Buddhist Heaven

Three Cheers for Grandmother Zen!

“It is much more difficult to control one's mind than to control the weather.” --Yeshe Dorje

A lonely sheet of paper lies on the top of my desk with some scribbled notes. I picked them to see if I could get back to the moment when it felt important to jot them down. Now they just look random but I tell myself that there is some rhyme and reason. There has to be, or does there?

There seems to be some notion floating around that if it ain’t hard nosed, tough no nonsense practice, it ain’t Zen. It certainly can’t be compassionate--or something.

To any macho Zen priest out there having a hard time adjusting to becoming a hospice monk, too bad, or as they say, suck it up. If you saw Issan in the kitchen trying to get his recipe for chocolate chip cookies right, with a temperature over a hundred and sweat on his shaved head, you might change your mind. You might even call it courageous Grandmother Zen.

______________

One of my dearest friends, Michael, was suffering a long, painful and slow death from AIDS. His partner was an older, very proper, even stuffy, English queen. When I suggested that they might come and visit Maitri to see if it might be a good place for Michael’s final days, the partner was emphatic. He said “never.” He called it “The House of Death.” I was shocked.

Great pain and denial go hand in hand.

I vacillated between those two views many times every day. Before I moved into Hartford Street I imagined that I would be doing some modern version of the ancient Tibetan practice of living in the cremation grounds. The reality was somewhere between cooking mashed potatoes to suit a resident’s particular taste and making sure the cable bill was paid.

The Tibetan Yogi, Lama Yeshe jporje Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama’s rainmaker, visited Maitri. Issan welcomed him with a big hug and a kiss, to which the startled Tibetan sage responded with a huge grin. I’m told there was immediate chemistry. Issan took him from room to room, probably pointing with his light but careful attention to their detail, the convenience of the bathrooms, light filling the bedrooms in the early morning hours, things that made Hartford Street feel like home, really more like your grandmother’s house. Yeshe-la was so impressed that he blurted out that Issan had created Buddhist heaven.

Stories of the rainmakers' visit were repeated so often they assumed the status legend. I asked Issan if Yeshe Dorje had even talked about Buddhist heaven. Issan said, “Yes,” he remembered their conversation very well. “He was a lovely guy,” but added “he didn’t pay the electricity bill.”

Whether or not Yeshe Dorje was capable of confounding the clouds, he certainly had experience trying to push out the bounds of the order of things. Beyond incantations and spells, a rainmaker needs to be able to read tell-tale signs in the sky that escape ordinary sky-gazing, not so much to control as to see which way the wind is blowing. When a storm is brewing, seek safe shelter.

In the various cultures that have invited Buddhist teachings to stay a while, even as a guest, we find at least several, if not many versions of heaven. Currently the most prevalent myths about this transition between life and death in the West is a kind of instantaneous shift, an escape, shaking off the bonds of our earthly body. New Age Spirituality has us as spirits temporarily inhabiting a corporeal form. At this stage of my life, I find this very odd notion, and very much at odds with the Buddhist notion that the gift of the human body is the result of eons of conscious efforts to wake to the path of liberation.

This popping out of the bottle story line is, I think, a hangover from our 19th century bout with American and European Spiritualism. More ancient Western myths are deeper and more nuanced. The narratives and anecdotes of the gospel of Jesus have defied easy classification; Ovid persisted into the Medieval world, and of course Dante was no shape-shifter. We can trace these stories of the transition back to Homer and the wealth of half-remembered lore that animated the ancient world. Most of them are more in line with a fairly consistent tread throughout Buddhist teaching--that the path from this life to the next is determined by our choices, limited and difficult they may be, and the depth of our practice.

The New Age holds accounts of near death experiences in awe, and, perhaps I am being harsh, imagines death as a kind of “This is Your Life” TV rerun. There may be some truth in the analogy, but it also is colored, fatally in my view, with easy admonitions about loving beyond petty grudges, good over evil, heroic virtue idealized. I admit that “This is Your Life” captivated my childhood imagination, but I think that was more due to the genius of its writers, and their sentimentality, rather than a glimpse into Perennial Philosophy.

Still there are stories that connect us with who we are, ordinary places where we can recognize who we really are.

______________

I remember a rather handsome younger man who often visited his friend in Maitri, a sweet man who had the small room at the top of the stairs on the second floor, facing the street. Like so many of us in the early 1990’s, this young man spent an enormous amount of time visiting friends in several of the places where they were dying, Coming Home Hospice, the Missionaries of Charity’s Arc of Love, Garden Sullivan, Wards 86 and 5B of San Francisco General Hospital. When the time came, he attended their memorial services as most of us did--we all struggled to honor the deep connections that linked us with so many friends who were dying way too young. He was so grateful for the care his friend had received that he wanted to give something back. He came to me and asked how he could help.

The room needed a quick paint job if we could get it done before the bed was filled again. I said if he could help me paint it we could do it in a few hours. As we worked together, he told me that he sensed something different at Maitri. He said he always felt like he was visiting his grandmother. I knew he wasn't talking about the “This is Your Life” version of grandmother.

Yeshe Dorje was right. Issan created Buddhist Heaven. 

Three Cheers for Grandmother Zen.

Come home to the empty house
Longing for the warmth of a fire
Or chocolate chip cookies

You notice your picture hanging on her wall
Right where she left it
Her uncompromising love that seeks only your happiness

It is a blessing
To touch this heart of grief and create a miracle
Fill that house once again

This is the great way

Out of Bounds, Off Limits

This is where Issan "Tommy"Dorsey Roshi began his career as a drag artist.

In a friend’s kind of online bio she said that “Zen is essential to my practice, but I'm not a Zen teacher. It turns out I'm too heretical for institutions and that's a good thing. There's much seeping in that doesn't fit the forms. The ecology of erotic emergence overflows.” I thought of her and Issan when I saw this picture of military police preventing entrance to a legendary San Francisco gay bar. If I am perhaps distorting her remarks to dig down deeper into something she intimates about the groupthink that seems to go hand and hand with the kind of rigorous practice that is normally delivered and fostered in western zen centers, forgive me.

