Remembering Ruth
Before the internet, those of us who produced shows and taught workshops would march about town, staple guns in hand, and ruthlessly plaster our posters over other people’s posters, collectively creating paper-swathed phone poles like Christo sculptures. One morning, as I progressed with my flyers down Telegraph Avenue on my way to the Caffe Mediteraneum for a cappuccino (a relatively rare beverage in those days), I noticed a poster for a meditation retreat taught by Ruth Denison. I’d been initiated into Transcendental Meditation years earlier and had been dutifully reciting my secret mantra to myself, by myself, for twenty minutes every morning and every evening no matter the circumstances. And I had benefitted from the soothing effects of my practice. But having eschewed the TM lectures and classes, I longed for a living teacher who could guide me into deeper realms of meditative bliss. I signed up for Ruth’s two-week silent retreat, packed a bag with my zafu and shawl, and caught a ride with two complete strangers who were kind enough to let me join them on the ten-hour journey to Dhamma Dena, Ruth’s rustic retreat center in Joshua Tree, California.
It was in the concrete meditation hall surrounded by cacti at Dhamma Dena that I experienced my first dharma talk. and felt that blissful shock of hearing wisdom uttered aloud as if something I had yearned for all my life without knowing the nature of the longing was suddenly being served to me. Ruth, in her trademark full-length skirt that brushed her ankles, blouse with puff sleeves that reached her wrists, and a crocheted cap that covered her ears but revealed her thick fringe of graying blonde bangs (appearing asif she had just walked off the set of Heidi) was not one to mince her words. Her dharma talks went on and on, rambling from one subject to the next in an improvised journey of twists, turns and lengthy detours. With a pile of notes stacked before her on a small wooden table, she carried on, her passion for the dharma utterly contagious. For in the tradition of all good teachers, Ruth was a master of transmission. She had received teachings from the renowned Burmese Vipassana master U Ba Khin who recognized Ruth’s profound awakening and urged her to teach in the West. Off she went, guiding whoever showed up at her doorstep in U Ba Khin’s practice of sweeping the body with awareness one infinitesimal inch at a time. Ruth was one of the first women Buddhist teachers to offer the dharma in the West and women flocked to her retreat center to sit at her feet. Unlike all of the teachers I have studied with, including some of the greatest living Buddhist masters, Ruth insisted we move, refusing to abandon the body as the home of awareness. She led us in daily stretches, afternoon dances, and marches across the sandy desert in the frigid night air as she pounded her drum to keep our steps in unison. One night, she stopped mid-march.
“Look!” she commanded.
Free of the blinding light pollution that plagues more urban areas, the stars and planets shone forth in a dazzling multitude.
“Look!” Ruth repeated. “Now look at the one who is seeing!”
In that moment, my mind melted into a vast awareness that seemed to stretch boundlessly in all directions free of time and space and name. “Who is the one who is looking?” Ruth asked, her voice more a command than an inquiry. “See the one who is seeing!”
After a moment of silence, she beat the drum and we marched back in unison to the meditation hall for our final evening sit. I had seen the one who was seeing. I had glimpsed the self that is non-self and free of impermanence, free of suffering. I had entered the stream. For many years, I made bi-annual visits to Dhamma Dena for two-week silent retreats. One night, perhaps at my fourth retreat, a deep fear caught me in its grip. I dutifully followed the sensations of panic as they crawled through my belly and tightened my chest and constricted my throat. Unable to manage the anxiety, I crawled out of my bunk and in my pajamas made my way to Ruth’s trailer. I knocked tentatively, fearful of waking her but even more terrified of facing my terror alone. Ruth, in her nightgown and nightcap, her hair in braids, invited me in. Not just into her trailer but into her bed.
I realize this sounds scandalous.
How can a dharma teacher coax a student into her bed and have the exchange be anything but… well… suspect?
Yet there was nothing untoward about our moment together. Instead what unfolded was a marvel. Ruth, smelling of perfume and toothpaste, took me in as if my fear were nothing special, a simple human experience that revealed its insubstantial nature in the light of her unconditional acceptance.
“Dukkha,” she whispered in my ear and fed me a cookie.
She was utterly maternal in a way my own mother had failed to be. In a way she had not learned from U Ba Khin. She took me in. Just as I was. Broken. Frightened. Needy. And then, she sent me off. I felt as if my visit, rather than having been a burden to her, was instead the most enjoyable interruption of her sleep one could ever imagine. It was as if being with me had enlivened and comforted her in the same way as being with her had enlivened and comforted me. I have talked to many fellow students of Ruth’s and each of us has sheepishly confessed to being sure convinced we were her favorite. The remarkable truth is, each of us was her favorite. Not in the normal sense, which requires one person be favored over another, but in a truer sense as in the light of Ruth’s awareness, each of us was favored, (favor: the state of being approved or held in regard). Each of us was seen as the unique beings we were, genuinely loveable, genuinely deserving of comfort. And in that moment of encounter with Ruth’s buddhanature, we each relaxed into our own buddhanature; we each became wiser and more compassionate. Ruth adored the dharma and she adored us and it was this equation that made her one of the greatest Buddhist teachers in the West. She transmitted wisdom through an irrepressible love laced with a Germanic sternness and a rigorous adherence to the transmission of awakening. I truly believe I would not have succeeded in entering he stream of Buddhism without Ruth’s heroic care, without her insistence on breaking all the rules that might prevent her from teaching what she knew was true and doing so in her own original fashion. I also believe that Ruth in her lifetime did not receive the accolades, honors and support she was due. She may never be recognized as the phenomenal, awakened being she was, whose renegade nature forced her to abandon all but true original dharma. Yet for those hundreds and perhaps thousands of us who had the unparalleled good fortune of being her favorite student, we will forever carry the light of Ruth’s love and awakening in our hearts.