Читать книгу Autumn Light - Edwina Norton - Страница 9

Fast forward thirteen years. After graduation from college, marriage to college sweetheart, birth of wonderful son, Alec, graduate school, unraveling marriage, divorce, single parenthood, dating and remarriage, second wonderful son, Dan, our family moves from Seattle to California. There I witness the richness and turmoil of the Sixties in the Bay Area: The Summer of Love, the Free Speech movement, the Vietnam War, and the transformation of bucolic Santa Clara Valley into high tech Silicon Valley. Struggling with an increasingly unhappy second marriage, I find myself at a turning point:

“Either I quit teaching high school or you and I get a divorce,” I declared in a clear, firm voice. “I can no longer handle both you and a bunch of 15-year-olds.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t love my husband, Dave. When we met I was immediately drawn to him physically and emotionally. I was captivated by his wit and dark humor, his wide knowledge of literature, music, and politics. He combined the steadiness and quiet assurance of my father with the intellectual acumen my education had taught me to appreciate.

Over the several years since we’d married, what I’d thought during courtship was social drinking had developed into a drinking problem, a serious one. I wasn’t yet able to name it alcoholism. This was the late 1960s when people still thought alcoholism was a shameful character flaw, not a pernicious disease. But alcohol was seriously damaging him and us.

I’d tried to persuade him to control his drinking. I drank with him to encourage him to stop after a couple of drinks. I stopped drinking altogether in hopes he would stop, too. I repeatedly begged him to stop. When begging only made him devious, I looked for ways to work around his condition: I covered for him when he missed appointments and, occasionally, work. As much as possible I kept Alec and Dan (five years apart in age) out of his way to reduce the harm his bad moods might do them. He was never physically abusive to them or to me, but our family’s emotional life grew increasingly chaotic. Over the fourteen years of our marriage, I had gradually assumed most of the responsibilities for our home and family. I became what is termed the co-dependent spouse. I unwittingly enabled Dave’s addiction.

Two or three years prior to my ultimatum, in desperate moments, we’d talked about divorce. Because ours was a second marriage for each of us, we were reluctant to go that way again. There seemed to be no solution. He continued to blot out his unhappiness with drink, which only worsened what had become depression. I kept us afloat by being responsible for everything at home and working full time teaching high school English, a challenging livelihood for me. With both work and home life increasingly out of control, my own mental health was deteriorating. I began to withdraw. I looked drawn and depressed. I wore black a lot.

One Friday evening I had a moment of truth. Home from work, Dave appeared to be genuinely falling apart. “I don’t know how I can face another day at work,” he groaned, near tears. “I am so miserable.”

I jumped in to rescue him again: “Let’s get away for the weekend together. I’ll stay with you the entire time, take good care of you, help you through this crisis.”

He listened and paused. “Well, no. I thought I’d watch football on TV this weekend.”

I felt my heart slam shut. TV football was something he watched every weekend. An inner voice addressed me loud and clear: “If you keep going like this, You. Will. Die.”

I resolved to make some changes. Over the next weeks I considered the options. Then I delivered the ultimatum: I quit teaching high school or we get a divorce. I was still not addressing the real issue, alcoholism, but at least I was taking a step toward reclaiming myself. Dave argued that we couldn’t live on just one salary. I said I would work part-time, perhaps teaching at community college. He resisted. I held firm. It was his choice: I stop teaching high school or we get divorced.

It took a couple months for Dave to believe we could make it on his salary if I worked some. “Okay,” he said, “Quit teaching, but you should read Zen. It might calm you down.” He was not a Buddhist, but he had majored in Far Eastern Studies in college, so he knew about Zen. Thus Dave provided both my most profound life problem, marriage to an addicted person, and its perfect solution, Zen practice.

As a co-dependent spouse I would do anything to solve our problems, including reading whatever Dave assigned. I began with The Way of Zen (Watts 1957). This did not change Dave, but it set in motion big changes in our lives because it brought me to Zen. Many years later I learned through Buddhism that changing one’s inner self actually is the only option for finding happiness.

I was puzzled but fascinated by the paradoxical concepts of Zen philosophy, exemplified in the enigmatic koans, ancient Zen teaching stories: What is the sound of one hand clapping? Does a dog have Buddha Nature? What was your face before you were born? Confounded, slowly I worked through Watts’ book, taking almost a year to finish it. At times I could feel my brain physically scrunching as I struggled to understand ideas so different from those of my Western education. Ten years earlier, I had written a Master’s thesis on the paradoxical poetry of John Donne. Perhaps that had primed me for Zen’s inscrutability.

