In twenty-seven short years
O'Halloran, Ruth L.
IN TWENTY-SEVEN RUTH L. O'HALLORAN SHORT YEARS THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF MAURA-SAN O'HALLORAN For the past eight years a trickle of visitors has been coming to a small Buddhist monastery in...
...I'm surprised...
...Then she left this life immediately to start the salvation of the masses in the next life...
...In her journal she writes: Tears prick my eyes ....It's Christmas day, like any other day...
...When the week of takuhatsu ends, she returns to Tokyo to continue training under Go Roshi's direction, still struggling with her first koan: "Are things mu or u [nothing or something...
...IN TWENTY-SEVEN RUTH L. O'HALLORAN SHORT YEARS THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF MAURA-SAN O'HALLORAN For the past eight years a trickle of visitors has been coming to a small Buddhist monastery in northern Japan to see the statue of a young Irish-American woman who lived there in the early 1980s...
...In August she took a break from monastic life to fly to Maine and to Dublin for her sisters' weddings...
...This disappointment, in addition to her nostalgia for home at Christmas time, caused her first serious setback...
...Has anyone known such a courageously hard-working Buddha as Maura...
...Although I shall always regret that Maura had to seek so far outside her own background and tradition to find what her "vertical" temperament required, I do accept what she called the "inevitability" of this move...
...Finally, in tears, Maura left dokusan and was walking back to zendo when: ...my legs gave way...
...Although her sex might have prevented her from considering a life of meditation in a Catholic monastery comparable to the rigorous monastery she entered in Japan, I never heard her express any regrets about her position as a woman within the Catholic church...
...Later that summer she writes: Some days I feel as if I'm near some kind of wakening because my consciousness is different, spontaneously, really, losing itself in menial tasks...
...Autumn 1981 brought my own first visit to Japan, an interruption of Maura's training but an opportunity to judge for myself the effect her immersion in Zen was having on her...
...Only when I got outside and was looking at everything and really seeing mu did I finally know...
...Her work in the temple garden provided her with an especially congenial additional training: I planted veggies, built a compost retainer, am preparing new beds...
...So in a sense I feel I've died...
...It's still hardly empty, but quieter....I' ye had such happiness of late, but there's still attachment...
...Despite my ignorance of the language, I came away deeply impressed with the sheer goodness of her many Japanese friends and her fellow monks...
...Even the post office is open...
...Isn't that death...
...Oh but they tasted good...
...Rarely in all my experience have I encountered such warmth, holiness, and generosity...
...I love life too much to lock myself away...
...When I walk, just walk, chanting, not wondering what time it is or watching the doors, I am very happy...
...As her mother I can speak confidently of her Catholic and Western cultural formation, but in attempting to analyze the changes that occurred during her last three years I must speak as an outsider...
...I owe them a debt, the debt of my self-oriented (though there is no self...
...Now it hurts just as much but it's as if it didn't matter...
...He became in a true sense her master/teacher, although his lectures, which she transcribed, reveal him as intellectually much inferior to her...
...I'm totally content...
...of time, I want to live it for other people...
...On January 5, 1980, 6:30 A.M., she left Ueno Station to the Kannonji in Yahabacho, Iwate-ken, with Sato Jiko and Dote Tessan...
...Drawing on Maura's journals which she sent home before her final journey, I shall try to explain how it is that my Bostonborn Catholic daughter is now known in Japan as Maura-Kannon, bodhisattva, Buddhist saint...
...This was the all-important breakthrough that takes years for some Zen students and is never reached by others...
...12: 28 February 1992 Commonweal In March, on an impulse, she decides to have her hair shaved off like the other monks and finds her new baldness doesn't bother her...
...Galli was screaming at me to breathe...
...He would not have exerted such a strong influence on her if she had not been open to the exacting type of Zen training that he offered...
...I snapped out of it, sat up, normal as hell...
...practice...
...Then he jumped at me, grabbed me...
...We are of no greater and of no lesser value...
