by Erik Storlie
“It doesn’t make sense to call it wrong. But remember, in our practice it is not important to meet heavenly beings. Our practice is very ordinary.”
I nod.
In our first meeting as student and teacher, Katagiri Roshi lays his finger on the rift that will always divide us. I refuse the traditions of Japanese zen—shaven heads, robes, chanting, a Japanese name, ordinations. And I refuse the informal American culture that grows up alongside—loose black shirts and pants, military haircuts, vegetarianism, whispered voices, even an American speech that begins to drop its articles, its the’s and a’s, in imitation of the Japanese teachers. I’m not into zen, I often grumble to myself, to stir up my family or be noticed on the street. I’ve done that already.
I ask, “Roshi, sometimes I wonder if Soto zen is clearly focused on enlightenment. I wonder if it isn’t like all the other religions—really worried about keeping itself going, getting people to accept its doctrines and call themselves zen students, or Buddhists, or whatever.
“For example, I’m confused by all the concern about the zen lineage and so-called transmission of the Buddha’s mind from master to disciple. It seems pretty exaggerated. Do you really think that some magic happened when Baker Roshi was given transmission and installed as abbot, that something actually passed to him that he wouldn’t otherwise have? Now, Professor Conze points out that Bodhidharma is a mythical figure, that he didn’t really exist. So in reality there was no continuous, direct transmission of the Buddha’s mind from India to China to Japan.”
Roshi looks taken aback. His eyebrows contract and his lips purse in distaste. With mild indignation, he protests, “Oh, Bodhidharma is very important. He really existed. That is very certain.”
As a Westerner raised in the tradition of free inquiry, I’m about to press the issue—but go silent. Does he find the question barbaric? Suddenly I see in him the Christian missionary, sorely pained that his American Indian convert, puzzled again, asks once more what’s wrong with the Great Spirit and why only the Jesus god can save.
We sit without words for a moment. My question drifts in some huge gulf between our cultures. I don’t want to offend him. I’ve just become his student.
Then he looks at me quite seriously and says softly, “The only thing I have to teach is emptiness. Just emptiness. That is all. That is the most important thing. That is really our way.”
“So nothing else,” I ask, “is part of this teaching?”
“No,” Roshi says. “Emptiness is the whole teaching. Emptiness is complete.”
We go on to discuss my dilemmas, my connection to friends and family in Minneapolis, my love for the mountains and wilderness, my teaching and study, my drive for enlightenment—the many rooms Dick Baker warned me against. Sitting quietly, Katagiri listens to all this, then says finally, “Don’t worry about zen now. Just finish your studies. That is very important. It is hard to chase two rabbits at the same time.”
“No, no,” I say, shocked at this suggestion. “I must do zazen, too!” Roshi says nothing.
Driving back up the coast to San Francisco, I mull over this exchange. Is Roshi pushing me to give up one or the other? I know I must practice zen. I want enlightenment. I want to be a master of meditation, a zen master. But I know also I must finish my studies, or voices will whisper that zen is the latest excuse, another escape from fears of inadequacy, a final failure of nerve.
And soon, I tell myself, the academy will need my zen training—and my Ph.D. It can’t forever ignore the existence of consciousness, of pure awareness itself, dismissing it as an inconvenience and embarrassment, as some curious epiphenomenon. Soon, surely, the universities will want professors whose training goes beyond the surface intellect, beyond the thought formations by which mere images of reality are constructed. And I’ll have that training—along with the requisite Ph.D.
Then my generation will winnow religion for its fundamental truths. The chaff of zendos and ashrams, of Bibles and sutras, of black and orange robes, of shorn and shaven heads, will be blown to the four corners of the earth, with only hard, sweet kernels remaining to be gathered and ground and baked into exuberant bread.
As I enter the outskirts of San Francisco, I’m firmly resolved. Somehow, I’ll fuse this Eastern practice of empty awareness to the rigorous intellectual structures of Western learning. Anything less is failure.
