Nothing on My Mind

by Erik Storlie

  “So the sutra says, ‘No attainment. There is nothing to attain.’ Because you have already attained this buddha nature. But that doesn’t mean we should stop our practice. This buddha nature makes it possible for us to practice. It is really so. Everything is this buddha. The word buddha is buddha. The letter b in buddha is buddha. The letter u in buddha is buddha. The letter d in buddha is buddha. All things are buddha. You are all buddha. Do you understand?” Suzuki Roshi chuckles softly. “So to know this, we sit together. This is our practice.”

  He stops talking. He sits easily on his cushion, his whole being light and sparkling.

  “But to know we are buddha,” he goes on, “does not make us so important. We are not so special. Everything is buddha. It is really a relief for us not to be the most important thing in the world, don’t you think?” Then he bursts into a peal of laughter. We all look up expectantly, and after clearing his throat, he says, “When I was a boy in Japan, I helped an English lady with cleaning. In her hallway there was a little statue of the Buddha. When I would enter her house, I always bowed to the Buddha. It was very important to me. My master bowed so much to the Buddha that he made a callus right on his forehead. Can you imagine that? So I always ask you to make nine bows at the service. This is to bow to the Buddha, not just outside you to a statue, but inside you too. Now, that lady saw me bowing to the Buddha and she got very angry. She scolded me.”

  Again Suzuki Roshi overflows with chuckles that shake his small shoulders. “She scolded me for bowing to that Buddha statue. Of course, she is a good Christian lady. For her that statue is just a decoration. Maybe she thinks that I believe the statue is really alive. She is very concerned to correct me. Of course, it is just a Buddha statue. But it is good to bow to it. We just bow to the buddha that is in all things.”

  He pauses, looking around the room, then asks, “Are there any questions?” A few students make hesitant, feeble attempts to question him. Finally, laughing, he says, “It’s okay. We can sit now.”

  We sit for several forty-minute periods. After the first period, Suzuki Roshi doesn’t sit with us, but after ringing a little bell leaves the room, his robes rustling, the old hardwood floor squeaking under his tread. I imagine he retreats to a little office he has. I imagine him sitting at a desk and taking care of correspondence to Japan, or conferring with an elderly man in the Japanese congregation who seems often to visit him. After each forty-minute period of zazen, he returns to lead us in kinhin—walking meditation.

  Toward the end of the afternoon, he rings the bell to begin what I assume is the last period of zazen. Soon we can stand up, stretch, and go home to supper. I’ve never sat this many periods of zazen at one time. My knees, neck, and back are stiff and painful.

  As we near what must be the end of the period, I can tell from the rustling of clothing and creaks and squeaks from the floor that others are as uncomfortable as I. Sitters all around me, quietly, stealthily, they hope unobtrusively, are shifting position to minimize the pain. I know we must be nearing the end of the forty minutes. “These folks are just weak,” I think. “I’ll tough it out. I won’t move.”

  Long minutes go by, but no Suzuki Roshi appears. The old building is silent except for rising afternoon traffic din out on Bush Street—and a quiet crescendo of rustling and floor squeaks from students who can no longer bear their silent agony.

  Then it dawns on me. “He’s testing our practice. He wants us to sit hard. Well, I’ll show him hard sitting. I’m certainly not going to move. I can handle another few minutes. This is real zen.”

  But more and more minutes slip painfully by, and suddenly it’s way beyond a few minutes more. It’s endless. “We’ve got to have been sitting over an hour!” I say to myself. Still, there’s no sign of the Roshi. All around me in the room are the sounds of sitters shifting their bodies, sighing, and even a few quiet groans as knees are unlocked and straightened.

  Horrified, I think, “It’s not a test at all! He’s forgotten we’re here. Why doesn’t someone go get him? Or do something?” I can’t, myself, of course, because I’m a newcomer. And if it really is a test, and I interfered, I’d be a complete idiot.

  Finally, in agony, composure gone, I join the weaklings. I surreptitiously allow my right foot and ankle to slowly, slowly slip off my crossed left leg—and point my toe down toward the floor so it only falls a few inches and barely makes any thump on the mat. My right knee shrieks at the release of tension, pulsing wildly with the beat of my heart.