When I finished The Way of Zen, I wanted to learn more. In the early 1970s not many books on Zen were available in English for the common reader, but I did find The Three Pillars of Zen (Kapleau 1965). There I got a more concrete sense of Zen practice. From the book’s illustrated instructions on how to sit zazen, I was inspired to try meditating.

I began sitting zazen for a few minutes a day in our bedroom where I could be away from the family. The book said to do zazen for thirty to forty-five minutes, but I was so agitated initially, I couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes. After a week or so of daily sitting I worked up to ten minutes. Then for several days every time I sat in zazen, I became preoccupied with how I could redesign the clothes in my closet. I did quite a lot of sewing in those days, but it never occurred to me to recycle anything. Yet every day when I sat down for zazen, immediately I began to visualize one or another garment and how to remake it. Could I make that gray wool flared skirt into a pair of slacks? Should I shorten the leopard-skin velour robe Dave gave me for Christmas last year? After several daily episodes of this surprising obsession, I realized that what I wanted to redesign was not my clothes, but my life.

Three weeks into my tentative home practice, I was convinced I was not doing zazen correctly. I was so easily distracted by daily concerns, and my knees hurt sitting cross-legged. I needed instruction. That week I read in the local newspaper about a community college class on Zen Buddhism to be taught by a Japanese Zen priest. Excited by the synchronicity of my need and this opportunity, I signed up for the course.

I looked forward to this new experience, but I was anxious about venturing so far outside my conventional WASP upbringing. Since college I had leaned toward the disconsolate existentialist view of life as intrinsically meaningless. I had tamped down incipient longings for inspiration. Now in the early 1970s, desperate to improve an abusive home situation, I was willing to risk joining an exotic course on Zen.

The first evening eighty people showed up for the class, far more than the number of chairs in the room. I was surprised and reassured by this level of interest. Perhaps it wasn’t such an odd thing to be doing. Sitting mostly on the classroom floor, we students eagerly awaited the teacher. Finally, several minutes late, a slender, young Japanese man with a shaved head swept into the room. He wore elegant, flowing black robes. A crisp white shawl collar accented his shining face. I was transfixed. This was Kobun Chino Sensei, just a few years in the U.S. and newly in charge of the Zen community, Haiku Zendo, in Los Altos. He would become my teacher—fulfilling the adage, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” His English wasn’t so good, but even though I could understand only part of what he said, I found him magical.

Toward the end of the ten-week course, Kobun invited the class members to come for zazen at Haiku Zendo. By that time class attendance had dwindled to twelve or fourteen students. Three of us accepted Kobun’s invitation. I found Haiku Zendo exotic—candles, black robes, tatami mats, mysterious wafting incense, bells, and two forty-minute periods of zazen—when at home I could sit for only a few minutes. Quite a challenge, but I was hooked. My two classmates and I went every Wednesday evening for several months. After each program, we three went out for coffee and talked excitedly about the experience. We were full of questions: “What was Kobun talking about when he said ‘shikantaza [just sitting] is not something you understand. It’s indescribable’?” or “What did he mean by ‘Sitting is pointless’?” His teaching was so mysterious. So wonderful.

Meanwhile, Dave, at home alone with the boys on Wednesday nights, was growing restive. He wasn’t so comfortable with my foray into Zen. Reading about Buddhism was good—after all, he had recommended it. Being gone every Wednesday night at some weird zendo was—well, he didn’t know. “What’s happening to my little Presbyterian girl?” he teased, only half-joking.

I had stepped out of our domestic arrangement and was on the way toward saving myself and our children’s lives. Regrettably, not his. I could not and would not turn back.

What was so compelling about Zen practice? The biggest attraction was Kobun. My initial impression of him on the first day of his class stuck with me. In his warm receptivity to us students, Kobun was quietly charismatic. He emphasized correct posture in zazen and sometimes came around to gently adjust our bodies. His light touch up my back was deeply encouraging. He spoke softly during his dharma talks, often humorously and usually haltingly as he searched for the proper English words. His Japanese accent and esoteric teaching style could be difficult to understand. He seemed to drift from idea to idea organically, rather than ordering his thoughts logically. It was like listening to beautiful music or watching a ballet dancer. One felt refreshed, uplifted; but afterward it could be hard to say what Kobun had actually said.

