Following the pathless path

Jizo in the snow, photo by Tom Tucker

This morning I read Open Buddha's review of Footprints in the Snow, an autobiography I also like, and noted that Sheng Yen wrote a book on the Chan form of koan work.  My first response to this news was, I'd like to get that.  Next, I remembered that I have mostly lost interest in formal koan study, which was very good for me when done with Ama Samy, whose method is unique, and good for me in altogether a different way when I worked with Daniel Terragno, whose traditional method was guaranteed to arouse my striving and thus my frustration.  There's a book in that sentence.

Koan work appealed to that in me that longed for mystical, intuitive engagement with the truth.  In fact, the beginning of my work was in a dream after I got home from my first retreat with Ama Samy, one of whose books is titled after the koan, Why did Bodhidharma Come from the West?  I dreamed a deeply felt answer, woke up briefly to write it down that night, and the next day wrote to him about it.  This was in 1999.  He wrote back to me with another koan, "Who is that one?," and I carry that koan to this day, realizing more all the time that this one is compiled of a thousand thousand bits that shift constantly - the truth of no fixed limited self.

During the years that I worked with Ama Samy while on retreats, I also worked with the first book in the Japanese tradition, The Gateless Barrier.  I worked with three copies of it, in fact, by three teachers, studying each koan hard, thinking about nuances.  I embraced this study gladly, finding it much more fulfilling than the graduate studies in literary theory I had recently completed.

It made its way into Zen-flavored humor written by Sherlock, my cat, which I intended to collect as The Sound of One Paw until I got felled by one real-life koan after another.  I also read and reread John Tarrant's marvelous collection, Bring me the Rhinoceros.  In all this, each koan worked its way into my mind.  It's something Tom and I share in that intimate way of the long-married, casual references to something we both did and that we understand.

Well, this is a shorthand description of a few years of journey.  My interest in koans tapered off - I couldn't say when.  At the time, I felt like I was failing.  But now I notice that I carry all those koans, and they often pop up in response to some event.  My practice has become more flexible, is changing all the time.  I'm about to pick back up yin yoga, taking advantage of Lulu Bandha's online site, recommended by the best and most generous yoga teacher I've ever known, Kit Spahr.  I am again interested in poetry, writing my own, reading others'.  On retreat, I was very moved by the visible world, and took photographs, including a sequence of a sunrise and one of a sunset that I'd like to turn into mini-slideshows and publish.  And, well, going to the health club - I have never been attracted to exercise - is a way of recognizing the basic principle of cause and effect we call karma.  Practice is all over the place, if you think about it.

I suspect all serious practitioners think deeply at times of throwing over the householder's life and entering residence, spending more time on formal practices like meditation and calligraphy.  I don't, anymore.  I'm too bonded to Tom, my neighborhood, my home, my church.  Besides, I'd drive them crazy.

Getting a transplant call

The way it went, I came home from a very calm afternoon, visiting with Marian in her back yard and then helping spread the money around by getting my car washed and vacuumed - it's still only $13! Then wandering the gardens applauding the first rhododendron blossom, watering the chives, which are in a pot to keep them in hand, and so on. Tom had been working in the garage while I was gone and we both went in at the same time. Going down the hall he said, "There's a phone message. No, two messages.

The first one was from Amy at OSU Transplant. My heart rate accelerated as I wrote down the number. The second message was from Karen, another friend. I wrote down her number, though I already have it in my cellphone, thinking, God, Amy's message came in over an hour ago. You only have two hours to reply to a transplant call. Then they go on to the next person. But surely they would have called me on my cellphone. Wait, I'd left my purse in Marian's house, and wouldn't have heard it. And Tom didn't have his cell in the garage. I ran into my study and put on the headset I use to talk on Skype, where I can hear clearly. Figured out how to put in Amy's number.
Hello.
Hello, Amy?
No, this is Karen.
Oh, Karen could I please talk . . . Wait, is this Karen?
Yes, Jeanne?
I had inadvertently mixed up the phone numbers and called Karen.

I hastily explained that I'd had a call from transplant, and I should get off and return it right now, and then call her back. I don't know if she understood, but she acted like she did.

Now, you don't want to hear the rest, and I don't want to write it. I tried four times to get through to Amy on the number she had given me. Keyed it in wrong, and etc. and so forth, as they used to say. The more I did this, the worse I got. Finally I breathed in, closed my eyes, and said, Maybe I have her number on my cellphone. I galloped down the hall to get it. And connected at last.

And of course, it was not about getting a kidney - I've only been on the list a little over two years. The average wait is three years, but some people wait six, and some people die. It was just about scheduling an annual followup with a surgeon. They want to make sure you can still "qualify" for a transplant - i.e. look like a good bet to survive this major surgery and take your anti-rejection meds. They will ask again if I have a living donor, as if I could have one and not let them know.
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Strange. I am just finishing Footprints in the Snow, the autobiography of Chan master Sheng Yen, and learned that he died of kidney failure at age 80. It's said that he turned down the opportunity for a transplant, saying it should go to someone younger. Well, yes. He was 80, while I am only 67. And he was enlightened, so advanced that he was ready to cast off this mortal shell. Here is his beautiful death poem:

Busy with nothing, growing old.
Within emptiness, weeping, laughing.
Intrinsically, there is no “I.”
Life and death, thus cast aside.