I’m going to occasionally write short pieces on brief and sometimes unexpected encounters, of a religious or spiritual nature, that I’ve experienced over the course of what has turned out to be an unexpectedly long life.
SHAKTIPAT*
“She’s 144 years old and wheeled around on a dolly,” Andy exclaimed excitedly about the “Bruja” he’d heard of, “Very famous around here, a powerful healer.”
I was skeptical. Andy, our Mexican American buddy, was sometimes given to exaggeration, especially in regard to spiritual matters. The image of a 144 year old woman, a Bruja or witch, ensconced on a dolly, struck me as farfetched.
It was the spring of 1968 and we’d recently settled into Oaxaca in Southern Mexico, where we’d come in search of Hongos, the fabled “magic mushroom.”
Andy and my brother Paul had rented a small boxy concrete room that sat atop the corner of a fortress-like home enclosing a large inner courtyard with an impressive wooden, drive-through gate, which I’d nicknamed “Fort Apache.” They planned the trip long in advance, saving money and getting the necessary paperwork. When I decided on the spur of the moment to come along, they were kind enough to let me join them.
I’d recently resolved to give away everything and become a homeless wanderer. A trip to Mexico seemed like a good start to life “on the road.” Without much in the way of money, I slept in the car Andy had purchased especially for the trip — a sweet, dark green and black, ’47 Chevy sedan.
When we hit the border at Nogales I worried they wouldn’t let me across without the proper papers but Andy assured me it would be OK. Sure enough, when he returned from a visit to the office on the Mexican side he told me, “They only want $5 to let you across.”
As we drove through the check point the officer stopped us, gesticulated towards me and spoke loudly in rapid Spanish, which Andy translated. “He says that for YOU they want $10.” I guessed that was because of my long hair and full beard — still a rarity outside of San Francisco. Andy and Paul had both cut their hair before embarking.
I didn’t know if I should be insulted or flattered at being worth twice as much with long hair and a beard. Throughout our trip through Mexico I would often be greeted with a hearty, “Heey Castro.”
After a few nights in Oaxaca, sleeping in the wide back seat of the Chevy, a rapping on the window interrupted my slumber. It was one of the comically attired local policemen, whose elaborate uniforms sported epaulets and ribbons reminiscent of turn-of-the-century European officers.
I sat bolt upright, fearful of what would be my punishment for sleeping in a parked car. The officer pointed to the lock button on the windowsill of the front door. I complied by lifting it to the unlocked position. He opened the door, put his nightstick on the floor, lay down on the front seat, and promptly went to sleep.
I guess I should have been relieved to have the law on my side, so to speak, but not only did he snore fitfully, he farted mightily, until the whole car reeked of recycled beans.
One morning I wandered away from the main part of town, along the dusty streets of the surrounding barrio. I reveled in the beauty of brightly colored adobe buildings fading in the southern sun. Walking alone in such unfamiliar surroundings brought me completely into the present, where I felt wonderfully open and alive.
At a wide intersection I stood pondering which direction to go in next. Suddenly, diagonally to my left at the far corner of the street, a young man appeared wheeling a dolly. Near the ground, on a small platform in front of the wheels, sat a wizened old woman whose legs were folded flat together and covered by a shawl or thin blanket. Except for a remarkable life-force that emanated from her she looked to be well over a hundred years old.
The young man and his unusual cargo stopped abruptly at the corner. As I gazed at them across the expanse of dusty street, the old woman smiled, put her thumb and forefinger together, and gently shook a gnarled hand in my direction — a gesture like a grandmother would make leaning over a crib to squeeze the cheek of a baby.
I was instantly overcome by a jolt of overpowering love, a love almost sexual in its blissful intensity, unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
In a haze of blinding light I staggered off down the street.