The Zen aesthetic entranced me, too, in its simplicity and Japanese design. Haiku Zendo was the former two-car garage of a ranch style home. The zendo’s interior walls were white and unadorned. Wooden sitting platforms called tans, raised two feet above the floor, lined the four walls. On the tans, square, black pads called zabutons were placed edge to edge with a round black zafus for zazen in their centers. Japanese tatami mats covered the center floor area, topped by more zabutons and zafus for zazen. At the front of the zendo, also on a raised tan, were bells of different sizes, including a large one with a lovely deep tone. A simple wooden altar was in the center of this tan. On it were a Buddha statue, a large white candle, a votive candle, an incense bowl for stick incense, a wooden box for incense chips, and a vase of fresh flowers. The altar candles and incense were lit for zazen and for the chanting and bowing service that followed zazen. Bells were rung to start and end periods of zazen and to accompany bowing and chanting during the service. The teacher’s seat was beside the altar, facing us. We students sat facing the walls in traditional Japanese Zen style. An entrancing and stately ceremonial world, far from the pain of my then unhappy daily life.

I loved the silence of zazen and the soft, soothing light. I could sit down and rest deeply in the quiet, alone, but in the reassuring company of others earnestly seeking peace and truth. I was humbled and grateful to be with Kobun and the other, more experienced Zen students. I could be safe in their presence. In this compassionate container, I learned to sit cross-legged, spine extended, shoulders and arms relaxed yet energetic enough to hold my hands at my lower abdomen in the Zen mudra. Eyes half open, I gazed softly at the wall.

As I learned the physical posture for zazen, I also learned to receive whatever thoughts arose. I trained myself to just observe whatever came up, however difficult or distressing. And let it go—over and over again. The zendo silence received and held me as I was, moment to moment. It permitted me to face life as it was. Sometimes I felt infused with the glowing candlelight as if I were alight with inspiration.

I became Kobun’s student and Haiku Zendo became my refuge. There I could stop worrying about what others thought or what contortions I needed to go through to satisfy them. Some years later I told a friend, “I love to come to the zendo because I can just be myself. I don’t have to pretend to be what other people want.” Zen revealed the way out of the pain and chaos of my marriage. Zen practice remains, after all these years, my refuge.

It took only a few weeks for the settled quiet of zazen to present me with reality: The problem I had was not just that Dave drank too much. The problem really was alcoholism. When this bad news first arrived in my awareness, I fought it. This couldn’t happen in my family. I couldn’t have married an alcoholic. My husband was too intelligent and educated to be an alcoholic. I didn’t know yet that a critical feature of the disease is self-delusion, which makes it so difficult to cure.

Every day when I sat down in the calm and steady container of zazen, the message persisted. Calmly, gently, it insisted that, yes, it was true: alcoholism was the root problem. Painful as it was, I knew I must accept this reality so that I could find a way to overcome it. The power of zazen is amazing. When we accept what is actually happening, we are freed to work with it effectively.

I set about problem-solving. In addition to sitting zazen every morning, I started going to Al-Anon meetings to learn what I could do to change the situation. There I learned the Twelve Step program that Alcoholics Anonymous follows. I also learned how I, too, could recover from the damage and turmoil alcoholism inflicts. How consoling it was to hear other people’s stories, so similar to mine. For three years I attended two or more Al-Anon meetings a week, absorbing the steps to emotional recovery and beginning to reconstruct the way we lived. I talked to Alec and Dan, then ages fifteen and ten, about alcoholism and their dad, and what we all could do to change our situation. They seemed relieved to name the problem.

Dave still drank. I still shouldered virtually all responsibility for our family life and home. I worked around his increasingly dysfunctional behavior—failure to keep promises or appointments, criticism of almost everyone, procrastination, anger and bad moods, vociferous cursing. To shelter the boys from his distressing presence, I busied them in outside activities. Change was slow.

The sense of failure I had from not being able to solve the root problem of Dave’s drinking, however, over time eroded my sense of personal agency. As he grew sicker and more miserable, he blamed and berated me more. In frustration and confusion, even as I practiced “Letting go and letting God,” I came to half-believe that I was the cause of his unhappiness. Or more accurately, that I was responsible for making him happy, and I’d failed. This is the basic premise of co-dependence. It would distort all of my relationships for many years to come.

