Sitting Long and Getting Tired

I just heard this morning that a second member of my first Zen practice community has died. Those of us that sat zazen together at the Living Dharma Center the early 80’s are getting to be of an age when death is not unexpected. But like most of the other people in that community, I had lost touch with her and was surprised to receive the news this morning via email. The community itself fractured after a few years with repeated revelations of sexual predation on the part of the teacher. He too is dead now—long after most of us had left to find other teachers or to strike out on our own.

Now we’re left with stories—though I suppose that is what we had even from the beginning. The original story was that: 1) We were a unique Zen group and the (only?) true inheritors of this wondrous tradition. 2) The most important thing in the world is to have an experience of enlightenment, of waking up. And 3) Students do not have the wisdom to truly understand the actions of a Zen Master. Though all of these statements have some kernel of truth, I no longer believe any of them.

But at that point, we did believe and we sat rigorous and silent retreats together for years—getting up long before sunrise and sitting as long into the night as we could manage. It was a badge of honor to be the last one out of the meditation hall and I remember long nights of secretly peeping out from under my lowered eyes to see how the competition was doing. Though it was a rather shallow motivation, I was inspired to push myself beyond what I thought was possible through the inspiration of my fellow practitioners.

We sat retreats in a large country house in Coventry, Connecticut. We were a wonderful community of idealists who were willing to work hard together. Though we barely knew each other, we grew close in the silence, struggle and comfort of the silent meditation hall. We supported and admired each other in this work of waking up that seemed of incomparable value.

As I recall, the majority of the members of the Living Dharma Center were women. Our teacher would pick one woman at a time to elevate to the level of secret consort. Periodically, this would become public knowledge, there would be a big meeting. Many people would then leave the community in anger and disappointment. Others, however, sensing the importance of the true teaching carried in this imperfect teacher, would stay.

St Paul once said that ‘All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful.’ He was speaking of the world of awakening—the world where we no longer live according to someone else’s idea of good and bad. When we realize that we are awake (something akin to what Christians call being ‘saved’) we have a new freedom. We are no longer constrained by the shoulds that have ruled our lives up to this point. We see that we are saved not by the merit of our own actions but by the grace that is the source of all life. We are free.

The danger of this place, however, is that we use our newfound freedom as my first teacher did—to satisfy the demands of ego. We can easily fool ourselves into thinking that we are somehow different from everyone else—that we get to make up our own rules—that we are no longer blind. We all now know the harm that teachers, spiritual and otherwise, can do from this place of solipsism.

But even though I came to see this teacher as a real danger to those around him, I am grateful for his teaching and for the community that briefly gathered around him. So these days I mourn the loss of my sisters Susan Parks and Elizabeth Pratt who were (and are) both role models to me. Thank you both for your gentleness, your fierce commitment to life and your passion to get to the bottom of it.