Certainty With Questions

by Cindy Sigal

"For art truly is hidden in nature:
he who can tear it out, has it."
-Albrecht Durer

Is it the same with you,
a question of strength or determination?
Have I made a mistake waiting,
as if you’d appear in the doorway.
Should I stand before you
like a sculptor in front of stone, listening.
Should I run into the night,
trees branching leafless above me, assuming
you’re some place else--
Should I continue to wait,
to pray for patience and a small boat
to row me back and forth, back
and forth across the November lake.
How will it happen--
What will you do to me?
Where does the hidden
reside? I know
I should stop
asking and simply dig.
Pushing bits of broken
branches, dirt and pebbles
away, until
I find you
to unearth from
where you lay most
hidden, as you tear
question after
question from me.

Coming Back Home

by Sheila Collins

Today I was stepping out of my car in the late September light and the words came to me, “This day is a great golden bell that is ringing.” I savored the sentence and I smiled. What a long long road is practice, how many mountains we have to scale and plateaus (as Sensei would say) traverse!

In my case the trail has been long indeed. I am returning to Zen practice after more than ten years of actively shunning it. I swore I would have nothing to do with Zen anymore—no more reading about Zen, looking up Zen temples, hearing new Zen masters say new and terribly profound (or silly) Zen things, finding Zen in breakfast cereals, bodywork ads, home decorating magazines. There would be no more Zen!

I had a bad experience with Zen. Well, the experience didn’t start out badly. When I was five years old I found a Buddha statue at a friend’s house and held it in my hand staring at it for a long time. I knew I knew it from somewhere! Then when I was sixteen I found a book in the high school library about Shakyamuni’s enlightenment. I was overjoyed and swore right then and there that I would become enlightened too. The next book I read was Philip Kapleau’s “Three Pillars of Zen,” I think I knew the stories of the sesshin participants by heart; I reread them probably thirty times. I made a promise to myself that someday I would travel to Rochester and learn how to “sit right.” So when I was twenty or so I got on an Amtrak train traveling from Milwaukee to Rochester. Once there, I met Philip Kapleau and was immediately impressed by him. He was such a spry figure up there in the front of the room! He made Zen meditation look so easy. I managed to sit properly in half-lotus myself and to count my breath. This was different from the kinds of meditations I had practiced at home on my own previously, which were primarily to encourage so-called “out of the body” experiences or were intense visualization techniques. I was encouraged and felt intuitively that I was on the right track.

The visit to Rochester would change my life. I began a long-distance relationship with another participant in the Rochester workshop, eventually coming to live with him in New York, which started a round of visiting numerous temples and monasteries, meeting masters and teachers of various sects, lineages. I became immersed in Zen and in the healthy-living, spirituality-oriented culture of the 1980s “New Age.”

After a few years, I came to live at a small temple in New York City where I had close contact with a noted Zen master and scholar. I was young and naïve—rather rebellious too. I was quite in awe of the teacher, but was also somewhat confused and disturbed by what I perceived as silly adherence to old rituals, by arrogance and coldness on the part of the male monks and their condescension toward women. When I look back now I think I was trying to make my Christian (Catholic) upbringing, with it’s emphasis on life and love, and my very American ideas about equality and democracy fit the Asian Buddhist pattern. I became frustrated when I felt I couldn’t make that work.

Then I did some stupid things and got myself kicked out. It was a traumatic event for me—even though I had helped to bring it about. I felt that I had been betrayed by someone for whom I had had great respect. Furthermore, I could not see how fine Buddhist words and riddles could have much meaning for ordinary Americans experiencing the “real world” with all it’s challenges, mundane or otherwise. I guess I made a decision then in my heart that I would give up on Zen as an institution—forever.

So for ten years my books gathered dust. I went back to the university to finish a degree, had a family, pursued a career. I bought a sitting cushion and used it occasionally, but with no real ambition. I assiduously avoided listening to anyone calling themselves a Buddhist teacher and was critical of the more famous Buddhist voices, thinking to myself that they could surely know nothing of the things that ordinary people—and in particular ordinary women—face. “Yes,” I thought, “it’s easy for great monks to carry on about a philosophy of happiness or peace or nothingness or whatever, when they are subsidized heavily by their admirers and don’t have to worry about getting a job, supporting and raising their children, keeping their health insurance. And why should people in robes with bald heads get so much respect when there is real wisdom and compassion manifesting in single moms, in artists, in factory workers, in the homeless, in everyday people with everyday problems—but few listen to them?”

