Intimacy - by Nonin Chowaney

When I'm ready to begin a class in Buddhism I teach at Creighton University, I close the door to shut out the noise from the hallway. It's a heavy wooden door and there's no cushion where it meets the metal frame, so I'm usually careful to close it gently. Once, however, I was careless, and it slammed shut with a boom!

It was so jarring that I grimaced, for I felt it deep in my heart. I automatically put my hands in gassho and apologized to the door for not treating it kindly.

As I walked back to the desk, I thought of something I'd read in a book by Kosho Uchiyama years ago, when I was just starting to practice zazen. He said, "If you can't hear the pots crying out in pain when you bang them together in the kitchen, your zazen is not deep enough." I didn't know what he meant at the time and imagined "pot beings" in agony in some non-human purgatory, but the phrase stuck in my mind, and when I slammed the door the other day and felt its pain, I understood what Uchiyama-roshi had meant. Fifteen years of zazen had opened my ears.

When we walk through the zendo heavily on our heels, the floor cries out in pain. When we toss a support cushion to the side with a plop, it cries out in pain. If we don't hear it, our zazen is not deep enough. We are not present to hear it. What we must do is be present; that is what is meant by deepening our zazen.

This morning, as I walked downstairs for zazen, I noticed a jacket that had been thrown carelessly onto the couch. It was half upside down and the arms were all contorted. I continued walking to the zendo, but it didn't feel right, so I went back, picked it up, and hung it on a hanger in the vestibule inside the front door. Then, I felt better.

In the Tenzo Kyokun (Instructions for the Head Cook), Zen Master Dogen said that we should handle each grain of rice as if we were handling our own eyes. This is true intimacy, handling all beings as if they were ourselves. This is true Bodhisattva practice, where there are no beings external to ourselves.

The Japanese character for intimacy is shin, which also means "parents." The implication is that true intimacy has to do with "parental mind." We should treat everything the way a parent treats a child, with the utmost care, always looking out for its welfare.

When I was training in Japan, I was impressed with the way Ikko Narasaki put his teacup down after drinking from it, always with two hands, gently, as if he were putting an infant back in its cradle. He handled eating bowls the same way, with two hands, always with the utmost care. I began handling bowls in the same way and felt the difference immediately. Now, when I hand something to someone with one hand or put something down carelessly, I feel as if I've violated the intimacy of the relationship I enjoy with what I am handling and with whom I am handing it to.

We also violate that intimacy when we leave garden tools out, when we kick our shoes off at the door. In the monastery in Japan, when senior monks noticed shoes or sandals left carelessly, we heard about it. I was called out of the bath at Zuioji once to refold the clothes I had hurriedly and haphazardly stuffed into a cubicle because I was in a hurry. Intimacy is developed by doing, by training. We shape ourselves by what we do and how we do it. We condition ourselves to act a certain way by how we act. This is how the Soto Zen way is transmitted, from the precise rituals in the Buddha Hall to the placment or our shoes neatly, side-by-side, ready to wear again after we have used them.

If we practice intimacy, treating all beings like we treat our own eyes, we shape ourselves into beings practicing intimately with all beings. By refolding the newspaper after reading it and placing it neatly on the table for the next person, by fluffing our zafus and placing them on zabutons that have been brushed off and placed square to the wall, and by returning support cushions gently to their rightful place, we break down the barriers between self and others by practicing as if there were no self and no others.

Years ago, when I was practicing at Tassajara, a huge oak tree fell across the creek behind the guest cabins with a tremendous crash. We all came running and gathered around it, discussing its size, weight, age, etc. Mitsu Suzuki, Shunryu Suzuki's widow, came up to me, the only priest present, and said, "We should chant the Heart Sutra for our friend the tree." She was intimate with the tree and felt a need to have a service, so we did. After it was over, I felt a "rightness" in what we had done. I thought of how Dainin Katagiri always put his hands in gassho when he passed a road-killed animal or bird.

Subsequently, when I've found a dead animal or bird, or when a being I've been intimate with, a worn-out garment, a broken teacup, has finished its life, I try to dispose of it properly by putting my hands in gassho and chanting the Heart Sutra. Sometimes, just putting our hands in gassho is enough, when we've carelessly slammed a door, or absentmindedly thrown something down. By practicing this way, we cultivate intimacy and shape ourselves into Bodhisattvas.