“The Black Cat” was one of San Francisco's first gay bars to offer regular drag shows. It was the San Francisco jumping off point for one of the great first generation American Zen teachers, Issan ”Tommy” Dorsey Roshi.

These days Issan wouldn't have a chance in certain parts of America, the country he put his life on the line for. But he seized on the chance of practice as soon as he encountered it and that gave him another life.

Rei, it’s always out of bounds and off limits or it ain’t Zen.

An Unauthorized Death

When Maylie Scott’s mother died at home in Berkeley, she called me. Apparently after my stint at Maitri Hospice, I had the reputation as the go-to person for dealing with Buddhist death rites. Personally I found the designation of hospice priest slightly uncomfortable. I had done my best to distance myself from any sacred ritual after spending several of my Jesuit years fussing over post Vatican 2 updating. But as we say, that was my personal issue.

Actually I made it up as I went along. I had to. I’d fallen into my role taking care of men dying from HIV without any formal hospice training. The crisis trained us all, often brutally. The same for taking care of the Last Things. If there was a handbook, it was untranslated or came with tons of cultural baggage. This is a story about some of what we did, why we did it, and where our hands were tied.

When Issan died, Steve Allen asked Kobun Chino Roshi to perform the exacting Soto ritual done at Eiheiji for their most revered priests. Kobun had served in an official capacity there, teaching ritual and chant. He himself had been well trained; his seemingly endless chanting was mesmerizing but certainly beyond our language ability not to mention voice control. He could not train us. I drifted off and realized that it probably wouldn’t make any sense to translate it anyway. It was perfect for that moment, and that was enough. It had to be. Later there were a few odd ceremonial gestures, like pouring salt on either side of the doorposts, that I understood even less. The salt heaps seemed to be Japanese superstition, perhaps to ward off marauding Yōkai. I didn’t want to believe that they had crossed the great waters with the Dharma, but I might be wrong.

Issan had arranged for his own cremation with the Neptune Society. We followed their car to the crematorium. It was a bare, ugly industrial space; the workers were dressed for work around the hot furnace. Though not disrespectful, it was utilitarian which came into sharp contrast when Kobun, Philip, Steve, Shunko Jamvold, Angelique Farrow, David Schneider and David Bulloch put on their formal Okesa. The usual work of burning bodies was interrupted by our chanting. I could see that this was outside the usual practice, and it cost extra. 

Steve and Shunko returned several hours before Issan’s body was reduced to ashes. Usually the crematorium would grind any remaining bone fragments into a powder in what looked like a giant food processor before returning them to the next of kin. Steven had requested that Issan be spared this process so that he and Shunko could sift through his ashes with ceremonial chopsticks, looking for small gem-like fragments to keep as relics.

Several weeks later there was an elaborate funeral at Zen Center. Hundreds of people gathered; Richard Baker Roshi, Issan’s teacher, was the head priest, but Kobun, as well as Mel Weitzman, Blanche Hartman, Norman Fisher and Reb Anderson were also present. Towards the end Richard Schober, the chair of Maitri and not a Buddhist, turned to me and said it felt like high mass for a bishop.

Between 1989 and 94 I was part of so many services for men who died in the hospice as well as others for Issan’s friends that I lost count. Almost 90 men and one woman died during Maitri’s first years. I tried to school myself, attempting to discover an appropriate level of formal ritual. Issan, Steve and Phil performed the Soto memorial service that included food offerings, and chanting, particularly the Daihi Shin Darani, an invocation for the compassionate intervention of Avalokitesvara. There was also a period of spontaneous sharing about the person’s life and loves, something that Richard Baker may have added at San Francisco Zen Center. Several times I helped gather a minyan so that we could recite Kaddish, and there was one Roman Catholic Mass in the zendo. On at least 4 occasions Issan, Steve or Phil performed Tokudo for men who wanted to join the sangha and shave their heads before they died.

The Book of the Dead

In 1989 at Lone Mountain College, I went to a teaching regarding the Tibetan Book of the Dead by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö, coupled with the bardo initiation. There were only six to eight of us who attended all the teachings. The lama sat on a high throne in the neo-gothic chapel for three hour sessions twice a day for three days. Despite all this formality he was very approachable, answering questions in an informal, personal way. I remember a long argument he had with an animated, forceful Jewish woman who said she could not forgive Hitler but felt she had to. Jamgön Kongtrül’s resolution, as I recall, was if the Talmudic leaning woman could stop harming herself no matter what she wanted to hold onto, opinions and positions would inevitably fall away.

When on the evening of the last day, time came for the empowerment of passing through the bardos, the audience swelled to overflowing, mostly gaunt men with HIV. I knew in my heart that many of these men were engaged in some kind of magical thinking. The fear of death was palpable. Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö performed the ritual in the manner of someone steeped in tradition. Perhaps death’s sting had not dissipated by the last chant, but if the pain of the men who lined up for his blessing was even slightly mitigated, it was a success. In my own life, the sting would linger for years, a kind of survivor guilt. Along the way ritual became less important, though it did not entirely vanish.

Normally an initiation ends with some practice instruction. On that last evening Jamgön Kongtrül concluded with a plea for everyone to live their lives as fully as possible for however many minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years remained. He said that would be the best practice; that bardo practice was noticing what happened in the “in-between” gaps in our experience. Many of these men would be dead in a few months. His instruction was a kind gesture of compassion.

Joshi, Kennett Roshi, and bending the law to death’s favor

Paul Joshi Higley was the first Zen priest in the community to die after Issan. He was one of two men and one woman Issan ordained. Paul had been a student of Chogyam Thrumpa, and held some level of Shambhala Training. He came to the hospice with a six month life expectancy and lived for nearly two years. He became part of our community, and my friend. In his late 30’s, dying of AIDS, he had a strong will to live fully. Determined to take full advantage of anything that medicine could provide during that first terrible decade of the epidemic, he didn’t die in the hospice but at Garden Sullivan Hospital out on Geary Ave after an experimental treatment.

