4/29 - Enpuki-ji, Montreal

                Enpuku-ji is a small Rinzai temple on rue Saint-Dominique in Montreal. I’m told that Leonard Cohen lives down the block and in fact, owns the building in which the resident priest of Enpuki-ji—Myokyo—lives. If that’s the case, he’s a very unassuming person. The houses are modest multi-plexes. Enpuku-ji is entered through a miniscule side-garden, which cannot be more than 12 feet square. A small sign on the gate post announces “Zen” and gives the street address.

                Myokyo walks up the street just as I pull into the drive. She is a slight woman with close-cropped hair and a charming smile. She looks younger than her sixty years. I was surprised to see any hair at all. In the photos on Enpuku-ji’s website, her head is shaved. She unlocks a back door, and we enter into a single long, narrow, room. The back end, where we’ve come in, is a small kitchen. A table with three wooden chairs is against the wall; this is where we chat. The rest of the room is taken up by the zendo, which currently has two rows of five zafus facing one another. Myokyo tells me they can accommodate  about fourteen. At the far end of the zendo—the front of the house—there is an altar with a graceful statue of Kwan-yin, the Chinese manifestation of Kannon, the feminized Bodhisattva of Compassion.

                The room is so narrow that the stairway leading to the second floor consumes a significant portion of the area. There is a photograph of Myokyo’s teacher, Joshu Sasaki Roshi, on the wall above the banister.

                The website describes the neighborhood as “ethnic.” It is certainly active. As we talk, I’m aware of the sound of dogs barking and children playing.

                I ask how her students address her. “Myokyo.” Not “sensei”? She ducks her head and shakes it. She tells me she makes it clear to them that she isn’t a teacher. (So, presumably, I cannot call them students.) What, then, is her relationship to them? Guide, she suggests, exemplar. She has a gentle demeanor, but, she warns me, she has been told that her eyes flash when someone doesn’t follow the zendo procedures correctly. “They think I’m angry. I’m not really. I just want to make sure they are doing things properly.” But not a teacher.

                She is an ordained Rinzai monk and priest—“osho.” She is also the Buddhist chaplain at McGill.  She used the term “nun” when she first came to Montreal, but that led to confusion because it was assumed that a nun did not have the same authority as a priest.

                Thirty-five years ago, she accompanied a boy friend to California to attend a sesshin directed by Sasaki Roshi. The boy friend had to return to Canada on family business. She stayed. For a while, she stayed at the Zen Center all by herself. “Literally?” I asked. “Well, some of the time there was another person there.” But essentially, she was on her own. Why did she stay? “Well, the sitting experience was strong.” Strong enough that she remained in the United States, illegally, for ten years, training under Sasaki Roshi in Los Angeles and at the training center on Mount Baldy.

                When Sasaki Roshi eventually asked her where she wanted her Zen Center to be located, she said Montreal—because it seemed the most interesting place in Canada. Leonard Cohen had also trained at Mount Baldy and had a house, next to one in which he lived, that he said he would donate in order to establish a zendo. She flew back to Canada with only the few possessions she was able to bring in her bags and expected that Cohen might meet her at the airport. He didn’t, of course.

                It was difficult at first, she admits, because people thought of it as “Leonard Cohen’s Zen Center.” They would come hoping that he would show up. He didn’t. The donated house is now Myokyo’s residence. The new temple space has been rented from another landlord.

                People learn about the temple by word of mouth.  When new people arrive, she shows them how to sit; describes the meditative process—being aware of the “seed-thoughts” that arise—which can be feelings or emotions as well as ideas. The negative ones we try to bury inside us. The neutral ones and the pleasant ones we allow to stay in our minds and they become stories we tell ourselves. The problem, of course, is that we begin to believe that those stories are our actual lives. It’s not an easy practice. It reminds me of Katagiri Roshi’s statement that the Zen he taught offered “no sweet candy.”

                The matter of Joshu Sasaki comes up. She doesn’t deny the allegations—though she does suggest some of the claims are exaggerated. Still, she has no doubts about his abilities as a teacher; she certainly recognizes him as her teacher. He hasn’t identified an heir, and it appears he won’t. “The tradition says that the student can only become an heir if he surpasses his teacher’s understanding,” she points out. “There is no one who has done that.”