...She found on her return, however, that her concentration had weakened, and after oversleeping one morning she scolds herself, saying: Today I was disgusted with myself...
...In Go Roshi she evidently found the father figure that she had lost at age fourteen but her feeling for him, as revealed in her journal, was much more intense than the normal daughterfather bond...
...Often, as in the above notes, Maura used the expression "to go down deeper" to describe her exertions during zazen...
...During sesshin [retreat], Go Roshi calls her to dokusan [private interview with master] which she describes thus: I feel so dejected, empty-minded....I do mu for him with all my strength, raising myself high and squeezing every bit of breath into mu until my head touches the floor...
...When even the peace isn't clutched at, then there'll be true peace...
...At this moment the best I can see to do is to give to people this freedom, this bliss, and how better than through zazen...
...At dinner the only words spoken aloud rang in my ears...
...Her interest in meditation may be a key, although this was not an uncommon interest among her peers in the 1970s...
...Although I have tried hard to understand—and I do have some insight—nevertheless my personal "enlightenment" is still incomplete...
...I do so...
...After shoveling snow in the sunshine my body felt strong, straight, and young...
...I just wanted a cup of tea...
...Inevitable...
...In our Dublin home in those days one often came upon her in some corner, sitting in the lotus position, calmly centered within herself, oblivious to phone, TV, and family...
...Maura-san go kensho itashimashita" [Maura has attained enlightenment...
...Maura reached her enlightenment on the first day...
...There was a spring training at Kannonji from May 2 for five days...
...I know this is only a thing of my own creation—"good zazen/bad zazen" —but it reflects where I'm at, which is a pretty unadvanced state...
...It is no longer the wave but the ocean which is what it was anyway...
...We had her Hishinsai [graduation ceremony] on August 7, 1982...
...I was in a crystal paradise...
...Maybe six months, a good chance to work on myself....I think I'll leave by summer but continue to study Zen in Paris...
...When I returned to Japan in 1983 for the dedication of her statue I could not help being aware that, despite some earlier unspoken disagreement between us because of our differing views of Maura, Go Roshi and I were at least united in the suffering we had both experienced in her loss...
...At twenty-six, a living corpse and such a life!...If I have another fifty or sixty years (who knows...
...My breathing stopped...
...Afterward, thinking about their question ["Why do you study Zen...
...She immediately immersed herself in it so completely that she became almost oblivious to pain or distractions, determined to become one with mu [nothingness...
...Nuts...
...It was killing me to refuse him...
...The fact that Maura grew up in a very feminine household (a mother, four sisters, and one small brother) may have made the male bastion of the Tokyo temple a refreshing change and she seemed to become a sort of honorary sister to all the monks...
...During her three years of Zen training in Iwate and Tokyo she was known as Maura-san, or by her monastic name of Soshinsan...
...They assume she has been doing zazen for years to achieve such control, instead of a mere three months...
...He slept two or three hours in the sitting position...
...He was, and still is, a much respected leader in his profession and in Buddhism...
...She returned to Toshoji on February 6. When I was ten, I had my Tokudo Ceremony at Fukuzoji in Johoji, Iwate-ken...
...This occurred to me as I was sweeping the floor...
...I'd have to show them I was okay...
...As a teacher of Zen practice he was obviously nearly a genius and it is apparent that the language and cultural barriers between them were quickly surmounted by his skill and her determination...
...Suddenly I understood that we must take care of things just because they exist...
...Maura did exactly that...
...I feel I could go on and on...
...Her hair, incidentally, had grown out sufficiently for her to make a good appearance at her sisters' weddings, but it was shaved off again before her graduation ceremony...
...This body is muji [nothingness], this head, eyes, ears...
...After six months of intensive training, May 1980 brought a dramatic event...
...I felt so light...
...The little old women slide open the panel on their doors, drop a coin in a bowl and stand, with bent heads and long aprons, waiting for a monk's blessing...
