Alice Cabotaje

Empty Cloud Zen, California –

Alice Cabotaje is Director of Spiritual Care Services at Stanford University in California. She is also an ordained Protestant minister in the Metropolitan Community Church, which (on its website) describes itself as “a diverse group of people with different perspectives and opinions.

“Many people within Metropolitan Community Churches,” the article continues, “consider us to be a Protestant Christian denomination.  We also consider ourselves to be a spiritual movement . . .  We have many straight people who are part of MCC, and they are important and cherished members, leaders, and clergy of MCC.  Most of our members, however, are from the LGBTQ+ community.  In fact, we are unique among all Christian denominations because we’re the only denomination that is primarily made up of LGBTQ+ people, has a focus on LGBTQ+ and Queer understandings, and this has been true of us for over fifty years.”

Alice is also a Zen teacher and Dharma heir of Father Greg Mayers.

She was born in the Philippines and lived there until she was in her 30s. Her father, a physician, belonged to the Methodist Church; her mother was engaged with an evangelical group. The image of God she derived from her religious education was that of a being who “was constantly looking over my shoulder.” She had a sense that the God who was addressed as “Father” actually fell short compared to her own father. And while on the one hand, she had what she describes as a desire to “merge” – a feeling that arose, for example, as she stared at the night sky as a child – she also had a profound sense of separation from God. “There was a deep pain, not only in my heart but in my soul.” In part it was due to that fact that very early on she realized she wasn’t heterosexual. “I had crushes on the girls and not the boys.”

While only 13 years old, she came upon Thomas Merton’s Raids on the Unspeakable in the school library. “There was a paragraph that said something like ‘to have an identity one has to be awake, and to be awake one has to know vulnerability and death – not for its own sake; not out of stoicism or despair – but one has to know the invulnerability of one’s vulnerable self.’”

She pondered what it meant to be vulnerable in this way, and what it meant to die. And then, in the normal course of things, members of her extended family did die. These reflections came to a head when, at the age of 16, she was on a bus which almost crashed into a ravine. At the time, she was surprised to find that her reaction was not as she might have supposed it would be. “Everything stopped, and everything just became clear. All of a sudden, I was not afraid of death. It was just this clarity, this stillness, and I felt like, ‘Okay.’”

After that experience, she felt a need for a spiritual practice which was more than “the usual Protestant services. Something that was akin to silence. I had no idea what that was.”

At university she majored in philosophy and found Chinese Chan [Zen] interesting but could make little sense of it. She also came upon literature that suggested her homo-erotic tendencies “would pass” as she matured, so at 18 she tried having a boyfriend. It didn’t work. “So I had a conversation with God, and I told God, ‘Let’s assume that this is the only life I have to live, I want to live it in a way that I am true to myself. And if you are going to send me to Hell for it, I’ll take it.’ So I severed my relationship with God at that point.”

A few years later, some friends introduced her to yogic practice and meditation. She attended a lecture by a feminist instructor who said, “In the end the only way to really transform a person is to have a change in consciousness. And the only way to change one’s consciousness is through the practice of meditation.” Although her Protestant background made her leery of meditation, she was “initiated” into the practice and given a mantra. Through the practice, the pain she had felt as a result of severing her relationship with God seemed to lessen.

She stayed with the practice for eighteen years and tells me that it helped lay the groundwork for her eventual Zen practice. “That really set for me the foundation for sitting in the Zen tradition. In the yogic tradition I would sit an hour twice a day. So that created the discipline that I needed for Zen.”

Her parents, however, were worried about her apparent interest in Hinduism as well as her sexuality, and – when she was in her 20s – they had an uncle lay hands on her to rid her of these tendencies. “In order to drive away the evil spirits. Nothing happened.”

She spent some time in India and then worked as financial journalist in Hong Kong. Eventually she and her partner relocated to San Francisco. Throughout all of this, she tells me, she found herself returning to the questions she’s first had as a small child looking up at the night stars – “wondering who am I, what am I here for?” And then one morning, when she was 39, she woke up feeling, “There is no God.” “I was dumbfounded. I fell into a deep abyss. Never-ending darkness and depression. And I thought, ‘If there is no God, what is life for?’”

She considered suicide. “Fortunately my partner had an acquaintance who talked about this Zen-Christian group over at the Mercy Center in Burlingame. It was a group led by Father Thomas Hand.”

Thomas Hand was a Jesuit who had studied Zen in Japan and introduced North Americans, especially Catholics, to the practice after he returned to the US. Alice and her partner attended a weekend retreat, and, at it, “A part of me healed a bit.”

Hand provided her an example of how one could practice both Christianity and an Eastern meditative tradition. She and her partner also began attending the Metropolitan Community Church.

During a later Zen retreat, she had an “experience of everything exploding. I just felt there was no ‘I.’  At the same time whatever exploded was also ‘I’. I was also everything.”

