Last night as residents were finalizing the set up for the evening lecture, Soryu gave an important teaching to the group that he had also given me years before. He told the group that if a teacher tells you to do something and you don’t do it, that is very bad karma. He told the story of a teacher who stopped giving instructions for the final period of his life because the students were not following instructions.
At the beginning of my time as head monk, I had a lot of difficulty following instructions. I would often do the opposite of what I was instructed to do. One time, Soryu and I were in the mudroom of the upper zendo looking at the newly constructed stone path in between the zendos. The path was crooked. We were going to have to walk this crooked path and look at this crooked path every day because we hadn’t done the work carefully or correctly. The state of mind of those doing the work (and the community generally) was right there for everyone to see. We had this conversation and he told me not to talk to the group about it yet. After we were done, I immediately went back to the lower zendo and spoke to the entire group about it.
I did many things like this. Eventually, he stopped giving me instructions. He told me it was very bad for me, for my karma, to not follow instructions from a teacher. Therefore he would protect me by not giving me instructions.