From Daily Log and Unpacking my attachment to the myth of dharma transmission

Before going to bed I was reading in Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World. Waking up I remembered dreaming about sitting at a table with Nyogen and I think Gary Koan Janka. Nyogen had transmitted to Gary and I was left out again. I was trying to insert myself into their lineage.

 As I thought about it I realized the connection between the dream and the idea I had been reading about. The lineage and the role of Zen Master were the trap of culture, something that looked desirable but could and had become stultifying, deadening, limiting. Even though I thought I had failed to complete my initiation, actually I had slipped out of the trap. 

When Roshi died I may well have been next in line to be anointed. Then I studied with Nyogen, who was the last one empowered by Roshi, and I became the first one to be named a Dharma Holder. But not much later he was disgraced and then run out of the center. Then Egyoku came in while I was the only student giving interviews and teaching one on one. She sized up the situation and replaced me in that role with Ryodo. So I always thought I narrowly missed my bodhisattva calling of being a zen master, achieving my main goal in life. But waking up this morning I realized that, albeit unconsciously and inadvertently, I had realized the way of no-way. As Trickster, I had done what I always have done, slipped the trap of culture, through the narrowest of cracks, doors, and openings, leaving me free to roam in unbounded space rather than the confines of a limited institutional role. 

That also goes a long way toward explaining the otherwise hard to understand narrative of my “careers”. Any single role always ends up feeling too one-dimensional and limiting. 

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False goals, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me?

Remember that what drew me to Zen was the characters of Han Shan and Shih-te, as presented by Kerouac, Snyder, and Watts.  How the Trickster archetype shows up laughing and stealing food from the Zen kitchen, escaping back to the mountains to live and write poetry.