HEART OF THE WAY
By Scott HonChu Fields
Born in Cleveland Ohio in 1946 & growing up in the Fifties, I idolized Beatniks & read my first haiku in a Peter Pauper Book. Daddy died in my arms in 1961 at the age of 44 of a massive coronary, shortly after I got back from summer camp where I had my first experience of deep oceanic space, so many stars so far away in deep time. I lost my faith in the Christian God & started exploring other mystical traditions. Mother painted watercolors & we always had a small white porcelain KuanYin next to her flower arrangements. She died in 2016 at the age of 104, shortly after I took the first precepts & met my partner Charlie. Taihaku was so happy I finally had love in my life.
I had started reading Life magazine in my playpen, & I am still usually reading a dozen books at once. I was an English major with a Philosophy & Religion minor at Williams College & pursued graduate study at Columbia and NYU for the next ten years, living in a small railroad flat in Greenwich Village I lived an archetypal hippie life, going to Woodstock, hitchhiking crosscountry Cambridge to Seattle, etc. Friends hooked me up with a theosophical theatre troupe called the Uranian Alchemy Players. We celebrated pagan solar festivals & got elemental tattoos on acupuncture points with Tibetan monks chanting on vinyl. Summers in Nova Scotia jumping over bonfires in the stone circle, casting I Ching hexagrams with yarrow stalks, Letters on Occult Meditation, the Great Naga in the Bay.
In the late 70s we all took multiple teachings with Kalu Rinpoche, senior Meditation Master of the Tibetan Kagyu lineage. When he sang Milarepa songs, it was like he was Milarepa. Shortly thereafter, a Dharma friend invited me to sit for DzogChen teachings with Dudjom Rinpoche, Widely regarded as an incarnation of Padmasambhava, His Holiness helped us see how easy it was to rest our minds in the natural state. I viewed these revered teachers as root gurus & OM MANI PADME HUM as root mantra.
Moving to Vermont, I taught English & Creative Writing
at Norwich for 36 years. There were
friends, but I basically lived the lonely life of a solitary practitioner, struggling
at time with depression & various forms of addictive behavior. I discovered Dogen’s Moon In a Dewdrop in
1986. I loved his enigmatic poetic
sensibility & the density of his quicksilver references to primary
texts: he seemed to know everything by
heart & not know it at the same time.
Subsequently, I read every sutra & Zen text I could get my hands on,
over & over. I named my two Siamese
cats Bodhi & Dharma & found myself calling out “Bodhidharma” thousands
of times over the next 20 years at the front door or back door, rain or shine. Bodhidharma brought Zen to China, & I
hoped he would bring it to me. Complex visualizations had started to lose their
charm: I wanted to simplify spiritual
practice, & I gradually realized I needed a sangha to practice with.
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| Scott at Dogen's Tomb at Eihei-Ji, 2012 |
In 2011 as retirement loomed I got a research grant to visit sacred sites in Kyoto & Shikoku, including famous temple gardens. I immersed myself in medieval Japanese culture & returned in 2012, tracing Basho’s actual route in The Narrow Road to the North & since then writing a daily waka as part of practice. I hoped to stay on retreat at Eihei-ji, which required a formal Soto Zen affiliation, & with some help from the San Francisco Zen Center I found Shao Shan not more than an hour from home. Bodhidharma was a neighbor.
I met with Taihaku, who urged me to come to Study Group before she would write a letter. A few years after the Eihei-ji pilgrimage I started coming to temple programs more regularly with friends who carpooled in the Buddha Bus. I loved vacuuming the zendo & sharing sangha meals. After Taihaku’s passing I volunteered to care for several rock gardens, & during that intensive work practice I sensed intuitively that I was ready to become a formal student. Kenzan kindly accepted me, & I spent the first half of this year sewing my rakusu with Donna’s compassionate guidance. In the middle of that process I found KuanYin in the basement in my mother’s sewing basket. She lives next to Tara now in the big picture window. At the recent Jukai ceremony Kenzan honored me with a new Dharma name: HonChu, True Center, something to live up to which is already here, here & now. Truly it has been a circuitous route, but I have finally come home.
Blessings to you all for being here, too.