The hospital called early in the morning, perhaps 1 AM. I’d promised Paul that his body would not be embalmed and that it would remain undisturbed for at least three days before cremation, but I was not at all prepared to find a way to transport a dead body from a hospital back to what looked like an ordinary San Francisco house in the dead of night. In those days the hospital afforded you 4-6 hours to have a funeral service to pick up “the remains.” I called Paul's father who met me at the hospital and provided the signature required for the release of his son’s body. Then I had to convince a tiny African-American mortuary to transport his body to “a Temple.” This was not entirely a fiction as Maitri was still part of Hartford Street Zen Center, but it was pushing the limits. It was against the law for a body, certainly an unembalmed body, to remain in an ordinary house, not a licensed funeral home, for three days.

We returned Paul’s body to his room at Maitri between 4 and 5 AM. I began to wash it carefully with sweet tea and a few drops of alcohol added, the astringent to help seal the pores; then I inserted some cotton balls into his anus. He’d been my friend so this was both a labor of love and extremely difficult. Issan once told me that in the time of AIDS, we were at war, and the ravages of Paul's last struggle with the virus were visible on his body. I imagined that I was washing them away. It was sunrise when finally Paul’s body, properly dressed, lay undisturbed in his room, dominated by a huge Tibetan style shrine. I turned and saw the last calligraphy that he’d done on large pieces of fine paper hanging on the wall. They read “Yes, Yes, Yes.”

Over the course of the next three days, friends, family and admirers came and went. It was a kind of Buddhist wake.

Phil sent me to Jiyu Kennett Roshi’s Selling water by the river: A manual of Zen training, to review what she wrote about a priest’s funeral. Together he and I sketched out the full ceremony, where everyone would stand, the placement of the altar table, the food offerings, the order of the chanting. Phil was a Soto priest performing the cremation ceremony of a Soto priest. He wanted to make sure that we omitted no part of the ritual performed in the crematorium in Emeryville.

Paul had kept $25 dollars in his pocket to pay for his cremation. After the ceremony, we used it to buy lunch in a Japanese restaurant. It didn’t quite cover the entire bill.

What did we keep?

A few appropriate words!

After all my experience and hard won lessons, I might expect that I could say something definitive about The Last Things. I cannot. As far as ritual, the first thing that comes to mind is Aitken Roshi’s counsel to Joel Katz, Ken MacDonald and me when we carried Dan Dunning’s ashes to a long boat at Queen’s Surf to be spread out beyond the reef. The Old Man said, “a few words would be appropriate.” Dan had been a dear friend for years. As I took the lid off the urn, I mumbled, “I loved you immensely, and I’ll miss you immensely.” Joel and Ken saved the day. They chanted the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, banging rhythm on the gunwale as we rode the waves back to shore. I’m sure Dan loved that professional musicians did the honors, especially since he’d seen Phantom half a dozen times.

Washing the body

Frank Ostaseski taught me the practice of washing a body for the final time. It is an intimate gesture of love and respect. It is also a difficult practice. When not left to morticians or hospital nurses, it can be an act of friendship. It is also a physical act, reminding us that death is real. Thank you Frank.

Don’t touch anything for a while

I had a Japanese friend whose partner died of AIDS. Yoshi wanted to keep the man’s body undisturbed for three days. He bought all the dry ice available in his small Marin town. Early on we decided that Maitri also ought to allow a resident’s body to remain untouched for three days. Cultural conventions certainly did not influence me nor do I have any particular beliefs about the soul traversing to a nether world, but I did sense that trying not to interfere with a natural process was probably a good thing, akin to not interfering with the natural process of thought in meditation. 

I certainly wanted to be respectful. Working in the hospice, I'd become keenly aware of a delicate balance between pushing to get something done and leaving things alone. Although it may feel like a good idea for personal relationships to be as loving, complete and even as robust as possible as death approaches, there may have been damage which requires more healing time than what’s available. On the other hand, having a formal will in place as well as written instructions about funerals etc., is something that has a definite time frame. Sometimes I had to push through denial and procrastination to get papers signed. Thankfully I had the assistance of very well trained social workers from Visiting Nurses and Hospice to help.

But more of a problem was the legality of not removing a body immediately. The law required that we not keep a body more than 24 to 48 hours without refrigeration or embalming. Luckily I found a funeral director who helped with the legal forms, the death notice, so that we could keep a body in the hospice for as long as possible. After some experience we realized that though we didn’t need dry ice, we did need a lot of ventilation. We always seemed to be pushing the limits.

One of the social workers called it “lying in state” when she would ask patients how they wanted their bodies treated after they died. Many, if not most, chose our Buddhist wake. Their friends did come by. It always took its own form. Sometimes there was chanting or some spiritual practice, but it didn’t have the religious formality of visiting hours with the obligatory rosary of my upbringing. Most of the men in the hospice would have rejected that anyway. In almost every case I can remember, it just seemed to fit.

As I sat with many bodies, I began to notice that dying is not instantaneous. Like any process of saying goodbye, life doesn’t just end when the breath stops. It’s not like walking out and closing a door. The legal definition of death may be that the heart no longer beats, but hair and fingernails continue to grow. The skin seems to continue to breathe. Bodies actually change. Over the course of several days I could actually see life taper out. I was not imagining something. It is a reality that I can no longer escape.

Full Circle

After Maylie Scott’s mother Mary died, I'm sure Maylie washed her body with love. Then she called several of us who’d been close to her mother during the last years of her life. We came and sat up with Maylie through the night. Three days later she called the Neptune Society. Within the hour they arrived accompanied by two cops because there had been an “unauthorized death.” Maylie thought that her mother would have been very amused by the ruckus she caused.

