Sesshin Teisho
                       JOHN TARRANT ROSHI
                     June 26, 1994 - Day One
                     Camp Meeker, California

                              DEATH


A few weeks ago we were here in sesshin and it seems to me that
we're still in sesshin.  So this is a very favorable time to go
deep; to take another step in the Way.  A few weeks ago Al
Einhorn's ashes were on the altar during sesshin and since then
I've been to two more funerals.  So I thought I should talk about
death today.  

Death is something that's like birth and taxes; it's always with
us.  Until you can be at ease with death, you are not at ease
with life.  Often it's thought that the measure of a person's
meditation is whether or not they are at ease with their own
death.  If, when you're dying, you can say, "Yes," then that is a
good thing.  Since you're going to do it anyway, it's not much
use saying, "No."  I don't know whether this is a quote of his or
whether he made it up, but at the beginning of one of Robert
Haas' books of poems, he says, "What shall we do with a beast so
enormous, so intractable, so difficult to deal with?"  And the
answer is, "We shall praise it."  That is our life, we must
praise it.

The two funerals I've been to recently were for Gregory Willms
and Anne Aitken.  Both of them knew they were going to die fairly
soon and did it well, so it wasn't really a shock.  Let me talk
about those two deaths a little.

I realized that Gregory was going to die soon when he arrived at
my place with some paintings and stuff that I knew he liked and
he started distributing his goods, distributing the objects of
his life.  He was kind of into objects, so that was significant
for him.  During his last months he spent a lot of time setting
things in order, giving little things away to people.  In a way
sort of unpacking his life.  We spend all this time collecting
things and now he was dispensing with them.  While most of us
knew he was going to die in a few months, he didn't know he was
going to die at that time, but because he had this attitude
towards death, that it was his last journey in this life, then he
really didn't make too much of a fuss about it.  When the nurse
called Gregory's partner, Leonard Gabriel, and said, "We're
losing him.  You better come into the hospital really quickly." 
Leonard jumped into his car and came in.  The nurse and the
physician were trying to stabilize him so that Leonard could
arrive and he had been stabilized by the time Leonard arrived. 
Leonard said, "They tell me that you're dying."  Gregory said, "I
don't know.  It's okay."  So they spent the night talking and
when the dawn came on he would drift in and out and his speech
would get very soft.  When the dawn came on, he roused a little
and saw the stars fade and heard the birds and then stopped
breathing.
When I heard I figured probably everyone was still at the
hospital, the body was still at the hospital, so I jumped into my
car because I had agreed with my friend that I would chant for
him.  So I went round and chanted and some other people came
around, Roberta.  It was quite a party in the hospital room. 
Because it's a new hospital and the AIDS wing, they left us alone
to do our thing, I guess.  We were in there for hours and
chanting.  It was very interesting because it was very easy. 
There was this very easy serene feeling in the room.  It was very
plain that clinical death does not mean entire death.  You can
really feel somebody's consciousness around in the room before
it's gone out further.  I began to understand how the Tibetans
wrote their manuals of dying which was just by being with a lot
of dying people and watching what they experienced and what they
noticed.

What I noticed was that Gregory was quite comfortable being there
with his friends and seemed to have no impetus to leave.  There
was a sense of this benign, amiable presence in the room.  But as
we chanted, then something would release and he'd be moving on
and moving through.  So one has that sense of chanting somebody
through and that the chanting is a very, very powerful thing to
do at such a time because it goes so deep into my heart and
everybody's heart.  And that was very easy with him.

When Roberta's dad died a few months ago, she arrived in the
hospital room not long after he was clinically dead.  He had
struggled; he had fought very hard for the last two days.  They
took him off code, which means that if he died they wouldn't
revive him, and he knew he didn't have enough heart muscle left
to survive, but he kept himself going.  He started his own heart
quite a number of times when it stopped.  Through those two days
he struggled while his family was gathering.  He bought some time
that way so that he could say goodby to people.  Roberta said
that struggle was very much in the room.  As she chanted him
through and she didn't have a lot of help because everyone else
was not familiar with this concept.  She's sitting there alone
with her dad with her meditation beads chanting, talking to him,
while the nurse came in to check on her every now and again to
see if she was okay.  It was kind of sweet.  She said that the
room was much thicker, much more turbulent with her dad, but as
she chanted, then everything smoothed out.  His mouth closed, his
face smoothed out and he went on.  She could feel him moving away
as she kept chanting.  Rather quickly, actually.  Until by the
time she left after he was completely cold, he was gone.

