Rules to Live By
by Edward Brown
Edward barred from
teaching at SFZC
Once Katagiri Roshi told us, "Practicing Zen is not like training your dog: Sit. Heel. Fetch.
We are not training ourselves to be obedient and just follow the rules. We are training ourselves to wake up." When a teacher says this, you know he's seen a lot of people trying to get it right. And failing. And being miserable. What was the point again?
Katagiri Roshi would also say, "Let the flower of your life force
bloom," and, "the meaning of life is to live." Not an
easy task when so much by-the-book structure stands out from the background
and appears to demand compliance. Still the wisteria
grows freely using the trellis for support.
To be in the grip of rules is a fearsome place to abide.
You know what you've done, so you are always on the run from the Zen
police, trying to hide and cover up the lapses, seeing if you can face down
the authorities. And how discouraging is it to find out
that you are playing every role yourself and there is no one to blame.
You cannot escape the whole charade. You know what
you've done, so you the authorities know what you've done and you the judge
will judge you accordingly. And you, along with the
others will conclude, "Darn, I'm no good at following the rules, even though
I'm great at catching myself, and passing severe judgments.
I'll never be able to get it right."
And you hear Roshi saying, "it's the flower of your life force
blooming, don't you think?" And you don't know what to
think.
Our most common strategy is to try to measure up, to attain
perfection and not have any lapses--zero tolerance, buddy.
And you being the intrepid alert policeman catch the smallest infractions
(You did not stop at the stop sign. I don't care if
you've never been caught before in fifty years of driving.
That wasn't a stop.) Bad dog!
Once you know the set-up, you notice that changing any part of it
changes all of it. As Suzuki Roshi mentioned in Zen
Mind, Beginner's Mind, "If you want to control your sheep or cow, give
it a large pasture."
Speaking of Suzuki Roshi, the story that David Chadwick tells in
Crooked Cucumber goes straight to my heart. Again, I
will paraphrase here. I first met David in the spring of
1967, when I was head of the kitchen and David was head of the guest dining
room at Tassajara, and though David and I rarely see each other, he abides
tenderly in the sweetness of my heart. It's one of the
understated remarkable aspects of Zen practice that we have friends for a
lifetime (or perhaps innumerable lifetimes).
I was extremely introverted and still tend to keep to
myself, while David was brightly extroverted probably the most outgoing
person ever to practice at Zen Center, as the students spend so much time
sitting silently facing the wall that they have rare opportunities to be
social. Extroverts need not apply and usually don't.
One day at Tassajara about ten years ago, I sat with David on the
side of the office in the sycamore grove, and everyone who came by stopped
to talk with him. They were not pausing to speak with
me each of them seemed to be right in the middle of an on-going conversation
with David: friendly, responsive updates given and received.
Sunshine sparkling in the blossoming maple trees and the budding
sycamores with their brilliant blue background: bright, gracious, convivial.
I sit in the warm light and soak it up in silent amazement. We are
such different people.
Students at Tassajara are directed not to drink
alcohol. What might be challenging for some is that
summer guests were and still are allowed to bring alcohol when visiting
Tassajara on their summer holiday. While the winters at
Tassajara are devoted to two ninety-day practice periods for Zen retreatants
only, summers are open to visitors as well. Summer
students follow a schedule of meditation and work (on scholarship), while
summer guests pay to enjoy the hot baths, the quiet contemplative
atmosphere, and three vegetarian meals. Income from the
Guest Season helps to support students the year-round.
At times students see the guest season as an
opportunity to develop skills and virtues that are not being cultivated in
the winter: being of service, cultivating graciousness and generosity,
learning to be conversant with others (in addition to perfecting the
inward-looking silent gaze acquired over the winter), learning to perform
when called upon, as in work where there are consequences, and
potentially acquiring people skills (which are not the same as
facing-the-wall skills).
Others find the summer to be a distasteful disturbance to the inner
and outer peace and quiet of the winter months. If peace
and quiet are the point (sit, heel, fetch!), then staying at Tassajara over
the summer certainly becomes a travail. As my friend
Daigan says with magnificent dry humor about a distant summer: "the heat,
the flies, the madness, and the lies." Which life will
you train for? Classically Zen students are said to have
mouths like a furnace you take it all in and burn it up, fuel for growth.
(And minds like a fan in winter--useless!)
Coming back to David (!) who was apt to sit down with the dining room
guests towards the end of the meal, share some of their wine, and visit.
After cleaning up, he would head off to a guest's cabin and continue
visiting, often shifting to brandy or scotch. And then
the following morning he would miss the student schedule of zazen, service,
and breakfast. The guest season was an opportunity for
him to be David.
Behavior such as this does not go unnoticed in a zen center.
One day after breakfast at the morning meeting of temple officers
with Suzuki Roshi, the director brought it up. These
chosans begin with silence while the Roshi's attendant prepares tea.
After the tea is passed around, everyone bows together following the
Roshi's lead. And the tea is sipped in silence until
Roshi speaks. His announcements or concerns lead to his
invitation for others to speak: "is there something you would like to bring
up?"
With David sitting nearby (after missing the entire earlier schedule)
the director asked, "Suzuki Roshi, what do we do with someone who is always
breaking the rules, drinking alcohol with the guests, and missing morning
meditation?"
Apparently Roshi paused, cleared his throat, paused again, and said,
"Everyone is making their best effort."
Persisting with his inquiry the director said, "but we've got to do
something. He's breaking the rules flagrantly and
persistently." Roshi responded that, "it's better that he
does it in the open, rather than hiding it from us."
Again the director pressed his case: "we can't just let this behavior
go unpunished. It's a bad example for others."
"Sometimes someone is following the spirit of the rules, even if he
is not following the letter of the rules." That
exemplified Roshi's exquisitely gentle firmness, his
utter conviction.