Mary’s ashes are kept in the ancient Malling Benedictine Abbey south of London where her other daughter, Sister Mary John, was the abbess. From Eiheiji, through Kaddish and The Book of the Dead, to a small Buddhist Hospice in San Francisco during the time of AIDS, and onto a small abbey of cloistered Anglican nuns. Perhaps a bit wobbly, but full circle. Life and death continue to circle on and on.

CONTENTS, All and Nothing

Introduction

What is “The Record of Issan?”

An Invitation
Several ways to read and listen to a conversation about things that matter.

"The End of the Rainbow"
Steve Allen questions Issan when he became Abbot of the Hartford Street Zen Center.

The Hands and Eyes of Great Compassion
What about compassion is difficult to understand? A koan commentary

Memories in a shoe box, Issan’s Jesus Koan 

Bruce Boone’s memory of Issan.

Hearing the parable of the Good Samaritan—for the first time!
My friend, Fr. Joe Devlin, S.J., celebrated a Catholic mass in the zendo.

Don't Worry. Be Happy. Just do your best!
Issan humms Bobby McFerrin. Actually he told me he couldn’t get it out of head; it was one of those loopy tunes that we can’t stop. But then he amends Meher Baba.

Dokusan goes Kung-an, Talking publicly about sex
The Master teaches how to brush sexual fantasy from meditation.

“They Never Get the Pleats Right” A Mondo
Never Blend In. Not even a fever of 102 could keep Issan from the obligation of officiating at the wedding of some old friends.

"One day not work, one day not eat," 一日不做一日不食
There are always dishes to clean and cookies to bake, if you’re lucky.

Sex, death, and food
Dainin Katagiri Roshi admonishes Issan! “Yes, we work hard long hours. Then we die.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

Buddhist Heaven. Three Cheers for Grandmother Zen!

Lord Krishna comes to tea

Issan and Sweet Baby James

Is life over when it's over?
A friend asks Issan, Why don’t we just kill ourselves?

Really Choosing Death.
There were men who took their own lives in the Hospice. We do get some choice in the matter.

Q and A Zen
A cautionary tale plus a koan—or two. My memory of Issan’s last breaths.

When the Breath Ends, "Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha."
Issan practices till his last breath.

Issan said, "I have things to do!"
This story about Issan’s last week of life came back to me when another Buddhist friend received news of a grave diagnosis from his doctor.

Phil, dreaming of gummy bears, sees angels descending.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Road to Rohatsu
After a powerful meditation retreat, Issan asks me to come back to Hartford Street.

I didn’t shout but I’m still a big phoney.
Blue Cliff Record, Case 10.

How does the past become the past? Therapy, Jesus and Zen
Perhaps this does not belong in the story of Maitri, or maybe it does.


Other Stuff

Mindfulness is not a Part Time Job
Bowing, Boring and Bliss
Saint Francis, Goa and Me

Issan asked Shunko, “Are you going somewhere?”

This story has already made the rounds, as well it should. It is so short and concise that it doesn’t yield to a lot of confusion or elaboration. Good koan material.

Issan knew how to deliver a one liner. He was in fact a true master, but this was delivered with no drama, and when he was in such pain and personal distress, we had to stop laughing and realize that he was not just making a joke but effortlessly pointing towards freedom.

I also know for certain that he was smiling and filled with gratitude. I can almost hear his laugh.

Michael Shunko Jamvold was a Zen monk who practiced for many years. He was known for traveling between monasteries and practice centers. Sadly he died alone in Japan from an untreated or misdiagnosed respiratory disease. He was also one of Issan’s close friends whom Issan called on to take care of him at the end of his life. Shunko responded with devotion and grace.

During the last few months of Issan’s life, as the disease took its physical toll, either Steve or Shunko, but sometimes someone else they asked to help, would sit with Issan and help him with basic needs, food, drink, turning over in bed, going to the bathroom. But basically the day-to-day attendant duties fell to either Steve or Shunko. 

The bathroom was just across the hall from Issan’s room, but he needed support just to navigate the 15 or 20 steps when he needed to use the toilet. Shunko held his arm firmly but gently. 

On one of the return trips back to Issan’s bed, Shunko was overcome with emotion, and blurted out: “Oh Issan, I am going to miss you!”

Issan smiled and asked Shunko, “”Oh, are you going somewhere?”

The Ripple Effect: An Engaged Buddhist Conversation

This is a short piece I wrote about my experience living and practicing at Maitri Hospice for a German Buddhist magazine, Ursache & Wirkung, in an edition about "Buddhismus unter dem Regenbogen."

Tobias Trapp asked me to write a few words about volunteering during the AIDS epidemic. I jumped at the chance because it gave me an opportunity to acknowledge Frank Ostaseski and Issan Dorsey Roshi as well as to encourage others to accept the invitation to be with another human being at the end of their lives.

In 1989 I lost a very dear friend, a woman who’d been like a mother to me. Her daughter asked me to donate the hospital bed that she had in her room at the retirement home where she’d spent the last years of her life in San Francisco. 

Through a series of phone calls, a gay friend who was doing design work for the Zen Center Hospice Project, gave me Frank’s number. Could the Hospice use the bed? Frank said he’d love to have the bed. How could we move it across town to the Hospice? I had a truck. Frank said let’s meet and be delivery men. We set a time. 

I liked Frank immediately, bright, up beat, not my picture of a deathbed priest. He was also very persuasive--between the time we’d loaded the bed in my truck and unloaded it at the Zen Center, I was signed up for the upcoming Zen Hospice Volunteer Training Program. 

That afternoon also set the tone for volunteering, listening and responding to simple requests, taking care of what was at hand, and working with others. No special knowledge was required.  

Within 6 months, I met Issan Dorsey Roshi, and became a volunteer at Maitri Hospice. Guided by Issan’s compassion, taking care of almost 100 men changed me. I cooked spaghetti and painted walls, I helped men sort through a lifetime of personal letters and called their mothers. Not every task was easy, but the rewards were immense. 