We feel the differences in the kinds of deaths people have.  We
feel the truth that we shall face this ourselves one day and that 
those we love will face it.  I think that the great poignancy of
human life is that if you don't love, you're the walking dead,
and if you do love, it's a contract that either you'll be at that
person's death bed or they'll be at yours.  So it's good to
become at ease with it and be able to expand the heart around
this kind of transition.  This kind of coming and going that we
do so busily.

Anne Aitken, again, I don't think expected to die quite so soon,
but clearly indicated she was planning to die this year. 
Although she had made certain plans for Aitken Roshi's birthday
which was just six days after she died.  So she had made plans
for things that seemed like she expected to be part of, but she
just went down kind of easy.  She was a little agitated and lay
down and couldn't quite get comfortable and was talking and then
her voice became very faint.  Since she was often fatigued
recently, Aitken Roshi and a friend, who was there at the time,
didn't really think much of it for awhile and then they realized
that something different was happening so they took her into the
emergency room.  Aitken Roshi told me it was Saturday night and
the Honolulu emergency room was a zoo.  There were people
handcuffed to chairs, there was blood on the floor.  It was just
life, the chaos of life.  Anne waited patiently through all this
and eventually they got her into a bed and she didn't ever leave. 
They stayed with her and it took her a couple of days to die.  At
first she could respond a little bit, then they couldn't hear her
voice but she could mouth words and she could hear them, but she
couldn't express.  Afterwards there was no sense of response at
all.  The image I had was that she just pushed off in her canoe
and she waved a few times and then she just headed out.  Years
and years ago Yamada Roshi had asked her what she thought of
death.  She said, "It's like you're waiting at a bus stop and
your bus comes along and you get on."  She was somebody who had a
very easy attitude towards death in that way.

She really was a lot of the impetus behind founding the Diamond
Sangha.  She and Aitken Roshi worked together on all his mad
plans.  She told me on their honeymoon, he said, "Let's go to
Japan."  She said, "Okay."  It sounded nice and exotic.  So they
went to Japan and then he said, "Let's visit Ryutakuji," Soen
Roshi's temple.  They went and there was a sesshin going on, and
he said, "Let's do sesshin."  She decided this was too much, but
she would get up and do some zazen, but she wasn't going to get
up at three in the morning on her honeymoon.  Some people said,
"And you stayed with him after that?"  She had quite a life in
the dharma.  Often people would ask her why she never taught zen
since she had finished the koan curriculum and was recognized by
Yamada Roshi.  She said, "Well, I really like my life just the
way it is."  Everything her life was like that.  It tended to
flow along smoothly just like her death.  Like people who are at
ease with their death, she wasn't afraid.  She wasn't afraid to
talk about it although it wasn't more interesting than other
topics like the latest detective novel she was reading.  

She was always the way to test a new tanto in the dojo because
she loved taking the kyasaku.  Because it was always hot in
Hawaii, she used to wear this dress that she designed that just
fit the zendo dress code and that's all.  It left her shoulders
quite bare from the neck down to the edge of the shoulders
because she was cool that way and then she'd have her rakasu on. 
The first time I remember walking the stick with her in the
zendo, immediately she asked for the kyasaku to see how good I
was at it.  I remember looking and she was so thin and so frail
and her skin was bare and there was the rakasu which would throw
off the kyasaku anyway.  And I thought where can I find so I
don't hit a bone.  So I hit her and afterwards she came up and
said, "You know, you really need to learn to hit a lot harder." 
She was a connoisseur of the sound.  She would tell me, "Ah John,
now at last you've got the sound right."  She always thought the
kyasaku was a teaching in that way.  It woke people up.  When we
were teaching somebody the kyasaku, we'd say, "Okay, you're
pretty good, but when Anne thinks you're okay, then you're okay." 
She would always ask for it.

There are many koans about death just because death is such a
feature of life.  When we were talking after the funeral, the one
that came to Aitken Roshi's mind was this one, which I'll read
you.  It's Case 55 of the Blue Cliff Record and it's called, Tao
Wu's Condolence Call."  This is about a master and a student who
go to a funeral a long, long time ago in China.
     Tao Wu and Chien Yuan went to a house to make a condolence
     call.  Yuan hit the coffin (with his stick, like that) and
     said, "Alive or dead?"  Wu said, "I won't say alive, and I
     won't say dead."  Yuan said, "Why won't you say?"  And Wu
     said, "I won't say."  And then as they were walking back,
     halfway back, Yuan said, "Teacher, you have to tell me right
     away.  If you don't tell me, I'll hit you."  Wu, the
     teacher, said, "You can hit me, but I won't say."  Yuan then
     hit him.

