Inka Speech — Marshall White
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Day follows night, night follows day.
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
No day, no night.
[Raises the Zen stick over his head, then hits the table with the stick.]
Day is just day, night is just night.
Which one of these statements do you like?
KATZ!
Sunlight coming through the windows reveals many bright faces.
Starting at about ten years old, I would go for long walks alone at night. They started around my neighborhood, then expanded to sports fields, parks, churchyards, and down into the canyons of San Diego. I would think about things, ponder the stars and the moon, and talk to God. I imagine people who have a favorite tree or secret place in nature experience something similar to the peace I found.
Because of these walks, I never had much interest in attaining enlightenment, or (in the Christian context I grew up in) going to heaven. Peace or heaven was always already available to me on my late-night wanders. My big problems were waking up the next day and dealing with my family, going to school and dealing with the other kids, and worst of all: hopeless romantic crushes. As a chronically shy kid from a family with expectations, my big questions have always been “How do I relate to other people?” and “How can I become somebody, fit into this world, and make my family proud?”
So my life consisted of a nighttime world where everything made sense, and a daytime world I found completely overwhelming. I had a lot of good ideas from those night wanders: What’s really important in life? The nature of God is love? How to love everyone? But as we say in our school, all that understanding could not help me. I could not translate those good ideas to the daytime pressures of home and school.
On my sixteenth birthday, some school friends dragged me to an aikido class. There, Martin Katz Sensei taught me how to find my center, move from my center, and connect with others from my center. And best of all, I only needed to say maybe two phrases in Japanese the entire class. Onegaishimasu! Arigato Gozaimashita!
Sometime after, another aikido student gave me a stack of spiritual books. Along with the usual Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, and the Tao Te Ching, was this strange book called Only Don’t Know: Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn. I devoured this book, but here are two points that stood out.
In the very first letter exchange, Zen Master Seung Sahn writes that he spent time in the hospital because of his diabetes. There was a man in the bed next to him who has a good job, a good family, and a good spouse. This man was like the Buddha before the Buddha went forth to practice. He has all the good things in life. Zen Master Seung Sahn asks the man, “What is the purpose of your life?” The man answers, “Nothing.”
This story pointed directly to the biggest fear of my life at the time. I was afraid that I would grow up, forget all about my nighttime walks, and work very hard to get the things my society tells me are important: a high-class job and a picture-perfect family while keeping too busy to think or feel much. And at the end of my life, someone would ask me a real question: What’s the purpose of your life? What’s most important? I would exclaim, “Nothing. I’m lost. Nothing.”
Funnily though, Zen Master Seung Sahn did not say, “What a pity, the man in the bed lost his way.” Instead, he seemed to say the man was on the right path, only that he needed to go further. The man understands “nothing,” but that understanding cannot help him, so he is suffering, just like me. He needs to attain this nothing. Zen means attaining this nothing mind, and using nothing mind to help others.
I did not understand what that meant at the time. But I did get loud and clear that what I thought was a dead end, a wall of despair, Zen Master Seung Sahn said it was a doorway, and on the other side of that door is a new kind of life in which helping others is possible.
The other point from the book that stood out to me was the closing salutation at the end of each letter, which most of us here have memorized: “I hope you only go straight—don’t know, keep a mind which is clear like space, attain enlightenment, and save all beings from suffering.”
I wondered at the order of the last two lines: attain enlightenment and then save all beings from suffering. In most conventional forms of religion (for example, other varieties of Buddhism or conventional Christianity), loving and helping other people is in service to a higher goal: getting enlightenment or going to heaven. So, you’d expect “attain enlightenment” to be at the end.
But Zen Master Seung Sahn clearly means that practice, up to and including attaining enlightenment, is all in service to saving all beings from suffering, which means connecting with and helping others.
I remember thinking as a teenager, “Finally! Someone who has their priorities straight.” From then on, I always understood the purpose of any practice:
Why pray to God, sing hymns, read the Bible? To connect with and help this world.
Why meditate, chant, and bow together? To connect with and help this world.
Why put on the keikogi and practice aikido? To connect with and help this world.
Why go on long walks at night? To connect with and help this world.
But don’t stop there!
Why eat every day?
Why wake up and put on clothes?
Why brush your teeth? To connect with and help this world.
And why lie in the hospital bed? You already understand.
At twenty-three years old, I was sitting in the introduction to Buddhism class at the University of Montana in Missoula. Professor Alan Sponberg (later given the dharma name Saramati) was lecturing on the four noble truths. Sitting there at the ancient desk, taking notes, I had a visionary experience.
First noble truth, suffering. I saw a huge wall rising between myself and other people.
Second noble truth, the cause of suffering. Where does suffering come from? Suffering comes from deep craving. My craving to be somebody; my craving to connect with other people; my craving to be safe and accepted. That craving itself builds and sustains the walls between me and others.
Third noble truth, the cessation of suffering. Just let the craving be. Let go of that need to be somebody, to know others. No need to violently smash or tear anything down. Let the craving go, and the walls dissipate by themselves.
Fourth noble truth, the path of practice, the way to end suffering. Tools like meditation help ease that deep craving and release the walls. Here, the teachings shift from being yet another set of good ideas to actionable instructions: just do it!
But one more step was necessary, I didn’t see at the time—maybe a fifth noble truth: How to use these walls of karma to help others. Then the walls become doorways, and helping others is possible.
From our temple rules:
Originally there is nothing. But Buddha practiced unmoving under the Bodhi tree for six years. And for nine years Bodhidharma sat silently in Sorim. If you can break the wall of your self, you will become infinite in time and space.
As it turns out, for much of my working life I have been the one bothering the person in the bed. First at eighteen as a Hospital Corpsman in the U.S. Naval Reserves at military hospitals, then as an in-home caregiver for some years, and for the past eighteen years as a professional hospice chaplain.
When you go visiting with someone who may be in the bed, maybe very ill or just not feeling so well, or feeling grief or a lot of sadness, here’s a practice that may be helpful: Take Zen Master Seung Sahn’s words to the man in the bed, “What is the purpose of your life?” Turn that question around and ask yourself, “What is the purpose of my life right now?” Oh yeah! What am I? HIT! Only don’t know! Which means no I-my-me, no agenda. Then you and the other person can find your purpose easily.
It’s the same when you wake up in the morning, feel the sunshine, walk outside and breathe the morning air, and talk to your loved ones and strangers. It’s the same whenever you or I are the one in the hospital bed!
In this talk there are many, many mistakes, beginning with opening the mouth. At one point I said, “Attaining enlightenment is in service to saving all beings from suffering.” That is a very big mistake. So, I ask you: attaining enlightenment and saving all beings from suffering—are they the same or different?
KATZ!
I am speaking; you are hearing my voice.
Already this talk is complete.
Thank you very much.
