The master turned to me.

“You should examine your understanding of the word crazy,” the master said. “What is crazy to you is not crazy to me.”

I felt slightly insulted.

If anyone understood the relativity of the concept of “crazy” it was me! Just five months earlier in his Dharma Study the master had called anyone who wanted to die "crazy," "mentally ill," and "deluded." Only after a quarrel had the master reluctantly conceded that a very small number of people—“a drop in the bucket,” he said—did want to die; and the master had added that most people who do attempt to take their own lives—“the vast majority”—simply seek attention.

To me this sounded like slander.

My father took his own life; and every quarter I had in my classes half a dozen to a dozen students who wrote that they had attempted to end their own lives or wanted to. They felt unloved, angry, alienated, depressed, confused, lost, empty, and sad. They were desperate to understand life and be free of their suffering and pain.

To them life did not make sense.

Was this desperation not the same as that of Huiko? To what teacher could they appeal? Were their suicides somehow different from Huiko’s cutting off his arm? Were they and their gestures crazy and Huiko and his gesture sane? Did not all arise from despair? If the master were right and the attempts of my students to end their own lives were only pleas for attention, how did their situations differ from the plight of Huiko? Were they not all calling out in desperation?

“I don’t understand! It hurts! I will do anything for an end to this torment! Please, help me!”

I wondered.

The previous quarter six of my students had confessed they were cutters. In the privacy of their bedrooms and bathrooms they used razor blades, pocket knives, and even paperclips to tear a hole and make themselves bleed. The physical pain, they wrote, seemed easier to bear than the mental pain.

Could not the same be said of Bodhidharma’s disciple? To receive the teaching Huiko had offered his severed arm to his teacher.

My students, ignorant of the Way and contemptuous of the whole idea of such a teacher, offered their blood to the void. Willing to throw their lives away to end their pain they tried to hurt and to kill themselves.

In just a few words, in a single sentence, clumsily I had tried to make this analogy for the master. He didn’t understand. To the master it seemed an irrelevant digression.

He looked annoyed.

“What does suicide have to do with Huiko?” the master demanded. “Explain what you mean!”

The master glared at me.

The vehemence of his response startled me. I stammered and had to restart my sentence two or three times.

“They’re lost, confused, suffering, in pain, and they act out of desperation,” I said. “They all seek help and understanding.”

The master listened.

He seemed neither to approve nor to disapprove of my analogy and the master returned to the topic of the commitment and sacrifice of Huiko. Now the master seemed to imply that his own students, too, should be willing to give an arm for the teaching. I was certain that the master meant this only metaphorically.

But while I considered my words and searched for the right ones, Martin raised his hands in gassho.

The master nodded.

“Yes?”

“I am glad that Huiko did cut off his arm for the teaching,” Martin said, “because, if he had not, Bodhidharma would not have accepted Huiko as his student; Huiko would not have received the teaching; the teaching would not have been transmitted through the lineage to Dogen, and to Katagiri, and to you, my teacher; and I would not be here now with the teaching that has meant and still does mean so much to me.”

Martin waited as the master considered his response. His words sharp with irony and even, I thought, contempt, the master replied.

“Those are very pretty words,” said the master, “and I’m sure they sound quite beautiful and nice to many people but I do not think you have even the slightest idea of what you have said or what those words really mean.”

Oof!

We all looked at Martin.

Martin sat calmly.

We waited.

Martin appeared unfazed.