Not on our side

In a retreat in the eleventh year of training at the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth, in the course of an evening’s exhortation, Forall told the story of a woman he had known at his original place of training, the Rinzai Zen monastery of Sogenji. This woman was a lay practitioner who lived in the nearby village and occasionally visited to help out around the place. She had not trained at the temple, yet was deeply enlightened. (He did not tell the story of her enlightenment at that time, and it is a matter for another tale.) She was the very type of a kindly Japanese elder, and yet Forall was surprised by a brief but intense wave of suspicion on their first encounter. He said that upon meeting her he was struck by the thought, “She’s not on our side.” In the exhortation he explained that eventually he would learn that she was enlightened, and at this time he can recognize the wisdom in this first impression—she, and enlightened beings in general, are not on anyone’s side—but he does not endorse his initial, all too human impulse to distrust that which is unwilling to take his side.