Later, along with a delicious warmth that lingered with me for days, I felt immense gratitude — even though I wasn’t sure exactly what it was she’d given me
*Shaktipat or Śaktipāta (Sanskrit, from shakti – “(psychic) energy” – and pāta, “to fall”) refers in Hinduism to the conferring of spiritual “energy” upon one person by another. Shaktipat can be transmitted with a sacred word or mantra, or by a look, thought or touch – the last usually to the ajna chakra or third eye of the recipient. Saktipat is considered an act of grace (anugraha) on the part of the guru or the divine. It cannot be imposed by force, nor can a receiver make it happen. The very consciousness of the god or guru is held to enter into the Self of the disciple, constituting an initiation into the school or the spiritual family (kula) of the guru. It is held that Shaktipat can be transmitted in person or at a distance.
BLANCHE HARTMAN
Senior Dharma Teacher Zenkei Blanche Hartman served as an abbess at San Francisco Zen Center — one of the first women to lead a Zen training temple outside of Asia. When she died in 2016 at the age of 90 I wrote a short remembrance of my encounter with her a few years earlier.
I had decided to take advantage of the Zen Center’s generous open-ended offer for anyone to do dokusan with a teacher at their City Center. Since Blanche Hartman was the only one there older than myself and I’d never actually met her face to face, I signed up for an interview with her.
Because our meeting was during the center’s 5:30 morning zazen (meditation) I drove down to Berkeley the day before and stayed at my brother’s overnight.
With the first morning light I crossed the Bay Bridge to the Zen Center in the lower Haight, a lovely old brick building designed by Julia Morgan for a Jewish women’s home, with a large ballroom in the basement — an ideal space for a Zendo (meditation hall).
I went up the steps and knocked on the massive door. A young woman in black robes answered and directed me to a small room on the corner of the top floor. After the ritual bell ringing and bows I folded myself into the half lotus and sat facing Blanche Hartman a foot or two in front of me.
She was an impressive figure. Even in her eighties she sat ramrod straight in perfect meditation posture, brown robes precisely arranged and her gaze direct and relaxed.
“This time is for you,” she said.
After a few minutes of silence we launched into an animated discussion. She more than held up her end of it, with stories of friends and Zen Center episodes from the past. When two people are one in their innermost heart, even though they meet for the first time, it’s like old friends getting together.
When she said that what made Suzuki Roshi so special was his ability to see the Buddha Mind in everyone I nodded in earnest agreement. She also described how Richard Baker, the disgraced successor to Suzuki, was a marvelously talented teacher with a unique ability to bring out the truth of zen in personal encounters.
I related one of my favorite metaphors for meditation. When I was a kid my parents used to take me to Playland by the Beach in San Francisco. In the funhouse, past the wonderful life-size wooden figure of the fat lady rocking back and forth in gales of laughter, there was a huge round hardwood wheel mounted on the floor, surrounded by low padded walls. At the sound of a bell everyone entered and scrambled to sit down on the big wheel, cramming together with backs towards the center. At the sound of another bell the wheel started to slowly turn. As it picked up speed people on the outer edges of the crowd started to slide off, flying into the padded walls. Finally, as the wheel was turning faster, only one person, who had managed to find the exact center, was left spinning there. Eventually even they could not maintain a perfect balance and were pulled off by centrifugal force.
“That’s samadhi!” Blanche exclaimed.
Since we were both quite old, we also talked of death at length. I told her of my parents who had both died recently in their nineties, within a few hours of each other.
Blanche said that she was with a close friend who had suddenly put her hand to her head and complained of a sharp pain there. “A couple weeks later she died of a brain tumor. Just like that,” Blanche said, snapping her fingers.
We must have rambled on for an hour before she suddenly remembered there were others waiting to see her. We quickly bowed and I went out the way I’d come.
When I got back to Berkeley, I lay down for a brief nap. Soft light streaming in through a lace curtain on a tall window triggered something deep within me, one of those sublime “moments” that I think anyone who loves meditation occasionally experiences.
It felt like a continuation of my meeting with Blanche Hartman.
