One of the tales from the Japanese Zen tradition recounts the story of Ohashi, the daughter of a samurai family that had fallen on hard times. To save them, Ohashi sold herself to a brothel and gave the money to her parents. In The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, which includes a koan about Ohashi, it says that she was “plagued by sadness for her former life” (i.e., before the brothel). Then she had the good fortune to meet Hakuin, a renowned seventeenth-century Zen master who had a soft heart for laypeople, and he became her teacher.
Hakuin told Ohashi that enlightenment “was possible in any circumstance.” He gave her the koan, “Who is it that does this work?”
One night, as part of her process of exploring the koan, Ohashi decided to confront one of her greatest fears. Though she was terrified of thunder and lightning, she deliberately chose to sit on a veranda during a storm. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning struck the ground near her. She fell unconscious, and when she awakened, she saw the world in an entirely new way. Hakuin recognized her experience as a Zen awakening.
To what did she awaken?
Good question—one that can only truly be answered by diving into one’s own life. This koan invites us to sit on the veranda of our own lives and deeply inquire into the question, “Who am I?”
Ohashi had a list of answers she could recite: daughter of a samurai, sex worker, calligrapher, poet, koan student. Was that all? What was her essence that she shared with all human beings?
In her commentary on this koan in The Hidden Lamp, Judith Randall describes Ohashi’s practice as “fiercely determined.” This wording moves me deeply. I think of others like the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu whose lives exemplify this path of fierce determination. A beautiful film about them, Mission: Joy—Finding Happiness in Troubled Times, shows how determined they were to live a vow of nonviolence. Film clips show how the Dalai Lama had to flee Tibet and watch his people’s homeland be systematically overtaken. Yet in spite of all the difficulties, he speaks strongly against retaliating with violence and continues to search for solutions. Desmond Tutu, at the risk of his own life, led the movement against apartheid in South Africa and earned the love of many and the hatred of others. He was a powerful force in establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, initiating one of the most profound acts of collective healing ever undertaken. In the most desperate of circumstances, both these spiritual leaders cultivated and nurtured a fierce determination to foster peace.
This is not lip service. It is hard work and requires the deepest kind of dedication possible. It is fierce determination in action. I understand “fierce” in this context to mean the depth of commitment necessary to maintain and live in a way that fosters peace and kindness. The Archbishop and the Dalai Lama each took vows to cultivate compassion in their respective spiritual traditions. To take those vows is one thing; to truly live them is another.
Ohashi’s taking her seat on the veranda was an act of fierce determination. When she sat down with this attitude, she did not know what she would find. This is a key aspect of koan study in the Zen tradition: letting go of what you hope you will find and allowing not knowing to be your ground zero.
I too have taken vows when receiving the Zen precepts, first as a lay practitioner, later as an ordained priest. The precepts are an elaboration of skillful means for living a mindful and compassionate life, and in receiving the precepts, we vow to enact them in our full body/mind/heart. Yet there are times when I cannot live the precepts as I would want to. My anger, sense of hurt, or whatever else raises its head and propels me into behavior that is not how I would like to be, not how I have vowed to be. In other words, I screw up.
After forty-five years of practice, I have come to understand that the intention to live these vows is the most important element. It takes fierce determination to avow again and again that I will do my very best to apply these principles as living teachings. Sometimes I fail miserably, but the commitment keeps me on track and encourages me to try again. And again. And again.
Ohashi’s fierce determination enabled her to realize her essence, which had nothing to do with living in a brothel. She could just as well have been living in a palace. She was able to transform her view of herself so that she saw beyond appearances. She was the buddha of the brothel. She may have been living in servitude, but she was free, not in body, but in mind.
I am not in any way saying it’s okay to be forced to live this way. Yet how often are we caught in a situation we can’t change? Sometimes we have no choice but to live with what is. Then comes the question: How can we live with this and not be a prisoner of it? It could be an incurable illness, our house exploding from a gas leak, or the forests around us burning out of control.
Ohashi did make the choice. Her father did not sell her. Her mother did not sell her. She chose to sell herself to the brothel. I repeat: I’m not saying that it’s okay that women, and sometimes men, have had to—and still do—sell themselves. At the same time, to ignore the fact that she made the decision is to steal away central themes of this koan. What is resilience? What does it mean to take responsibility for our actions?
Statistics about resilience are one thing. Personal stories have a more piercing effect. Here are two that have helped me believe in the power of fierce determination, which could also be expressed as unwavering resolve.
My friend Esperanza and I both gave birth in 1977, when we were twenty-eight years old. Esperanza, who had suffered from diabetes since she was child, was warned by doctors of the dangers of pregnancy and giving birth. The highest risk, caused by the stress that pregnancy would put on her body, was losing her eyesight—something that can happen to severe diabetics.
Esperanza went ahead with the pregnancy. The most feared thing happened. Shortly before giving birth, she lost her eyesight in one eye. Shortly after the birth, she could no longer see with her other eye. She was completely blind.
One day Esperanza received a visit from someone from the department of social services. Ostensibly, the social worker was there to see how the local government could assist her, especially given that her husband had to work long hours and often weekends to meet the medical bills and to provide for their living expenses. Following that first appointment, Esperanza became terrified that social services would take her baby into care because they didn’t believe a blind woman could be fully responsible for her own child.
A second appointment was set up for a few weeks later. Esperanza was resolved to fight for her child by providing evidence she could take care of her every need. Her plan was to prove that in the apartment, she could guarantee a safe home. She was determined to show that she was the master of all the circumstances and that she could do everything a seeing parent could do: change diapers, prepare food, wash her baby every day, feed and clothe her, cuddle and nurture her, and prevent her from hurting herself, whether it be falling down the stairs or playing with electrical outlets.