...Soon after they learned of her death, Maura's friends and fellow monks in Japan sent me a collection of letters of condolence which included the following from her old master: On December 8, 1979, Maura O'Halloran joined Toshoji Doairyo and we had a Tokudo ceremony ["investiture"] on December 10...
...The latter attitude led to such a detachment from material things, especially fashionable clothes, that she often appeared genuinely shabby (years before Commonweal 28 February 1992: 11 the current vogue for "shabby chic...
...She began her vigorous training from that day...
...Maura did the same...
...I carry them to appropriate homes when they take over indoors....I'm very, very, very happy...
...But she had her lighter moments, times of carefree exhilaration: I feel very glad to be young, not just mentally (as I sometimes feel) but physically...
...She was obviously under the impression that the master spoke English...
...For thirty days from January 6 she trained in strict kan-shugyo [training in freezing cold...
...Incredible...
...Several days later she is still working on it: "I get up and go to the zendo at 4:00...
...I have also come to realize that it would be unjust of me to blame Go Roshi for Maura's "defection"—if defection it was...
...Commonweal 28 February 1992: 13 Then I caught myself...
...I was laughing and crying...
...And mu is u and Bodhidarma [a founder of Zen] can say the dog has no Buddha nature...
...Any desires, ambitions, hopes I may have had have either been fulfilled or spontaneously dissipated...
...In 1983, as her mother, I was invited to come to Japan for the dedication of her Kannon statue, an indication that she had become identified in the minds of local people with the bodhisattva Kannon, the Buddhist saint of compassion...
...Her choice of a small, old temple tucked into a back street of the congested Shinagawa district of Tokyo seems to have been almost a chance decision...
...Then "once more again...
...in fact, my zazen seems very bad...
...Not so hard...
...Strange sensation, almost as if I'm close to death...
...In the dust pile there were sixteen grains of rice and two tiny crawling things that didn't need to die...
...He doesn't speak English but I don't register surprise...
...I fainted...
...She deliberately limited herself to a very stringent budget...
...That's why I have the fear that if I left here the peace might also leave...
...I decide monastery life is not for me...
...I feel such peace puttering about in the dirt with all the wiggly, slimy, ugly creatures...
...Sometimes they gasp in surprise when they see me, a woman, a gaigin...
...She had the ability to focus cheerfully and totally on whatever she did and I have no doubt that this was partly the result of her habit of meditation...
...I will sit every morning in that stillness...
...Everything seems wonderful...
...Of course I want to get deeper, see clearer, but even if I could only have this paltry, shallow awakening I'd be quite satisfied...
...Other days, more cynical days, like today, I think I'm closer to a sleepening ....Now I'm twenty-six and I feel as if I've lived my life...
...Like most beginners in Zen, she was given the koan "mu" to solve...
...They were alarmed...
...It's more open...
...This point of view found an outlet in college protests, volunteer social work, both in Dublin and Peru, union organizing, and in what I can only call a sort of spontaneous poverty...
...She made a free choice as a grown woman and his influence on her was not of the unhealthy sort one hears of with "cult" leaders...
...In the same month, psychologists come to test the monks' skin potential and respiration during meditation...
...She carried no chip on her shoulder although her highly developed sense of the need for social justice sometimes made her impatient with institutional obstacles to human development...
...The creatures digging and fertilizing the garden are worth no more nor less than I. I'm careful about them now, try not to disturb them...
...Up in the morning at 3:30 for zazen, evening, too...
...Wait...
...In the course of my own reading on Zen I have come across both Christian and Buddhist writers who speak of two types of people, those whose consciousness is shallow but wide (which includes most of us), and those few others whose consciousness is narrow but deep...
...Hold it...
...She concludes these remarks with her thanks to these generous people whose contributions sustain the temple and make her practice possible...
...Facing into the long cold winter is not only fine, but I know I'll enjoy it...
...She was, by this time, becoming something of a celebrity and was a bit annoyed by the interruptions from media people: On the final day of sesshin, the TV people came to film me...
