Thirty Years A Zen Priest

Thirty years ago today, Nonin (front), Dokai (middle), and I went under with shukke tokudo with Katagiri Roshi. One of the most important days of my life, to be sure.

I’ve written a few pieces about all this Zen priest business over the years. “What the Heck is a Zen Priest?” and “Hanging Out with Homeleavers,” for example.

August 18, 1984, was a beautiful summer day in Minneapolis. An internet search says the high was 82. The next day, I believe, we all went to the monastery for a couple months of practice and for me it was perfect. Home leaving was coming home. Deep quiet mind like I’d never tasted it before. Zazen – which had long been physically challenging – flew by in samadhi like the song of the whippoorwill. And a closeness with Roshi that I hadn’t felt before.

Good times indeed.

Today Tetsugan asked, “What vision did you have of your life as a priest then?”

At first, I couldn’t find any memory of what my vision was thirty years back. But that didn’t stop me from talking about it most of the way through breakfast.

One of the things I remembered was how back in those days, “Zen priests” were not all of that – and still aren’t unless you’re in the small-town-like subculture of American Zen or nearby environs. And they really shouldn’t be – all of that, that is.

Even then in our small community, priest ordination was controversial. A couple of the founding members of the Zen Center had left because they didn’t agree with Roshi about ordaining priests and making some people “special.”

Sure, we had a fancy ceremony and new clothes to wear but we viewed ourselves as altar boys and girls – more like servants and less like something special. It became clear over the next year or two that Roshi now expected us to take responsibility for whatever he assigned (which I thought he had before ordination too) and that Roshi would be more directive with our training and might send us somewhere else, like Japan (all quite vague and quite negotiable) because Roshi at his most directive wasn’t all that directive.

It was crystal clear and nonnegotiable that there was utterly no guarantee that we would receive dharma transmission and be fully ordained priests and teachers. I didn’t consider it a likely outcome and I didn’t ordain for that. I was becoming a priest to train with Roshi. That’s it.

Oh, it was clear that we got to wear five or six layers of clothing in 90-degree sweltering Midwest humid heat.

So what was my vision?

I didn’t have much of a vision at all. I was 28 years-old and Katagiri Roshi was 56. I naively expected my life and his to continue as they were. And they almost completely didn’t. The marriage I was in in 1984 died a few years later, in part due to my being more married to Zen than to my wife at the time. Roshi died in 1990. My interests in practice led me away from most of the people I hung out with at the time.

So here I am. Thirty years down the road. I suppose I’ve gone through a lot. And have become a person with not much to do but quite a lot of energy for it.

What have I learned?

One of the things that Zen priests receive when ordained is a bowing cloth (aka, zagu) that’s unfolded and placed on the floor when we bow so as to protect buddha’s robe. I’ve tried with the several zagu that I’ve worn through in the course of thirty years to keep them folded neatly, just like on the day their sewing is complete and they get all pressed up squarely. Despite my best efforts, each one looks quite the same after a while.

Like this:

It really is a process of becoming who we already are.