Meeting Issan
Dear Toby,
I could just tell this story as if it were bumping into a very effeminate gay man on the street in the Casto. He just happened to be a Zen priest, and he invited me to join him in creating a hospice for people with HIV. Our meeting was in fact quite ordinary. During the first Zen Hospice Volunteer training. Issan had been invited to come to one of the sessions and answer our questions. I asked a question and he answered. I remember that my question was about all the things that were going on in my mind while I was trying to take care of the basic needs of Nancy Storm when she was dying. I knew that he was paying attention to me in a way that was quite profound, and I knew that I was going to work with him in some capacity.,
I could link it to my Jesuit roots. I could order the sequence of events as they actually happened. After 35 years, a chance meeting with a Zen priest who was starting a hospice for people with AIDS turned my attention back to meditation practice. It also allowed me to carefully trace the roots of suffering through a spiritual practice that is agnostic with regard to any particular religious system of beliefs. My 15 year relationship with Terry was on life support and I stumbled into the Hartford Street Zendo early one morning for meditation. I think that it was probably after I’d met Issan because I knew that he sat every morning at 6 AM. I was alone in the zendo, sitting facing the altar.
In a certain sense all of these storylines are plausible and to some degree true, but the actual sequence of events seems entirely improbable but nonetheless true.
Tobias Trapp asked me to write a few words about volunteering during the AIDS epidemic for the German magazine, Ursache & Wirkung. I jumped at the chance because it gave me an opportunity to acknowledge Frank Ostaseski and his pioneering work with the Zen Hospice Project as well as Issan Dorsey Roshi who founded Maitri Hospice. It also gave me an opportunity to encourage others to accept the invitation to be with another human being at the end of their lives, something that sadly our fears stand in the way of.
In 1989 I lost a very dear friend, Nancy Storm, who’d been like a mother to me. Her daughter Mary asked me to donate the hospital bed that she had in her room at the Heritage Retirement Home in San Francisco where she’d spent the last years of her life.
I still remember that the more established hospice care facilities refused donations unless it had a warranty. In the late 90’s, there were sometimes 100 men a week dying in San Francisco from HIV. Surely someone could use a hospital bed. I began to feel that I had to do something to help.
Then through an odd series of phone calls, Curtis Mann, a gay friend who was doing design work for the Zen Hospice Project gave me Frank’s number. Could the Hospice use the bed? Frank said he’d love to have the bed though work on the building was not complete. How could we move it across town? I had a truck. Frank said let’s meet and be delivery men. We set a time.
I liked Frank immediately, bright, up beat, not my picture of a deathbed priest. He was also very persuasive--between the time we’d loaded the bed in my truck and unloaded it at the Zen Center, I was signed up for the Zen Hospice Volunteer Training Program.
That afternoon also set the tone for volunteering, listening and responding to simple requests, taking care of what was at hand, and working with others. No special knowledge was required.
Within 6 months, I’d also met Issan, and became a volunteer at Maitri Hospice.
Guided by Issan’s compassion, I cooked spaghetti and painted walls, I helped men sort through a lifetime of personal letters and called their mothers. Taking care of almost 100 men changed me. Not every task was easy, but the rewards were immense.
I could just tell this story as if it were bumping into a very effeminate gay man on the street in the Casto. He just happened to be a Zen priest, and he invited me to join him in creating a hospice for people with HIV. Our meeting was in fact quite ordinary. During the first Zen Hospice Volunteer training. Issan had been invited to come to one of the sessions and answer our questions. I asked a question and he answered. I remember that my question was about all the things that were going on in my mind while I was trying to take care of the basic needs of Nancy Storm when she was dying. I knew that he was paying attention to me in a way that was quite profound, and I knew that I was going to work with him in some capacity.,
I could link it to my Jesuit roots. I could order the sequence of events as they actually happened. After 35 years, a chance meeting with a Zen priest who was starting a hospice for people with AIDS turned my attention back to meditation practice. It also allowed me to carefully trace the roots of suffering through a spiritual practice that is agnostic with regard to any particular religious system of beliefs. My 15 year relationship with Terry was on life support and I stumbled into the Hartford Street Zendo early one morning for meditation. I think that it was probably after I’d met Issan because I knew that he sat every morning at 6 AM. I was alone in the zendo, sitting facing the altar.
In a certain sense all of these storylines are plausible and to some degree true, but the actual sequence of events seems entirely improbable but nonetheless true.
Tobias Trapp asked me to write a few words about volunteering during the AIDS epidemic for the German magazine, Ursache & Wirkung. I jumped at the chance because it gave me an opportunity to acknowledge Frank Ostaseski and his pioneering work with the Zen Hospice Project as well as Issan Dorsey Roshi who founded Maitri Hospice. It also gave me an opportunity to encourage others to accept the invitation to be with another human being at the end of their lives, something that sadly our fears stand in the way of.
In 1989 I lost a very dear friend, Nancy Storm, who’d been like a mother to me. Her daughter Mary asked me to donate the hospital bed that she had in her room at the Heritage Retirement Home in San Francisco where she’d spent the last years of her life.
I still remember that the more established hospice care facilities refused donations unless it had a warranty. In the late 90’s, there were sometimes 100 men a week dying in San Francisco from HIV. Surely someone could use a hospital bed. I began to feel that I had to do something to help.
Then through an odd series of phone calls, Curtis Mann, a gay friend who was doing design work for the Zen Hospice Project gave me Frank’s number. Could the Hospice use the bed? Frank said he’d love to have the bed though work on the building was not complete. How could we move it across town? I had a truck. Frank said let’s meet and be delivery men. We set a time.
I liked Frank immediately, bright, up beat, not my picture of a deathbed priest. He was also very persuasive--between the time we’d loaded the bed in my truck and unloaded it at the Zen Center, I was signed up for the Zen Hospice Volunteer Training Program.
That afternoon also set the tone for volunteering, listening and responding to simple requests, taking care of what was at hand, and working with others. No special knowledge was required.
Within 6 months, I’d also met Issan, and became a volunteer at Maitri Hospice.
Guided by Issan’s compassion, I cooked spaghetti and painted walls, I helped men sort through a lifetime of personal letters and called their mothers. Taking care of almost 100 men changed me. Not every task was easy, but the rewards were immense.
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