Talking the Talk

It took me a long while to make two of my Zen students “Dharma Holders.” That designation means that I think they’re on the path to becoming Zen teachers. I find myself in a new role. As a result, and perhaps because I’m at the age for looking back and taking stock, I’m thinking about how I became a Zen teacher. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share what I’ve learned. In the process, I’m learning what I’ve learned. And some of what I haven’t. What a gift.

I have two reference points. I taught four years in college – at Finch and Sacred Heart – and no one guided me into the process. I’d spent years in college and graduate school.  Presumably, on the basis of that experience, I was supposed to figure it out. I muddled through. I did the best I could to mimic the teachers I’d admired. No one ever gave me any feedback.

The contrast with my training in social work and psychotherapy was dramatic. There were courses on methods and psychopathology, but the heart of the training was supervised clinical practice.  Our supervisors reviewed our sessions with clients/patients in meticulous detail. That was where the real learning happened.

Becoming a Zen teacher was more like becoming a college teacher than a social worker. What do Zen teachers do? Zen teachers give private interviews – they reminded me of mini-therapy sessions – and they give talks, the teisho, the Dharma talks which look so much like sermons. No one ever told me how to do a Zen talk, but I’d witnessed talks by Kyudo Roshi, Bernie, and Bob, and by occasional guest teachers. Presumably, I would figure out the teisho thing just by observing. The instruction seemed to be, “Watch your teachers; do what they do.”

Earlier, Jishu had told me that I wasn’t ready to give talks. When Dee and I first opened our house – we were fortunate to have space for a zendo on the third floor, Jishu allowed me to read to the sangha – I chose excerpts from Beginner’s Mind – once a week. When I was finally empowered to give talks – I gave my first formal talk at my Shuso Hossen ceremony, completing the second of three steps on the priest training path – I followed the pattern which I’d observed: teachers talk about koans. Jishu had died suddenly three months earlier. Bernie officiated, finishing up the work that Jishu had left unfinished, with two Jukai classes and with me. I talked about the seventh case from The Gateless Gate, Chao Chou’s “Wash your bowls.” Jishu was my Chao Chou. When I was hoping for profound words of Zen wisdom, I learned to wash my bowls by watching Jishu wash hers. I spoke from my crying heart that day. That was the only talk Bernie ever heard me give. He didn’t give me any feedback.

Bob heard a number of my talks. After he found out that I was Dharma Holder, he always invited me to give a talk at his sesshins. Bob did suggest, a couple of times, that I talked too much. It took me years to figure out the teisho thing. I didn’t always speak from the heart. I didn’t always keep it real. In the beginning, I was too busy trying to act like a Zen teacher. Although I didn’t have the time to do it well, I’d pick a koan to talk about and I’d read a couple of commentaries. I’d try to explain the cultural obscurities which would have been transparent to a Chinese student a thousand years ago. What was I thinking? That it was important for Zen students to learn about koans?

Teisho has a long tradition, with roots in Shakyamuni’s original teaching practice. Although it was an important part of life in the medieval, Chinese Zen monastery – so many of the classic koans are tales of teisho – it is more important today. In old China, students and teachers lived and worked together, often side by side in the fields or in the kitchen. Students had many, daily opportunities to observe the “enlightening” life. My Zen students rarely see me except in formal interviews or when I give a talk (and sometimes they only see me on zoom). My talks are no substitute for working side by side with me on the monastery farm or in a charter school meeting with a struggling student’s family. Teisho, I realized, was my best opportunity to show myself, my “enlightening life,” such as it is.

Could I take advantage of the opportunity? How would I get over the mountain called, “Fear of arrogance”? Who am I to “show” the enlightening life?  I look in the mirror and I see none of the thirty-two physical signs attributed to the Buddha, but Bernie said I was a teacher. I’d have to hang my hat on that, take a chance, be myself. To be a teacher, I have to stop trying to act like a teacher. I have to stop pretending to be a teacher.

Alan Blum had given me the tool I’ve used to think about teisho. Alan was my most inspiring teacher in the NYU sociology doctoral program. Alan took thinking seriously. He gave me a thought picture of the thinker. Alan would draw a stick-figure – he called his stick figure “the theorist” – in profile on the chalkboard. In front of the theorist, Alan drew a circle which he labeled “topic.” And over the theorist’s head, he drew a second circle. This one was labeled “corpus” or perhaps “resource.” Alan was encouraging us to make the theorist’s activity evident.

I have been using Alan’s stick finger to think about teisho. The topic is a challenge in my life (what’s in the circle right in front of me). I use a koan or another piece of Zen wisdom – it may not even be Zen – to think about the challenge. That’s what’s in the circle over my head. I can begin the talk with the challenge and bring in a koan as resource for working with it. Or I can begin with the koan and bring in my life challenge to illustrate how I use it. The point is not the koan as artifact. The point is not the funny or frightening story of some moment in my life. The point is the practice – Alan’s stick figure – of showing my work with the ingredients of my life. A challenge which I’m going through is always freshest, but I can talk too about challenges which I went through in the past. What am I showing? Me. Me reflecting on what I’m going through. It’s not the same things as watching me go through it, or going through it with me, but it’s what I can show in my teisho. The students see me struggling, clay feet and all. Teisho is a showing and what the Zen teacher is showing is himself. The important thing is not the koan. It is my practice of looking at myself. Otherwise – and I think this is a real danger – the practice is just talk.

When students work with koans, Zen teachers – me included – often push, “Don’t tell me about the koan. Show me.” The teisho is the teacher’s opportunity to show himself. No hiding behind erudition. No hiding behind koans.

I am fortunate that I discovered this, although it took me years. Maybe some Zen teachers never escape their erudition. I wish someone had told us. Working now with Dharma Holders for the first time, I’m encouraging them to use Alan’s stick-figure theorist as a tool for reflection. I’m coaching as they begin their “student teaching.”

Speak from the heart. Walk the walk. Talk the talk. Keep it real. Toward the end of his life, Bernie called this, “Being a mensch.”