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The Quarterly Newsletter of The Zen Center of Denver
Lotus in the Flame Temple
Winter 1998

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Becoming a Happy Fat Man*
A morning talk given by Sensei during the October 1998 7-day sesshin.

I received one of my first lessons in Zen some years ago in the Gurdjieff Work. During one of my group's evening meetings with our teacher, a member of the group spoke at some length regarding his concern with being a bit overweight. He felt it was his job to take responsibility for his body and health and how it affected his family. He was quite convincing. When he was finished speaking, our teacher, Mr. Freemantle, said, "You have it totally wrong. Your job is to become a happy fat man".

It was very touching last night to hear the Tanto speak of the lives of Uchiyama Roshi and his teacher. After over a decade of practicing zazen that he might become courageous like his teacher, Uchiyama Roshi found that he had not changed at all. He said he was still a coward as he had always been. But having read his books and spoken to people who have attended sesshin with him, I am certain that he had become a happy "coward" who appreciated his perfect, unique, more timid nature than his teacher.

Last winter when I was with Aitken Roshi in Hawaii, some one arrived to spend some time helping out and studying with Roshi. He was charming and very loquacious. Roshi and I did not talk a lot. One day at lunch the visitor said, "Roshi, am I talking too much?" Roshi said, "Oh no Chris, just be yourself!" What a good teaching. I think it is a fact that when children grow up in an atmosphere of love and approval they most often become happy adults. Those that grow up under a cloud of disapproval have a hard road to walk for the rest of their lives.

In his retirement ceremony, during shosan, some one came forward and sat in front of Aitken Roshi, looked up at him and said, "So Roshi, how are things up there?" Roshi replied, "Oh, I'm still struggling with my self doubts!" What a wonderful teaching!

On the second or third day of a sesshin at the San Francisco Zen Center, when a lot of people were experiencing a lot of pain and difficulties, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi entered the zendo and spoke to the participants very slowly, "The pain and difficulties which you are now experiencing..." Everyone thought he would say "will pass." But he didn't say that. He said, "The pain and difficulties you are now experiencing will continue for the rest of your lives." And he walked out of the zendo. The bad news seems to be that we will never change and that life will always be full of hardship and travail-that things will never get any better. The good news is that we don't need to change and that everything is fine just as it is. We don't need to fix ourselves and the situation. Even if we manage to get everything just the way we think it should be, you know how long that lasts-about three seconds! No, we don't need to change ourselves or try to improve on the nature of things. In order to gain release and joy, we need only accept ourselves and our situation unconditionally. We need only cooperate with the inevitable and be in complete accord with the changing circumstances of our lives.

We come to sesshin to learn how to do this, to learn to accept ourselves and the situation just as they are, and simply be what we are, where we are. This is true peace.

So just sit up straight, calmly abide in the Self, practice carefully and peacefully, and you will settle into your ground of being, which is completely at rest.

* This is not to encourage gluttony and greed nor to minimize the responsibility for taking reasonable care of one's body. Rather, this is a forceful way to show that our work is not for the purpose of self-reform but rather for self-realization.

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