Later that spring I drive back down to Monterey to again urge the cause of zen students in Minneapolis. Sitting in the Katagiris’ small living room, I try to persuade him.
“Roshi, it’s a perfect time for you to move. Baker Roshi is taking care of the San Francisco Zen Center. Things seem to be going smoothly there—and you will always return to lead sesshins and practice periods. The midwest has many people interested in zen. Don’t you think it’s time for a teacher to come to the middle of the country? We call Minnesota the heartland.”
“Yes,” he says, “this may be a good time. But I have to think very carefully. I promised Suzuki Roshi that I would help take care of Zen Center. But I will think about it. I am very interested.”
I’m encouraged, but I wonder if his interest is shared by his wife, Tomoe-san, who has brought us tea and now listens quietly to our conversation. Outside, their two little boys play in the warm sunshine.
“Tomoe-san,” I say finally, “you have never been to Minneapolis. The winters are cold and full of snow, and the summers are much hotter than San Francisco. Yasuhiko and Ejyo will have to go to different schools and make all new friends. Do you really want to go?”
Tomoe-san looks at me brightly. “It is okay. Wherever he is,” she says, laughing and pointing at Roshi, “I am okay.”
Some weeks later, several women zen students from Minneapolis visit the Katagiris in Monterey, and upon my own return to Minneapolis in the early summer, I learn that finally he and his family have agreed to come.
Later that summer, Katagiri Roshi arrives in Minneapolis to lead a five-day sesshin. He and his family won’t be able to settle here until late fall or winter. But we don’t want to wait that long for a sesshin with our master. His small group is eager to practice hard.
The day before the sesshin begins, I pick him up from the family with which he’s staying. As my parents are gone on vacation, I’ve offered to have the sesshin at my house. Roshi and I drive over so he can see the house and think about arrangements. After a brief tour of the rooms, I suggest that the large living room be cleared of all furniture, which can be stored in two bedrooms. He can sleep in my room. The rest of us, about eight men and women, will throw sleeping bags out on the floor—women in the living room, men in a basement room.
Then we sit down at the kitchen table to write out a daily schedule on a yellow legal pad I take from my mother’s desk. Since I’ll be the doan, the one who rings bells indicating the different events of the day, I watch carefully. He writes:
4:30
Rise—ring bell
5:00
Zazen
5:40
Kinhin
5:50
Zazen
6:30
Service
6:50
Breakfast
7:20
Break
7:35
Zazen
8:15
Kinhin
8:25
Lecture
At this point, I interrupt his writing. From past experience at sesshins, I know that breakfast never gets done on time and people line up, frustrated, trying to use the bathrooms during the short break afterward.
“Roshi,” I suggest, “maybe we can allow more time for the break after breakfast. We’ll have eight or nine people here, so we’ll need time to use the bathrooms. Then the time for the next zazen might go forward to seven-forty or seven-fifty. That’s easier for people to remember, anyway. It’s kind of confusing to start things at thirty-five minutes past the hour.”
Roshi pauses, looks at me questioningly, then says, “No, I think it is okay. It
is not so bad even if people have to hurry a little bit.” He turns back to the schedule and completes it. The last entry is
9:10
Bed
But I have several more improving ideas for the sesshin routine. As usual, the afternoon tea break is only twenty minutes long. The house is a block from Cedar Lake, which has lovely wooded pathways. “Roshi, you know it would be very good if people could have more time at the afternoon break. That would permit them to walk down to the lake, which is very beautiful. Probably some of the new students can use more time to stretch their legs, too.”
“No, no,” he says firmly, the corners of his mouth tightening down. “This is enough break.”
I’m desperate to loosen the schedule. I’m afraid if things are too strict, we’ll lose some of our present members, let alone attract more. One member has already repeated her therapist’s horror at what she must endure during sesshins. The therapist asks how a practice that demands, and seems even to revel in, such self-inflicted pain can be anything but masochism.
