Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi died 31 years ago, before he reached the age of 65. He was Bernie’s teacher and I had the great blessing of sitting with him for an entire summer intensive and several retreats.

Recently I’ve coughed wildly, asthma rearing up its convulsive head, and remembered a winter’s retreat in Los Angeles to which I arrived with a persistent cough, which only got worse as the days passed. When I finally met with Roshi in face-to-face, he had me bend over and pounded relentlessly on my back. I felt silly, wanted to sit up and have an exchange with him (there were more than 50 on line behind me), but he told me to stay bent over and continued pounding on my back. One of the best face-to-faces I ever had.

I purloined the phrase face-to-face from Roshi Egyoku Nakao instead of the Japanese dokusan, or interview in English. The Zen sense of interview is of a student presenting her understanding to her teacher, and she either gets approved or not. Both as student and teacher, I always felt uncomfortable with that term, so when I heard of face-to-face, I latched on to it. After all, that’s what characterized such an encounter, a meeting of minds both impersonal and personal, and deeply, deeply intimate.

I still remember how intimidated some people were to see Bernie in face-to-face. It didn’t help that in traditional retreats he sat somewhat higher than you in priest robes, a beautiful altar nearby. One woman I knew told me she cried out the first time she saw him in face-to-face and ran for the hills. Later, when we worked at the Greyston Bakery, you saw him in the office surrounded by office paraphernalia, which gave people more ease.

Now, of course, old-timers worry about whether meeting students via Zoom is really face-to-face. You watch for everything, including body language, how the student comes into the room, their eyes and face, how s/he bows to the teacher (there’s a fairly extravagant ritual upon both entering and leaving, most of which I’ve let go of over the years). Zoom captures folks from the shoulders up, but the persona is not there. The soul is not there.

Roshi was often sardonic with me. He made fun of my koan study and my name (“I call you Eva!”), and showed the deepest patience for a beginning student who hardly knew her own mind. Looking back, I ‘ve often wondered how, over so many years, he could listen and listen to students sharing the details of their sorrows and disappointments with him without understanding that, dissatisfactions notwithstanding, if you present yourself as someone outside your own life, as an observer or even a victim of circumstances, you’re separating yourself from that life and thus missing the point.

I wonder what he thought of these Western students with their constant, stubborn self-referentiality, who didn’t get for years that it wasn’t about them at all. I’m talking especially about me, with my stubborn certainty that intelligence will carry me through. If anything, it stood in my way.

And yet, with all the failures with koans, asking irrelevant questions, and drowning in personal drama, he reached me. Marcus Aurelius wrote: “Keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self.” Roshi reached me through those back roads that circumvented the brain, that skipped gleefully over my obsession with meaning and the stuff of why?, and helped me sense something else. For that I had to give up on what I perceived to be my strengths and habitual modes of survival.

I have a photo of him on one of my altars which also contains a small urn with his ashes. Often when I pass it or arrange flowers on it, I wonder if he wouldn’t laugh out loud at the notion that I’d become a teacher, his dharma grand-daughter. Would he want me in the family?

How did he have the patience and persistence to keep at it, not just with me but with so many others? It’s enough to shorten anyone’s life. And to do this across two such different cultures, two such different worlds of relating and communicating!

The summer I spent sitting at the Zen Mountain Center in Idyllwild, California, is in my bones. The nights were cold but the days, especially the afternoons, were very hot. Early mornings I’d put on lots of layers under the black meditation robe, but in the afternoon heat I’d wear only a white cotton shirt and underwear, and still perspire abundantly.

During one such afternoon I went to see him in dokusan, or interview, or face-to-face. I don’t remember our exchange, only that we both laughed a lot (a sojourn in those “back roads” can be delightful). He sat on a platform a little above me but felt inches away.

Suddenly I had a deep urge to get up on my knees from the cushion where I sat and give him a kiss on the cheek, in gratitude. I was aware of the fan blowing a breeze through my meager layers of clothing, I was aware of Roshi’s reputation with women, but I was overwhelmed by the sense of appreciation and deep intimacy.

The feelings continued and I didn’t act on them, just sat on my cushion till he rang the bell to signal the end. I did my bows, aware of the loose V-neck shirt and robe through which, I was sure, he could see the top of my breasts, and left. Went back to sit, facing the wall, and considered the matter.

Ahead of me was an entire summer studying with Maezumi Roshi, an extraordinary, fortunate, and undeserved turn in my life. Already, my respect and, yes, love for him felt boundless. But what would have happened had I gotten up on my knees, the fan cooling my neck, and reached out to kiss him on the cheek?

I don’t want anything else, I told myself, and knew right away that my intention didn’t matter, my action did. What could happen? How will the summer unfold? I was going through a lot of turmoil at the time, which I’d shared with him. What will happen to my practice?

Right then I knew that I was right not to act on my impulse. Right then I knew that I wouldn’t act on that impulse the rest of the summer. There were other ways to express my gratitude to him. At the lunch ending retreats, as nonresidents left, they would come to him to thank him, murmur some words, put their hands together and he would do that in response.

That’s how you thank him, I told myself. You’ll continue in your practice forever, both on and off the cushion. You’ll lose your way and find your way even as the way will never lose you, you will appreciate his diligence and devotion to the end of your life and they will inspire you, too, to share the practice moment by moment, in whatever way you can. And that will be how you thank him.