Many years ago I participated in a weeklong, intensive, silent, Zen sesshin that began each morning at 4:45 with 108 prostrations and included 10 periods of meditation interspersed with kinhin and ended at 9 p.m. with the last sitting. I’ve attended many sesshins and other Buddhist retreats, but an incident in the zendo from this particular one often comes to mind and I consider it an ongoing dharma lesson.
There were 30 or 40 students at the sesshin and about halfway through the week a small but significant episode took place. By that stage of any retreat most participants are usually fatigued, invigorated and highly tuned into inner space and immediate outer surroundings. It is a time when deep and repressed thoughts and feelings often surface. We were doing kinhin between periods of sitting, slowly walking with precise steps, evenly spaced in a line around the dimly lit zendo, each of us attending to our own practice, our own space and every breath of meditation. One could be forgiven for viewing such intense, peaceful, focused experience as the very essence of Zen Buddhist practice.
Suddenly, the silence exploded.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” a male voice boomed.
“YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT! WALKING TOO SLOW,” another male voice replied in a shout.
A brief scuffle between two students about 10 people in front of me shattered the atmosphere of the retreat day. It was shocking and disorienting. For the next few minutes chaos and confusion prevailed in the zendo. The roshi intervened and escorted the two Zen combatants outside the zendo. Kinhin and sitting resumed. An hour or so later the roshi and one of the students returned to resume practice. The other student was not seen again.
What had happened was this: the accepted protocol during kinhin is that students keep the same space between them. Student A was in front of Student B and was, apparently, lost in his own thoughts and not aware that the space between him and the next student in front was larger than the space between the other participants. Student B, apparently, was not lost in his own thoughts but was acutely aware of Student A’s kinhin pace. To speed things up and to set them right, Student B violently shoved Student A from behind, almost knocking him down.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT!”
The roshi talked with the two and decided to exile Student B from the Zen center for a year and he was told to and did leave immediately. I do not know if he ever returned.
This event has come to mind many times in different circumstances and I consider it worth contemplating as an example of the dharma in action. How many times in our daily interactions with and observations of others do we have the thought, “YOU’RE NOT DOING IT RIGHT!”? And how many times each day do we think about others, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” And how often do we each give voice to those thoughts? And, then, how often (much less I would hope) do we give physical action, aggression, even violence to that voice, those thoughts? And how do we respond when they are given to us?
Deconstructing this incident or any confrontation in any of our lives, with the Eightfold Noble Path in mind is a useful dharma tool for better understanding. What part does right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration play in this incident? What can we learn and use in our daily lives from the actions of Student A, Student B as well as the roshi? Do you recognize yourself in the role of each of them? If so, what have you learned? If not, what are you doing?