Cypress Trees in the Garden:
Myokyo (Zengetsu) – 39-45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 54, 56, 66, 67, 108, 286
 

4/28 - The Montreal Zen Center

It was Spring on the west coast when we were there to do the first five interviews. Ornamental fruit trees were in full flower—white through pink to burgundy. Although the tulips hadn’t yet opened, the commercial daffodil fields around Laconner were brilliant.  Five days after returning to New Brunswick, I drove to Quebec in order to take part in a sesshin at the Montreal Zen Center. On day two of the sesshin, it snowed—heavily.

                I don’t do sesshin well. To begin with, I have osteo-arthritis of the spine, which makes prolonged sitting without back support agonizing. I’ve had kidney-stones; this is worse. As well, I still haven’t fully recovered from a broken femur. I need to use a cane, which is a nuisance, but getting up from sitting on a cushion or from lying on a foam mattress on the floor requires forethought and leverage. On top of which, because I am not used to a grain-based diet, the vegetarian meals served at the Center give me bountiful flatulence. By my second visit here, I had learned to avoid the breakfast porridge and the evening casseroles, and make do with fresh fruit, raw vegetables, cheese, and surprisingly good bread. Friends notice when I’ve returned from sesshin; they’ll comment that I’ve lost weight—they can see it in the bones of my face.

                And yet twice a year I drive the 800 kilometers from Fredericton to Montreal to take part in sesshin or in a one-day sit. There are, however, times when I wonder why I put myself through it, and when people ask me about it, I find it hard to explain. As we drove here from Kingston, we listened to Leonard Cohen:

Ah I don't believe you'd like it,
You wouldn't like it here.
There ain't no entertainment
and the judgements are severe.

                The teacher is Albert Low. Most of his students simply call him “Albert.” Those of us who prefer something more formal address him as “Mr. Low.” Although he wears the rakusu—the only one in evidence at the Center—which he earned when he passed his first koan under the tutelage of Philip Kapleau, he eschews titles such as “roshi” or even “sensei.”

                The center is located in a large, three-storey house on an L-shaped lot in a well-to-do residential neighborhood. It is across the narrow green of Park Stanley from the Rivière‑des‑Prairies. The extensive lawns are graced with a traditional English Garden with lots of “edge.” Throughout it there are Buddha figures scattered.

                My first meeting is with four of Low’s senior students. One of these, Monique, wants me to understand what a remarkable thing Low has done in establishing a bi-lingual sangha in this city. She sent me an email before our meeting to stress it. It is remarkable. Low is from London, England, and still speaks with a British accent. Most of his teishos are given in English, although dokusan is available in either French or English. But he has been embraced by his francophone students.

                In some ways, Low is the most intellectual of Zen teachers. He is the author of about a dozen books. Some are on predictable topics—Zen and the Sutras or Hakuin on Kensho—others deal with topics such as business management or evolution. His teishos are peppered with quotations from T. S. Eliot and Saint John of the Cross. He is particularly fond of the Hindu teacher, Nisargadatta.  He has recently begun a new blog—Thoughts Along the Way.  But none of this is what makes him remarkable or generates the loyalty I see in these four.

                They struggle to define the quality they so admire. His teaching, they tell me is authentic, austere. Part of the difficulty is that, for all four, English is a second language, even though they all speak it well. Other teachers, they point out, become involved with extraneous issues—with psychology or social issues or morality. But none of that is what practice is about.

                Eventually I decide the term they are looking for is “uncompromising.” And Low’s teaching certainly is that.

                I have a short, forty minute, interview with him after I meet with the students. I begin with the question I have started with elsewhere: “What is the function of Zen?”

                “Oh, there’s no function of Zen.”

                “So why do people come here?”

                “Because they think there is a function of Zen.”

                “And what do they find out?”

                “There is no function of Zen. If they work long enough.”

