The Space Trap: Legacy

This is the second of a four-part meandering from space through place to legacy. Michel was right. Part of what we do as Zen teachers is hold the space. But there’s a demon waiting here. What happens to the space we’ve been holding after we’re gone? One demon emerges when “holding a space” blurs into holding onto a place. There’s a legacy question. We are concerned with what we’ll leave behind. Maybe it’s part of being human. It’s certainly there in the DNA of American Buddhism. Maezumi Roshi, my dharma grandpa, and Trungpa Rinpoche, were close friends, both major architects of American Buddhism. One from Japan, one from Tibet, both envisioned an American landscape in which Buddhist universities flourished. Trungpa’s vision manifested as Naropa University.

It was Bernie’s job to bring Maezumi’s vision to fruition. While still serving as Maezumi’s number two at ZCLA, Bernie was on it. He’d succeeded in finding a benefactor willing to donate the land on which the Maezumi Institute would stand. But as Bernie explained later, “Sometimes the time is not right.” Bernie waited and, in the meantime, returned east, first to Riverdale, then to Yonkers where he built The Greyston Foundation, then west again to Santa Fe and back to California. Maezumi had passed, but his vision remained, and when Bernie was offered the Montague Farm for “a good price,” he grabbed it and returned east. With Maezumi’s brothers in attendance and co-officiating, the founding of the Maezumi Institute was celebrated.

So many people had told Bernie that he needed a place, that the Zen Peacemakers needed a mother temple. He had that now and a home for the Maezumi Institute. There was a problem though. The “good price” wasn’t so good. The business plan for the Maezumi Institute had gigantic holes in it. As they used to say in the old-time movies, Bernie “had to get the money for the mortgage on the farm,” and he couldn’t get it. Bernie survived the foreclosure and survived to pay back all the supporters who’d lent him money for the project. But it took a terrible toll.

Earlier Bernie had created a Founders’ Room at Greyston, honoring Maezumi Roshi. When Jishu passed so suddenly, her ashes and other articles from her practice were installed there as well. Years later, after Bernie’s passing a portion of his ashes, were brought back to Yonkers. There was no Mother Temple but there was a Founder’s Room. Until there wasn’t. Dharma brother, Paco Lugovina, one-time Greyston board member, got a call. Greyston was selling the building that housed the Founders’ Room. If we wanted any of the stuff, we better come quick. Paco and I and one of Paco’s successors, Daikin Nelson, raced to Yonkers ahead of the bulldozers to rescue all that we could carry.

The large urn holding Jishu’s ashes now sits on my dresser, reminding me daily of her compassion and her teaching, and the sadness of her passing, of raking her ashes from the crematory oven, her skull bone crumbling to dust, and later during the funeral lifting leg bones into the urn with tongs.

Sometimes, when we contemplate the end, Dee reminds me, “Ken, before you go, you have to find a place for Jishu.” But there is no Mother Temple, there is no Founders’ Room, there is no place.