The student's wonderful because he was so eager that he hit the
teacher trying to intimidate him into giving him the answer.  The
teacher's wonderful because the teacher keeps holding the student
so that the student can find it out in the student's own heart.

     Later Tao Wu, the teacher, died.  Yuan went to Shih Shuang,
     which is the next teacher, and brought up that story. 
     Shuang said, "I won't say alive; I won't say dead."  The
     student said, "Why won't you say?"  The teacher said, "I
     won't say, I won't say."  At these words, suddenly, Yuan's
     heart opened and he had an insight.

     Then one day Yuan, the student who now had the insight, took
     a hoe into the teaching hall and he walked back and forth
     from east to west and west to east while everyone was
     sitting zazen.  The teacher said, "What are you doing?"  He
     said, "I'm looking for the sacred bones of our late master." 
     Shuang said, "On the vast ocean the billows rise to the sky. 
     What do you seek for is the sacred bones of our late master
     other than that?  On the great ocean the billows foam up to
     the sky."

     Hsueh Tou, the poet said, "Good heavens!"

     Yuan said, "This is good for my training; this is good
     practice."

     Fu of T'ai Yuan said, "The late master's sacred bones still
     exist."
Like many stories there is the core story and then there is all
the little jazz riffs that people do around it.  Alive or dead? 
Someone who has died, are they alive or dead?  Where are they
now?  

When Pai-chang was walking with his master Matsu--Matsu, perhaps
one of the greatest teachers of all time, he was a very powerful
person.  They were walking along by some reeds and a wild duck
flew up and flew away.  Matsu said, "What is that?"  Pai-chang
said, "Wild duck."  Matsu said, "Where did it go?"  Pai-chang
said, "It flew away."  Matsu grabbed his student's nose and
twisted it until Pai-chang cried out in pain.  Matsu said, "Why
it didn't fly away at all."  So where do the dead go?  Who is it
who walks around in this dojo?  Who is it who sits intently?

I just picked up Peter Matthiessen's book Nine-Headed Dragon
River which is some of his early zen journals.  I guess he's
teaching now.  Really what drew him into the zen path was his
wife, who was a zen student before he was.  Suddenly in the dojo
when he looked at her with that clarity of meditation, he
realized that the sickness she had was mortal.  It had not yet
been diagnosed as cancer and they didn't know what it was, but he 
looked and suddenly he saw death in her.  Then she did her own
meditation process with that, and then did die very shortly
thereafter.  But it was that awareness of death that spurred him
into going deep into his meditation for the first time so that
his own body fell away and all his opinions about life fell away. 
Everything we are holding onto will fall away.  That's one thing
you can promise yourself.  

And it's worth it.  All we have to do is just turn to the Way
with a full heart and then the world will open up and all the
structures and beliefs that have been imprisoning us will
gradually fall away and our lives become much more fluid and we
are no longer afraid and each thing that happens becomes a
blessing.  Sometimes it's a sharp blessing.  It's like the spring
blossoms in the snow.  The snow is very cold and the blossoms are
very beautiful, but nevertheless, a blessing.  Each thing that
happens opens a door--grief and joy both--and we have to just
walk through that door.

In the early days of his illness when I spoke to Gregory Willms
about dying, I said, "How's it feel to be dying?"  He said,
"Everybody's dying.  I just know my schedule."  That's true.  We
all die.  What we're haggling about is the timing and what we
will give up.  There's no need to wait to decide to give things
up.  No need to worry about the objects at all.  Let's just give
up our prejudices and our ideas right now.  Give up that kind of
clinging we have that closes the heart.  If you look into your
heart when you do zazen, you can see whether it's open or it's
closed.  If it's open, you'll be okay.  If it's closed, it
doesn't matter how clever you are, you won't be okay.  There it
is.

This is an auspicious beginning to sesshin.  Just let go into the
sesshin.  Don't try to force the ocean to be quiet.  Just become
one with the waves of the ocean and you'll find how bright, how
bright, how bright it appears.  The light is always shining. 
Please, look for yourselves.  Just throw yourselves into it.

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