While other meditators went to breakfast, she stayed behind doing prostrations in gratitude. “And also asking forgiveness for all the pain and suffering I had caused.”

The next retreat she attended was facilitated by Greg Mayers, who confirmed that her experience had been kensho. He recommended that she begin koan practice in order to integrate that insight in her life. He became her official teacher in 2004 and fifteen years later he recognized her as a teacher and gave her transmission.

Catholics like Thomas Hand and Greg Mayers have found ways of retaining their Christian practice and priesthood at the same time as they are engaged in Zen, in fact they found that Zen enhanced their understanding of Christianity.[1] Alice – in spite of the fact that she is now a Metropolitan Community Church minister – readily admits to me that she isn’t a theist. I ask how she is able to reconcile a lack of theism with her role as a Protestant minister.

“There are contemplatives in the Christian tradition,” she tells me, “like the mystics who have reached the point where the concepts and even the form of God has just gone. Although when I speak within the Christian tradition, I address God as God – the Divine – I use that language in order to be understood and in order to be able to connect.”

“Are you suggesting that God is a metaphor for something else?” I ask. She seems unsure what I’m asking. “You say that you use the term to be understood, so is how you understand the term ‘God’ different from the way the members of your congregation might understand it?”

“Yes. It’s possible that they may have an image of an anthropomorphic God or however they understand God to be. People have different experiences, different understandings, use different names. They may call the Divine the ‘Creator.’ And it takes time – depending on their practice; depending on their motivation – to further go beyond that if they wish.”

“Is there something you personally identify as ‘Divine’?”

“Everything.”

“That’s a good Zen answer,” I say chuckling.

“Because it is,” she insists. “I cannot separate what is sacred from what is ordinary or what is the physical from the essential.”

We talk about the functions of Zen and Christianity. She tells me that the intent of Zen practice is assist one encounter one’s true or essential nature. When I ask about the purpose of Christianity, she tells me, “More and more, I think it is to truly understand the example and the teachings of Jesus outside institutional interpretations. I see Jesus as a wisdom teacher. And to me, I won’t say it is the invitation to ‘love your enemies,’ but the invitation to know what it is to truly love. That to me is so profound and demanding.”

She doesn’t have a congregation as such but receives frequent invitations to speak at churches. Just before our conversation, she had given the Ash Wednesday homily at the Stanford Memorial Church.

“Because it was around Ash Wednesday, one draws on the scriptures or the readings in terms of developing one’s message. But my goal both with my Christian colleagues or members of a Christian church and my Zen students is for me to be able to share with them my understanding and realization of what Ultimate Reality is. It is to live a life that honors the sacredness in one another, honors the essential nature I see in them. That’s what I try to do when I preach and when I give teishos.”

I ask if there is much difference between preaching and giving Zen teishos.

“It depends on the context. If it’s a very Christian – like over at Stanford, it’s an ecumenical service – I would lean more in citing scripture or staying within the Christian theme. But then I would still bring in concepts that are generally understood outside the Christian tradition. A Zen colleague of mine, for example, recognized I was coming from my experience in Zen. It’s just the words. But if I’m leading a Holy Week retreat over at Mercy Center, I know there will be some Christian attendees. So I will bring in both scripture and some koans maybe. I may refer to a Zen koan along with scripture. And then if it were like a Zen retreat, then I would just stick to koans or expounding on a Buddhist principle.”

“You said that Greg Mayers told you that in order to integrate the kensho insight into your life you needed to do koans. Do you believe that’s the case?”

“I do. For me, koans were the next step. My awakening experience came from my sitting practice and doing shikan taza. But koans helped me integrate that experience into daily life. They deepen my appreciation and my understanding. When I started with Mu, I could see how concepts arose, how my thinking came up, and I came to that space where everything just breaks down, falls away, and there’s nothing else. The sudden understanding or ah-ha! moment of the koan. And then each koan that I go through provides another lens or another perspective or another way of appreciating or expanding that awakening experience. For me the practice of koans is not just a question of getting through each koan. When I quote/unquote ‘get’ the koan, I sit with it. I marinate in it. I see how, ‘Okay, what does it mean?’ And I sit with it for at least another week or two before I move on and sit with another.”

She has a group of students with whom she meets online and at retreats facilitated at the Mercy Center,  all of whom work with koans. “It has to be koan work not just sitting.”

“So if they weren’t interested in doing koan work, you wouldn’t be a good fit for them? There are, for example, some Soto people who are hostile to the idea of working with koans.”

“I’m more in the Rinzai School because I have experienced and seen the growth I’ve had as a practitioner through koan study.”

“People engaged in Soto practice will sometimes argue that koan work simply creates a ‘gaining’ mind.”

