What should we talk about?

If you are reading this blog, you’re important to me. What are you interested in? When you come to a new blog post, what are you hoping for?

What am I hoping for? Am I writing to get something off my chest? I do that kind of writing every day. That’s my journaling practice. My journal is damn near illegible even for me. It’s not just my handwriting. I’ve begun to leave letters out. Saving time or saving space? I don’t know. I noticed this morning that “morning” had become “morng.” I am journaling every morning for almost thirty-five years. I was journaling before I met the Sage of the I Ching, before I began daily meditation practice. I was journaling before I met Julia, and she gave the practice additional shape.

Journaling is getting stuff off my chest and out of my unconscious. Blogging is different. Blogging, I’m hoping to be heard. I’m grateful that you’re listening. I want you to keep listening.

But I want more than that. I want dialogue. I realized early on my attraction to dialogue. I discovered it in Socrates. Was it that he reminded me of my father? Was I always poor, pathetic Meno? Were those “discussions” with Dad my plunge into an unconsciously carried tradition of Talmudic debate?  I found dialogue in Freud and lived it through my own analysis with Erika: dialogue was the way to self-knowledge. Freud and Socrates were saying the same thing. Then, I heard Dogen, “To study the Buddha way is to study the self.” It could have been Socrates talking. It could have been Freud talking. That’s when I began to imagine a book, The Dialogue Lineage: Socrates, Freud, Dogen. Dialogue is the way to truth.

Talking without dialogue is not Zen. Talking-at is not Zen. We need to be talking-with. It’s not always easy to talk-with. When as a Dharma Holder – a sort of student teacher – I began giving weekly talks to our little, Staten Island Zen group, I knew who I was talking to, and in my weekly teisho, I could speak to what I understood were the concerns of sangha members. I heard their voices in the discussions which followed my talks and in private interviews which are such a crucial part of Zen teaching. But even so, I was often simply talking about what was concerning me that week. I make it a practice now of regularly starting my teisho by asking the sangha, “What’s arising?” I listen to what’s coming up. As members raise seemingly unrelated concerns, I listen – it’s a trick I learned in group therapy practice – for the underlying concern, the group theme. I try to pick up on that theme, and sangha members add their perspectives. It’s a dialogue, and the dialogue often takes us deeper than I could have ever gone alone.

Sometimes, getting to dialogue seems impossible. When I had the opportunity to talk to Roshi Kennedy’s sangha during sesshin, my words were floating out into the magnificent space of St. Ignatius in Manhasset. Bob’s students came together from all over country, from all over the world. I didn’t know most of them. Who were these people? What were they listening for? Was I trying to talk about something which was important to “all Zen students”? But we are all so different. Was I defaulting to sharing what I thought it was important for “you” to hear?

In my humble moments, I would hear the arrogance in my voice and recall Seung Sahn Nim’s, “Open mouth already a mistake.” And then Katagiri Roshi would answer, “You have to say something.” and I would keep talking, acknowledge the one-sidedness of our dialogue, if it was a dialogue at all, and keep talking.

Blogging is even harder. Not only don’t I hear your voices, I can’t see your faces. I can’t tell you to turn your cameras on. But I still want dialogue. What should we talk about? What’s coming up for you? What do you want to talk about? What do you want me to talk about? As you read the blog, there’s a black box to the side (at least on my computer). Click on that and talk to me. Join the dialogue. I would love that.