Zen Mothers

I had initially thought that I might hold this blog back until Mother’s Day.

I was horrified – as soon as I came upon them – by the stories of great Zen teachers who abandon their elderly mothers to pursue the Dharma. How was it possible for enlightened masters to act without compassion? My heart rebelled.

I am horrified by the story of the great Hui-Neng, the immortal Sixth Ancestor. I could see it clearly: the hard-toiling, illiterate boy, the sole support of his mom, so struck on hearing the Diamond Sutra chanted that he drops his axe and goes in search of his monastic destiny. Although I love the rest of the Hui-Neng story – how the poor kid without education, beats out the frontrunner monks to succeed the master and how he wears this robe with grace and modesty – he abandons his aging mother and never looks back. This is not a parable for children.   

The story of Tozan is even creepier. Here is a Zen story which could have been written by Edgar Allan Poe. Tozan is a hero, the founder of the Soto Sect, the author of the Five Ranks, and yet his treatment of his mother is enough to give a Zen student nightmares. Tozan too abandons his mother in search of the Dharma. Impoverished, desperate, Tozan’s mother goes in search of her son, wandering destitute from monastery to monastery until she finds, on a cold and windy night, the place where her son is sitting in meditation. The monastery door is locked. Momma Tozan bangs on the door. No answer. She scratches at the door now, trying to get in. I can hear her weeping. Tozan is deep in meditation, but he can hear her too. On his cushion, Tozan opts not to interrupt his zazen, leaving his mother to die on the streets. I expect Tozan to be wracked with guilt, but no. In the most pathetic element of the story, Tozan imagines his mother coming to him in a dream. More than forgiving her son, she applauds his commitment to the Dharma. Freud would have had a field day with that dream. This is not a parable for adults. It’s not a parable for me.

How is it possible for enlightened masters to be so disengaged from their families? It’s so odd that this question should come from me. Although I never heard either of my parents say anything negative about their parents or even complain seriously about their siblings, we were far toward the disconnected end of the enmeshed/disengaged family spectrum. I was only tenuously connected to aunts and uncles and cousins, saw them only a couple of times a year growing up, and almost never as an adult. My parents proudly walked their path of independence. My mother told me often enough as I was growing up that she would never be a burden.

Did Bernie too grow up in a disengaged family? I rarely heard him talk about his family. He talked more about his teacher, Maezumi Roshi’s, family than about his own. And yet I was drawn to Bernie by his notion of a balanced life. I cherished the moment when he was asked how much energy we should be putting into our Zen practice, how much into our careers, how much into our families. When Bernie began his answer, “Put 100% of your energy into your Zen practice,” I thought, “Oh, no, not more of this Tozan bull.” But when Bernie continued, “Put 100% of your energy into your career; put a 100% of your energy into your family,” I knew I had found my teacher. I loved it when he joked about the too typical Zen student who was at the zendo all the time tending meticulously to the altar while her children went to school in dirty clothes. I am a householder Zen person and proud of it.

I could go on and on about Hui-neng and Tozan, and I usually do, on Mother’s Day. Today, I interrupt my rant for a moment of reflection. Why do these stories bother me so much? Reb Zalman is in my ear again. Recently, I came upon his suggestion that my persistence in not forgiving Tozan marks a moment of my own culpability. What guilt of my own am I ignoring?

Once I ask the question, the answer is not hard to see. I am Tozan, although I have not forgiven myself for failing my mother even if my failure did not reach Poe stature. I was a good son, pretty much, mostly. I never visited enough. Well. I had my excuses. Mom lived in Great Neck; I was living in the city, but I did bring my mother to live with me in the big Brooklyn brownstone when she sold her house in Great Neck. She moved with me to Staten Island. But when I moved out of the townhouse we shared, to move in with Dee, Mom wanted to come too. She was being silly. She was being ridiculous. Did I not hear Tozan’s mother scratching?

It didn’t make sense to me. I was in a new relationship, preparing to remarry, but Mom kept asking. All her friends were living with their children, she said. I doubted that was true. Anyway, I had my excuses. Mom had always been so independent, even while she was living with me. She had moved out of her parents’ house before she was married, became a teacher, built a private tutoring practice. She was never going to be a burden.

I've told myself there’s no reason for guilt. Mom wouldn’t have been able to live with us long anyway. I saw the signs but wouldn’t believe it was dementia. Mom was so independent, travelled by herself to Manhattan for her high colonics. Until. Her Alzheimer’s so quickly became overwhelming. One morning she couldn’t get out of bed. A neighbor called 911. Mom was hospitalized. Although the doctors couldn’t find a cause, they transferred her to the hospital rehab unit anyway, and she went from there to a nursing home rehab unit. I was happy that it was one of the few good nursing homes on Staten Island. Then they transferred her to their Alzheimer’s unit. Mom lived her last years on that unit. By the end, she didn’t always know who I was. She was a risk to wander.  She needed full-time care.

Reb is right. I am so harsh in my judgments of Tozan and Hui-Neng, so unforgiving of their treatment of their mothers because I have not forgiven myself for failing my mother at the end. I could have found a way to bring her to live with us. If I had tried. It had just been so much easier to recall her independence. Maybe living with us, the stimulus of being around people, would have held off the dementia.

If I haven’t forgiven myself for leaving my mother to languish in the nursing home, how could I possibly forgive Tozan? There is still work here for me. Maybe I’ll have news to report on Mother’s Day.