I arrived at the Temple at 4:35. Irene met me almost as soon as I walked through the front door. She had not read my last email and assumed that as junior ino she would be managing the sesshin in my absence. She had already begun laying out mats and cushions for the 6:30 morning service which would follow our ninety minutes of zazen. I helped her tuck a sutra book under the front of each mat. I laid out on the main altars the slender green sticks of incense to be lit and offered before the service. I put the usual small wedge of charcoal briquette in the koro to be ignited later for the offerings of powdered incense. Irene had prepared the first day's assignments—doan, shoten, jisha, servers, dishwashers—so until the second day I was able to sit free of the worry I normally experienced as senior ino at sesshins, and on both Saturday and Sunday I enjoyed practicing with my friends in the sangha.

 

In spite of all that had transpired I thought hardly at all of the conflict.

 

"I'm glad I came," I told the master in dokusan.

 

"Good."

 

"I don't have a question," I said. "I just wanted to let you know how I felt."

 

"In all my years of sesshin," the master said, "I don't remember a student who had been reluctant to participate ever saying when it was over that he wished he hadn't come."

 

I smiled.

 

"I want you to promise me something," the master said.

 

"What is it?"

 

"I want you to promise me," the master explained, "that at the first opportunity that presents itself you will talk with your son Stephen face to face and open up to him and let him in to really know you."

 

I nodded.

 

"I loved my father," the master said.

 

I nodded.

 

"To this day I regret that as adults we never really got to know each other before he died."

 

"All right," I said.

 

"Do you promise?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Thank you," the master said—he put his palms together and bowed.

 

"Thank you," I said—bowing back.

 

I rose from my cushion, moved it to one side of my mat, put my palms together, bowed first from the waist, then knelt and pressed my forehead to the floor in the customary one full prostration which concluded dokusan, I lifted my hands, palms up, just slightly, in the symbolic gesture of lifting the Buddha, and then I stood, palms together, and I bowed one more time from the waist before I made my exit and returned to the zendo.

 

I sat.

 

At the end of the last, long, two-hour period of zazen we all assembled informally on the floor of the Buddha Hall—our mats and our cushions arranged in an irregular circle—to share our reflections on our experiences of the sesshin.

 

I was surprised to be present at all, I explained when it was my turn to speak, since only forty-eight hours earlier I had quit and had vowed not to attend but, I added, in spite of myself I'd had a good experience and I was glad that I had come.

 

I looked at the master.

 

"He changed my mind," I laughed. "I don't know how."

 

The master said again what he'd already told me—that he could not remember a student ever regretting his participation in a sesshin no matter how reluctant the student might have originally been to participate.

 

"Would anyone like to say anything to Bob?" the master asked.

 

Nikki raised her hands in gassho.

 

"Nikki?" asked the master.

 

"If Bob doesn't mind my asking," she said, "I'd like to know why he quit."

 

I looked at the master.

 

"He insulted me," I said.

 

The master blushed.

 

"Thank you!" Nikki exclaimed. "That's the dirt I was looking for!"

 

We laughed.

 

"I didn't insult Bob," the master said.

 

I looked at the master, I made a face I hoped ironic, and I smiled.

 

Silence.

 

We all waited.

 

Silence.

 

Smiled.

 

Silence.

 

"Thank you all," the master said.

 

"Thank you!" we all replied.

 

It took only a week or two before the echo in my subconscious of the master's parting denial that he had ever insulted me began to haunt me and I again felt vaguely troubled by the issue I had hoped he and I had put to rest once and for all. This third time—or was it the fourth or fifth—it did not seem that I would have to sever my relationship with the master over our conflict and our differing perceptions of his language and tactics.

 

But I did feel a weary resignation.

 

When my brother and his wife visited one afternoon and I recounted the details of my conflict with the master and my quitting and then re-enacted the private interview during which the master had warned, begged, and cried and persuaded me to return, they exclaimed in unison at its conclusion.

 

"Manipulation!"

 

No.

 

I smiled and shook my head.

 

No.

 

The master would be spending the month of June at Laugh Out Loud and then another month and a half there in sabbatical recuperation and rest. The master hoped this might be good for his irritable bowel.

 

My time apart from him might heal me, too, I thought.

 

I hoped so.