by David Guy
Sometimes I would see him just sitting, parts spread in front of him on the table or floor. He might have a bewildered look, then he’d settle into a kind of calm; he’d sit and wait. After a while he’d begin working again.
“Bicycles are one thing,” he said. “Machines in general. All my life, drop me in front of a machine, parts all over the place, and even if I’ve never seen it before, I’ll get it together. Sooner or later I see it. But if I blank out in a talk, there are no parts on the floor. There’s nothing.”
You might have thought he’d be frustrated, angry, or sad, but he was just tearing into the chicken, that delighted little smile on his face. The leg went first, then he started on the breast.
Jake had always been a deliberate talker in the zendo, never prepared a thing. He liked to hold the kotsu, that little stick that priests carry, like a stake, plant it on the floor in front of him, and grip with both hands. He might pause for twenty seconds, thirty, waiting for the next point to come or the last to settle.
But last spring some of the pauses had been longer. It was as if he were trying to retrieve something way down there. Sometimes what he came up with seemed out of the blue. Zen talks are like that, make sudden leaps. But I’d wondered.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They love what you say.”
“That has its limits.”
“I’m not sure it does.”
“It does for me.”
“It comes from the deep part of your mind. It has meaning.” I honestly believed that. Anything he came up with would be helpful.
“You’re not being realistic,” he said. “You’re not facing this.”
“I am.”
“I’m losing my mind.”
He said that with all the emotion of someone who had lost his wallet. It was the mashed potatoes at that point; he was sitting there with that stupid little plastic fork, taking each bite with a little gravy, a cluster of peas with an onion. He was saving the thigh for last, his favorite part.
“That’s an exaggeration,” I said.
“Everything goes eventually. No use trying to hang on. I can watch it. It’s astonishing. Something’s right there, then it’s gone.”
“We all have that,” I said.
“Not like I have it.”
This was giving me a stomachache.
“Whatever happens, I’ll take care of you,” I said.
“I know. And I’ll die before it all goes. I’m convinced.”
There had been some heart problems before this, blood pressure and circulation. It wasn’t just his mind.
“I won’t wind up a babbling idiot,” he said.
“I don’t want you to worry.”
“I’m not. But we’ve got these talks.”
“Why did we come down here now? Of all times.”
For years Madeleine had wanted to start a center in Cambridge, Jake in charge, the whole thing sponsored by her. She worshiped the ground he walked on, couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t make himself more accessible. Students had to schlep up to Mount Desert Island, sleep in sleeping bags, dash out in the frigid morning to a Porta-Potty. He wouldn’t even record his talks.
She’d have had him speaking in Carnegie Hall. She’d rent out the place herself.
Just when I thought he should be kicking back for good, seeing people in that informal way, he told her he’d come down and have a look.
“I have two reasons,” he said. “One I haven’t told you. The other is this idea of the center. But that’s not for me. It’s for you.”
“Me?”
“That’s what I mean about being realistic. You’ll take care of me. Who’ll take care of you?”
The ache in my belly was deepening.
“Have you thought about it?” he said.
“Of course.”
“What have you come up with?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“You can’t run a cash register the rest of your life. Four months a year.”
“I know.”
“Even if I leave you the house, which I will, there are expenses. Unless you acquire a gift for repairing bikes.”
“I don’t think so.”
Jake had tried to teach me. I was all thumbs.
“I want you to teach. Carry this on. It’s time.”
In the sense that he was ready to quit, it was. In the sense that I was ready to start, no.
“Madeleine will have her center,” he said. “It just won’t be me.”
I had, during long sesshins, given a talk or two. Jake had taught me various rituals. But I hadn’t been in charge of anything. I’d never even led a one-day retreat.
“She doesn’t want a center if it isn’t you,” I said.
“I’ll be there at the beginning. But the woman has eyes. I’m seventy-eight years old.”
“She thinks you’re immortal.”
“She’s got to grow up.”
Of all the things Jake had said, that one startled me the most. I’d never heard him say a word against Madeleine.
“Just sit with me up there,” he said. “Sit at the front for the talks. Probably everything will be fine. But if I can’t handle it, if it all dissolves before my eyes, I’ll pass it to you.”
Good Lord.
“You’ve got to do this,” he said. “There’s no other way I can handle it.”
What could I say? The man had given me everything.
“I’ll do it.”
“Good.” You’d have thought I’d told him I’d take attendance or something. It was over as far as he was concerned. His plate was empty. Literally. Not a drop of gravy left. “We’ve got to go up the street,” he said. “There’s no dessert here.”
His one vice. The man was willing to give up his whole mind, thought by thought, but I’d never known him to skip dessert at any meal. We couldn’t go to bed without some cake and coffee.
He’d sleep like a baby, after two cups. A little bald one.
3
SITTING BEGINS THE DAY, has for almost twenty years, and in Cambridge there are various options: the Korean place that the guy mentioned in the bar, an Insight center a couple of blocks up from the Y. One of the glitches in Madeleine’s scheme is that there are already meditation centers here, but she thinks Jake is unique, and for once I agree with her. Besides, if she foots the bill, what’s the difference?