Trying a new tack, I mention to Roshi a second member’s wish to use work time to do something socially beneficial, some activity worthy in itself as well as helpful in making zen acceptable to the Minneapolis community. “She suggests we use the work period to gather litter along the lakeshore. I’ve got the plastic bags. It would be a very good and useful activity.”
“Zen is really useless,” says Roshi, chuckling. “It is not good for anything.”
“But this schedule may be too hard for people, at least right now,” I protest. “Why do we need such a strict, rigid schedule?”
At this, Roshi straightens up from the table. He says, curtly, “Yes, the schedule is strict. But it is not really so strict.” He looks at me intently. “After all, we have vowed to save all sentient beings!”
Then relaxing, he says, “The sesshin is a wonderful opportunity for us. In sesshin, all we have to do is sit together. We can try to sit very hard.” He smiles and makes a fierce twisting motion with his hands, as if wringing every last drop of water out of a washcloth. “Every human being has a certain smell, a kind of stinkiness. In sesshin, each person can squeeze out his stinkiness, maybe, even just for a little while.”
It’s the fall of 1972. The Katagiris arrive and we house them in a lower apartment in an old fourplex near the University of Minnesota. We convert an upstairs unit to a zendo. Next door is a huge old house in which three families that are deeply committed to Katagiri Roshi live communally. Now we must raise money, repair and redecorate, thread through tax proprieties, devise a political structure, and learn how to relate to the Roshi, his family, and each other.
The practice is strict. Roshi rises six days a week to sit two periods of zazen with us at five in the morning. Five nights a week he sits in the evening or gives a lecture or instruction. During the day he works on his lectures, meets with students, and occasionally gives a presentation to a high school or college class or a community group. Every month we have a two-day sesshin, and several times a year we sit for five to seven days.
In that first year, the founding members have meeting after meeting in the dining room of the big house next door to debate and approve the articles of incorporation and bylaws by which the new organization will become a nonprofit religious corporation. We meet evenings and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. We sit on straight-backed chairs around a large table drinking cups of strong black coffee. How shall we govern ourselves? Is the Roshi’s word law? Or is this a congregational organization in which democracy rules? Katagiri has no hunger for power—he’s deferential and gladly accepts the group’s judgments about the new structure.
Most of us prefer a democratic, congregational form, but some argue that Roshi should make absolute decisions. He discourages this idea. One of us argues that the organization should make decisions only by consensus. This idea gains support, but several of us, including Bob Pirsig and his wife, vociferously disagree. Over more cups of coffee the debate rages, with Katagiri looking somewhat nonplussed, perched cross-legged on his straight-backed chair, cradling an empty coffee cup in his lap. Finally, shyly, he asks, “Can someone please explain this word ‘consensus’? I don’t understand.”
Chuckling, I say, “Well, Roshi, it means that everyone on the new board of directors has to agree before we can do anything. And if we don’t agree, we have to keep on having a meeting like this until everyone agrees. So things would be like this all the time.”
“That’s not a fair description,” says the proponent, with rising irritation. “We’re a spiritual community. Roshi, how can we maintain a sincere spirit if we don’t fully work out our differences? It’s essential that all of us be in agreement with steps we take.”
“Oh,” he says, raising his eyebrows, “Of course it is very important if we can all agree. Let’s discuss some more.”
Another hour of increasingly testy debate goes by. It’s clear that there won’t be consensus on the consensus proposal. Finally Roshi says, “Maybe it’s not possible for us to go forward if one person can make us stop. I think maybe we shouldn’t try this ‘consensus.’” A vote is taken and majority rule is adopted for the normal actions of the board of directors. As the newly elected secretary of the soon-to-be incorporated Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, I’m pleased to record the decision.
