Written for my 1997 Memoir Class

Linked from Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Zen Center of Los Angeles and Spiritual Steppingstones August 8, 2008

My teacher, Taizan Maezumi Roshi, died in Japan on Mothers’ Day, 1995. That morning, because Roshi was in Japan, I was giving the private interviews upstairs in the Founders’ Room at Zen Center of Los Angeles. At one point during the morning I had a strange experience of feeling time totally stand still. I made a mental note that this sensation was unusual for its depth and clarity, and how “long” it seemed to last. That’s possibly the moment Roshi died, which we later heard was about 10am Los Angeles time.

After morning sitting, my wife and daughter and I participated in the lovely Mothers’ Day gathering at the Center in the morning, and then went off to have brunch in the Valley with my parents. When we arrived back home, late in the afternoon, I saw two people walking toward me, wearing their sitting robes. It was Richard and Patricia, but there was no reason to be wearing robes that late in the afternoon. The Sunday schedule ended at noon. I had a feeling of foreboding as they walked toward us. Maybe I could see the expressions on their faces. Richard spoke first, in his usual blunt manner, but more softly than usual. “Roshi died this morning in Japan. He died in his sleep. They think it was a heart attack.”

My thought was “What? You’re kidding.” But I couldn’t speak. I just listened.

“We’re going to be doing a memorial service in a few minutes. You’re supposed to run it. Here’s the outline of what to include.”

“How do you know this? Where did you hear this?”

“Tenshin called us from Mountain Center. Roshi’s wife called Mountain Center and told them.”

I went into the house, stunned, to change into my robes so I could put together the service quickly. There was a message waiting on the answering machine. It was Tenshin, with the same story Richard had told. Also, he said I should find my copy of the instructions for the emergency Succession procedure, and fax it to two of the local Dharma Successors.

So now I’d heard it from two sources. Apparently this was real. But from the outset there was no chance to reflect, because as the Director of Ceremonies it was my responsibility to put together the first quick memorial service, and then to organize many of the activities immediately afterward. A couple of months later, to help with the transition, I became the Chief Administrator for the next two years. Now that I am finally relieved of that responsibility, two and a half years after the death, I can finally begin to reflect on the magnitude of this relationship, and where my life goes next.

The first time I saw Maezumi Roshi, in September of 1972, it was the culmination of ten years of reading, searching, and fantasizing about a Zen Master. I had read “The Way of Zen” by Alan Watts in high school, in 1962, and was completely enchanted by his depiction of the Zen Master as the paradoxical, rascally embodiment of freedom, wisdom, and independence. The fantasy was reinforced by reading Kerouac’s “On the Road” shortly thereafter, with his frequent reference to ‘Zen Lunatics’. They were characters Kerouac modeled on Han Shan and Shih-te, semi-legendary Chinese hermit poets depicted in brush paintings sneaking into the kitchen of the Zen Monastery, stealing food, and laughing hysterically, never to be caught in the act. I found and loved the poems of Han Shan, Cold Mountain, that were translated into English by Gary Snyder. Snyder was the model for Kerouac’s Japhy Ryder, the one member of the core beat circle who went to Japan and studied in a Zen monastery. These were the first early influences that set me off on a meandering trail to try to find a real live Zen Master.

In 1969 I made a first shift from theory to practice, with beginners instruction at the Berkeley Zendo. I sat a few times with Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco and Chino Sensei in Santa Cruz, but still had enough playing left to do in the counter-culture that I wasn’t able to settle down. Then finally, on September 7, 1972, I came to hear a talk at Zen Center of Los Angeles.

That first evening at the Zen Center, seeing and hearing Maezumi Roshi, was like coming home. This is what I had been looking for and thinking I might never find. This man radiated the depth, mastery, warmth, freedom, seriousness, and playfulness that I had only imagined. But he was real. And there he was. In his late thirties, physically small, but projecting a compact intensity, he was a dignified presence sitting cross-legged in his robes on the raised platform at the front of the room. Through a very thick accent, his English revealed subtlety and mastery both in the precision of its insight, and the seemingly artless imprecision of its strangely apt errors of syntax. The impish humor, with absolutely no sense of self-consciousness, was irresistible.

