I am listening to a decade-old conversation between Bernie and Genpo, their reflection on forty years of friendship and Zen practice. I am grateful to Genpo for sharing this with me. In a story which Genpo tells, I find a contemporary koan. It was an important lesson for me. Here’s the koan:
Genpo Roshi studied with Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and became Maezumi’s second successor. Just before his Shiho, Genpo led a sesshin in Phoenix and, during that retreat, had a profound experience. As he gave a teisho on the Sixth Ancestor, Genpo became Hui-Neng. He was there, receiving transmission from the Fifth Ancestor. It was a total body experience: Genpo broke down, sobbing, in the middle of the sesshin. Back in LA, Genpo shared this experience with his teacher: “I had this experience of being the Sixth Patriarch, and I am the lineage! That’s who I am, I am the lineage.”
Maezumi roared, “DON’T FORGET ME. I’m the coupling that connects you to the lineage.”
As I listen to this story, my first thought is that I am being allowed a peek into Maezumi’s egotism. I am shocked by all this me-me-me stuff from my Dharma grandpa. In the next moment, I am hearing something else in Maezumi’s words. I feel I understand him. How human that the Zen master, my Dharma grandpa, wants to be appreciated. It reminds me of my all-my-life insecurity, asking my mother over and over again, “Do you love me?” It wasn’t until my analysis that I realized that I knew my mother loved me; that’s why I asked her for reassurance. It was my out-all-the-time-it-seemed father who I was unsure about and afraid to ask.
For a moment, I am Maezumi Roshi. He grew up with his seriously accomplished father, a big deal in Soto World, too many brothers to count, all competing for Pop’s attention. I know that Maezumi was very attached to his mother all his life. Was it to his mother that he turned when his insecurities bubbled up? Did his insecurities bubble up that day in dokusan with Genpo? How human!
But then as so often happens when I work with koans, this morning there are further thoughts. I have been learning, as I’ve worked with students on the ancient koans, that the ancestor, who appears unresponsive or dismissive, even abusive, or -- at the very least -- to ignore the student’s question, is speaking so directly that it is easy to miss the point. This morning Maezumi is taking me deeper: “Yes, the experience of oneness with the lineage is important, but don’t forget the linkage that connects you to lineage.”
I have had my experience of the oneness of the lineage, although it didn’t shake my world quite the way Genpo’s did. I had my “I am the Buddhas” taste while chanting at ZCNY. During Bernie’s signature liturgy, The Gate of Sweet Nectar, there is a line, “I am the Buddhas and they are me.” I chanted the words every week, always wondering if any of the others in the zendo believed the words they were saying. And then one day, without reason or explanation, I was the Buddhas and they were me. I didn’t fall down, laughing or crying. It wasn’t a really, really, big Bernie kensho – a famous Japanese teacher had said that Bernie’s kensho “was the deepest of any westerner” – and it never occurred to me to say that I am a teacher because I had that experience. When asked what makes me a teacher, I have always had only one answer, “Because Roshi Bernie said I was a teacher.”
Bernie is the coupling that connects me to the lineage. He is more than the teacher who inspired my practice, who encouraged me as I ventured inward on my journey to discover my true nature which had been there all along or on my outward journey to actualize the oneness of life. I trusted Bernie – without giving up my trust in myself: I had after all chosen my teacher and, if it came to that, I could fire him – to help me avoid some of the delusive traps and sink holes along the way. Sometimes, I needed a kick in the butt. Mostly, I needed to just sit with my uncertainty. “Do you love me?” I never asked Bernie. He never told me.
I trusted Bernie. Why? Was it because he felt that he had realized and actualized the Oneness of Life? Was it because he told me he was enlightened? Was it his charm? Was it his charisma? God knows, Bernie had plenty of charisma, but I’ve been burned by people with charisma. Bernie stood in the line of Buddhas. Maezumi had said that Bernie was a teacher. Maezumi was Bernie’s coupling. Bernie is mine.
Few people have found the way without a guide. Sigmund Freud did manage to analyze himself and, in the process, invented psychoanalysis. I don’t know anyone else who went the self-analysis route. The rest of us mortals needed help from a trained analyst on the inward journey. Shakyamuni Buddha discovered a way to inner peace and freedom, a path to the end of suffering, a way which he taught and which, according to the Zen story, has been transmitted through eighty-one generations to me. Historians question the “accuracy” of our lineage story. I am not concerned with historical accuracy. I tell my students, “Yes, it can be done without a teacher. The Buddha did it, but the rest of us mortals have a better chance with a guide.”
I’ve occasionally been asked, “What makes you a Zen teacher?” I’ve asked myself the same thing many times. I learned a lot from Bernie, more than I can remember, but the stuff that I learned is not what makes me a teacher. What made me a teacher, what happened in my Shiho ceremony, was that Bernie said I was a teacher. This authorization, as I understand it, was not based on the completion of a course of study, wasn’t anything like my academic achievements. I completed some studies, but didn't complete others. I imagine that I received this authorization to teach because Bernie saw in me, or thought that he saw in me, the realized ability to continue the way.
That’s so important because I don’t always see it myself. There are days when I wake up wondering what the hell I think I’m doing “teaching.” There are days when I wake up, having lost my temper with Dee the day before, certain that I am not the sort of person who should be a spiritual teacher. What in the name of God – I might say – makes me think that I’m a teacher? I’m a teacher because Roshi Bernie said that I’m a teacher. He’s the link. He's the coupling. Bernie connects me to the lineage. “I am the Buddhas and they are me.”
That’s what I’m hearing Maezumi saying to Genpo. It’s not just your feeling, your identification with a lineage, a tradition. There’s a link. The authorization makes the link.
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