But the best place to sit is right where you are. The rooms at the Y were a tad Spartan, with one of those iron bed frames that you couldn’t dent with a sledgehammer, a worn-out mattress that had seen God knows what kind of action, a desk and wooden chair where you were supposed to write letters to mama back in Duluth, a battered wooden wardrobe, tiny sink in the corner. The walls were a pallid green, the bed frame darker. Jake and I carried our cushions everywhere, and I made a mat out of the blanket, sat in front of the door. Not much space in those Y rooms, and a bad smell to them, hard to describe. Hardscrabble working class. The stagnating dreams of dozens of faceless men.
Sometimes it seems that in your sleep you go to some faraway place, and you have to sit in the morning just to inhabit your body again, to know you’re here. Sometimes it seems the whole thing of sitting, a whole lifetime of sitting, is just to get comfortable with having a body, as if you’ve spent several millennia without one, without that restriction. I’ve sat for over twenty years and have less idea how to do it than I ever did. It’s simple when you begin, more complicated as you go on. The Buddha’s teachers acknowledged him as a meditation master years before his enlightenment, but he didn’t get anywhere until he started all over and sat the way he had as a child.
All I know is that it’s helped me more than anything I’ve ever done, and that people out on the street—rushing to the subway while they gulp their coffee, shouldering people aside and cramming into the last car, staring at the floor as if waiting for something to end, they’re not sure what—haven’t done it. They need to.
God knows how long Jake had been up. Sometimes when we
occupied the same room—the Y rooms are all singles—I’d blink awake in the morning and he’d be sitting already, right in bed, just the pillow for a cushion. He’d continue till I finished.
I knocked on his door at 8:45. We were due at Madeleine’s at 10:00.
“I know the place for breakfast,” he said.
I’d passed it any number of times, a battered dirty store-front called the Golden Donut, though there was an old sign that said Twin Donuts right below a newer one. The place had been taken over by a Chinese family. They should have called it Jade Donut. Though if anything was worthy of an apotheosis in New England, raised to the status of Golden (other than pilsner beer), it was the donut.
Jake hadn’t been there for four months, but as soon as he entered, the tallish Asian woman at the front, thin and going gray, said, “Hi, Jake,” and without missing a beat, spoke to a small woman behind her. “One light.”
She turned back. “How about your friend?”
“Black,” Jake said.
From then on, whenever I came in, almost before I could get to my stool, there was a cup of black coffee waiting for me.
Eggs, potatoes, toast, and that coffee were all of $2.30. Juice was another fifty cents. Jake substituted a muffin for the toast—he would—and they knew that too, waited until they brought the plate to ask what kind.
“What’s fresh?” he said.
“Everything, Jake. What’s the matter with you?”
The food was good; I like grease as much as the next man. But ancient grease like that has an old taste, as if it’s embedded in the grill. The freshest eggs aren’t right with that to fla-vor them. And they cook right beside the sausage and bacon. It all mixes in.
The coffee was superb. So was the corn muffin. Jake gave me a bite.
“I love this place,” he said.
It was a classic Formica countertop, wound to the back in U-shapes so it could accommodate more people; the first U—where we sat—was nonsmoking, though the cloud of smoke, like the smell of grease, drifted all over the room.
The back two U’s were jammed with homeless and near-homeless from all over the square. Most of them stared into a coffee cup, smoking. One, a black man who looked African, ate an omelet and spoke cheerfully to himself, making a speech. A thin pale woman wrapped in an overcoat stared around, rocking in her seat. Some guys at the back were carrying on. Otherwise the place was quiet.
“There’s no bottomless cup of coffee,” Jake said. “You pay for every cup. Otherwise they’d never leave.”
“I believe it.”
“They’re not all unemployed. Some of them work in the candy factory. Necco wafers. Ever have one?”
“When I was a kid.”
“These people made them.”
I’d eaten my last Necco wafer.
“Lily knows their names. Every one. How they like their coffee. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
As if on cue, she stepped our way.
“Who’s your buddy, Jake?”
“Hank. He works with me.”
“Buddhist too?”
“I guess. If I am, he is.”
She put her hands together, made a little bow.
“She belongs to a Baptist church,” Jake said. “Totally Chinese.”
“Whole world ass backwards,” Lily said.
That was for sure.
“Where you been, Jake? Haven’t seen you in months.”
“Up in Maine. I live in Maine. You remember.”
“That’s right. Live in Maine. Come down see girlfriend.”
“She’s not a girlfriend.”
“I think might be. What you think, Hank? Jake bring her here one time. Good-looking woman.”
“You’ve got to wonder,” I said.
“Never come back. What’s wrong, Jake? She no like donuts?”
Madeleine probably wasn’t a real donut hound.
“She stay at home. Cook for you herself. Home cooking.”
Jake was smiling. He must have really liked Lily.
“She no have sweet stuff, I bet. We got what you really want.”
She had taken our plates and was wiping the counter.
“What kind of donut today, Jake?”