I could not have known that this simple trip would lead to the first Buddhist Hospice for people with HIV/AIDS. I was just helping a man carry a bed across San Francisco. Thank you Frank, Issan, J.D., Bernie and the other men who came into my life. Your gifts were amazing.

An Invitation

[This is a part of the Introduction to *The Record of Issan]

Please come and sit with me. I invite us both to sit quietly as we can. Issan will also join us. Oh how he loved a good conversation, especially the jokes. Together we can explore what holds us together. The story of his life and Zen teaching are the glue.

I started to say “binds us together'' but that is not the correct word. It makes me think of prison or captivity. The purpose of this exploration is to be more free and spontaneous. Issan would prefer something far more gentle and affectionate, more like the caress of love or the hug of friendship. 

Perhaps this conversation will help both of us see more clearly what we are about. This is not the ordinary course of a conversation. Sometimes we just want to go over old times and have a good laugh. That’s probably just fine for certain times and places, but most times it’s a waste of time. Issan loved to quote Suzuki Roshi, “Don’t invite your thoughts to tea.” Disappointment and regret are sure to follow. Regret has its place, but not in this conversation. There are thousands of things that all of us should not have done, but tears or dreams of what might have been cloud our eyes and obscure what is right in front of us.

And Issan would probably suggest that we be on our best behavior, at least try to pay attention to what is being said. This requires an alertness of body and mind. We can listen to glean information, to satisfy our curiosity, or actually to try to find some answers to the questions that matter. How we listen determines what kind of answer we find.

Issan died on September 6th 1990. He continues to speak to us when we hear the words as if he were speaking to us. I have heard many students tell stories about him, some of them are recorded in this book, and they all have the very clear signs of words that were said to an individual person in a particular time at a definite place. If they have one consistent thread, it is Issan’s encouragement: Do the best you can. Listen and respond with every bone in your body. Don’t think too much of yourself, but certainly be yourself. No apologies are necessary. 

Begin with a joke!

My friend and mentor, Jon Logan gave me some wise and generous advice, advice that Issan would have seconded, “Always start with a joke.”

So here goes.

One bright afternoon, Isaan was walking down Hartford St. towards 18th with Steve Allen and Jerry Berg. They were headed to the hamburger place that used to be close to the corner right next to Moby Dick’s. That information might not be important unless you want to know if Issan loved hamburgers—he did—but you have to know that Steve is a Zen priest, one of Issan’s closest friends, his dharma heir, and the first Executive Director of Maitri Home and Hospice. Jerry Berg was a successful lawyer and prominent leader in the gay community, and an early supporter of the hospice.

As they walked, Steve and Jerry were talking about possible legal structures for the hospice while Issan lagged a few steps behind. He noticed a bottle lying on the sidewalk and bent to pick it up. Yes, any rumors that he was an incarnation of Mr. (or Miss.) Clean are well founded. But when he noticed that the bottle was rather beautiful and might be worth keeping, he took out the rag that he kept neatly folded in his monk’s handbag, and began to polish it. Suddenly, a Genie appeared! A Buddhist Genie, a Bodhidharma look-a-like, with a shaved head, droopy ears and a bright robe. The Genie looked at Issan and Issan looked back, a staring match of wonderment. Steve and Jerry turned around to see what Issan was holding Issan up, and stopped dead in their tracks.

The Genie spoke the time honored script of genies: “Because you have freed me after many lifetimes of being cramped-up in that god damned bottle, you, yeah, I guess all three of you, get one wish. It’s just one so you’d better make it good.”

Steve didn’t hesitate: he knew his Buddhism and asked to be released from his karma and enter Buddhahood, or nirvana, or the Pure Land, right there and then. Just as he was about to raise his palms in gassho, the traditional gesture of respect—poof, he was gone.

Jerry thought to himself, that’s powerful magic. I’m going for it. I’m not getting any younger so how about a great life in a heaven modeled after Palm Springs—but without the humidity—endless pool parties, rafts of handsome men, an eternal nosh that never made you fat? As he smiled and waved good-bye—poof, he disappeared too.

The Genie turned to Issan who was left standing alone—it might have been wonderment on his face, maybe just a bit puzzled. The Genie said, "OK, honey, it's your turn, what does your little heart desire?

Issan didn’t hesitate, “Get those two numb-nut girls back here. We have a hospice to run.”

"One day not work, one day not eat," 一日不做一日不食

The renowned revolutionary Chinese Master Baizhang Huaihai ( 百丈懷海; Hyakujō Ekai) is perhaps most well known for introducing manual labor to Zen Monasticism. From his rule book comes the oft-quoted phrase, “One day not work, one day not eat.” Modern western students can thank him for samu, chopping vegetables and cleaning toilets during our retreats.

 

Legendary teachers create legends. Some of Suzuki’s students came upon him cleaning the public toilets at Zen Center. Not exactly what they expected. Perhaps their surprise was at least partially the result of some lingering guilt for leaving a dirty job undone.

 

One asked, “Roshi, what are you doing? Why are you cleaning the toilets?”

 

“Because they needed to be cleaned.” And there was still time before meditation and dinner.

 

It is said that Suzuki gave Issan his name during samu. Someone tells the story of Richard Baker climbing the stairs at the Page Street Center with Suzuki Roshi and coming upon Issan balancing a large industrial floor polisher, keeping it close to the floor to do its work. Machines have a mind of their own. Suzuki Roshi admired his tenacity, and said “Issan, One Mountain,” I think pointing to some determination to quell the bumpy forces at work in our nature, or that is my story.

 

There are several versions of both these stories floating around to amuse, edify or even prod us. Zen students love a pious yarn. They circulate like the wind, picking up little particles from each teller, sometimes veering so far from the facts that they become jokes or even lies. That is the nature of stories. I will add a few more.