I was so traumatized and disgusted that it would take a major personal crisis to bring me back to Buddhism. Last year, after experiencing some health problems, I found out that I might be facing debilitation and possibly even untimely death. It frightened me right down to the core, just blew my complacency to bits. I had often thought about dying, but never like this. Nor had I considered the idea of physical wasting before; I had always been so healthy and strong. It shook me badly. I became very anxious and depressed, spending much of each day in bed. To comfort myself, to try to reach toward some sort of light, I dug out my ragged copy of “Three Pillars of Zen.” There was Philip Kapleau’s autograph on the front page that was falling out. There was the inspiring story of Yaeko Iwasaka who had achieved great enlightenment from a sickbed. I remembered my old vow. I remembered Rochester. I began to search for some way I could get back to my roots. I found the Chicago Zen Center on the internet and called Sevan Ross Sensei. What a revelation! He wasn’t cold, he wasn’t arrogant, he wasn’t academic, he wasn’t condescending. He listened to me and offered advice and he welcomed me to the Center. I felt I had connected with a real person. It was just so good. I thought, “Maybe this is Real Zen.”

Sensei invited me to a Tuesday night introductory sitting. I had to drive a couple hours to get to Evanston from Waukesha, WI and I was anxious about it, but I felt that I should go. “Maybe I do need to relearn sitting,” I thought. It went well and I liked everyone that I met. So then I decided to try to come for Sunday sittings and teisho/dokusan. That was even better. I signed up to become a member, then eventually I also signed up for a four-day sesshin. By early summer I was revitalized. I had made new friends and my practice began to bear some fruit.

I was seeing again how important a rock-solid faith in Buddhist practice is, and how important it is to practice regularly. I realized that I had held many prejudices that caused me to perceive some of my old teachers, sangha and Buddhist philosophy in a distorted way. By “coming back” to the Chicago Zen Center and meeting Sensei I felt warmed and welcomed by a spiritual embrace that has caused some of those old conceptions to be turned around. And by focusing on a koan or just sitting with firm resolve, in regular practice, my mind has “lightened up.” Those prejudices and distorted views that I had carried around for so long have been becoming gradually weaker and are interfering less with daily life. The good effects I can test and feel in my many interactions with my family, friends and fellow workers. There is more harmony and less fighting. There is more understanding and less vexation.

So I have come back to truly valuing Buddhist practice, teachers and the sangha. In fact, I feel really grateful, right down to the bottom of my heart. Perhaps it is my being away for so long that makes the return ever more precious.

Lessons in Cause & Effect

We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by H. G. Moore and J. L. Galloway

book review by Jeff Berger

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young describes a brutal battle that took place in Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley in November 1965 and some of the personal and political consequences that flowed from it. Its contents are shocking and have a deep resonance for me.

Moore was the commanding officer of 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, the unit that was air-mobiled into Landing Zone Xray in Ia Drang against a North Vietnamese force that turned out to be many times larger. Galloway was a journalist who was there on the ground. The battle lasted several days and resulted in very high numbers of killed and wounded, both US and Vietnamese. It is clear that the “We” of the title refers to those on both sides of the slaughter.

The battle scenes are based upon many hours of interviews with the survivors and in many cases use their words directly. These are scenes from a hellish animal realm that most of us do not experience in such purity. This is difficult stuff to read, so it is fortunate that the book also investigates some of the consequences of the battle.

One section is devoted to the political consequences. So many were killed on both sides of the battle that the leaders of each side were forced to claim it as a victory. No other assessment could be morally justified. The leaders drew conclusions that would determine the shape and magnitude of the war for years to come.

Another section contains interviews with family members of some of those killed at Ia Drang. We hear from wives and children whose lives were changed utterly as a result of these deaths.

You could say that the book gives a textbook illustration of the Buddhist law of cause and effect.

But as I say, the book resonated with me.

I got out of the army in June 1965, having enlisted three years earlier. At the time I enlisted, I was twenty years old and gung-ho. The idea of winning hearts and minds had won mine, and I wanted to become a Green Beret. One way to do that was to go through jump school and Ranger training, so I enlisted for the airborne infantry as a first step. After basic training in Kentucky, I went to advanced infantry training (AIT) at Fort Polk, Louisiana. There, I was sidetracked into NCO School, the graduates of which would be the squad and platoon leaders for the AIT cycle starting two weeks later.