Roshi had been speaking on Thursday evenings on a classic text called Genjo Koan. The section for tonight was:

When a fish swims in the ocean, there is no limit to the water, no matter how far it swims.
When a bird flies in the sky, there is no limit to the air, no matter how far it flies.
Thus, no creature ever comes short of its own completeness.
Wherever it stands, it does not fail to cover the ground…
Know, then, that water is life.
Know that air is life.
The bird is life and the fish is life.
Life is the bird and life is the fish.

The impression the evening made on me was stunning. It wasn’t just his mastery of the text, and what he brought to it, although that was part of it. Being in the midst of the seamless ritual, the light aroma of the Japanese pine stick incense, and Roshi’s warm presence, everything told me loud and clear this is where I should be. The next morning I came back and rented an apartment across the street, and my entire life since that day, a quarter of a century, has been lived in and around the Center.

Three years after that first evening I took vows as a Buddhist. Maezumi Roshi, whose name was Taizan, Great Mountain, gave me the name Kenzan Mokunin, Firm Mountain, Silent Patience. The irony was beautiful. When I arrived I was a scattered ex- hippie, barely able to concentrate on anything. For the first few years almost the only instruction he had for me was “I want you to settle down”. And settle I did. Within a few more years I was married, raising a family, working as a manager in a large corporation, sitting on the Board of Directors of the Zen Center. I became that firm mountain on almost every level. I felt daily gratitude for my good fortune in having found this great teacher who helped me find myself, my own strengths, working toward my own independence.

Nineteen years after that first meeting, and four years before his sudden, unexpected death, Roshi asked four of us, in 1991, to start giving the formal private interviews to students whenever he was away traveling. It had been a topic of discussion around the Center for some time, that with Roshi traveling so much, and since all of his successors had left the Center to start their own places, new students coming in were not getting enough guidance. He set up a new category, Senior Instructor, and asked us to begin to teach.

We were not being made formal Dharma Successors. None of us had yet completed one of the prerequisites to being authorized as a Sensei, which was completion of the koan curriculum. A koan can be any deep question to which you bring the full force of your life energy, to penetrate and clarify with the entire body and mind. The traditional koans are cases, often dialogs, depicting the enlightenment experiences or key teachings of ancient masters. The student must penetrate the true meaning of each case, and then present it to the teacher in private interview as one’s own living experience. There are hundreds of these cases, in several volumes, that had to be presented and approved. Here’s an example, “Rinzai’s ‘True Man’”:

Rinzai said to the assembly, “There is a true man with no rank always going out and in through the portals of your face. Beginners who have not yet witnessed it, look! Look!
Then a monk came forward and said, “What is the true man of no rank?”
Rinzai got down from the seat, grabbed and held him: the monk hesitated. Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true man of no rank–what a dried shit stick he is!”

 

The idea is definitely not to try to explain what it means. I think the other three new instructors were probably quite a bit farther along in koan training than I was. My struggle with koans had something to do with how intellectual I was, and how identified with my concepts. With each case it took me a long time to get down below the analytical level to fully penetrate and present its essence directly and vividly. Even so, I knew Roshi harbored some hopes for me. I remember that after my three-month period as Head Trainee in 1988 he put a picture of the two of us on the credenza/altar in his office, and for a long time after that he had only two pictures on his credenza: one of his beloved mother, and that one of he and I together.