  Suddenly the bell is ringing. With all the quiet commotion in the meditation room, Suzuki Roshi has crept in to ring it. There’s blowing of breath, sighs, and we all turn on our cushions toward the middle of the room and come creakily to our feet.

  Suzuki Roshi says, “Thank you for your hard effort. That is all we need to do today.” And he’s gone.

  Stiffly, I walk out of Sokoji and back to Lon’s apartment. For a block down Bush Street, my knees burn at each step. At supper with Lon at a Japanese restaurant nearby, I tell him what happened, then ask, “So, what do you think? Did he just forget us? Or was he putting us through the wringer?”

  “Hey, man, your guess is as good as mine.” Lon laughs, picking at his fried vegetables with a pair of shiny black chopsticks he brings with him so he won’t have to use the cheap disposable kind. “Everyone says he is very absent-minded, and he likes to joke about it. But you never can tell. He’s an old fox. I think it’s a teaching.”

  Then I ask Lon about the lecture on form and emptiness. “This is important, man,” Lon says. “Can’t you dig this? Haven’t you heard the parable of the golden lion?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well, if you think about it, it’s really like that. The gold can be formed into a lion—or anything—or nothing. But’s it’s still gold, isn’t it? So if I point to the lion and ask you, ‘Is that gold?,’ what do you say?”

  “Oh, I suppose I’d say yes.”

  “Right on,” says Lon. “And if I point to the lion and say, ‘Is that a lion?,’ what do you say?”

  “I’d say, ‘It’s a lion.’”

  “And if I point and say, ‘What is this, a lion or gold?,’ what do you say?”

  “I’d say, ‘It’s both.’”

  “So,” concludes Lon, “gold is gold, and gold is also the lion, and lion is lion, but the lion is also gold. It’s like the Clear Light of the Void in the Book of the Dead. On acid, it’s what rises up from everywhere in everything you feel, everything you see and touch. It’s that flowing energy. You dig?”

  “Humph,” I say, annoyed that I didn’t myself make these logical connections. Why did the words seem so meaningless? “Well, then emptiness isn’t really just nothing. Just like the Clear Light of the Void isn’t just nothing. It’s the Clear Light.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lon says, returning to his rice and vegetables. “Ask Suzuki Roshi. You’ll get a chance if you go with me down to Tassajara next week. A lot of people are working down there. And Suzuki Roshi’s going in a few days. They’re going to do the first Tassajara sesshin at the end of the summer. It’ll be heavy. They’ll sit a series of forty-minute periods from rising till bedtime. If we work down there for a week or so, we can join. Tassajara is an incredible place. You’ll dig it.”

  “Great,” I say. “I’m ready. I just hope Suzuki Roshi won’t let zazen go longer than forty minutes.”

  “Oh, he won’t,” Lon says. “But it’ll be strict. The real thing. A mountain practice led by a real zen master. But he says we shouldn’t go overboard, either. We can’t just sit sesshins all the time. When I asked him how often I should do one, he said, ‘Oh, maybe it’s enough to climb the mountain once a year.’”

  It’s the next summer, 1967. I’ve driven again from the mining claim in the Bitterroots to visit Lon and practice with Suzuki Roshi. My doctoral course work and teaching in Minnesota continue. And Farmer and I have developed a regular practice of zen at our respective houses, two periods in the morning
before breakfast and one period at night before bed.

  Lon’s moved to a new apartment now, just across the street from Sokoji Temple. His building and several others up and down the street, all old and somewhat rundown, now house numbers of young people who have come to practice with Suzuki Roshi. The Katagiris live at the end of the block.

  I find my way to his door, knock, and am surprised by a new Lon. His head is shaved, his full beard gone, and he wears ordinary jeans and a work shirt. There’s no trace of a psychedelic costume. I’m uneasy. Head shaving by American zen students has always struck me as pretentious.

  After greetings and small talk, Lon serves green tea. We sit on zafus on the hardwood floor in a dining room empty of furniture. He pours in silence. After a few sips, I ask, “How are things going? Looks like your scene has cooled down here a bit.”

  “Yeah, that’s for sure. Things happened this year. I guess I was overdue. Long overdue.”

  “Ah,” I say, raising my eyebrows. And then ask, “What happened?”

