dokusan

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I was reading a nice little article by Koun Franz about dokusan, the one-on-one private meeting that sometimes occurs between Zen students and their teachers -- a warm blooded, open-hearted, and metaphorically bare-nekkid time -- when it occurred to me that I have probably been wrong for a long time.

The formal practice of dokusan often takes place in a formal place with formal rituals. It is special. It is safe (god willing and the creek don't rise). It is a place where teacher and student mingle their eyebrows. It is intense. It is, on the face of it, like washing up on an uninhabited island where things are, at last, ahhhhhh. Even when the going gets tough, still dokusan is pretty unusual and different from day-to-day dealings. A haven ... even when it's hellish.

But as I read the article, it occurred to me that that's pretty much the way I feel about any zendo anywhere -- including the one in the backyard here. No special room or time, just the zendo. It has its formats and formalities, but basically it is a place where anything goes -- where secrets find no purchase, where people are allowed to say what they have held firmly to their breast, where it's OK to release the ahhhh that has been clamoring to get out. Of course Franz was talking about all this in terms linked to the various sex scandals in Zen, but what interested me was the specialness of dokusan, the notion that there could be a formalized, ritualized time and place in which to unzip your mind and heart.

Maybe it's a little like what devoted Catholics feel about confession: Ahhhh in one moment and scarier than a pissed-off grizzly bear the next.

Of course the next step from a special time and place and activity is an unspecial time and place and activity. If there is peace and quiet and even bliss (whatever that means) on the meditation cushion, well, who wouldn't like to transfer and transmit those wonders to whatever-it-is-anyone-calls-times-that-are-not-like-that.

From afar, it is easy to say that all times are this time, but that's just intellectual and emotional eyewash. To say that every moment is dokusan ... well, if that were true, what nitwit could or would bother saying so? So I like the idea of a stylized setting in which individuals can shift gears ... maybe even something special like dokusan ... or something special like the zendo... or something special like ... like whatever. Bit by bit what was special will seek out the unspecial ... and vice versa. But it's nice to have a time and place that appears geared to a geared up effort.

My mistake is to make all of this some kind of assumption in my mind. Go to dokusan ...ahhhh; go into the zendo ... ahhh. But not all visitors feel that way at all and speaking from the heart ... well, sometimes it can seem spooky or threatening. How many students has anyone heard saying things like "I feel as if s/he can read my mind?" (Weird how anyone who may feel this -- perhaps quite strongly -- never stops to think why in the wide world of sports anyone would want to read or know their mind: Isn't one mind more than enough to cope with?)

A mistake on my part, assuming that ahhh just feels better, when in fact it may not feel ahhh at all to a newcomer. Still, it's an assumption and habit I am damned if I can -- and uncertain if I even want to -- correct.

Special, special, special ... yes, yes, yes ... attention, attention, attention ... are we there yet?

Just noodling incoherently.
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