THE CITY OF TEN THOUSAND BUDDHAS
When we first moved to Mendocino County on the north coast of California I worked as the director of a the Mendocino Art Center. During one of my forays inland to the county seat of Ukiah to get supplies for an art reception I took a wrong turn — which led straight into Talmage, a tiny suburb of the city. The road ended at an auspicious arc of a gate that loudly proclaimed “City of Ten Thousand Buddhas.”
I’d heard that a Chinese zen master from San Francisco, Hsuan Hua and his followers, had bought the old Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane and were transforming it into a Buddhist Monastery.
Sensing that fate was somehow at work I drove right on through the gate and parked in front of what appeared to be the office. I walked inside and asked the young Chinese fellow behind the counter if there was a schedule for zazen (meditation). He didn’t speak English, and I don’t know a word of Chinese, but after some pantomime he suddenly grasped what I was referring to and excitedly pointed down a street and almost shouted “Tathagata, Tathagata.”
The narrow streets were all marked by faux street signs with names like “Proper Work Avenue” and “Wisdom Way.” I finally found “Tathagata Boulevard,” which led to “Tathagata Hall,” an old, weathered, unpainted grey stucco building with protruding roof tiles that gave it an oriental character.
It was an overcast winter day and the leafless trees and stark bare courtyard created a mood that was strangely beautiful and silent. I imagined I was a traveling monk who had just arrived at an ancient Chinese monastery.
When no one answered my tentative knock on the door I opened it and walked slowly down a long musty corridor lined with empty cells behind steel bars, which I would learn had formally housed deranged mass-murderers and the most dangerous of the state’s criminally insane. Without much remodeling the tiny solitary cells had become home to severely ascetic Buddhist monks of the Chinese “Chan” tradition.
The misty light cast a spell over me as I wandered through the deserted old asylum. I’m fascinated by ancient buildings and long-abandoned sites of intense human activity, which, although desolate and empty, can still harbor subtle lingering impressions of their former inhabitants,
A large restroom along the hallway appeared to have been completely unchanged from former times. The old round fixtures, heavy porcelain sinks and urinals, replete with ancient odors and stains, were profoundly weighty and substantial
Built with the sturdy materials and workmanship of an earlier time, everything in the old structure, from high ceilings to yellowing walls and dark wood, was weathered and worn by the passing of a multitude of insane asylum inmates — whose ghostly tormented souls seemed to float in and out of the corners of my mind like peripheral visions.
Finally I stumbled into the meditation hall, a long narrow room with an extremely high ceiling and skylights from which rays of light drifted down. Meditating monks lined both sides of the room facing one another across a wooden floor — all of them were Chinese except for one Caucasian, who came to my rescue and escorted me to a sitting cushion near the door.
I quickly settled into the palpable stillness that pervaded the room. I noticed that the monks had old pink or blue pastel blankets over their legs or around their shoulders that looked to be holdovers from the insane asylum days. Many of them were nodding and falling asleep. I learned later that this was the final part of their annual three week retreat during which they rose at 2:30 in the morning after only a few hours of sleep, usually taken sitting up in the full lotus. They are encouraged to undertake austere vows such as never to lay down. A few of them walked from the Mexican boarder to Canada while executing a full prostration with every third step, emulating their master who had crossed all of China in the same manner.
There was no bowing, chanting or other ritual in the meditation hall that afternoon. Between silent sittings we walked at a brisk pace around the room several times. For awhile a slender old monk in faded robes stood on a platform at the front of the room and gave a solemn talk in Chinese. Since I didn’t understand what he was saying, I concentrated on his non-verbal communication — an exercise I find most interesting.
When it began to get dark I felt duty calling me to finish my errands for the Art Center. After bowing to my motionless and unresponsive hosts I slowly walked back to my car, savoring the moment and the lingering, euphoric calm engendered by repeated periods of zazen. I resolved to return the following year and attend all of their next annual retreat, during the holidays in December and January, but I never did.
I’ve heard they’ve spruced up the buildings and grounds considerably since then, including opening a vegetarian restaurant. The large campus serves and is supported by the Chinese lay community in San Francisco. It’s said there really are ten thousand statues of the Buddha there and many colorful rituals and ceremonies are conducted.