The next year is wonderful. I marry Jeanne, a lovely young woman who also teaches at the college, and we move into a spacious apartment near the new Zen Center. My doctoral coursework is done. I’m closing in on the dissertation. And for the first time in my life I’m at the center of an organization, not standing outside with my nose pressed against the window. Roshi talks to me about everything—low water pressure in his apartment, health insurance policies, car repair, fund-raising, schools for his boys, buying a Zen Center building. I begin tutoring Roshi and Tomoe-san in English each week in their small apartment. Soon I come an hour early before his lectures to help with the English in his translations and commentaries. I’m proud to have this role. There are a dozen of us who have founded this organization and are involved in its activities almost daily. But somehow I feel I’m Roshi’s right-hand man.
We have a picnic that first summer. Nancy Pirsig, a natural social director, organizes it. We’ll celebrate our success as a new zen center at one of the city lakes. We bring our children, charcoal grills, and hot dogs (not everyone will eat them). We drink beer, play baseball, and behave as if we were normal Americans. Instead of wearing his usual robes, Katagiri Roshi shows up in a baggy pair of shorts. And he wears a white, round sailor cap—it hides his shaven head. He seems a teenage boy, happy and relieved of the burden of puzzled midwestern stares. We chuckle at his short bow legs, a legacy of some thirty years of cross-legged sitting.
Roshi and Tomoe, Bob and Nancy Pirsig, Jeanne and I, and several others sit together at a large picnic table. We eat brown rice and hot dogs on paper plates and drink beer in paper cups.
“Well, Roshi,” asks Nancy, “how does it seem now that you’ve been in Minnesota for almost a year?”
“Oh,” he says, smiling, “it’s very nice. I think I’m very lucky to come here.”
“But did you enjoy the winter?” someone asks, laughing.
“Oh, winter is pretty good,” he says quizzically, raising his eyebrows. “I think that cold temperature is pretty good for us. Especially for Tomoe.” He smiles at her.
“Oh,” she says, “I get used to it. And the boys like very much to play in snow.”
“I think,” he says, “it is good to go away from San Francisco. San Francisco is a kind of paradise. It’s by the beautiful ocean and the mountains, and it never gets very cold. It’s a kind of paradise for spiritual practice, too. Many people are interested in religion. When I first came from Japan, I was very surprised. So maybe it’s really too easy. I’m really glad to be here.
“But there is one problem in America. I can never get lazy. There is always some students interested in zen and crazy to sit eve
ry morning. Even when I am lazy and don’t want to get up, I think, ‘Oh, I must go. Someone will be there.’”
We all laugh at this, knowing Roshi never misses morning zazen unless he’s sick. We can hardly imagine that he ever just wants to stay in bed.
Bob says wryly, “If it’ll help, Roshi, I promise not to come to morning zazen next week.”
“No, no, that’s okay,” Roshi says, shaking his head. “You better come, even if I am lazy.”
“Now, tell me again,” Nancy commands. “Why did Bodhidharma go to China? And why did Katagiri come to Minnesota?”
Roshi laughs delightedly and says nothing. We laugh, too. This is a standing joke we like to tease him with.
The conversation lags for a moment, and I offer to refill Roshi’s paper cup.
“Oh, no, thank you, I’m okay,” he says.
“It’s a picnic,” I say jovially. “Have some more.”
“No, no,” he says firmly, raising his hand palm upward in the zendo gesture of refusal for an offer of more food or drink. Somewhat chagrined, I nurse my own second beer.
Nancy says, “Roshi, Bob has an idea on the oryoki sets. We’ve found a potter who will make the bowls, but it sounds like we can’t get the setsu sticks any time soon.” The group has been eager to use traditional monastic eating bowls in the zendo. But we haven’t been able to get the cleaning sticks that go with each set.
“Yes, that is our problem,” says Roshi. “I wrote, but they are very slow in Japan.”
“Well,” says Bob, “we’ll take care of that ourselves. I’ll bring some power sanders to the Saturday work period, and we’ll begin making them. It’s simple enough.”