Dave claimed I didn’t love him unconditionally as a good wife should. He criticized me for always Doing, never Being. I was a Zen student. Why couldn’t I just sit still and Be? Why was I always Doing something? he repeatedly complained. He was not aware that because he did almost nothing to take care of our home and family, I had to do more. Nor did either of us realize that my constant activity was a symptom of anxiety and unhappiness. By the time I finally woke up to the emotional peril I was in, my sense of self had been seriously damaged. Like the proverbial frog that would have jumped out of the water had it been thrown in when it was already boiling, I was deep in the steadily heating water of co-dependence before I realized I must get out or die.

At last, supported by Al-Anon friends, I summoned the courage to tell Dave I thought his problem was alcoholism. As is typical in these situations, he denied the label, calling his problem depression—which did underlie and also perpetuate his drinking. It was many months before he could admit that he needed help. During that time, finding relief in the support I got through Al-Anon and zazen, I continued those practices. I grew stronger emotionally. Then one day Dave agreed to go to an AA meeting. Over the next year or so he was in and out of both AA and denial. We separated for a year. We reunited for another year. But he couldn’t stay away from alcohol. We divorced and a few months later he died by suicide. The tragedy of my life is that though I was able to save myself, I could not save him. Nor could I prevent the emotional damage to my sons, a bitter legacy for a mother to leave her children.

The Buddha taught that when we cling to or resist reality, we suffer. Through Zen and Al-Anon I learned to face the suffering that addiction causes and over time to let my anger and grief go. The zendo and Al-Anon meetings were refuges from a difficult home life, but my lack of self-confidence infected even my Zen practice. I didn’t know if it was appropriate to discuss personal problems in dokusan (private interview with the teacher), but when I met with Kobun my problems spilled out anyway. He was very kind, accepting me as I was. Mother had always wanted the best for me, but her advice usually focused on improvements I should make. My husband, in the classical dynamic of familial repetition, also counseled improvements, repeatedly saying I was wrong to feel what I felt. When Kobun simply accepted what I said I felt, it was a revelation. In one dokusan session I confessed that I was afraid of driving on the freeway with Dave, even though he was a good driver. Kobun said, “Of course. Your fear comes from the responsibility you feel for your children. You don’t want anything to happen to you for their sakes.” His acceptance amazed me. Those closest to me repeatedly had dismissed my feelings. Kobun’s kindness became the model for how I wanted to treat others. I don’t always live up to his example, but acceptance of others as they are remains my goal.

Three years into practicing Zen, one evening after a brief, face-to-face interaction with Dave, I intuited that he was going to die, though he was not then physically ill. He had come to our house because the next day he was moving back to his hometown in Washington. He had phoned to tell me this news, wanting to avoid the pain of saying goodbye in person. But young Dan insisted that he come over. Of course it was a sorrowful visit, but worse than that, I detected a blackness underneath the surface of his face, as if death was in him. After he left, I was badly shaken and couldn’t sleep that night.

The next morning, alarmed by the power of my insight and not knowing what to do to help Dave, I phoned Kobun. I didn’t know if it was proper for a student to call him at home, but I was frightened. Immediately, he responded: “Yes,” he said, “please come see me. I will help you prepare for his death.” When we met, Kobun gave me very practical advice: Get my own affairs in order by making a will and family trust. Write a letter to Dave telling him that I forgave him and asking his forgiveness; and after that, phone him to re-establish friendly terms. Kobun’s pragmatic counsel was all the more meaningful, given how unworldly he seemed to be.

I did what Kobun advised, and some months later, when Dave took his life, again Kobun was there for me. He came to our house and led traditional Zen ceremonies on the fourteenth and forty-ninth days after Dave’s death, as is the Buddhist tradition.

Because of Kobun’s compassion at this crucial time, I had good reason to be devoted to him. I felt blessed to be his student and trusted him completely. In the difficult time after the divorce but before Dave’s death, I had asked Kobun if I could have a lay person’s ordination, called Jukai. In this ceremony of commitment to Zen practice one receives and recites the Precepts, the ethical principles of Buddhism. Usually Jukai is performed for several students at once, but Kobun arranged for the ceremony for me alone. I believe he wanted to fortify me for the intuited, upcoming death of my husband. It was a wonderfully validating experience. I felt deeply honored and seen—like a bride. Kobun gave me the dharma name, Shun Ko Myo Kuo—Spring Light, Wonderful Happiness, to encourage me to believe there would be happier times in the future. I felt the ceremony was also for Dave, for it was he who had introduced me to Zen. As it turned out, Jukai occurred just two months before he took his life.