Then one night, a drunk driver changed my life.

That August night was hot and mosquito filled. There was no moon. Seven of us got into the back of a deuce and a half truck, and headed out into the night to be dropped off somewhere in the piney forest for a field problem. The canvas top on the truck was not up, so we were cooled slightly by the truck’s motion down the road. The fact that the top was gone turned out to be an even bigger gift to me later.

Some miles out, the deuce and a half swerved violently to the right. Bang! and the truck careened onto the shoulder. Then the right side of the truck, the side opposite me, dropped away. I stood as the truck rolled and, with some others, flew into the black night. As I hit the ground, I could hear the truck behind me grinding, upside down into the gravel ditch.

I got up knowing I didn’t want to go back to the upside-down truck to see what was happening there. I had a pretty good idea. But I figured I could still make myself somewhat useful by attempting to prevent other drivers from piling into our wreck. So I got a flashlight from one of the other guys (his shoulder was broken when he was thrown clear) and went back up the road a few yards to flag down approaching cars.

A sergeant with too much to drink had been driving back to the base on the wrong side of the road. Our driver had swerved trying to avoid the collision, but had lost control after the impact.

It all came down to where one was sitting in the back of the deuce and a half. The guys on the left went onto the air, the guys on the right went under
the truck. I got a few scrapes. Others had broken limbs, shoulders and backs. And Private Richard Tricky had his skull crushed.

At the hospital where we were taken to be checked out, one of our training sergeants told us that we now knew what it felt like to be hit by an artillery round. “Kinda takes the fight out of ya, don’t it?” He was right. I requested out of jump school a week later.

From that point on, I was just counting days. Eventually after AIT, I was assigned to the 25th Infantry, stationed in Hawaii. There in 1963, I met and married Lynn. There, I also made my first, brief contact with Zen Buddhism at the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu.

Lynn’s dad, Ralph, was a Sergeant Major with the division. He saw major action in WW II and Korea before being sent to Vietnam. Her younger brother Al went into the Army and to Nam soon after high school. Marty, one of her two younger sisters, later married Steve, another Nam-era GI. I was welcomed into the Olson family even though I was obviously not cut out for military life.

So, when I read We Were Soldiers, I see people I knew: draftees, enlistees, career soldiers, their families. I see a life I partly knew and things I myself touched. And I realize that I could have passed into that caldron.

If the guy on the wrong side of the road in Louisiana had been where he belonged, I would not have gotten that quick glimpse of where I was headed and would not have changed direction myself. If he had not had so much to drink, I would probably not have been stationed in Hawaii where I met Lynn. If that sergeant had stayed at the bar five minutes longer, Richard Tricky might still be alive. If that sergeant had stayed on base that night, I might not have done zazen with the Diamond Sangha a year and a half later.

More lessons in the Buddhist law of cause and effect.

Grace & Courage

by Jody Wilson

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the slightest tentative movement of the bathroom door opening out. Then a quick closing, like a breath interrupted. Then, a half second later, a quicker more determined move as if she were exhaling herself into the space. I instinctively glanced at her, as one does when another person enters room, and instantly averted my eyes. She must have weighed 400 pounds, perhaps more. I didn’t want to stare. Or perhaps I looked away as I do when I drive past highway accidents. When she saw me, she furtively busied herself with the contents of her bag, turned back into the bathroom, closing the door softly behind her. A clear retreat. The serene atmosphere of this lovely day spa suddenly crackled with shame. She had exposed herself to my judging eyes. I was exposed as a judge. The complete internal experience of profoundly obese women and those who shame them was as naked as we were. We hated ourselves and each other.

Had I judged her? All I'd done was glance up and look away. But she had "known." She'd known because that's what she expects, that's what she does herself. The project and the introject at work. When we shame and judge ourselves, we expect and seek to be shamed and judged by others. And, yes, I admit, my first thoughts were judgmental, followed instantly by prideful assessment of my own slim and supple body. People who think and write about the way we think our thoughts say we think from the platform of the opposites, think in contrasts. But why does contrasting my thin body to her fat body so readily translate into I'm good and she's bad?

This is all hindsight. A moment later, the door opened again. She stepped out, shoulders set, head high and walked with grace and courage to the steam room. No more fumbling, nothing furtive, a royal progress.

I'd like to say that our eyes met and that she saw the new admiration and respect in mine. But they didn't. I didn't even exist for her.