June 15th Saturday
In Lew
When I drink Tea
I
fold myself into convenient shapes.
When I drink Tea
I
follow the bathers in their bulging suits
into
the unforgiving sea.
When I drink Tea
my
least breath is Mahler than my fist.
When I drink Tea
all
my old loves are sealed in red envelopes,
. which
are never sent but always arrive.
When I drink Tea
the
laughing lady jumps again and again from the 43rd floor
onto
the roof of the 5-storey parking garage.
When I drink Tea
I
swallow God and piss Christ.
Who does not want to be present for the aftermath of a
disaster. The news had spread. The loitering guests, the nosy parkers, the buttinskys,
the snoops and the gossips were steadfastly trying to not be themselves, but to
be transcendent. To be above it all when they really wanted to be immersed in
it.
It was like the old, maybe a little tired, Zen story: The Chan Master was going with two young monks
from a monastery in Ji, a thousand miles to a sister monastery in the capital city of Xi’an. It was a furious time for weather. They were quite exposed to the elements, but uncomplaining. The three monks walked in silence through the discourteous rain and the
obloquies of storm. Eventually, half way through their journey, they came to a
medium-sized village built on treacherous terrain risxing out of a ravine and spiraling into a hillside. The vicious torrential rising rivers had flooded the main
street of the village of Yingtan. A young woman, a beautiful courtesan, was
standing helpless in her tight silk dress in great distress unable to cross the
muddy street. So, without a word, the old master walked over, picked her up,
and carried her in his arms across the slushy road and put her down. The three monks then went on their way in
silence, another five hundred miles. In a month or so, they arrived at Xi’an.
Then the master said that the two young monks should go directly to the
monastery to rest while he meditated at a local shrine. But the two monks, were
bursting, Master, we cannot help it. We need to know. Why did you carry that
whore across the street in Yingtan when you know we are not supposed to look at
women, no less touch them? The Master glowered at them with some exasperation.
Finally, the Master said, I just carried her across the street. You carried her all the
way to the threshold of monastery of Xi’an.
About a dozen people, who sought an
invitation weeks ago, waited outside the garden in the narrow corridor between
the side of the house and wooden fence. No one paid to attend but the space was
small and the participants had to be limited. Any way it made the ceremony
better to keep it focused. They spoke in hushed tones. It was almost 6:15pm. No
one would be admitted late. The ceremony would last for almost two hours. The Teisho
would be Sensei George who performed his responsibilities with exceptional
grace. He was already boiling water on a carefully prepared charcoal burner. It
had to be specially approved by the local authorities to use even on spare the
air days.
Emptiness, & the drinking of tea,
the whisking, the pouring, the water, the cleansing, the fire, the charcoal,
the culling, the sacrificing of the tree, the sapling, the cutting the scion,
the borrowing of life, & the emptiness. So we travel from void to void,
from breath to breath, from dark to dark. David was not even thinking of
defense or offense or suspense. Presence or absence. Only tea.
Sensei George was dressed in his
usual somewhat frayed and baggy brown robe with a stain. George could never
remember to clean it. Thinking it made it grow smaller. It had to be disregarded.
It was never forgotten enough to be remembered.
Move to your seat, too much
thinking and not enough non-thinking. But the method is not to cast the thought
out but to watch it. So, you point to it:
this is my thinking, and this is my non-thinking but of course when you
have seen your non-thinking it is not non-thinking anymore. The rest is
silence.
Sensei is elegant in the way he
handles the instruments, as if he is suspending time and letting them bob upon
the air as if they were bouncing on the wavelets of stream. Already the water
kettle is boiling and filling the space around him with steam. The sigh of it
cleanses me. The smell of it cleanses me, the taste of it cleanse me, the touch
of it cleanses me
The filth, it begins with this. If
the goal of tea is purity, it requires filth what is in this pot is everything.
That includes filth, and contamination and disease and failure. The sacrament
is about filth as much as it is about purity. It is about transformation. In
other places, wine and blood. In this place, the tea is prepared, time is
transformed, the world is transformed, the teamaster is transformed and the
drinker, the devotee, the sufferer is transformed. The essence of tea is impoverishment,
depletion, emptying. To finally have lost everything including a place for god.