...Without knowledge of clinical psychology I cannot pretend to understand this dramatic episode, so uncharacteristic of my strong, sensible daughter, but it seems to me that she recognized that the master was now making unreasonable demands on her devotion...
...She requested to become a Tenzo [kitchen person] for the autumn training, starting from October I . Her wish 14: 28 February 1992 Commonweal was granted...
...I stayed up doing zazen but I was too tired for it to do much good...
...Her Tokudo name was Daigo Soshin Hikyuni...
...They were relieved but I only wanted to do zazen...
...They discover that she breathes only three or four times a minute during meditation as opposed to thirteen breaths a minute normally...
...It's a huge debt, one I'm inclined to shirk...
...Once again," he says, in English...
...How did this daughter of an American mother and an Irish father, educated at Sacred Heart Convent schools and Trinity College, Dublin, become not only a Zen master but a Buddhist saint...
...Heart muji," he says, thumping me, and "Go Roshi heart muji," I say, belting him back...
...Not that I expect to change the world or even a blade of grass, but it's as if to give myself is all I can do as the flowers have no choice but to blossom...
...I cannot possibly express my astonishment...
...When the wave subsides it doesn't disappear, cease to exist...but it does...
...Her last photo, taken in front of a Bangkok temple just before she boarded a bus which crashed on the road to Chang Mai, shows a tall, blue-eyed, black-robed young woman of twentyseven, with a radiant smile...
...Even undesirable, painful conditions have a poignant beauty and exaltation...
...We call these people mystics because they go deeply down, acquiring wisdom rather than knowledge, seeking personal fulfillment in some form of meditation such as Zen...
...Soon, however, this idea is forgotten when she travels by train north to the master's newer temple, Kannonji, in Iwate prefecture...
...Her position as the eldest child, flung into the role of "second parent" to five younger siblings at her father's sudden death, hastened a maturity that few adolescents experience...
...When takuhatsu came around again she worried about how she would deal with it: Last year I could only survive by promising myself "Never again...
...At sesshin in May the master offered to give Kannonji temple to Maura if she would marry a fellow monk, Tetsugen-san, and live there...
...I raise and put back my head, saying mu....It's warm, enveloping dark, a womb dark, shared with I don't know who...
...Her transfer to Kannonji plunged her into a rustic lifestyle that she loved...
...After several weeks of living mu, night and day, she believed she had solved it but was brusquely told by Go Roshi to continue working on it...
...In the morning I do bupan, work for three hours (begging), rest half an hour, then soji [cleaning], practice ookyo [morning service] at three, at 3:30 collect bupan, at 4:00 do banka [evening service] then every second day I cook...
...The voices were very far away...
...Suddenly I'm laughing and crying muji and everything around me...
...Kensho shita" [it is enlightenment], says he...
...Waves on the ocean are separate but the same...
...She became a Zen master in 1982 and was killed in Thailand six months later...
...I couldn't understand...
...So I must go deeper and deeper and work hard, no longer for me, but for everyone I can help...
...No, that's not what I want....It's not the life for me....He was pushing me, pushing me hard...
...My zazen is not good enough or, strong enough for nonsense like missing a sitting...
...I never abandoned my reservations about the choice she had made (Maura knew this but blamed it on "culture shock"), but I could see that her happiness was genuine and much of the credit had to be given to her whole-hearted surrender to Zen monastic life...
...Even her everyday cleaning tasks become opportunities to apply Zen principles: "Someone said we must take care of things simply because they exist...
...They were fascinated and alarmed at my room [reached only by climbing a narrow ladder...
...I prefer it...
...During the monks' begging expeditions through the streets of Morioka, Maura remarks that "on several occasions, during our breaks, people gave us tea, toast, rice cakes, or pastries...
...it seemed like something I never decided to do, not with a sense of determination but in the same way that I know Monday comes after Sunday...
...By March 10 she could say: "My mind these days is so much calmer...