                Perhaps “uncompromising” also implies “honesty.” There is an honesty and directness in his teaching which can be excruciating. In dokusan, even courteous prevarications are caught and pounced upon. So maybe those are the qualities—the lack of compromise, the honesty—which keep drawing me back here.

                After my interview with Low, I spend a little time taking photographs of the grounds. The crocuses are out. If you’re patient, Spring always arrives.

[Albert Low died on January 27, 2016. My memorial tribute to him can be found at:
Albert Low memorial]

4/1 – Eshu Martin, the Victoria Zen Center

                Today, April 1st, is Joshu Sasaki’s 106th birthday. He is the Zen master who made national headlines last November when there was finally confirmation of long suspected inappropriate behavior at his monastery on Mount Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains outside Los Angeles. Sasaki was accused of touching the breasts of female students during private interviews. One of the people who revealed the extent of the problem was Eshu Martin, now the leader of the Victoria Zen Center in Sooke, British Columbia.

                The center is in his home, a small wooden house on a lot with a second building used for rentals. The path to the front door is lined with a statue of Kannon and a couple of garden gnomes. We knock on the door of the rental house and a young boy, approximately eleven years old, comes out of the other house and asks if he can help us. He introduces himself as Eshu’s son, Kigen, and directs us to the correct building. He, his mother, and his younger sister, are leaving as we arrive. “I hope it goes well, Dad,” he calls as they get into their car.

                Eshu is 6’4”,and has a shaved head, but a well developed auburn beard. He has a deep belly laugh. The house is both his family’s living space and the zendo. We sit at a moveable table in the dining area, next to the kitchen. It is very much family space. There are colored eggs on the table and Easter decorations on the wall. A central fire place separates this space from a small zendo that sits 12; if the dining table and chairs are removed on this side of the fireplace, there is room for another ten. His bedroom, downstairs, has a double mattress on the floor which he takes out into the hall so the room can be used for sanzen.

                Eshu was raised in Pickering, Ontario. When he was nine, his mother went into a coma, and he prayed for her recovery. When she died, he became very angry and began acting out. He became a vandal and started using drugs early. He was 15 when his father remarried and would wake every morning and think how he was going to made his step-mother miserable that day. Eventually he became involved in martial arts, discovering that was a better way to work off his anger than destruction of public property.

                The martial arts instructor gave him a book which provided the philosophical background to their discipline. In it he found the story of the two monks who come upon a young woman unable to cross a stream because the bridge had been washed out. The elder monk picked the girl up and carried her across; the younger monk fretted about this inappropriate activity all day until at last he asked, “How could you do that?” The older monk said, “I put the girl down back at the stream. You’ve been carrying her all this distance.” Eshu becomes a little emotional retelling the story. “It made me realize that it was me who had been carrying all that anger for so many years.” It was his introduction to Zen. He bought a copy of Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen and began following its instructions on how to sit.

                By that time he had a girl friend, later to be his wife, and they decided they needed to leave Pickering. She had some contacts in British Columbia, so that was where they went. And in Victoria he found a notice for the Victoria Zen Center. He went there and found the membership was made up of a number of elderly women who sat for a short period on their meeting evenings and then had tea. “Each evening the session ended with a discussion about who would be responsible for bringing the tea next time and who would bring the cookies. It drove me nuts.”

                Eventually he began working with Eshin Godfrey, Abbot of the Vancouver Zen Center. Godfrey was a student of Joshu Sasaki and arranged for Martin to go down to Mount Baldy. The training there was severe, but Martin took to it easily. The regime worked for him, and he decided that he wanted to stay there and become a monk. He phoned his girl friend, who was then working at a L’Arche community and told him his decision. Then he met with Sasaki and asked to be ordained. Sasaki told him, “No. You go back to Victoria. Get married. Then we think about monk.” Eshu called his girl friend and proposed.

                He is no longer formally connected with Rinzai-ji, nor is the Victoria Zen Center, but they do work with other centers, such as Genjo Marinello’s in Seattle. One of Eshu Martin’s current concerns is that all persons, wherever they live, have access to Zen instruction and to that end he has started an on-line introductory program.

