Unforgiving Buddha

It took me a while to become the Unforgiving Buddha. It wasn’t easy. I was in Jishu’s precept class, working with non-anger, and my anger at Angela – not her real name – was still so fresh. Angela had been my boss. She’d fired me from the best job I’d ever had. I’d imagine myself with a high-powered rifle and a sniper’s scope crouched on the roof of an inpatient cottage, waiting for Angela to emerge from her car. Angela in the crosshairs. In my imagination, I kept my finger off the trigger to keep from killing her. I brought my imaginary rifle to my precept study with Jishu.  

I loved that job. Angela had asked me to take on the children’s service, and I’d agreed, but I had my conditions. It was a lateral move. I’d be trading a top-performing service for a mess. I’d take the job if I could report directly to Angela. It gave me some extra leverage to get things done: I was the only chief reporting directly to the CEO. With her support, I turned around the children’s service. Angela and I spent time together on trips to statewide directors’ meetings. I liked working with her.

It came out of the blue, a complete shock – you could have bowled me over with a feather – that morning in Angela’s office, when she told me that she was planning to close the children’s service. Until our inpatient unit opened, Staten Island kids often ended up at hospitals far out on Long Island, arduous to reach by public transportation. Particularly for poor families, contact with their kids often became tenuous. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but Angela had her reasons: The children’s service was a lot of extra work. For Angela. She didn’t get any extra pay. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of you.” She was planning to fire one of the Brooklyn chiefs: I could have that job.

“What about the rest of my team?”

“I can’t worry about everyone.” It was a done deal, she assured me. She had all her political ducks lined up for the closing. It would be happening soon. “Just don’t say a word to anyone until it’s announced,” but the unit never closed. It’s still going. When the unions and people at other hospitals who'd be affected by the closing heard of Angela’s plans, they talked to the elected officials, and, very quickly, Angela’s political ducks fell out of line.

People always joked that Angela was a bit of a witch, psychic. She felt I had pulled the thread that unraveled her scheme, but she couldn’t prove it. I was back in her office when she told me, as if we were chatting about vacation plans, that it was time to make a change in Children’s Service leadership. She demoted me from the job I loved. She would have fired me if I didn’t have my civil service protections, although she tried. She appointed a special investigator to dig up dirt, to prove that I’d committed a fireable offense. She had to settle for the demotion because her investigator didn’t come up with the dirt.

When I got over the shock, I was enraged. That’s when I began creeping around the roof tops of my mind with my imaginary rifle. I was still carrying the rifle two years later when I got to Jishu. As I worked with that anger, I saw that if it hadn’t been for Angela, the best things in my life would never have happened. Dee and I would never have gotten together – I was Dee’s boss until I was demoted – gotten married or had our daughter, Morrigan: they’re the greatest gifts in my life, and without Dee’s support, I never would have found my way to Zen practice. Although Zen had been beckoning since I was 16, actual spiritual practice was outside my realm. Dee was the first spiritual person in my life, and she gave me the courage to practice.

Jishu told me that if I just breathed, my feelings would morph. Just breathing, my anger transformed into gratitude for the wonderful things that had come into my life. I could gassho, bow in gratitude to the Universe, but I couldn’t bow to Angela, couldn’t smile and thank her. If I tried to imagine that, the anger boiled again. Obviously, I was no Hakuin. I didn’t have his equanimity.

Hakuin, the 18th century Japanese Zen master, is one of my Zen heroes. In one Hakuin story, a village girl gets knocked up. To protect her boyfriend who’s left town, and perhaps herself, she tells her parents that Priest Hakuin is the father. When the baby is born, the girl’s parents march her and her baby out to Hakuin’s temple. “He’s yours,” says the angry grandfather. “You take him.”

“Is that so?” is all that Hakuin says. He takes the child and cares for him.

A few years later, the repentant boyfriend returns. He will do the right thing. He will marry the mother of his child. Everyone is happy. Parents and grandparents march out to Hakuin’s place. “He’s not yours.”

“Is that so?” is all that Hakuin says, and he returns the child.

I was stuck. I was unforgiving. How could I let go of my anger if I couldn’t forgive? I was sitting with that koan, grateful but unforgiving – Angela had tried to hurt me; she hadn’t sought to bring gifts into my life – when I saw a light: I didn’t have to forgive people who meant me harm, even if their actions brought good things into my life. I could be the Unforgiving Buddha. I found peace in that self-acceptance even if I was no Hakuin.

That’s been my story for 30 years, until this winter, until Bernie’s friend, Zalman Schachter, got in my ear. Reb Zalman was saying that when we refuse to forgive, we are harboring and hiding from our own responsibility and culpability in the unforgiveable. I knew that he was talking about me and Angela. There was a piece of the story I’d been aware of all along but hadn’t digested, a guilt that I hadn’t acknowledged.

What is Reb Zalman pointing me towards? Where’s my guilt? I wasn’t up front with Angela. I didn’t have the courage.  If I’d known Bernie then, if he’d articulated his approach to peacemaking, I might have found another way. I might have looked at conflict as a peacemaker, but I was not a peacemaker then. I was an advocate. I was on the side of the “all the lost and left behind.” Those kids we were serving, they and their parents were among the most vulnerable in America.

I didn’t want the service to close, and I didn’t want to be fired. I was frightened, too frightened to be honest and direct with Angela. I sat there in her office and kept my mouth shut. What was I thinking? Was my silence all fear? That at least I’d have a good job?  How much of it was greed?

It has been over thirty years since that afternoon in Angela’s office, years of anger and of letting go of anger, years of coming to terms with my unforgiveness. Zalman is pointing deeper. Is shame too strong a word? Embarrassment? I didn’t have the courage to speak up, to tell Angela how bad I thought it would be for so many people if she closed the service. I didn’t have the compassion to hear her stress or to look with her for a solution which could help her feel good about keeping the service open. Maybe she was not a person who was easy to work with in that way, but I didn’t try. Bernie might have helped me, but I didn’t know Bernie then. It took all that I did and all that Angela did, to create the conditions for me to find Bernie, and only now for Bernie’s friend, Zalman, to appear in my mind.

Just breathing this – the fear and the lack of compassion – I’m smiling. I did the best I could at that moment in my life. I’m forgiving myself. Feeling more compassion for myself, is it possible that I’m forgiving Angela? Is it possible that I’m thinking of calling a former colleague? Would he like to take a ride out with me to the nursing home in Jersey where Angela is living?