...It felt neither good nor bad...
...For myself there is nothing else to strive after, nothing more to make my life worthwhile or to justify it...
...However, nothing about her conventional middleclass upbringing in Boston and Dublin seemed, in the normal course of events, to foreshadow the unique role she came to play in Japanese Zen Buddhist history...
...Euphoria...
...I wished I could always appreciate every bite, each sip with such relish...
...Commonweal 28 February 1992: 15...
...She completed her circle and left Narita Airport on October 9. I received an international telegram on October 25, 8:00 P.M., which said Maura had died of accidents in Thailand on24...
...My master, Fuchizawa Chiaki, said, "Zen monks must work twenty hours, and three hours for sleep every day...
...I assured them I'd never felt so wonderful in all my life...
...Our grand master Dogen went to China and to the Tendo mountain for one thousand days, working hard all day, he sat for meditation at night...
...My only thought was, he may do this for ages...
...It was –20° C. weather in Morioka where she had her training...
...Their fierce attachment to one another still seems almost inexplicable to me given their difference in age, sex, nationality, and political philosophies...
...Almost convinced by Go Roshi's infectious enthusiasm, I found myself nodding—everything, anything was okay...
...Get down to it...
...We're embracing...
...She has gone up for the winter ritual begging, called takuhatsu, which she describes as follows: Takuhatsu—with our begging bowls and bells we walk slowly through the streets of Morioka, through the snow and sleet, in straw sandals, bells ringing, chanting...
...In her journal, Maura traces the step-by-step process by which she became a disciple of Zen...
...It is significant that after this event Go Roshi finally accepted her decision to leave Japan at the end of her training and he made no further serious attempts to push her into a marriage...
...I'm working hard...
...Something left me, some huge oppressive weight that I'd never even known was there and only recognized in its lifting...
...What else is there to do with it...
...They were worried, massaging my feet, applying carbon, discussing cures...
...It was wonderful striding through the snow, shovel on my shoulder, breeze in my hair...
...But perhaps her biggest adjustment was in simply being a young and personable female in a spiritual environment not only totally alien to her own but so traditionally masculine...
...I tried to calm them, tried to stand up but collapsed, twice...
...Although she hated to refuse him and had trained herself to conquer her own ego, her ego did in fact assert itself in this struggle of wills, but at the cost of her brief physical breakdown...
...Settling into her Japanese monastery in the winter of 1980, her customary Spartan lifestyle must have helped her to accept without complaint the frost-bitten feet, strange and awkward foods, unfamiliar customs and language, and briefest of sleeping hours on the floor of an icy temple...
...It's peaceful and comforting...
...As a mathematician and linguist she distinguished herself in school and college but as a compassionate and wise human being she early gave promise of a rare spirituality...
...My mind never felt so clear or lucid...
...In fact, if anything, it became more stringent...
...Sitting alone, trying the new mu that Jiko-san has taught me...
...She had achieved in twenty-seven years what took the Shakuson eighty years...
...She went in for meditations twice, three times a day, and solved all three thousand koans...
...HAN TEKKYU October 27, 11:00 P.M., as I watch the eleventh-day moon...
...She was the modern Dogen...
...From somewhere I heard my voice softly answering "Hai...
...Although Maura had by now achieved her goal of enlightenment, her training did not stop...
...In her journal Maura never mentions the fact of her birth and youth in Boston, but her New England background, and especially her grandmother in Maine, contributed as much to her formation as did her fourteen years in Ireland...
...I liked them but felt silly talking about myself...
...Everybody was fussing...
...Her relationship to the master, whom she called Go Roshi [Master], was obviously the overwhelmingly important one for Maura and there can be no doubt that it was his constant and paternal concern that made it possible for her to achieve enlightenment so quickly, and to continue her Zen practice in the months that followed...
...I was too selfconscious even to know that it was kensho...
...She was able to graduate Dogen's thousand-day training...
Vol. 119 • February 1992 • No. 4