Cypress Trees in the Garden: 
Martin, Eshu – 15, 43-44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 84, 98-115, 203, 468

               

3/27 - Tahoma-san Sogen-ji and Enso House, Whidbey Island

                Yesterday, Chozen Bays told me that all teachers require a teacher. “You’re never finished with this work. You need somebody you tremble before. Someone who can show you when ‘self’ is intruding, when you are deceiving yourself.” The teacher she has chosen to work with is Shodo Harada, a Japanese master who has established a program for western students in Japan, at Sogen Temple (Sogen-ji). He has also established programs in the US, Germany and India. The main US temple is on Whidbey Island in Washington State.

                When I ask Chozen what it is about Harada Roshi that drew her to him, she tells me: “I’ve never met anyone who lives so much in the present moment. I know he knows who I am, but I don’t think he has one thought about me unless I am right in front of him.” He has a sensitivity and alertness, she says, which makes him appear almost psychic. One can go to sanzen expecting to say something, and Harada Roshi will speak the words before the student gets them out.

                The Whidbey Island property is called a monastery, but, in effect, it is currently a hermitage. There is only a single monk (the Head Monk) living there. His name is Dairin—Great Neighbor [photo]. He listens to my recording of Chozen speaking about Harada Roshi and nods his head enthusiastically. “You can’t tell stories about roshi,” he insists. “Because it isn’t a matter of what he says or does—it’s his presence.”

                While Dairin is currently by himself, on the weekends students do come to practice, and there are plans for a residential program. Shodo Harada comes to Whidbey three times a year to lead sesshin, and people from all across North America—the US, Canada, Mexico—apply to attend. The temporary zendo (a prefab building on the site) can only accommodate 55 people, so there is a waiting list and some individuals have to wait more than a year to be accepted.

                Connected to Tahoma Sogenji is Enso House (an enso is the Japanese calligraphy circle which symbolizes the void or enlightenment in Zen). It is a hospice program. Dairin and I walk about a quarter of mile along a moss-laden path through the woods to get there. The hospice is run by Dr. Ann Cutcher. Students of Harada Roshi are sent there to assist for periods of varying lengths. The German nurse, Myoo, has been there ten years. A young man from Hungary, Peter Torma, has only been there a few weeks.

                I had developed a wax build up in my right ear early in this trip and was having trouble hearing. Chozen had said she would willingly look at it, but circumstances prevented her from doing so. She emailed Ann to ask if she would examine me, so before we begin the interview, Ann takes me into a dispensary and flushes out both ears, which were far more plugged than I had realized.

                I ask if Ann is a Zen practitioner. She pauses a long while before saying, “I don’t know.”

                As we eat lunch together, I ask the people around the table in what way Enso House is part of their Zen practice. Each has his or her take on this, but Ann’s is the most compelling. She describes the first “guest” at the hospice. They only have one guest at a time; the average stay is less than four weeks. The first was a man who lived in isolation from everyone else on the island. When people realized he was dying, a few tried to look after him but were unable to meet his needs. None of them were Buddhist, but they heard that Shodo Harada had determined to build a hospice and they came to Enso House where they met Ann. The hospice was not ready to receive guests; the requisite legal documents were not ready, but the board agreed to accept the old man. He was mute—possibly because he had fallen out of the habit of speaking. “However,” Ann says, “he had these bright, alive blue eyes, but he kept them shut for two full days when he arrived. I thought, ‘Oh, he’s angry about being torn from the only home he has ever known and being brought here,' and I felt terrible.”

                Then Ann’s friend, and Harada Roshi’s translator, Priscilla Storandt, visited and sat for a while with the guest. When she came out of his room, she told Ann, “He is so grateful.” And, of course, Ann realized, he was. She understood that she hadn’t been seeing him at all but rather her projection of what she thought he was. It was, for her, a transformative moment. She has been at Enso House now for twelve years.

                As I am leaving, Ann is scraping pasta sauce out of a pan into a Tupperware container and tells me in parting, “You know what the primary lesson of Enso House is? Flush out your ears!”

Cypress Trees in the Garden: Chapter 6, pp. 117-132.

