Another, perhaps final, chapter

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 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 checked in at the office earlier I 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 era.

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 muscular 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.