  “Well,” says Lon, “You know how, during the fund-raising for Tassajara, some of us made pretty good contributions, even though, like they say in the newspapers, we had no visible means of support?”

  “Yeah, I dig,” I say. “I know hundred-dollar bills appeared with surprising frequency in the collection plates. Strange coming from a congregation of poor hippies.”

  “Well, old Suzuki didn’t like it. He figured out where the money was coming from. He’s in real hot water with the Japanese congregation, anyway. They’re mad as hell about all these hippies swarming around him. They call it ‘hippie Sokoji’ now. But Suzuki always seems to be able to calm them down. You know what he’s like. He’s incredibly calm and collected—and happy. How long can you be upset with a guy like that?

  “Anyway, all of a sudden we get this hard-ass lecture from Katagiri Sensei about how it’s not real zen practice to sell drugs and give money to the Zen Center. He said it violates the precepts. It’s got to stop. ‘It’s only delusion,’ he said.

  “Boy, you should have seen him when he gave that lecture. Was he uncomfortable! I’m sure Suzuki Roshi just told him he had to do it. Might as well let the first officer handle it.”

  “So that’s going to change your life a bit,” I say, smiling, sipping my green tea.

  “Yeah, it will, but it’s okay. It’s time. And it’s time for me to make a final commitment to Suzuki Roshi and to the practice here. This is it. I’m in it for the long haul. For real. There’s no turning back.”

  A few days after my arrival, Lon tells me excitedly that Bishop Sumi, Suzuki Roshi’s superior in the Soto zen sect, has arrived from Los Angeles to visit Sokoji Temple. Everyone says he’s a remarkable man, a great zen master. He’s to give a lecture in the evening.

  After supper, we join a throng of American zen students at Sokoji. We sit on zafus beneath a low stage on which Suzuki Roshi and the bishop are seated. After introductions, Bishop Sumi begins to speak. To my surprise, he says nothing about zen practice itself. He talks about the Japanese living in America. Then I’m amazed. He seems, in fact, to be scolding Suzuki Roshi.

  “We have so many Japanese boys who are in trouble in California,” he says. “Many are in trouble in Los Angeles. Many are in trouble in San Francisco, too. It is very hard to think that we are too busy to help them. Some of those young men even will go to the jail. This is a very terrible thing for the boys and their families.

  “The Soto Sect has a very important job to help these boys and families who are in trouble in some way in this country. We are not really here to help the Americans. Of course, we like to help in any way that we can. But we must take care of the Japanese people who are in trouble.”

  I look over at Suzuki Roshi. I’m astonished. Is he nervous, ill at ease? Embarrassment clouds his face. I’ve never seen him like this before. Though seated cross-legged on his zafu, listening quietly to the bishop, he seems almost to fidget.

  Bishop Sumi continues. “I don’t really come here to criticize your effort at Sokoji Temple. I know, it is important for Americans to have an opportunity to learn zazen. I know Suzuki Roshi is very sincere. I know you are all very sincere. I accept how sincere you are, and I appreciate this very much. But we cannot forget our young people in trouble. They are begging for our help. So we cannot forget this.”

  Bishop Sumi stops talking. I hope to hear some rejoinder from Suzuki Roshi, but he simply thanks the bishop for coming and the evening is over.

  As Lon and I walk across the street to his place, I ask, “What’s going on? Sumi doesn’t seem interested in zen at all. It was like hearing some Christian minister talk about the social duty of the church. And I’ve never seen Suzuki Roshi look uncomfortable like that. It was unbelievable.”

  “Well,” says Lon, “the Japanese congregation is very upset. They really don’t like us American weirdos hanging around. Suzuki Roshi always says zen is dead in Japan, anyway. He says he’s glad to be here where people are actually interested in real practice. I know he’s considering leaving Sokoji. We’ve got Tassajara now. The next step will be to find a new place in the city. I think it’s going to happen.”

  It’s another August in the late sixties. I drive, as usual, from the mining claim to visit Lon in San Francisco and do another sesshin with Suzuki Roshi. There’s now interest in zen in Minneapolis. Once a week Farmer and I join a small group that sits together with Beverly White, a middle-aged woman who for years has been a student of Buddhism. We sit at 5:30 in the morning in her living room in St. Paul.

