In January 2025, after five years of full-time training, I was asked to be the Head Monk—the most challenging awakening role a training resident could have, encompassing many responsibilities for the sake of upholding the practice container.
On the next self-practice day, I happened to be the training resident on-schedule, which means that I continue holding the awakening container as well as do work while other trainees don’t have to.
That day, Soryu showed up in the zendo before the time of the evening sit, which was unusual. He had many exchanges with me, mainly asking if it made sense to me how some things worked the way it did in the training, then inviting me to consider how I’d decide how they should work.
Near the end, he expressed much happiness that the Teaching Zendo is finally constructed, completing the MAPLE Cathedral—also consisting of the Lower Zendo and Upper Zendo—after more than a decade of envisioning. Soon we’d have the trainees fully dedicated to awakening needed to officially open the Upper Zendo, I recalled he saying with a warm, glowing smile.
Watching his face, I replied quietly, “I have faith because I see you having faith.”
After a pause, he said, “We must have faith greater than the world. Otherwise, how could we possibly support the world?” He glanced momentarily at the first four lines of the poem mounted on wooden plagues hung near the ceiling:
Abandon All Hope
Ye Who Enter Here
This Place Will Not Support You
Abandon Hope and Fear
Then, completing his thought, “How could we possibly not support the world?”
He started walking out the zendo, doing an end greeting to all the directions in the center stone as usual. Then halfway to the door, he turned and said, “We need to have so much faith in our aspiration to care for all life, that even if all life is destroyed, we’d still succeed.”
“Huh,” I responded in bewilderment as he left.