I stared at him. “You have a donut after that?”
“These donuts good for you,” Lily said. “Try one.”
“You had a muffin,” I said. “You had cake last night.”
“I live it up when I come to the city. This is my vacation.” He looked at Lily. “Lemon.”
“Lemon good. You want lemon, Hank?”
“Why don’t you have ice cream on it?” I said.
“We no do that. Straight donut here. Classic donut.”
“Wouldn’t want to overdo it,” I said.
“Golden donut,” she said.
Jake picked up his bag on the way out, as we paid.
“See you boys tomorrow,” Lily said. “Jank and Hake. Easy remember.”
Apparently not. But it was her first mistake.
Jake looked back on his way out. “When I go totally dotty,” he said, “completely out of it, I’ll hang out here.”
“God damn it, Jake.”
He wore a big grin.
Outside it was a marvelous New England autumn morning, sky clear and sunny, the slightest chill to the air. Jake munched his donut as we walked.
“We have plenty of time,” he said. We were strolling slowly. “I hope I wasn’t hard on Madeleine yesterday.”
“I knew what you meant.”
“She doesn’t need to grow up. She needs to face this. She hasn’t faced it.”
“There’s a lot of that going around.”
Jake had told me about Madeleine in the past; we’d had long talks. She was the classic poor rich girl, heiress to a major fortune, had a place in Cambridge and another in Bar Harbor. An apartment in New York.
She’d been one of his first students back in the eighties when he just had a sitting group and taught a class from time to time. She wandered into the bike shop the same way I did, saw the notice for the class. She was on her third marriage at the time, and it was collapsing all around her. She’d been to counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists. Lawyers of course.
“She was suicidal,” Jake had told me. “Claims I saved her. I didn’t save her. Clear seeing saved her. But people get confused. They think it’s you.”
I knew what he meant. It wasn’t him. But I also knew how she felt. Talking to Jake was like nothing else I’d ever done. Even with a shrink, the most highly skilled one, you could see the wheels turning, judgments being made, techniques worked out. Nothing wrong with that. It was their job. Some were good at it.
But talking to Jake was like throwing stones into a well. A deep, still well where you never hit bottom. There was no judgment, no thinking. A helpful word now and then. Somehow, in that situation, the things you said stayed right in front of you. You saw them in a new way. The way he was seeing them. Clearly.
There was more teaching in the way he listened than in all the words he’d ever said.
“I used to think everybody had to sit,” he had told me. “Everybody needed a strong practice. But some people can’t do it. They’re not ready, won’t be in this lifetime. You have to take them as they are.”
Through the years Jake had had multiple students who came to him wanting to sit. What they really wanted, what made them feel better, was just to talk to him, throw stones down that well. He would hear them go on about how they were establishing a practice, trying to get there. After a while they would drop it, or he would drop them. There was nothing to talk about.
Except for Madeleine. She still hung on twenty-five years later.
“Did she ever come on to you?” I asked him once.
“Wanted to make me husband number four. Live in that big house. Had a meditation room all set up.”
“Were you tempted?”
“It would have been the end of everything. I have to live the way I do, somehow. Bes
ides, the husband of Madeleine Harold. No one lasts in that job.”
He hadn’t quite answered what I’d asked, but I didn’t press him. What Lily wondered, I wondered.
The awkward thing was the money. Madeleine would happily have provided for Jake’s every need. That was hardly unprecedented in the history of Buddhism; all the way back to the Buddha, there were wealthy people around. But the Buddha only let them do so much. He would take a meal, but wouldn’t let them provide all the meals. He would stay in decent quarters in the rainy season, but would wander the rest of the time. The middle way, by his standards, was not all that middle. The Cambridge Y would have looked posh to him.
Madeleine had given Jake the house on Mount Desert Island; nothing in the life he had led would have accumulated savings. She might also have supported him other ways. He never said where the money came from. We lived frugally, but comfortably.
The question was, was he hanging onto a student just for the money?
“I’ve asked myself that a million times,” he once said. “I’ve told her all I really know is sitting. I have nothing to give but that, and even that I don’t give. Sitting does. There’s no wisdom beyond the banal platitudes everyone knows.
“Madeleine says she gets something out of this, the talks I give. Interviews. Other casual encounters.”
He came to Cambridge on a regular basis.
“I have to assume I’m doing something.”
He was hardly aware of what he did with that listening, it came so natural to him. But it was rare, and priceless.
If there was one thing I hoped to learn from him, that was it.
Madeleine lived on Hampshire, one of those massive houses that have mostly been converted into businesses or apartments. The outside was already set up for the meditation center she’d been planning, with a high wooden fence around the grounds, a modest Zen garden with slabs of slate surrounded by small stones, a small pond with some carp, garden beds with a few plants.
There was a vestibule with a bell, and she met us at the door, wrapping Jake in a hug and kissing his mouth, actually hugging and kissing me, which was a first, at least for the past nineteen years. She led us into the house, bright and airy, not musty as I might have expected. Right at the entrance was a wide hall and a stairway to the second floor.