After a while, frustrated with my slow progress with koans, I decided to try to do something about it. We had a tape library of all the talks Roshi had given on each of the major koan collections. I decided that instead of listening to the radio on my ride to and from work everyday I would listen to these taped teachings, and sequentially go through the whole system. It was an amazing experience. After a few weeks it felt like I could anticipate his thought patterns on the tapes. The teachings became wonderfully transparent and obvious. My real life relationship with him shifted, as my confidence increased. It was at about this time in 1991 that he asked the four of us to start offering interviews to new students who came for the introductory workshops. This felt like the beginning of the shift that I had been working for since being head trainee in 1988, the opportunity to move toward teaching, sharing the bounty which had been such a wonderful influence on my life.

From the first, the experience of sitting in the teacher’s seat in the interview room was spectacular. As soon as a student would walk in the room I could feel my entire mental apparatus drop off. To use some Western jargon I later learned, I became the clearing of emptiness for them to speak into. I still had a watcher present who knew this was going on, and an observer who was breathtakingly impressed by the depth, clarity, and dignity of the proceedings. There was an internal watchdog who could tell when the slightest trace of self appeared from my side, and trim it off. In Zen they say that a hairsbreadth of difference can create a gap as great as that between heaven and earth. Keeping on the right side of this divide was vividly clear and effortless. Decades of training were coming to fruition, and I was humbled and grateful to be involved. That this was happening at the same time that I was laid off from my corporate job definitely was a large part of softening that blow.

But then, my frustrations from a long series of unsuccessful job interviews started coloring my life at the Center, and I got caught up in some personal drama about recognition and empowerment. One of my fellow teachers became a Sensei and the other two were named Dharma Holders, another new intermediary stage. Rather than being happy for them, I began to feel deprived. Then Roshi invited the three of them, along with all of his more senior successors, to a very special month-long retreat at Green Gulch Farm in Marin County. I felt left out. Although I didn’t know it, when they left, it was the last time I was to see Roshi alive. They spent the subsequent month with him before he left for Japan, and it was a crucial month indeed. Among other more important matters for the history of our school, it consolidated their positions as the authorized teachers.

After Roshi’s trip to Japan and his unexpected death, as we his students shared our stories, it became clear that he had been making strong efforts to complete unfinished business with many of us before he left for Green Gulch, and while there for the month long retreat. Only in looking back did I realize the increased intensity of our relationship just before he left could be seen as a tying up of loose ends, as if he somehow knew he was going to die in his sleep of an unexpected heart attack, with no history of heart problems.

Just before they left for Green Gulch, knowing I wasn’t invited, I looked more closely at my sense of deprivation and lack of recognition. I had a strong realization that it was a replay of separation from the parents, only at a more subtle level. I experienced a dropping off of my dependency on the Zen teacher. This was helped by some intense conversations he and I had about empowerment and realization, with a strong sense we were both trying to get to the bottom of it once and for all.

“Kenzan, why does it seem you are always holding something back?”, he asked in one Dokusan (formal private interview).

“Roshi, I know you keep thinking that, but there is nothing hidden. I am absolutely, totally here in this moment. If this isn’t full presence what is? Tell me what I’m holding back NOW”, I shouted, knowing I wanted to clarify this matter once and for all.

I told him that I had finally given up on seeking empowerment from him, that I had deeply realized the goal was not about getting recognition from outside myself. He was very pleased with that, and we seemed to meet each other as peers for the first time, each fully covering the ground upon which he stood, alone and needing nothing. And of course, within a day after I told him I had let go of the need, he said something like, “You know, Kenzan, we’re going to have to figure out a way to give you Dharma Transmission without finishing koan study.” This was the last conversation we had. He left for Green Gulch, and off to Japan, and I never saw him again.

Hearing Roshi died was a shock. I was very grateful for those last discussions with him. I was thinking of this when his relics were brought back from Japan, and installed in the Founders Room where I had been giving interviews the morning he died. Outside the memorial room we had a guestbook for people to sign when they came to pay their respects. Pausing before going into the room, I stopped, took a deep breath, and wrote in the guestbook: “The true man of no rank bids farewell to the true man of no rank.”