"Wouldn't it be better if he followed the letter of the rule and not
just the spirit?"
Right, wrong, good, bad; often I don't know what to say.
David got to stay, and he continued being David. I
rarely went to the morning meeting with Roshi, as I just kept working in the
kitchen, and my lessons came from cutting a hundred thousand vegetables.
I like to think that Suzuki Roshi knew David's heart, and knew it was
in the right place. How shall we understand this human
life, intrepidly wayward, intrepidly seeking the way?
I think that it's well worth noting that many years later after the
Roshi's death in 1971, David was the one who championed Suzuki Roshi,
telling everyone that we needed to preserve his lectures and establish an
archive. Disciples much better at following the rules did
not have this inspiration, and did not readily agree to support David's
efforts. Little by little David carried the day, running
up large debts in the process. (I think that he should receive a grant to be
David, as he is so phenomenally good at it.) It took a
while, but David eventually got sober, and there is a new quietness, focused
and alert, receptive and curious, that has deepened his easy engagement with
others.
David's story touches me--what is it, finally, that helps people,
awakening our good hearts?--and I know that Suzuki Roshi also wanted others
doubtful of their worthiness to stay at Tassajara and continue practicing
zen. I wish that I had known this story when I was head
resident teacher at Tassajara in the spring of 1984.
Though the chosan had taken place in the sixties, I did not know
about it until David's biography of Roshi (Crooked Cucumber) came out
in 1999, so I did not have Suzuki Roshi's example in front of me in 1984.
The officers of the temple, serious and stern, came to inform me that
one of the students, James, had been doing drugs and sharing
them with others. Unfortunate news in the crisp spring
air with lucid sunlight flooding in my windows. What
shall we do? I said, please, let me speak with James,
before we decide anything.
James was an energetic, occasionally moody young man with a disarming
smile. He was by far the youngest student, perhaps
eighteen (or was it twenty-two), and he'd
come to zen practice off the streets of San Francisco,
after being discovered by Issan Dorsey, one of Zen Center's priests.
Rumor was that they had been lovers. And now James
was following the schedule at Tassajara--Issan was not there--where he slipped
easily into the role of mascot (rather than hero, scapegoat,
or lost child).
Sitting down together in my cabin by the upper garden, I found James
to be entirely forthcoming. It had been his birthday
recently, and his mother had sent him a Care Package, only instead of the
usual chocolate chip cookies, there were brownies laced with hashish, some
LSD, along with marijuana for smoking. What a mom!
What was she thinking--sending drugs to a Zen Center?
Why wasn't she thinking?
James said that the package had entirely way too many
drugs for him to consume on his own, so naturally he had shared the drugs
with others--on their day-off, of course.
James also expressed his remorse and his deep wish to continue
practicing at Tassajara. He loved being there, and he
especially loved Suzuki Roshi. I told James that I would
do my best, but I wish I'd known how to make his wish come true, known the
story about David and Suzuki Roshi, known to consult with others outside of
Tassajara. When I met with the officers, I told them that
I wanted James to stay, but they were insistent that he had broken the rules
and had to leave Tassajara. I argued that he would soon be
back on the streets of San Francisco, and that he wouldn't survive for long.
The officers said that was up to him; that he had to leave. I
finally agreed to go along with them. Heaven help me.
James may have lived for a while at our City Center, but shortly he
was back on the streets, and after a year or so, we heard that he was dead.
How painfully sad. Of course we don't know what
would have happened had he stayed at Tassajara, but an isolated canyon in
the mountains does not have the temptations of the streets of San Francisco,
and today I am heart-broken not to have kept him in that structured
isolation. Where we could have provided him with a big
brother or mentor, where the spirit of Suzuki Roshi would have welcomed him:
James, please stay, do your best, let this practice take care of you.
Though you break the rules, come back to the way.
Zen practice is not like training your dog: "Sit. Heel. Fetch."
Some of us dogs have taken years to mature. What
finally helps is hidden in the heart, waiting to be uncovered.
Sometimes by a teacher. Sometimes through sorrow.
My brother Dwite attended the first practice period at Tassajara
beginning in July of 1967, and when he left after a month, I didn't know
why. He went on to become first an Episcopal priest and
then a Catholic lay-person. Finally, a few years back we
talked about it. He said that another one of the
students--he was remembering that it was David Chadwick of all people!--was
bugging him about his imperfect attendance in the
zendo. He loved, he said, to sit and watch the creek,
but he was being pestered relentlessly (so it seemed) to follow the
schedule. David does not remember doing this, and my
brother agrees it may well have been another student.
Finally he'd gone to tell Suzuki Roshi that he was leaving.
Effusively Roshi encouraged him to stay, saying, "please, don't worry
about it, don't worry about what the other students say.
I need you to stay." And then my brother said, "Roshi
got up and hugged me." He didn't know what to make of it:
"what did he mean, that he needed me to stay?"
So the Roshi's efforts could not dissuade my brother from leaving, as
he was set on not having to weather the harassment any longer.
"I just didn't like it," he said.
*********
DC comment: It was Niels Holm, my life long close friend, who spoke up at that chosan, morning tea.
I remember what I said to Dwite that day. It was before the first practice period and I'd been there a few months already and was an eager beaver student who'd come to ZC the prior fall. I asked Dwite why he wasn't going to zazen and he said Suzuki Roshi had told him it was okay not to go. I said, "Why don't you go anyway?" That was it - one time in passing. I didn't learn till decades later that he'd left because of that. He was very sensitive. There's a lot of good stuff on cuke from Dwite and his wife Judy - we've had some most interesting correspondence.
Rules to Live By (PDF)- by Edward Brown, first published in Buddhadharma in the fall of 2013.