I sorely missed Kobun, but his absence did not lessen my commitment to Zen. I joined Keido Les Kaye to practice at Kannon-do. Les was a good teacher, ordained by Suzuki Roshi; Haiku Zendo had been in his garage. At Kannon-do I began more deliberately to study the basics of Zen practice—How to work more subtly with the body and mind in zazen; what the correct forms were for kinhin, bowing, chanting, and moving in the zendo. I favored teachings about the simplicity of Zen practice. Just sitting, Nothing special, and Non-gaining were Zen watchwords that steadied me. During this period of recovery from family trauma, I also benefited from the many resources of the 1980s Human Potential movement in bloom in California. I read voraciously and attended workshops on how to recover from emotional co-dependence, on assertiveness training for women, and on adult development. All good medicine. I was healing.
At home I sat every morning at six a.m., facing the brick fireplace in the living room. A simple clay Buddha statue from a friend in Sri Lanka presided from a nearby bookcase. On Friday mornings a neighbor joined me in zazen. Royce was a college psychologist, a lanky, exuberant, and kind fellow a few years older than I. He didn’t want to belong to a Zen group but was delighted to sit zazen once a week together. He rode his rusty bike to my house, arriving just before six a.m. I left the front door unlocked so he, and occasionally one or two other friends, could enter quietly to join zazen.
Hosting weekly zazen in my home stretched me emotionally. I was still very much a beginner at Zen but powerfully drawn to share the wonders of zazen. I relished the generosity that welled up in me when others quietly entered my living room to sit. Initially, a frisson of fear also rushed up my spine when I couldn’t see who was entering because I was facing away from the door. Yet sitting together silently seemed to protect the space. The Buddha statue that I bowed to, the candle and incense that I lit before morning zazen made the room seem inviolable—even sacred. In fact, non-Zen friends often commented about my home’s calm atmosphere. Integrating Zen practice into daily life helped my healing. Royce and I sat together on Fridays for nearly twenty years.
During these years I also began to study the foundational teachings of Buddhism, the Prohibitory Precepts and the Eight-Fold Path. Somehow, perhaps because when I started practicing, American Zen was still developing, I hadn’t been guided to study these basic teachings in any depth. Kobun and Les had strongly emphasized just sitting and non-thinking. Devotional practices had not yet been encouraged, except perhaps at the major Zen centers.
I loved the teachings on ethics and beliefs because of their usefulness for living in the world. Perhaps my Presbyterian minister’s sermons years before had established ethics as my spiritual bent. In my career in the corporate world as an organization consultant and trainer, I advised and taught company managers about communications with employees. Daily I had the need to apply the teachings on ethical behavior. Especially pertinent to both work and personal life were the Buddhist Precepts of not lying, not slandering, not being possessive, and not harboring ill will. Every day, organizational life brought opportunities to test myself in one or more of these prohibitions. Working with them as spiritual practice was fortifying. Likewise, the Eightfold Path steps of Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood were beacons. Right Livelihood ultimately guided my decision to leave the defense contract firm where I worked. I could no longer in good conscience support managers responsible for manufacturing instruments of war. I was slowly awakening. Buddhist teachings guided my life.
I began to penetrate the meaning of the Buddha’s initial teaching, the profound and original Four Noble Truths. The first Truth is that suffering (dissatisfaction) is a fact of our human life. Life isn’t all or only suffering, but we repeatedly experience some form of suffering. The second Truth is that suffering has an identifiable origin, the human habit of having preferences for the way we want things to be. The third Truth is when we know what causes suffering, we can end or at least reduce it. And the fourth Truth is that the Eightfold Path shows us how to accomplish this.
The Four Noble Truths percolated in my interactions with work colleagues, friends and family members. When I had a conflict with someone, I began to notice that my mind seized on explanations for a behavior of theirs I didn’t like or understand. I saw I was skilled at analyzing their possible motives, and I used my “story” about them to feel safely in control. As I continued to practice Zen, though, I saw that these deft analyses of other people left me feeling separate—safe, but alone, even alienated. Plus I spent a lot of time justifying why I should avoid or manipulate these “foes.” Eventually, I saw that this was the work of the second Noble Truth—the origin of suffering, which is, simply, that we suffer because of the way we think about our experience: We grasp and cling to experiences and phenomena we desire, and we push away those we don’t want. Whichever reaction, cling or reject, we perpetuate our unhappiness.
To work deeply with this second Truth, I had to delve into the foundational Buddhist concept of No Self. Because all phenomena, including ourselves, are always changing, nothing has any permanent or abiding characteristics or nature. Psychologically, this teaching is difficult to accept. Our minds behave as if we are permanent. We have memories, histories. It feels like we are the same person we’ve always been. Early in my study of Zen I had acknowledged the deeply non-Western concept of No Self, but I did not understand it. Now I began to see how it was the assumption, itself, that was the cause of my suffering: Especially when circumstances made it necessary for me to change my ideas or actions, I suffered from not being able to stay as I was. So the belief that I was one “thing” was what caused me to suffer.
If I was always changing, what or who was it that demanded that things be the way “I” wanted them to be? If I gave up believing “I” existed in any way other than transitorily, I saw my desires and aversions were absurd. They should drop away as I naturally focused on responding to what actually was happening in the present. Learning this teaching and developing the habit of applying it has taken many years, but finally I can understand the Buddhist saying of Seng-Ts’an, Zen Patriarch (Sixth C.): “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.” (Seng-Ts’an).
Still, I stumbled over self-centeredness and its many cravings and aversions. Perhaps because I understood that change was the nature of life, now I began feeling restless in my job. I considered a change of livelihood. I investigated returning to teaching; I took some night classes on the Rudolph Steiner educational system. I explored other parts of California where I might live and work. Eventually, I gave up on making a big change and simply resigned from my corporate job to go into business as an independent organization consultant. During the five years that I worked for myself, I gained personal agency, new professional experience, and skills for living life more creatively and contentedly.
I continued my daily home practice of zazen, sat weekly at Kannon-do, and took part in sesshins. Over these years I gradually gained access to my suppressed, early conditioning. I recognized my strong tendency to rescue people, the co-dependent habit I had perfected when married. I realized I gravitated toward people who needed support but could not offer support in return (I married two of them). I realized that avoiding intimacy may have been a hedge against being rejected by others—no doubt a habit I had established in adolescence.
Chapter 4
Abundant Inspiration
In the early 1990s I learned of a job teaching English at a women’s university in Okayama, Japan. I had the requisite academic credentials and experience. I had twenty years of Zen practice, which included some knowledge of Japanese culture. I thought living in Japan might shake up my thinking as I had been wanting. I applied and got the job. I was fifty-seven.
Before leaving for Japan, I heard about the Rinzai Zen monastery, Sogenji, located in Okayama. Sogenji was a training center whose Abbot, Shodo Harada, welcomed European and American Zen students. Once in Japan and settled into teaching, I visited Sogenji and met the Abbot. I spoke with him about becoming a guest student during the university’s summer vacation. When I formally applied in writing, he granted me permission.
I