 

Issan loved to cook and clean. We have to learn to sit zazen correctly but Issan knew samu in his bones.

 

At Christmas the first year I lived at Hartford Street, I wandered into the kitchen to find him carefully inserting cloves of garlic into a pork loin. There must have been 50 shiny white slivers obeying Issan’s careful, meticulous thumb. Raw pork, raw garlic—meat was only allowed in the kitchen on special occasions; I thought I caught a fierce look of concentration as if to wrap it more quickly in aluminum foil.

 

“What are you doing?” along with the unasked question, what is it? “Oh” he said, “I’m trying a roast Cuban pork with mojo sauce for JD (the first resident of the hospice). He told me that he loved it, and it is Christmas.” He could never say No to JD. Many people complained that he was just continuing to spoil a spoiled child. But in my heart I feel that Issan knew there'd be no miracles in the last few months of the young man's life. It was just cooking a tricky Cuban dish with a lot of garlic. 

 

For most of us in the Castro, “Come out the the closet” meant to be honest about our sexuality, to banish all secrets about being gay. It had connotations of a difficult process for most white middle class gay men of that era, difficult conversations with backward, prejudiced families, about why we weren’t going to marry. Coming out of the closet opened the possibility of losing not only family but long time friends, jobs, inheritance. I certainly had to deal with all those scenarios. It took years. So when Issan told me that if he was depressed, he cleaned out the closet and almost immediately felt better, my mind immediately latched onto every Gay Liberation catch phrase.

 

At the bottom of the stairs that led up to my attic room, there was a shallow closet with shelves next to the door to Issan’s room. One morning I came rushing down the stairs, probably late for a meeting. The door of the closet stood open; Issan stood behind his ironing board, neatly pressing his worn underwear. He smiled and said, “Oh, I feel so much better.” He really meant cleaning out the closet. Just that. No time for my middle class preoccupations, well maybe the nanosecond between jokes.

 

Issan often said that Maitri was difficult work, taxing, and demanding. Once he even compared it to war, telling me that he’s been to war, on a ship during the Korean conflict, and it was not fun. But he also said that what made it bearable was to laugh a little and have some parties, tell a few jokes between the deadly serious bits. One of the most delightful samu tasks was baking chocolate chip cookies for the parties, wigs and skirts optional.

 

I came into the living room looking for Issan, needing to ask about some mundane detail. I asked Phil where he was.

 

“Probably cleaning the toilet with a toothbrush.” Yes, just cleaning a toilet bowl can be that difficult. I saved the joke for last. And I'm not lying.

Below is Ken MacDonald, Issan's heart student, joking, I hope. But he has an important environmental message which might help inform our samu.

Nearly 40% of the developing world’s population lacks clean drinking water and about 2 million die each year because of it. By 2025 nearly ⅔ will live in water-stressed countries.Nearly 40% of the developing world’s population lacks clean drinking water and about 2 million die each year because of it. By 2025 nearly ⅔ will live in water-stressed countries.

In the developed world we take our supply for granted, flushing it away mindlessly. But BRITA’s latest ads seem to imply that since the water we use for all our purposes “comes from the same source,” it’s as if we are drinking sewer water. Do you think that’s tasteless?

But if you do buy a BRITA filter, don’t expect it to protect you from anything…it doesn’t filter bacteria,

Q and A Zen

A cautionary tale plus a koan—or two.

A friend recently told me about some advice from a Taoist master. I admit that I automatically distrust some Western dude with an ancient Chinese title. It feels like a label to make him credible. I don’t fully understand what Daoism is, and certainly haven’t the faintest idea of what it might have meant in 6th century BCE China. The friend didn’t actually repeat his Taoist teacher’s advice. I think I might be required to fork over some cash before I had the pleasure. We are a gullible lot.

I investigated my initial response and discovered two basic questions: What are the prejudices that spark my immediate response? And what would be the criteria for me to trust a teacher and what he or she teaches? These are separate questions. It is important for me not to discover one answer and think that it provides a solution to both investigations. It is easy to conflate and confuse the answers: because I have discovered that I am distrustful for X reason, the teacher and his or her teaching must be trustworthy.

Sometimes in Zen circles we western practitioners get lost in a lot of talk about our way, the Rinzai Way, the Soto way, the right way. This kind of jabber is barely distinguishable from cultish blabber.

The questions this raises are really the same: How can we recognize what we call “authentic” practice; and what makes a teacher trustworthy?

These questions bite their own tails. Some people, even trusted teachers, counsel us to trust our feelings. But when we honestly examine them, we find a twisted mess. We are told to just sit and they will sort themselves out. We sit. Perhaps a few of the knots disentangle, but there is no guarantee that a clear direction will emerge. Judge by the solutions that appear in real time, there are no easy answers.

In 1990 when nearly 100 men were dying from AIDS in San Francisco every week, I remember talking with a bright, engaging woman who came to sit zazen at Hartford Street. She asked questions about the Hospice and Issan. I invited her to come back, perhaps become a hospice volunteer. She begged off, explaining that she was very involved in her practice at “the big Zen Center.” I remember her words exactly. “We do the real Japanese Buddhism: we bow at everything every time we turn around.” That is one choice.

I never saw the woman again. What stopped her? Did I get in the way? Perhaps there was something about the dying, knowing that you’re dying, and the emotions that stirs up. I cannot say. Several of Issan’s close students didn’t visit. When he started to get sick, they actually disappeared, later explaining that they couldn’t bear to see him suffer or they preferred to remember him as the Pastor of Castro Street. Many were also gay and themselves HIV positive. There was such pain and suffering in the community, facing death head on was hard for all of us. I met Issan when HIV started to ravage his body and mind so that is really the only Issan I knew. It was his gift and my luck. But when I listened to stories of Issan at Tassajara or at Zen Center, Green Gulch or Santa Fe, I knew that dying Issan was the same man dedicating himself diligently and completely to the practice.