So Eckhart says in the end god must be his own place. To get therte, you begin
with tea. The tea eradicates the soul, which depends upon filth to sustain it,
and the tea abolishes even the location of the soul.
Okay … it will happen something like this: A risk
will be extended in the form of an invitation, an invitation to a baptism/
bris/ ablutions with no guarantees. No guarantees. It was the reason for taking
this path to begin with, no guarantees, in fact, no salvation and not even a
promise of ethical behavior or courtesy and certainly not happiness, no
pleasure is promised, no intimacy, no rescue from your own weaknesses. No
cures, no compliments, no orgasms, no chiliastic victory among like-minded friends,
no afterlife, no intoxication, no sobriety, nothing. No suffering and no joy. That
is, if everything goes according to plan. But almost no one can complete the
plan the journey, the trip, the whatever it is. The Life. Without messing up. In fact, screw-ups are part of the plan.
Philip was here, as well, not
formally invited but here anyway. David did not see him until he seemed to come
from nowhere at the end of the ceremony. Philip, like everyone, knew
everything. Obviously, he had spoken with George. George was not capable of
being disloyal because he was not capable of being loyal. Loyalty was a
principle that had no meaning for him. He was a gumball machine of truth. You
put a quarter in, twisted the crank, and the gum fell out. David had no
reproach to make against George for telling Philip. George had acted with
complete integrity and total predictability, in the only he way he could, for
what and who he was. Philip was with one other member of the Board of the Zen
Center, Gracie. She was ineffectual and seemed to be a shill for whatever was
Philip’s plan. She would almost inevitably go along with what Philip suggested.
David decided that they were going
to recommend that he be dismissed. It was a strange thought for him, to be gone
from the only real job he had ever had since the middle 1970’s, if you could
call running the center a real job. Many wouldn’t he thought. But it certainly
looked like a job to him from where he was sitting and he was about to lose it.
When he lost he would lose his pay and his benefits. No healthcare. No small
stipend. Just released. It was quite Zen, he thought smiling at the irony.
The ceremony was in many ways a
simplification of the complex cha no yu ceremonies that could go on for many
hours. David had designed it to be simple. The reason was not to be efficient
in any way or to get ‘em in and get ‘em out. He wanted the ceremony to be
artful by emphasizing its artlessness.
It was at moments like these that
he appreciated George. George was a machine that once set in motion would
meticulously carry out his task with no deviation from the process. And this
kind of serene commitment with the process was never more important than in
tea.
When the final bows were exchanged,
it was not really the end of the ceremony. The moment of exchanging thoughts,
the socializing and touching and embracing and not embracing and not
socializing with others were all parts of it. The ceremony was held on the 1st
and 15th of every month as a
way to bring people together and to offer a bit of outreach to the neighbors or
to interested potential students. It was ostensibly free, but it was always
used as an opportunity for donations, so it was a closet benefit. The silence
hung in the air for a while; no one wanted to be the voice that broke the
stillness utterly. It would resemble a desecration. But slowly it would come
alive with voices. The great silence was always broken, only it was slower this
time.
When a voice did erupt, it was
certainly soft but sounded like an explosion after the accumulated weight of
the silences and the expensive torpor of tranquility that had for almost an
hour dominated the area. David, Philip actually physically tapped him on the
shoulder, a sleight gesture that rocked him. Can we talk to you? Gracie was
standing next to him like a ghost. Philip was sipping his own cup of tea after
the passing of the communal cup. He slurped it. David looked at the small but
tightly packed crowd: Yes, Philip, Do you want to go into the office? No,
Philip said, That won’t be necessary. Let’s walk over to the other side of the
fountain. They let the fragile plash of the fountain veil the sound of their
voices. No one heard their words, but many if not all of the people in the group
knew in a general vague way what was happening. David’s problem was fairly well
known. David himself did nothing to disguise it or to evade the facts of the
matter. Philip kept it simple: The Board wants you to be ready to discuss what
is happening with you at the meeting later this week. Just advanced notice to
be prepared. No desire to ambush you about this. You know what we need to
discuss. As Philip formally rehearsed this message to David, Gracie just let
her head bob up and down in wordless agreement.
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