I suspect the monks in the recesses of the Tathagata Hall are only a small, but essential part of what goes on there.
BLOOD OF CHRIST
I’d always been fascinated with the Penitente Indians — Native Americans said to be indigenous to Mexico who converted to Christianity.
Isolated in the sparsely inhabited reaches of Northern New Mexico the Penitente developed their own austere form of Catholicism, noted for its ritual reenactment of the Passion of Christ on Good Friday. A procession of flagellants whipping and scourging their flesh, blood streaming down arms and torsos, accompany a young man chosen to carry the cross that year. The ritual is said to culminate in an actual crucifixion using sterilized steel nails. Thankfully the guest of honor is taken down from the cross before he actually dies.
When the mainstream church sought to interfere in their practices the Penitentes evolved into a secretive, mystical “Brotherhood.”
In the fall of 1968 I was hitchhiking around the Southwest, circling through Hopi and Navajo country, past false-front cowboy towns, through dusty barrios and along city streets of neon and concrete. Stone “Hoo Doo” people, embedded side by side in the rock walls of mesas like guardians carved in the pillars of Egyptian tombs, gazed down impassively as I went back and forth through Utah and Arizona.
I slept under freeways and bridges, in dry river beds beneath a star-strewn sky, and on park benches and picnic tables. Occasionally I was taken in by friendly people looking to get high with a real hippie, or if I got really lucky — a lonely woman to lie with in a darkened bedroom.
I was a prototype for the legion of homeless wanderers who would follow in the years to come — wild-eyed madmen wrestling with personal demons on city streets and roadsides. It was one long meditation, sometimes spent actually sitting cross-legged beside streams or in mountains. I stayed for a short time in an old mining cabin beside a small creek winding through a meadow high in the Colorado Rockies where I awoke in the morning to little chipmunks perched at the foot of the bed seeking handouts. For a few weeks I worked pitching hay bales on a ranch.
Finally I ended up in Penitente country north of Taos, hitchhiking on a back road across an elongated plateau, with the range of Sangre de Cristo Mountains holding up the sky to one side. A series of short rides took me through tiny settlements of scattered adobe houses, with old pickup trucks rusting under bare trees and dirty faced little kids staring wide eyed at the long haired bearded stranger in a tattered corduroy sports coat and old bluejeans. It was already October and the wind had a sharp cold edge to it.
Dropped off late in the afternoon at a desolate crossroads just south of the Colorado border, I gazed up apprehensively at the mountains slowly disappearing into ominous clouds and the sky growing darker. The main road, devoid of traffic and eerily empty, stretched out straight in both directions. Away from words and images to echo my feverish thoughts, my mind too became empty and calm.
After a few hours without a single vehicle driving by, I realized it was not only getting darker but much colder as well. Thin layers of icy snow started flying across the deserted roadway as an early blizzard blew in from the Northwest.
Far off in the distance a lone light flickered in a ranch house. For a brief instant my mind flew across the expanse of barren landscape and I gazed out through the eyes of a woman sitting inside by the fire.
The temperature dropped precipitously and low drifts of snow began to accumulate in a ditch by the roadside. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel cold. In fact I wasn’t feeling anything, except an overwhelming urge to fall asleep. The vision of a long dark tunnel opened up before me, with a glorious golden light at the end of it.
Just as I was getting ready to lie down in the snow by the side of the road, a baby blue and white ’55 Oldsmobile hardtop, exactly like one I once owned, pulled to a stop in front of me. For a moment I thought it might be an hallucination, but as I stumbled forward I saw three Indians, black hair and weathered faces under battered cowboy hats, staring expectantly at me. The door opened and they beckoned for me to get in the back seat.
As we rumbled off down the road they handed me a bottle of sweet red port to drink from, followed by a partially gnawed head of green cabbage to chomp. The port, a wine that I’d never tasted until then, warmed up my insides as it went down. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since — as is cabbage, which I prefer cooked, but tasted pretty good raw.