I feel that the bowing woman missed an opportunity to experience a man who lived out the teaching until his last breath, but I also know that Issan would never have faulted her for avoiding him and bowing every time she turned around. He was so non-judgement and tolerant not to mention how much he loved to bow. I admit to applying a little pressure on the woman—I needed help at the hospice—and I also admit to feeling slightly superior in my role running the hospice which was of course real practice. I can’t set my experience center stage for applause, but on the other hand, I need to avoid rote answers, or getting caught up in some cultural forms that I don’t understand as if they unlock some esoteric secret.

Quick change of scene

Listening in on a recent discussion bemoaning the death of Zen in Japan—so many first-son priests escaping the lifeless tedium of administering the family's temple business, my mind went back to a morning I spent looking over the library at Hartford Street, searching for a book that might unlock the mystery of the universe. Trained as a Jesuit, I hoped to find an answer, even a coded one, recorded by someone at some time in some place that might point me in the right direction.

I picked up a volume and read about the third and final destruction of Nalanda, including its vast library, and tried to start a conversation with Phil Whalen. I was more horrified at the loss of the the sutras, the Mahayana texts and commentaries, including all the works, the notes and who knows what else, of the pivotal scholar Nāgārjuna than I was by the wanton murder of thousands of monks and teachers. I blurted out something about the horror of burning books to Phil who was sitting in his chair across from me. He just looked up, smiled and said, “Don’t worry, kid. They left us enough, just enough.”

Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji is not alone in trying to destroy the dharma by burning books and killing monks and nuns. Beginning in 1950 Mao and the People’s Liberation Army systematically destroyed monasteries and burned as many sacred texts as they could lay their hands on in Tibet. In 1868, the Meiji Restoration began the campaign of Haibutsu kishaku (廃仏毀釈), literally "abolish Buddhism and destroy Shākyamuni," which led to the wholesale destruction of Buddhist temples and monasteries as well as sacred texts. The Taliban destroyed huge ancient Buddha statues in Bamiyan Afghanistan early 2001 which shocked the world and was soon followed by the regime’s defeat, but it did not prevent them from reasserting their hardline earlier this year.

The burning of sūtras during the Haibutsu kishaku (unknown source).

So while I deplore book-burning or destruction of religious art, their preservation is not a necessary condition for our practice. The loss of cultural Japanese Buddhism, centuries old beauty and tradition, including bowing to everything all the time, is a real loss, but it might have already disappeared.

How much remains? Just enough.

Issan is dying.

In the early morning of September 6th, 1990, Issan’s breaths had become very labored. Someone woke me. My room was directly above his. I went downstairs and joined the others. There were perhaps ten people in the room, most of whom had shared the last difficult months of his journey, his doctor Rick Levine, Steve Allen, Shunko Jamvold, Angel Farrow, David Bulloch, David Sunseri, Kai Harper Lee, Jakushu Gregory Wood, myself—I can’t really remember who else was present. Most of us were sitting as best we could in the posture of meditation. Phil Whalen sat in a chair.

The time had come. We waited for the end. I actually don’t know if it felt so dramatic to others, but to me it did. We were told that certain endorphins naturally kicked in to numb the pain, and of course there was palliative medication, but it was almost painful to hear the sound of his struggling for breath. His body jerked and trembled. Steve got up, lay down beside him, and held him gently. At first I was shocked. I was sure that Steve had never held Issan in that way before, but then it seemed like a perfect, spontaneous response—Issan loved the reassuring caress of another man. Gradually his breath became calm but more shallow. I tried to follow my own breath, to remain present and focused. It was difficult. There was a cascade of thoughts and emotions realizing how much I’d come to love Issan and how deeply I would miss him.

The room became very quiet. Then Phil got up from his chair and bowed one last time to his old friend. Was he leaving? I was startled. It felt important to me to stay to the end. In a soft voice Phil said, “I’m sorry but I have to excuse myself. I will open the Zendo in the morning, and I need to sleep.” Then he left while life remained.

  

Love rides on the breath,

Labored, easy, 

When the breath ends 

It stands up, walks out,

And saves itself.

Sex, death, and food.

Dainin Katagiri Roshi admonishes Issan!

This life we live is a life of rejoicing, this body a body of joy which can be used to present offerings to the Three Jewels. It arises through the merits of eons and using it thus its merit extends endlessly. I hope that you will work and cook in this way, using this body which is the fruition of thousands of lifetimes and births to create limitless benefit for numberless beings. To understand this opportunity is a joyous heart because even if you had been born a ruler of the world the merit of your actions would merely disperse like foam, like sparks. —from Tenzo kyokun: Instructions for the Tenzo by Eihei Dogen zenji 

Let’s talk about death while we’re still breathing. Talking about it after we’re dead might  be challenging.

A dying Isaan told me something Katagiri Roshi said to him when they were both very much alive. I find myself revisiting this conversation about impermanence and death. And while I’m at it, can I also include a conversation about sex? They’re both dead and can’t have that conversation, or we’re not privy to it, but I will try to do it for them. 

And I’ll even stick my tongue out at you, Katagiri, even though you may only be a ghost.

And now, in reverse order, sex, death, and food

During one practice period at Tassajara, Issan ran the kitchen—the position of tenzo is highly respected in Zen monasteries thanks to Dogen weaving a spell about the cook’s practice of making food. Issan told me he’d been working night and day in the kitchen. According to the Founder of Soto Zen, this is really good practice: “Day and night, the work for preparing the meals must be done without wasting a moment. If you do this and everything that you do whole-heartedly, this nourishes the seeds of Awakening and brings ease and joy to the practice of the community.”

But Katagiri Roshi called him in. 

Of course he went. The Roshi asked him why he was missing so many periods of zazen. Issan said he felt he had to explain himself—he was terribly busy; there were a huge number of students to cook for; directing the preparations required an enormous effort; and, cut to the chase, Issan  admitted that he was challenged working with some of the students as well as not complaining about foodstuff he didn’t think was terribly wonderful to begin with. 