  Earlier in the year, I wrote Lon to see if Suzuki Roshi would encourage us to have a two-day sesshin, even without a master. Lon wrote back, “Roshi says it’s okay, so long as you’re sincere.”

  Lon’s head is still shaved. He now dresses in dark, solid colors, simple shirts and loose pants sewn by women in the zen community. Zen and the San Francisco Zen Center are his life. He has become macrobiotic, austere, soft-spoken. I see in him at times a medieval monastic dedicated to God and the mortification of the flesh. I have doubts about these trappings of zen, but I too want enlightenment. Lon is the only friend I have who takes this all with the same deadly seriousness I do.

  Suzuki Roshi, I discover, is down at Tassajara Mountain Center with some thirty students. Lon says we can join him and sit the last sesshin of the summer. I’m excited. A few years ago, Lon and I sat the first sesshin at Tassajara. I remember the hot spring, the creek, the simple stone-and-wood buildings, the hot, dry California mountains.

  Within a few days, we drive down the coast to Monterey, inland to Carmel Valley, then over some thirty miles of rough mountain roads into the heart of the steep Santa Lucia range. Rounding a final bend, we stop the car and look down into the valley. Beneath us, Tassajara Creek winds through a scattering of old buildings. How wonderful to return to this wilderness outpost dedicated to zen.

  The sesshin doesn’t start for a week, so we’re assigned to work crews. Each day we work on rebuilding buildings, repairing a spring-fed water system, hauling soil from the hillsides to create garden beds by the creek, and taking care of the cooking and other routine needs of the community. These days of work are punctuated with two forty-minute periods of zazen before breakfast and single periods before lunch, dinner, and bedtime.

  Though I visit the California zen community every summer, I feel, as I often do, left out, on the edge of things. I know many of the old students and officers, but no one acknowledges my presence or talks to me, except to collect a fee and assign a cabin.

  After a few days, I suggest to an older student whom I admire that we eat a sandwich together at lunch during a free day, but he declines. His free time, he says, has become “too social.” Of course, he’s quite social with other regulars.

  I feel better when Lon, after the last sitting one evening, stops me outside the meditation hall. He pays me a high compliment. “Erik,” he says, “you’re sitting beautifully, as solid as anyone in the zendo.”

&nbs
p; As the days go by, I watch Suzuki Roshi work on a rock garden he’s begun outside his little cabin. Bubbling, enthusiastic, he seems energized by this hard physical labor under the open sky. This is not the berobed, retiring man I first met in Sokoji Temple, moving with measured tread through its quiet, dim confines, silently bowing to each sitter as he or she leaves the zendo to step into the evening fog on Bush Street. At Tassajara he’s everywhere, brilliant and sunny, a reflection of the hot California summer itself.

  The sesshin begins—seven days that mark the end of the summer. I worry. I’ve sat for four or five days at a time before, but never for a full week. Still, I’m eager to test my practice.

  The sesshin is hard. We sit from five in the morning till nine at night, each period of zazen followed by ten minutes of slow walking meditation. We’re off our cushions only during a daily two-hour work period after lunch and during meals, mercifully taken at tables outside in the shade of great trees. As we sit in silence waiting to be served, warm breezes carry the smells of delicious vegetarian foods.

  By the last sittings before lunch and bedtime, I’m in agony—knees burning, my back a complicated knot of pain. Stubborn, I refuse to change position. In the snap of the fingers, in the blink of an eye, enlightenment will pass me by.

  Roshi lectures morning and evening. Many of the students are new to zen, and he talks often about the pain. On the second evening of the sesshin, he says, “I know you are practicing very hard. Now after two days many of you are feeling some pain. But if it is possible for you, don’t move. Just sit. Don’t move your body. Don’t move your mind. Sometimes it is very hard, but that is our way. Try to experience the pain as just pain. It is pain, but that is part of our human life. It is actually okay. I can feel the pain too. When I was a young man and had to sit many sesshins, sometimes I imagined my whole body was being swallowed by a great snake. It was so hard.

  “Zazen is hard for you, too, of course. It is true. But remember too that zazen is also soft and gentle. Please try to sit with a soft mind like bread dough—you know how it sticks together, and then with fire becomes something wonderful to eat.”