After a few pleasantries I discovered my saviors were Penitente Indians. They seemed pleased when I told them I’d always wanted to meet genuine Penitente. Once across the Colorado border we pulled into a big truck stop at a busy highway intersection. By then a cold rain was falling.
My companion in the back seat offered to buy me a drink at the tavern nearby. As we sat at the bar drinking whiskey and beer he told me he’d always wanted to meet a genuine hippy. “You look so much like Jesus,” he crooned while gently stroking my long hair. He said he’d taken LSD a few times and that I could stay at their place nearby and take it with them. The thought occurred to me that maybe they wanted to fatten me up for the “Ritual” in the spring. Although flattered, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go there.
A psychedelic vision flashed before me of a smooth dirt floor inside ancient adobe walls, followed by a wave of paranoia as I remembered that the Indians of the Southwest had somehow determined that hippies were homosexuals. The thought of taking LSD with a band of horny Indians, who were also into bodily mortification, was even less appealing than the cold highway outside.
I downed my drink and thanked them for their kindness but said I really had to be on my way. They looked on with bemused expressions as I backed nervously out the door and quickly hitched a ride on a big rig truck going west towards Alamosa and Durango.
I’ve since read that dying of hypothermia (low body temperature) is actually quite pleasant, like falling peacefully asleep.
MEETING
“Treading the secret path, you shall find the shortest way.
Realizing emptiness, compassion will arise within your heart
Losing all differentiation between yourself and others, fit to serve others you shall be” Milarepa, at his death.
Mrs. Gretzinger’s tiny old Toyota Corolla hardly seemed capable of climbing the steep dusty road up out of Carmel Valley to Tasajara Hot Springs and the Zen Monastery that had recently been established there. The little car vibrated and jumped around as I drove us up over row after row of washboard ruts, around sharp corners (hoping we wouldn’t meet someone coming the opposite direction), until finally we reached the top of a high plateau, where panoramic views of blue ridges fading in the distance and the clear air made me imagine we were on a journey across Tibet.
It was the summer of 1971 and my friend Mrs. Gretzinger had taken it upon herself to make sure I got out of my little hermitage in the Sierra foothills in order to visit what she considered significant places and people. I teased her about being “spiritually promiscuous” because she was personally acquainted with every type of religious practice imaginable, from various, often exotic forms of Christianity, to psychics and yogis — and now Zen Buddhism.
As we drove along a ridge towards Tassajara she made me pull over by a huge very singular oak tree growing right on the edge of the road. The trunk looked to be over ten feet in diameter, with huge spreading branches.
Mrs. Gretzinger got out and circled the tree, lovingly caressing the rough bark and putting her face close to it. She had recently lost her job as a teacher in the tiny foothills town of Copperopolis because she had taken her grammar school class out to gather around a notable local oak tree and “listen to what it had to say.”
I think the townsfolk were already suspicious of her for visiting the hippy hermit (yours truly) who lived in the old pump house beside the pond outside of town. “Talking to trees” must have been the final straw.
She didn’t seem to mind losing her job and it hadn’t deterred her from continuing to converse not only with trees, but with various other denizens of the natural world. She said she was ready for retirement anyway and was about to take up permanent residence in her home at Capitola on the coast. Once there she would doff a little bikini every morning, her skinny old body wrinkled from sunbathing, walk down to the beach nearby, wade into the freezing water of the North Pacific and swim until she was out of sight, and then back in again.
I would miss her occasional visits. When she first hiked over the hill from where she rented a room from a local matron in Copperopolis and walked through the graveyard and down across the meadow to my door, I’d already been residing in my remote shack beside the old pond for several years.
I must have impressed her because not long after that first visit she brought another old lady with her, who was apparently wealthy and well-connected. They offered to set me up in an ashram for people to visit, where I could, presumably, impart some of my hard-earned wisdom.
I found the idea preposterous and laughable. Granted I’d been meditating and practicing yoga quite strenuously, but I’d only had one moment of real insight and that lasted just a few seconds. Although it was enough to keep me going it hadn’t left me with much real understanding.