“Well, I see koans more like a tool. You know? It’s another way of experiencing. It’s another way of breaking habits of perceiving or thinking or experiencing . There’s something about koans for me that when one quote/unquote gets it, or gains it – whatever language one wants to use – the fact is it opens. It’s a paradox. One may be trying to work to get it, but when it finally opens, you’re, ‘Oh, wow!’ You realize that there was nothing to gain. And so they say, ‘There is no achievement. There’s nothing to gain.’ And yet it requires effort as well. It requires dedication; it requires discipline. It even requires a desire or a motivation to gain. That’s just the paradox of the practice.”

“What do we mean by ‘transmission’?” I ask. “When we talk, for example, about you receiving transmission from Father Greg, what is it that’s transmitted?”

“Well, my experience with Father Greg when he made me his Dharma heir, it really got to a point where we recognized that his mind and my mind were . . . We were of one mind.”

“Do you mean you felt you perceived or understood or intuited things as he did?”

“Yes. Him and others. When I hear about the old Zen masters whether through koans stories, it’s like, ‘Yes! Yes!’ Or realizing through the koans, ‘Oh, yeah! I know what that person meant when he talked about that.’”

“The koan tradition doesn’t really date back all that far in the history of Buddhism,” I point out. “The stories themselves are Chinese, not Indian, and the actual practice as we’re familiar with it only goes back about 900 years or so to Japan. And yet we’ve got these transmission documents which go all the way back to the Buddha himself who passed something onto Mahakasyapa who passed it onto Ananda who passed it onto somebody else, and eventually it wound its way to Greg Mayers who passed it onto you. How realistic is that?”

“The term ‘passing on,’ for me, is a misnomer. Because there’s nothing to pass on. There really is nothing. I think for me it’s more of a recognition. Like, let’s say, when the Buddha twirled that flower and Mahakasyapa smiled. It was like he exactly saw what the Buddha saw. He saw or realized he was seeing the same thing.”

“Are you suggesting there has been a consistency of perception – a uniformity of perception – over these 2600 years?”

“The same level of realization? I don’t think so. I think over the centuries there has been in some cases a watered-down transmission. Even if we go back to Joshu. Did he really have a Dharma heir? I mean, I think his standards were so high that he would not just make someone a Dharma heir. So I think it really depends on the teacher. In my case, I think about it. I have five students; one of them has received transmission in the Soto Zen. And when I think, ‘Will I have a Dharma heir?’ The person would have to be outstanding, even better, exceeding me.”

“Since the Meiji era, it has been a matter of Soto policy that awakening – kensho – isn’t a requirement for transmission.”

“Yes. Which to me is sad. Japanese priests who have temples in Japan, they may inherit the practice but have not necessarily had a realization about their essential natures. And realizing or experiencing one’s essential nature can be just a glimpse. It’s a lifelong, daily, moment to moment practice. For me, when I had that experience at the Mercy Center, that was when I felt that the real work began. That’s when the hard work began.”

As our conversation draws to a close, we talk about the special focus that the Metropolitan Community Church has working with LGBTQ individuals. Given the intolerance still prevalent in certain Christian communities, I understand the importance of a denomination which specifically addresses this matter. But I have also recently encountered LGBTQ Zen chat groups. I ask Alice how important these are for Zen practitioners who may not identify with normative culture.

“For me,” she tells me, “Zen is a practice that encourages a smashing, a letting go of concepts of how things should be. So I would say, it would be a very attractive place for people who feel they don’t belong anywhere else.”

“That’s my question. If that’s something Zen practices provides as a matter of course, then is there a reason why, within that practice, there still need to be opportunities for people who don’t necessarily identify, for example, as heteronormative to come together?”

“From the practice itself and from an essential point of view there really are no distinctions. And yet we are expressions, unique expressions of Essential Nature. And in our uniqueness there are feelings of wanting to belong, feelings of wanting to be understood, feelings of wanting to be on the same wavelength. This is something that one desires. So for me, yes, I would feel very comfortable being part of – I may not necessarily seek it – but I would be comfortable being part of an LBGTQ group because there were be certain . . . either from language, from engagement certain things that would require less explanation. That’s one. Secondly, there is a sense of safety and comfort. A feeling of belonging. As a person of color, I feel more comfortable being with other people of color. There’s a level of understanding of the pressure we go through, the discrimination. At the same time, there are certain values that we share that don’t have to be constantly verbally articulated. There’s an intuitive understanding.”

She goes onto say, “There’s a sense of freedom that comes from the practice of Zen. There’s a sense of a lack of fear.”

“Freedom from?”

“From expectations. In other words, I can truly be myself in the unique creation that I am. So, in other words, both the essential and the formal come together. Being able to live my life that way is so liberating! It means I am able to fully accept who I am and others as well. And with that, I believe, comes true understanding, compassion, and kindness towards the other. I don’t want to use the word ‘love,’ because – you know – it’s overused. But at least in terms of one’s behavior, a true embrace of the other.”

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[1] The number of “Christian Zen teachers” has began significant. James Ford provides a partial list on his “Monkey Mind” blog: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2022/10/christian-zen-teachers-a-list-in-progress.html