Katagiri sat stone-faced. Then he said, “Yes, we work hard long hours. Then we die.” That was it. And as they say in the koans, Issan bowed and left. A true koan exit.

Issan told me this story just months before he died. In both his smile and the bright tone of his voice, I could sense his gratitude for the decades old warning. The certainty of death added urgency to his story. HIV was ravaging his body. He knew he was dying. His body felt it. Denial was no longer possible, but I didn’t hear even the faintest note of resignation in his voice, rather a note of surprise that seemed as fresh as the day of that meeting. Past and present seemed to merge.

He never forgot those few words. They changed his life. They were a blessing. They shook something loose. They turned every excuse and explanation upside down, and released unexpected wonders.

A conversation about food ended in death. Issan spoke honestly. He was dying as the direct result of a sexual encounter with his longtime boyfriend. What did he have to hide, and how could he hide it anyway? Despite the fact that many people loved Issan, they also found his relationship with James troublesome, not particularly because it was gay love, but the love of his life was a man addicted to methamphetamines. 

I began to look for other things Katagiri might have said about death, and found several. The old horse always found his way back to the barn. The words of a beloved and respected master have a way of creating their own currency. In Zen the phrase “turning word” points to a phrase that helps a student refocus his or her attention, perhaps even prompt a realization. In turn students circulate a good turn of phrase. 

Steve Allen told me that when Katagiri visited Suzuki Roshi just before Suzuki died, Katagiri cried out, “Please don’t die!” Another version of his plea is more personal and direct, “I don’t want you to die.” I had also heard that Katagiri’s last words were, “I don’t want to die,” but that may just have some sincere student either misquoting, conflating or confusing time and place. I can find no solid confirmation, but none of these statements are what you might expect from a Zen master. They certainly don't fit any sentimental notions of a master’s death poem.

But each version of the story rings of something real, gut emotion crying out. I accept the invitation to get real. 

Onto Questions about Sex!

Dosho Port quotes you, Katagiri, as saying: "After my death I will come back and haunt over you, checking on your practice."* Yes, for me, Roshi, even though I was not your student, you have come back to haunt my practice, but not checking it as you did Issan’s work as the tenzo. I find myself weighing the value of your words. They have some punch, but is it a strawman? If I deflect the impact of your admonition about dying with the volatile ammunition of sexual scandal, am I ducking the question?

"But I kept my mouth shut"

Can I take you seriously? Revelations about your sexual misconduct have come to light after your death. I am unsure if you actually lied about your relationships with women in your community, and there was no accusation that you were abusive. But keeping your mouth shut is not entirely honest either. I get that your reputation did depend, to some degree, on the perception of your being a steady family man. Perhaps you felt that if you were not directly confronted, your silence would serve the dharma. You are often quoted as saying that a good Zen student kept his or her mouth shut, followed directions, and sat upright. Roshi, I am told you were a good sitting monk, that you followed directions, well mostly; your form was good; and you certainly kept your mouth shut.

I have also tried to keep my mouth shut. I have not commented on your sexual dalliances, Roshi. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't even judge them—if it were left to me, I would allow you any sexual expression you felt drawn to as long as it didn’t hurt others. But you were not fully transparent about your affairs. Did you really think that they would not come to light? Your naivete has come back to haunt us.

I am obliged to add your name, Katagiri, to the list of teachers who have abused their position. Of the more than 450 Zen teachers in the United States, the amount of oxygen taken up by the small proportion who have been involved in sexual scandals is enormous. The distraction alone gravely harms the teaching.

I will name names: Issan’s own teacher, Richard Baker,* Joshu Sasaki, Taizan Maezumi, Eido Shimano, Dennis Merzel. High profile Tibetan teachers whose names have been dragged into the same mud include Sakyong Mipham and Sogyal Rinpoche. These men, and they are all men, truly hurt us in real ways.

Po-chang and Huang-po: "The Buddha-Dharma is not a small affair”*

When the hurt goes away, does it mean that we have understood? I’ll stick out my tongue!

One day the Master [Po-chang] addressed the group : "The Buddha-Dharma is not a small affair. I twice met with the Greater Master Ma's 'K'AAA! ' It deafened and blinded me [for] three days."

Huang-po hearing this, unconsciously stuck out his tongue saying "Today, because of your exposition, I have been able to see Ma-tsu's power in action. But I never knew him. If I were to be Ma-tsu's heir, afterwards I'd have no descendants." 

The Master Po-chang said, "That's so, that's so. If your understanding is equal to your teacher's, you diminish his power by half. Only if you surpass your teacher, will you be competent to transmit. You are very well equipped to surpass your teacher."

Roshi, you were saved by the queer guy! Issan fished some sound practice advice out of a muddy pond and passed it on. He wasn’t blinded or deafened by a few words. but he wasn’t blindsided either. He carried them in his heart for more than three days. In fact he used them till the day he died.

Your dharma heir, Teijo Munnich, quotes you, Katagiri, “Please don’t call me ‘Zen Master.’ No one can master Zen.” And you also said, “Do not make me into a god after I die.” 

Don’t worry, Roshi. I won’t. Thank you.

The Maori people of New Zealand have created a ritualistic dance, the Kapa Haka,

in celebration of light triumphing over darkness.

_______________________

* Tenzo kyokun: Instructions for the Tenzo by Eihei Dogen zenji 

*Dosho Port,  Me in Your Heart a While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri

* Bivins, Jason C. “‘Beautiful Women Dig Graves’: Richard Baker-Roshi, Imported Buddhism, and the Transmission of Ethics at the San Francisco Zen Center.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, vol. 17, no. 1, [University of California Press, Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture], 2007, pp. 57–93, https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2007.17.1.57.

*following the Ming version as translated by Cleary. Also quoted in Zen's Chinese Heritage

The Masters and Their Teachings by Andy Ferguson