Looking back I do think that my power of bare concentrated attention had developed to a higher degree than I realized because the offer to turn me into a guru didn’t engender the least bit of ego in me (as it probably would now) and I just laughed it off as absurd.
As we drove down the incredibly long steep grade into the narrow Tassajara Valley I was careful not to lean on the brakes too hard, lest our little car end up like the rusting vehicles in ditches along the roadside that conjured up images of dedicated seekers abandoning their disabled autos to rush into the monastery, never to come out again.
Once inside Tassajara Mrs. Gretzinger disappeared into the women’s side of the hot baths.
Left to my own devices I walked up Tassajara creek and found an isolated spot beside the rushing water to meditate. I especially like sitting beside a stream. The characteristic downward slope provides the same effect as sitting on a meditation cushion, with the added benefit of fresh air and sunshine.
When we’d checked in at the office earlier I’d overheard that Suzuki Roshi was currently in residence. My inclination to sit zazen (meditation) whenever I was alone was given renewed purpose by the thought of his presence there.
I hadn’t seen him since my days in the Haight Ashbury, but he remained an ever-present inspiration. His simple method of counting and watching the breath and “just sitting” had informed my meditations ever since, and I intended someday to become his student.
I remembered how he spoke once of “really meeting someone.” He said that most of us had never actually “met” anyone, that what we thought of as meeting was not even close to what it was like to really meet someone.
Meditating beside the stream I had an intense vision of Suzuki sitting in zazen. I saw him from outside and inside simultaneously, like I was both myself and him at the same time. His life-stream flashed before my eyes, first in Japan, then coming to America, and finally right up to the present moment, as if he were running across time towards me.
I stood up and wandered downstream to the mineral baths. Along the wall at the entrance was a faded mural of a Native American chieftain cradling his daughter. Legend has it that the healing waters of Tassajara hot springs came gushing up out of the ground as a result of the chieftain’s tears and fervent prayers for his sick daughter who was dying as he carried her towards the ocean for healing.
I went into the main bath on the men’s side. The smooth plaster in the big hot pool was a unique turquoise blue characteristic of hot springs from the early part of the twentieth century when Tassajara and similar resorts had enjoyed great popularity. I marveled at the color and how whoever had built the baths had managed to create such a perfect hue, like the blue of the sky in landscape paintings from the same period.
I had the large bath all to myself. Between plunges into the fiery hot sulfurous water I was doing hatha yoga and meditating naked in the full lotus, my body flexible from the bath.
Suddenly a tall shaved-head monk entered the bathing area, holding a smoking stick of incense between raised palms. Following behind him was Suzuki Roshi.
I jumped up and asked if I was supposed to be there, or if it was the monks bathing time. The monk assured me it was OK and to just continue what I was doing. Then he left me alone with Suzuki.
I slid into the bath and looked up as Suzuki disrobed (literally) and somewhat awkwardly got into the hot water, one hand held politely over his genitals. With his small body and shaved head he reminded me of the little guys in Japanese wood block prints wearing breech-cloths and running with water buckets.
Neither of us spoke as we faced each other across the steaming water. Normally I’m shy and non-confrontational but there was something about Suzuki so calm and accepting that my agitation and anxiety quickly melted away.
The surroundings faded into a round orb of consciousness, like “seeing” with eyes relaxed in zazen. Suzuki was transparent. I could see right into his mind, except that it was my mind as well, a mind totally clear and open like empty space, free of all discrimination such as self and other, or teacher and student.
Since the experience was without images and thoughts, it’s difficult to remember or say much about it — even how long we remained that way.
The spell was finally broken when a feeling of deep suffering and pain arose and Suzuki abruptly got out of the bath and disappeared. I couldn’t be sure who’s pain it was, but since I’d recently been experiencing both physical and emotional pain, I assumed it was mine reflected back at me.
Later, as I drove away from Tassajara with Mrs. Gretzinger we stopped at the little spring on the side of the road. When I leaned over for a drink of cold water I had an urge to go back to Tassajara. Something told me this would be my last opportunity, that Suzuki would die soon.