3/26 - Great Vow Zen Monastery, Oregon

                Clatskanie [klat-scan-aye], Oregon, a self-proclaimed Christian township of 1700 persons, is an unlikely location for a Zen monastery. The Great Vow Zen Monastery, just outside the village, is the residential practice center for the Zen Community of Oregon. It, and a city temple in Portland for lay students, is under the leadership of Jan Chozen [clear Zen] Bays and her husband, Hogen. The monastery is a former elementary school which provides spacious and elegant accommodations for the community.

                Chozen is a pediatrician who gave up full-time medical practice to study with Taizan Maezumi in Los Angeles in the 1970s, a time in which the Los Angeles Zen Center produced several significant figures in American Zen, including Bernie Glassman and Joko Beck. It was also the era of “flower children” who found their way to LA and San Francisco from throughout North America, seeking the Dharma but also freedom from the social constraints of the mainstream society.

                LAZC was shaken up in 1983, the same year as Richard Baker’s fall from grace in San Francisco, when Maezumi Roshi agreed to go into a rehab program for alcoholism and the extent of his sexual affairs became known. Chozen admits that she was one of the women with whom Maezumi had relations. Clear guidelines had not yet been defined in Zen centers or anywhere else. She has done a great deal of study about the issue since leaving Los Angeles and now volunteers to help women who feel they had been sexually exploited in other centers. I ask if what happened in LA could be considered an example of what we would now call clergy abuse. Certainly it was misconduct, if not abuse, she replies.

                Great Vow is dedicated to Jizo Bodhisattva, protector of children—which is appropriate for a monastery headed by a pediatrician. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of Jizo statues throughout the building and in an extensive Jizo Garden, where people have left statues in commemoration of lost, sick, or dead children. They are decorated with scarves and knitted hats, even some with booties.

                In addition to the Jizos, the monastery is a treasure trove of Buddhist art—shrine rooms, courtyard gardens, a founder’s room (where a portion of Maezumi Roshi’s ashes rest by his photo), the zendo are all graced with beautiful statuary. There is a store room for the pieces they don’t have appropriate places to display.

                The monks I meet range in age from “just turned 20” to a man in his late 50s. The days are long, starting at 4:50  ending after 9:00. They begin and end with two hours of zazen. The rest of the day is taken up with work assignments and study. But study here can take unusual forms. One young woman described a formal orioki breakfast at which a dead bird was passed around for students to examine. Chozen had found it on the property and later dissected it to determine what caused its death.

                She explains that many of the young people who come to the monastery had dropped out of university and still were very ignorant about the nature of the world in which they lived. An introduction to basic biology is provided, but also training in fundamental skills like learning how to sew and cook.

                And then there is marimba playing and square dancing. This area of Oregon is one where marimbas are made and after Chozen learned how to play she started going to the local schools to teach the children; in the school, she is known as Mrs. Bays. It was one way to help to overcome the initial community suspicions about a Buddhist center. But more importantly marimba playing demonstrates how quickly moods change. One might be feeling upset but as soon as one starts playing the marimba, one’s mood lifts. Square dancing was something Chozen (now 67) and her husband had taken up to help keep in shape. Now all Great Vow monks are required to go square dancing at least once. One shy young  monk admits that acquiring social skills is also a valuable part of what he is learning here.

                It is a serious practice center, but the atmosphere is warm and welcoming. Chozen smiles easily and is relaxed with her students. She admits she has a mother’s temperament, seeking to ensure that the family all gets along. The Oregon Community does not have an “Ethics Committee” as has been established at many centers, but it does have a “Harmony Committee.”

                Besides her work as a teacher and abbot, Chozen still maintains a small medical practice (mostly teaching), consults in child abuse cases, and has become recognized widely as a proponent of mindful eating as a way of addressing obesity in children and older persons.

                The prime directive of a Zen teacher, she tells me, is to ensure that the teaching continues. The fact that Great Vow can thrive in rural Oregon suggests the teaching is secure.

Cypress Trees in the Garden:

Bays, Jan Chozen – 111, 117-18, 122, 227, 239, 271-88, 289, 293, 296, 297, 298, 299, 365, 437, 476