, “if you can find it. We’ll miss you. It’s been a hard year with Suzuki Roshi’s death and all the changes. You’re older than most of the students. You’ve been steady. It’s been a big help.”
“Why, thank you,” I say, pleased to get this acknowledgment.
“Someday you must go to Japan. It’s important to see what zazen is like when you’re not just sitting in someone’s living room.”
I nod, an image forming in my mind of a zen practice that is less personal and idiosyncratic—a practice that’s a normal part of a culture, like a physics class in America.
“But be careful,” Dick continues, “about going back and starting a zen group. As soon as you’re the leader, your own practice will stop developing.”
Surprised, I nod. I’ve never considered myself even remotely qualified to lead a zen group—not yet. I’m light years from that vision of the clear light thrust upon me six years ago in Chicago one chill spring morning.
I bow, Dick Baker bows, and I step quietly through and close the door.
I’m brought back to the Crag by intensifying pain in both knees. I rock my body from side to side in increasing arcs, release my right foot from on top of my left, and stretch out my legs. The pain reaches a crescendo, then quickly subsides.
Glancing over, I see the raven has fled from his branch. I didn’t notice. I stand gingerly, my legs stiff, carefully balancing on bare feet, enjoying the sun’s warmth radiating from the black rocks into the soles of my feet. Then I step idly down fifty feet from rock to rock, testing my balance, finally leaving the rocks to meet sage and hillside.
I stand for long minutes at ease, observing the lengthening shadows thrown by the great Douglas fir that follow the crest of the Crag, then notice, off to my left, beyond trees thirty yards distant, a blur of brown. Bear again? I freeze, and then three cow elk and as many young move cautiously into the clearing—edgy, nervous, gazing toward me with soft faces. The wind coming over the crest of the hill didn’t give them my scent. The cows are huge. Reaching only their shoulders, the calves seem to stand on stilts.
Now they catch my movements. For a time all six brown faces are lowered in my direction. I see concern and curiosity. Then the cow nearest me makes her decision and turns to run. The others follow noisily, pummeling the turf, plunging through crackling underbrush and scattering fallen branches.
Happy, I turn and, step by careful step, make my way back up the jumble of the outcrop to stand by the three leveled black rocks. In my absence the raven has returned. Again, he pointedly ignores me as I gather myself into a sitting position. There is slight achiness now in both knees as I pull them loosely into a half-lotus position. I begin watching my breath. It flows easily, in and out, in and out. My body is erect yet easy, every bone and muscle falling naturally into its place. This, I remember, is how Katagiri Roshi used to look toward the end of a seven-day sesshin.
I shut my eyes and awareness is everywhere, an ocean. Thoughts arise and sink into a shimmering surface. Then thoughts cease. I’m an ancient tower, a lighthouse shedding beams of light over a silvery night sea, a mountain marking the slow, massive slip of glaciers down its sides. Everywhere, inside and out, all the world is one bright pearl.
10
Master Dainin Katagiri
IT’S EARLY SUMMER. A WOMAN FRIEND FROM Minneapolis and I drive from the San Franciso Zen Center to Monterey to talk with Dainin Katagiri Roshi. He moved there a few months after Suzuki Roshi installed Dick Baker as the abbot of Zen Center. We want him to move to Minneapolis. And we are ready to ask formally to become his students.
In the last few years, he’s visited the growing group of zen students in Minneapolis several times. This last year at Page Street, I’ve been lobbying him to come to Minneapolis and lead us. During that time, it had seemed possible he would replace Suzuki Roshi. Now, with Dick Baker’s appointment, he seems guardedly interested in Minneapolis. In any case, despite years of refusal to compromise my independence, I’m finally ready to declare allegiance to a teacher. There seems no other choice if I’m to achieve mastery of zen.
Katagiri Roshi and I sit on black zafus facing each other in the small back room of his house in Monterey—his zendo that year. After a few minutes of small talk, he waits for questions.
My heart pounds. “What am I doing here? I never made a commitment, even to Suzuki Roshi! Why make one to Katagiri?” Sweat pools in my armpits and drips down my arms. It runs out my short-sleeved shirt and plop, plop, plops on the black mat.
Katagiri watches, then says, “Oh, yes, I once sweat very much when I was a young man and had to go to dokusan with an important zen teacher who visited the temple. It was pretty difficult. But it’s okay.”
I blurt out, “I’d like to be your student!”
“Accepted!” That’s the end of it.
“Now,” he says, “I would like to tell you an old story. Please tell me what you think.
“When Tozan Zen Master was still a student, he was asked by his master to show his spiritual power. He stood up and walked out of the room, saying, ‘So long!’”
Katagiri pauses. I want to respond, but my mind’s a blank.
Before I can say anything, Katagiri adds, “Later, when he was a master, Tozan had a disciple who left the monastery to go to a hut in the forest. For a while this student came back to the monastery for food, but one day he stopped. Tozan sent for him to ask how he got his food. The student said that heavenly beings brought him food. Tozan told him he had a crack in his practice through which the heavenly beings could appear. But the student still stayed alone practicing in his hut, and finally one day he was enlightened. To express deep appreciation of his student’s understanding, Tozan went into the forest and burned the hut.
“Now, why do you think Tozan burned the student’s hut?”
I say nothing, but I’m thinking, “He’s already got my number. He knows I avoid the ceremonial practices at the Zen Center. He knows I disappear into the mountains in the summer.” I say slowly, “Well, I guess Tozan wants to stop his student from having a practice all by himself, so he gets rid of the hut.”
Roshi says, “Oh, but he burned the hut as the student’s reward for becoming enlightened. But it is true that individual practice is not usually our practice.”
“Well,” I think, “I’m not exactly being told what to do here. In the first story, Tozan expresses his enlightenment by walking away from the master. Remember how careful Suzuki Roshi was when you asked him whether you ought to practice by a strict schedule?” Still, the hint seems clear. My independence is a roadblock. “Well,” I ask, “was it wrong for Tozan’s student to go into the woods to practice alone?”
