Are you willing to look at the other ways and see if you can find your way?
Heisoku Maik Bain
Heisoku Maik Bain is preparing for his ordination as a Dragon Heart Dharma priest. He continues to offer Mondo Zen Facilitation actively and participates in several sanghas including One Wisdom Zen, Dragon Heart Dharma, Hollow Bones Zen and ours. I caught up with Heisoku last week to see what has changed since he arrived at the Virtual Zendo in 2021.
Ekai: I'm here today with Heisoku Mike Bain, who is in the process of becoming a Dragon Heart Dharma priest. You did Jukai with Fugen Roshi at Hollow Bones. How did you get into Hollow Bones Zen?
Heisoku: Covid had gone down, and Patric Schretlen was attending the meditation sessions online. He and I were having a conversation, and he told me to check it out.
Ekai: So you started regularly.
Heisoku: Pretty much, but I've been going to a bunch of different sanghas these days.
Ekai: Were you doing meditation before that?
Heisoku: Not so much. 10 to 15 years ago, I did some sessions with Stan Koehler. I was connected with him through ManKind Project (MKP). Prior to him, 25 years ago, I changed careers into social work. The program did peer education. They would start their peer education sessions with meditation, guided meditations.
Ekai: Nothing like Zen. So when Patric Schretlen, who you knew from MKP, said check it out, you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. How long have you been involved with ManKind Project?
Heisoku: Since 2003.
Ekai: Now you're a ritual elder. I bet that keeps you busy. It also lets you bring your Zen teachings to your colleagues there.
Heisoku: That's right. I've facilitated Mondo for the last two years. Now there's a group of men from MKP that I did Mondo with that meets regularly to discuss about the Mondo manual, prayers from the sutra book, and how we are living in general.
Ekai: What's the relationship between the MKP and the kind of work that you're doing now with Zen?
Heisoku: it's spiritually interconnected. It's men doing trauma work or doing introspective work and then connecting it with the spiritual world and making it so that all jives together. How can we live life differently? How can we help healing? For me, it's all about healing. It's about just helping people to find a better way to live, to enhance quality of life.
Ekai: And how do you feel that meditation has impacted your life, the quality of your life?
Heisoku: I'm lighter. My interactions with people are lighter. I'm a guy from the streets. I was a drug addict. I've been in recovery for 32 years. I had a lot of trust issues. There's a lot of street savvy that, with Mondo Zen, has allowed me to lean back some and not always be on guard. I don't have to be on edge. I don't have to live like a tense, vulcanized life. It's like opening up the shell, peering out the shell, and then casting off the shell and allowing a new outer appearance.
Ekai: What is it about Mondo Zen that has been most had the most impact on you?
Heisoku: It's gotten me to rethink my life, to rethink what happens and to look at it in such a way that I'm not projecting the negative. I look for positive or the softer edge to what is there. Even when things are uncomfortable, it's about being able to see the uncomfort and then walk through the uncomfort to be stronger and better, more pliable, more malleable. It's like taking a rough piece of clay and then just slowly wiping away the exterior and just creating a new mold. It's more like a beautiful mold. It’s a natural beauty.
Ekai: What I'm hearing is someone who really is practicing and committed to ongoing Mondo Zen as part of your life. You're a practitioner.
Heisoku: Fugen Roshi gave me the name Heisoku and asked me to embrace that name. Heisoku means ‘calm breath’ in Japanese. When I looked at it, I saw the different meanings that it could mean, but it was the calmness, calm energy. I've lived my most of my life without calm energy, with hard edge, rough energy. Now it’s softening. I can see the lover in me. I don't mean sexual lover. I mean the lover, the caring person who I was when I was a little kid. I liked people. I was outgoing, friendly. I respected people. I had this feeling of just wanting to connect with people. Over the years I lost that. By stepping into Mondo, I've been able to retouch that person inside of me.
Ekai: That's lovely. Since you're a certified facilitator, this energy comes up when you're facilitating others.
Heisoku: I share with them, and I help them to look inside themselves. Are you willing to look at the other ways and see if you can find your way?
Ekai: You're one of the people who is really comfortable being a Mondo Zen Facilitator. It's been lovely for me to watch you embody the teaching. I think Jun Po Roshi would be really proud. You’re also part of the training of other practitioners in Mondo Facilitation. Have you found it fits pretty well with the folks that you're doing it with?
Heisoku: For the most part, everybody gets something. There's some who stay and follow the course. I tell people I'm giving you a key. “Here's the key, unlock the door, peer outside the door. See if there's something that attracts you, that you feel safe and that you trust, and then step out on the path. And if the path works for you, continue on the path. And if you want, I'll walk the path with you. Sometimes we'll deviate, you'll go one way, I'll go the other way. But then there's times that we'll come back together, and we'll see each other, and we're still on that same path.”
Ekai: That's lovely, and that's true. It also honors the folks you are working with because not everybody's going to be on the path with you. There's no judgment.
Heisoku: Some people don't want to look past the crack in the door. This isn't for everybody. I know many of the people that I've introduced this to garnished a new way of life. Even if they step backwards, they still have it, because they come back to me and say, I think that I need to go through the emotional koans with you again. I need something. I need a retuning.
Ekai: Good for you. And somehow from being a facilitator, you were led to the clergy. You’ll be ordained by Fugen Roshi in October at Gently Sitting Like a Stone. How are you feeling about that?
Heisoku: I'm feeling overwhelmed. But there's a warmth that comes over me. It lets me know that I'm walking the right path, and I'm walking the right way. It's not led by ego. Mondo is just opening the door. How do I help people to walk past the door? How do I get them to walk the path and stay on the path, and when they walk on the path, how do I help them to continue walking?
Ekai: Do you have a sense of what might change? Or are you looking forward to anything when you finally get to the other side?
Heisoku: Pine Ridge is a really good place to be. It's a spiritual place. It's connecting with the Native Americans that have been there, and they helped me to tap in and to receive a full blessing.
Ekai: It is a special place, our spiritual home. For those who don't know, it’s Koto Washi Dallas Chief Eagle’s retreat center on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Heisoku: I'm a ritual elder, so I plan to continue working with the people that are where I'm at. I mean, I've retired as a social worker last year after being a social worker since 1997. I started as a Social Work Assistant on Riker’s Island. I ended up working with HIV people who were dying. They were drug addicts, and they were criminals, and they were trying to get their lives back in order. I was there trying to help them figure it out. So that's the beginning of what I'm doing. That is the beginning.
Ekai: You have a lot of training. Now you just have different tools, but you were doing almost the same thing.
Heisoku: But now it's being a spiritual advisor or a spiritual guide. I also facilitate trainings for MKP. Helping men to do introspective work and to do trauma work, and to do just changing how they're living their lives and helping men to find their masculinity. I mean true, good masculinity, instead of just like chaos and craziness. I've learned to work with different populations, and it's not like I'm just working with men anymore. It's like I work with men and women.
Ekai: Does that feel different?
Heisoku: It's looking to garnish the energy from the maternal. I've always been at the paternal energy, but now it's embracing the maternal energy. And by embracing the maternal, I get to feel more of a loving energy, loving and nurturing and caring from a softer place. For the last four or five years, I've tapped in with people who've known me for a long time. And I ask them, do you see a difference? And they say, yeah, there's a different you, calmer.
Ekai: How does that feel for you to hear that?
Heisoku: It allows me to really embrace and feel the lightness. I gotta appreciate that.
Ekai: I appreciate what you're doing, and I'm excited that you're on the journey. I thank you for taking the time to share with me, and I look forward to being with you through this particular period.
Heisoku: Thank you.