Missing completely

The chant leader has a number of responsibilities during chanting, and one of the most important is to strike the bells used to begin, end, and punctuate chants clearly and at the appropriate times. During a certain period of my tenure as chant leader, this became very difficult for reasons I didn’t understand. I would strike them at a bad angle and create an ugly sound, or hit myself or the chanting lectern with the striker as I swung it, forget a certain bell and create confusion within the group, or even let the striker slip from my hand and clatter to the floor.

Forall had already given me a good deal of instruction about this: swing the striker with your whole body, keep your focus on the bell as you prepare to strike and merge with it, and other useful teachings besides. However, during our longest retreat of this past training season, my bell striking continued to deteriorate. He had said I shouldn’t be making mistakes like this more than once a month, and during one interview he observed that I’d made eight or more mistakes in that retreat alone.

One morning, things came to a head. I missed the bells six or seven times in the course of that chanting service, and when I did so, I swung the striker without even making contact with the bells. Each time it happened I was completely mystified. After each miss, I redoubled my resolve not to miss again—and then I missed again. My confusion grew and grew.

When I missed the bell near the end of the final chant that tells the group to move into the closing section, Forall, who was sitting to my right, made a gesture low to the ground, where the bells sat in front of me. He had been making similar gestures with my previous misses, and this time he kept his hand there as I prepared to hit the final three bells. With firm resolve I locked my attention on the big black bell I would strike—and to my surprise, I found fear in my body. The fear stayed with me as I swung the striker, and it reached a painful pitch as the strike made contact, letting out a loud, clear sound. I struck the bell twice, three times, each time painful, each time clear.

After the chanting service, I was called to the Upper Zendo for a group interview. In the previous interview, Forall had said ,“If you’re going to do something, do it completely.” That morning, I went last in the group, sharing my goal: “Burn it all away, do each thing completely.”

“And?” He said. I didn’t respond immediately and he repeated himself: “And?” I started to exhale audibly, as I frequently would when I had nothing else to offer, but he cut me off. “How have you done that?”

My exhale turned into an “ummmm” and then I said, “I really missed the bells completely.”

Forall smiled. “You did that. Well said.” He paused and tutted. “What about the last three bells? Did you miss them completely?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I considered for a moment. “You made this motion,” indicating with my hand the gesture he had made, “and I actually brought my energy and attention down into the bell, and I noticed how much resistance there is to this… contact.”

“Exactly,” he said even before I had finished speaking, “That’s exactly right. It’s reasonable. You know this term contact. It’s a famous term. You also know, I expect, in many traditions, the metaphor that is used for what it’s like to make contact. What is that?”

“The arrow,” I said, recalling the image of a dart that pierces the eye when we see visual objects.

“Indeed,” he nodded, “it’s that bad. It’s reasonable to be afraid. That people are afraid of experience. Well, we just have courage. And yet we see, that just as bad as it is, it’s better than this.” He spread his arms out, seeming to indicate this whole realm of perception, with this painful fear of the clear sound I would make if I struck the bell correctly. “It is better than this. This moment of direct contact… isn’t so bad. There is a joy that comes from knowing that we’re on our way. Let that joy carry you through.”

I passed that interview, and as I continued to investigate contact, I kept passing my interviews for the rest of the retreat.