At a meeting of the Omaha Zen Center Board of Directors in May—when we assigned jobs to be performed at the Temple in the master's absence—Jane told me she was glad that I had not quit and that I had instead decided to continue.

 

"Oh," I joked, "I quit and rejoin six or seven times a day."

 

Jane smiled.

 

In the world of my mind it was true.

 

At home I found I had an email from Billy. I had sent Billy—just as I had my nephew Adam and my son Stephen—two of the most contentious of my weekly journals along with the master's replies.

 

"How is your relationship with the master going?" Billy asked me now. "Even just standing on the sidelines I was feeling the heat—with my habitual patterns alive and well. Perhaps the only real progress for me is that when they rear their heads I do not feel so rotten about myself."

 

But I didn't feel rotten.

 

I seldom had.

 

"Maybe there is a little maitri—kindness—so I'm grateful for that," Billy added.

 

Good.

 

"One thing I liked in the master's responses to you," Billy added, "was the phrase 'that's what you think.'"

 

The phrase reminded him of a story about Suzuki in which someone had criticized him for teaching his students to count their breaths.

 

"Oh, they're not really counting their breaths," Suzuki had replied. "They just think they are."

 

I didn't know what this meant.

 

Think!

 

Not Adam, not Stephen, and now not even Billy had even in part validated my perception of the master and by so doing validated me. I told Billy that I had attended the two-day sesshin which concluded the practice period.

 

"But my questions about the master continue to test me," I confessed.

 

I was tired.

 

"If he were just my friend there'd be no problem," I said, "but his being my teacher complicates it."

 

It was hard to explain.

 

"I don't know what will happen with me and the master," I wrote my friend, "other than old age, sickness, and death."

 

In his Sunday Dharma Talk near the end of May the master mentioned a monk by the name of Doshin.

 

"Do not be disturbed by confusion," Doshin advised disciples. "Do not be disturbed by stillness."            

 

"Why are people disturbed by stillness?" Nikki asked.

 

The master explained.

 

Twice.

 

But Nikki and several others present did not understand the master's answer or felt it unsatisfactory. They asked more questions or made statements of their own and the master soon tired of their inquiry.

 

"Intellectual curiosity is good for building bridges," the master said, "not for understanding the self."

 

In my four years at the Temple I'd heard the master make a statement like that a dozen times. This time the master added:

 

"Put a lid on it!"

 

Dismissed.

 

From The Cloud of Unknowing—

Our intense need to understand will always be a powerful stumbling block to our attempts to reach god in simple love and must always be overcome. For if we do not overcome this need to understand, it will undermine our quest. It will replace the darkness which we have pierced to reach god with clear images of something which, however good, however beautiful, however godlike, is not god.

The master left for Philadelphia and Laugh Out Loud just a few days later, and I'd have most of the summer to reflect and to sit on what had transpired between my teacher and me. For eighty days the monkeys would manage the zoo. Incredibly, in spite of my conflict with the master, my quitting, and then my unquitting, I remained senior ino, and with the help of other regulars I would be responsible for maintaining the Temple and its activities for the two or three months that the master planned to be gone.

 

My teacher's absence I felt might do me good.

 

From Stephen I had hidden nothing, of course, at least not deliberately, though Stephen had indeed told me that he felt he didn't know me. I informed Stephen of what the master had asked of me and at the first opportunity a month or two later I did as I had promised and invited my son to tell me or to ask me anything that he believed might facilitate the revelation of the intimate knowledge of his father that my son had said he felt he lacked.

 

Poor Stephen—

 

He seemed embarrassed that his remark had traveled so far.

 

It was awkward.

 

Stephen could think of nothing specific to ask.

 

"Dad!"

 

He made a goofy grin.

 

I laughed.

 

I could think of nothing specific to offer.

 

We hugged.

 

"I love you," I told him.

 

He kissed me.

 

"I love you," he told me.

 

It had been a feeling he'd had.

 

Yes.

 

I understood.

 

I did.

 

Perhaps it is a feeling every son has about his father.

 

"I'm sorry," he said.

 

"No."

 

That wasn't right!

 

Me.

 

"I'm sorry!" I said.

 

Love—

 

Wordless mutual love.

 

A hug—

 

I almost wished that I did have something to confess, something to offer, to open up, but I didn't—just my profound love for my son, which I expressed yet again, as I often had—and I thought again, too, of the master and of his own unsatisfying relationship with his father. We human beings love, yes, deeply we love, but we cannot merge, we cannot become one, be one, and there had been many many times I wished it were possible.

 

We love—

 

We love—

 

Lucinda Williams:

I want to watch the ocean bend
The edges of the sun—then
I want to get swallowed up
In an ocean of love

God!

 

How we yearn for love!

 

God!

 

How we yearn! 

 

Time passed.

 

The horrible wars went on. 

kk kkkk kkkk

kk kkkk kkkk

kk kkkk kkkk

kk kkkk kkkk

kk kkkk kkkk

kk kkkk kkkk

In his column of June 13, 2005, journalist Bob Herbert explained to his readers that the soldier's job is to kill. Though it had been decades since he himself had been in basic training, Herbert wrote, he could still hear the drill sergeants screaming at their recruits.

 

"What are you?"

 

"Killers!" recruits would scream back.

 

"What are you?"

 

"Killers!"

 

"What is your purpose?" drill sergeants would yell.

 

"To kill! To kill!" recruits would shout.

 

"What is your purpose?"

 

"To kill!"