No, I thought, that’s ridiculous, he had looked strong and healthy. I would wait until I felt ready and then I would return and become his student.
A few months later I learned he had died.
AFTERWARD
For Suzuki to engage with a wild-eyed stranger like myself on such an intimate level struck me as absolutely fearless and compassionate. He encountered me as an equal, though my foolishness must have been apparent. Even if I couldn’t see my own Buddha Mind, he could. There was no opposition in him, no need to dominate or instruct. Because of that openness, his influence was profound.
After Suzuki died I returned to Tassajara intent on finally becoming a member of the community and practicing zen there. Immediately upon arriving I approached a young man in the office and informed him of my intention.
“I’ll paint watercolors on location around the area, sell them and donate all the money to Tassajara to pay for my room and board,” I offered.
“You can’t do that,“ he said smiling benignly at my naivete. “Everyone here is assigned a job.”
“But I would be worth much more as an artist. They must need carpenters, plumbers, even lawyers. It seems a shame to let those skills go to waste.”
“Baker Roshi doesn’t want us to become attached to an identity like a job,” he said, referring to the new Abbot, Suzuki’s successor, “He even makes everyone rotate jobs periodically so they won’t become attached.”
“What about him, does he rotate his job periodically so he won’t become attached?”
He laughed, and that was that. Painting was more than just an ego-identity for me. It was a disciplined practice, like meditation. I wasn’t willing to give it up in order to put myself under the total control of someone whom I’d never met.
It would be over a decade before I returned to Tassajara again, this time for a week as a “work-study student” during the summer guest season. A fresh-faced and bright-eyed Reb Anderson, who would later replace a disgraced Richard Baker as Abbott, spoke to the assembled new guest students. He apologized for the laxity of the summer practice, hinting that it bore little relation to the real practice periods that took place during the winter when the guests were gone.
“Everyone comes to Buddhism by a different path, with a different story,” he said.
Assigned a bed at the end of a long dormitory that looked like it had once been a barn, I was somewhat distressed to discover a crack in the wooden wall right over my bed which was home to a nest of strange bees, the likes of which I’d never seen before — very large, fuzzy black, and longer than ordinary bumble bees. They made a loud buzzing noise as they zoomed back and forth to their crack in the wall just inches above me.
Several times during my week-long stay there, when I would try to catch a short nap during breaks in the schedule, one of the giant bees would somehow get under the covers with me and make a dreadful commotion, which sent me hurling out of bed. Incredibly they never stung me.
The toilets nearby, which were touted as some kind of cutting-edge technology, consisted essentially of a hole in the ground which one hung over and threw ashes in afterwards.
Despite these inconveniences, I took to it like a duck to water. The dark figures in robes floating silently up the path towards the Zendo in the faint early morning light, sitting upright in long rows listening to birds chirping and the sound of the creek flowing past, chopping vegetables in the kitchen with my hair tied up in a bandana as guests peered in awestruck at the sight a real monk at work, and especially the delicious vegetarian food — all helped open my mind to the streams of bliss flowing though that narrow valley.
I had taken a translation of Huang Po’s “Transmission of Mind” with me and when I visited the little Tassajara Library I discovered they didn’t have a copy. I located the librarian and offered to donate it to them but was politely rebuffed with the explanation that it wasn’t the proper school of zen.
So instead I gave the book to a pleasant young fellow who occupied the bunk across from mine. He was working on a medical degree at UC San Francisco. I told him of my encounter with Suzuki and explained that even though Huang Po was the teacher of Rinzai, the founder of a rival Zen school, his teachings were very similar to the Soto school and Suzuki.
At the end of the week we had some free time and I hiked up to a large rock that was a memorial to Suzuki Roshi placed over his ashes. When I approached, a little lizard scampered to the top of the massive stone and looked directly at me.
I remembered Suzuki’s kindness. Tears streamed down my face. Even without the opportunity to practice with him further, in that brief encounter he had shown me all I would ever need to know.