To do this, Esperanza knew she had to be completely familiar with the layout of the apartment, building a topographical map in her mind’s eye. And because her baby soon would be crawling, she knew she had to learn the apartment at ground level. Every day she spent at least an hour crawling on her knees over every inch of the apartment´s surface. She built a tactile sense of the apartment; by touch and sound she knew at every moment where her daughter was and where she could move safely.
I was awestruck as I watched her crawl through the apartment. It was not cute or picturesque. This was a woman fighting to keep her child by showing her ability to protect and care for her. When the social worker returned, she was relieved to see that Esperanza had developed mastery and confidence in the weeks that had passed. In fact, she had never intended to remove the baby, but she was happy to see everything would be okay. For everyone.
Now as I write about it, I feel the tears gather behind my eyes, even after so many years. I continue to this day to admire how Esperanza embodied the meaning of her name: hope. Fierce hope!
While reading the Spring/Summer 2003 edition of Wind Bell, San Francisco Zen Center’s newsletter, I discovered a story by Zen teacher Paul Haller that deepened my understanding of fierce determination. He wrote:
For many years there was someone who would come to City Center [San Francisco’s Zen Center’s urban temple] to sell us tins of candy. They were very sweet caramels, coated in chocolate, and they looked like little turtles, so we called him the Turtle Man. The Turtle Man was blind, so we’d buy two boxes instead of one. We’d put the tins of candy out on the desk in the front office, and even though we all thought they were too sweet, they were quickly eaten.
This ritual continued for many years. The Turtle Man, with his white cane, tapped his way up the stairs, tapped on the door until it was opened, came in and charmed us into buying the candy, and then left…
One day while I was out on the street, I heard a voice cry out, “Help! Help! Help!” It was the Turtle Man. He was standing on the corner of Page Street and Laguna. He needed to cross the street and his way of accomplishing that was to stand on the curb and cry “Help!” Just crying “Help!” until someone came along and escorted him across the street…
What an amazing, courageous life. Walking along until confronted with an insurmountable barrier, then to stop and just cry out, “Help!” Not knowing who you’re calling to, if anyone. Just waiting until somebody turns up and helps you cross that barrier. Then walking on, knowing that pretty soon you’re going to meet another barrier and then again you’re going to have to stop and cry out, “Help! Help! Help!” Entrusting your life to the innate generosity of existence that helps all beings to cross barriers and keep moving forward in their lives.
For me, the blind man’s cry expressed his fierce determination to cross the street—and all the roads of life. Yet, I find entrusting my own life to the “innate generosity of existence,” as Turtle Man is said to have done, is not so easy. I’ve had to face crossing streets as if I were blind many times. Existence was not especially generous to me as I was growing up. By the time I was twenty, I was deeply involved in the major illnesses of both my parents. When I was sixteen, my father suffered a brain aneurysm that left him with very little short-term memory. The day that aneurysm came, I lost the father I had known; the person who remained was a senile old man. He was no longer my parent in the traditional sense of someone who could take care of me, but rather our roles were switched: I had to change his diapers and make sure he didn’t get lost when he wandered off.
I learned to love him as a gentle bodhisattva who gave me the opportunity to serve him and to receive his deep gratitude and love. “You’re such a good person,” he would say. Even when he would repeatedly ask me, “When are we going out?” and I would lose my patience, he continued to say how good I was. Like Turtle Man, my father relied on the generosity of the universe, which in the beginning took the form of a very confused teenager who did not want to have to grow up so fast and often felt resentful and angry. Yet as time went on, my father´s deep kindness and gentleness wore me down, and I began to feel the quiet joy of being able to serve.
In the spring of 1970, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. We were in the throes of preparing for my wedding. I was just twenty years old, yearning to find stability in married life. For her own reasons, which she never explained to me, my mother didn’t tell me or anyone else that she was ill.
Two months after my wedding, she called and asked me to pick her up and take her downtown. I arrived and found her waiting with a small suitcase. As she got into the car, she handed me a piece of paper with an address on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“Mom?” I began.
“Don’t ask questions. Just drive!” she said sharply.
We arrived in front of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. With her hand on the door handle, my mother said to me matter-of-factly, “I’m having a radical mastectomy tomorrow. Take care of your dad.” She got out, took her bag, and walked toward the entrance. I watched her in shock. Without looking back, she entered the hospital before I could say anything. Whatever I could have said, she didn’t want to hear. I went home to take care of my father.
My mother lived for six years in remission before her cancer resurfaced, and she died two years later. I came to understand that her not telling me about her diagnosis expressed her fierce determination to spare me any pain until the last moment possible. I, on the other hand, wanted to fight death every step of the way. I urged her to seek out other doctors, other treatments, even fly to Japan because I heard about some treatment that might be helpful. She would listen quietly and then say every time, “No. I am doing what I can, and we have to accept what is to come.” In the months leading up to her death, she taught me that fierceness could also be expressed in a soft, determined way. It was her gift to me.
I have various ways of sitting on the veranda to face my own fear. And sometimes I can and sometimes I can’t. I just have to think of a recent conflict with a colleague when I couldn’t transform my anger and instead let it out on her—not loudly but in a sharp, hard way. From an outward perspective, I was probably justified in my response. But that’s not really the issue. The fierce determination would have been to express what I wished, though not in a way that made her feel attacked. Instead, I closed down and she closed down, and then any real communication was not possible.
So, fierce determination is not so much about toughness as it is about the commitment to do one’s very best to move forward in a way that savors and honors life. It’s about developing a steadiness of mind, heart, and body that allows one to truly stand firm, even if it is much easier to give in to other, more destructive emotions and behaviors. With fierce determination, when we stumble and fall, we get up, assess the damage, and recommit to finding the best way forward.
Thunder and lightning are always going to appear. How will you show up?
