Q&A with Karen Maezen Miller
by Julie Honmei Snider

I sat down with Karen Maezen Miller, a sensei at the Hazy Moon and fellow sangha member, to discuss her book Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life. As an aspiring writer and junior Zen practitioner, I took the opportunity to ask her some questions about her book and her practice.

Is your book for everyone?

I didn’t write it with anyone particular in mind. It’s everyone’s story--the story that always leads to the Dharma. The things we pursue, what we achieve, the place we live always seems as though it’s not enough. It wasn’t until I came to inhabit my life as a wife, mother and homemaker that I saw the wisdom that was always available in taking care of one’s own home. In that way, the story is recognizable to women who are in a similar place. But the truth of it is the same for everyone. We all have to make ourselves at home where we are.

What was your motivation for writing it?

I was asked to write a book. I’m not sure if I was asked to write “this” book. I was asked to write about Zen in everyday life. When I was just beginning to figure out what to write, I was in Rohastu sesshin. Dogen’s lines came to me: “To study the Way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be enlightened by the 10,000 things.” The description suddenly resonated with aspects of my everyday life. I associated study of self with laundry, forgetting the self with the kitchen, the 10,000 things with the yard and saw how to organize the book to give Dogen's words fresh interpretation. Moments later in dokusan, Roshi asked if I was writing a book. I said yes.
 
What changes has the practice brought you? What improvements in your life?

I can’t respond as though it has been a linear process or list the differences as A, B and C. Everything has changed. What practice helps you do is accept the fact that everything changes. My practice is completely responsible for my being alive.

There is a sense of desperation that leads us to practice. Without the immediate balm of practice and its promise, desperation would have led me to self-destruction. When I began, I was a relatively young woman convinced I would never remarry, never have kids and never live in California. I used to jokingly say I would never go anywhere where there wasn’t valet parking. Now I find myself living in a totally opposite way than what I thought I required and who I thought I was.

Do you see things differently since writing your book?

Writing a book is a metaphor, "book" being a word for your life, the same way work or family or practice is a word for your life. The principal change in view is one turn: no longer viewing life as "mine." No longer trying to fabricate, to control, to do only those things I like or want and instead seeing that it is what it is. When you see your life as Dharma, you learn to do your work and set it down, and trust that whether people call it this or that, ugly or pretty, good or lousy, it will serve the Dharma.

What would you offer people who have read your book sincerely and find themselves in difficult situations?

A difficult situation is a wonderful thing. It is the pivot point where your eyes can open. Where you can find a teacher. Where you can find truth and take encouragement. You might really hear the Dharma for the first time. Then you know for yourself immediately what to do. I hope what’s clear in all I write is that only the practice transforms your life--not what you read, not a pithy phrase.

Do you think your book presents a fair picture of how it is without exploring the hard work of practice? Why do you sit if you can pay attention and change your perspective?

A book like this one can be a start for someone. Practice begins with the thought of enlightenment, the thought that there is an alternative to a life of unrelenting pain and darkness. I can’t change someone’s mind or drag them by the hair into the zendo. That’s not what we do. It doesn’t work.

The Tao Te Ching was my first pointer. It was poetry. It didn’t tell me how to cross my legs or what to do for how many minutes. We don’t know what will trigger a thought to begin practice, what propels and motivates. Only the individual can pick up a book, read it and take the next step. I wanted to speak to people where they are. I don’t need to speak to people in the zendo.

The greatest hour of need for me is when I feel I cannot possibly wash another dish or do another load. That’s where my practice matters. It has to work there.   

All the time people ask, “What’s the next step?” or “Can you write more about meditating?” Reading about it is not the same as practicing. I try to make clear how important formal practice is to me. You can try mindfulness when washing the dishes, but that’s not how it works. You need to sit on the cushion. Then you can practice at the sink.

Your book follows your discovery of the need for practice and your meeting with Maezumi Roshi. Then it moves on to your practice in your life now. Once you’ve started practicing then what? Is the Hazy Moon in your book?

After I met Maezumi, I began to picture how my life of practice would be. I imagined I would drop everything, live in a foreign country, in a monastery… I romanticized. That’s not how it went.

I once asked Maezumi “What do I do now?” There is an impulse to want to renounce everything. He responded, “I want you to practice with me and without me.” This was literal in that I did not live close by. But it also happened that his death was nearly imminent. It is a tricky thing, dependence on a teacher as though the teacher will give you something or change your life.

I couldn’t be a wife and mother today, I couldn’t walk the dog, rake leaves or make beds, except for the practice. What has always upheld the foundation of my relationship to Nyogen is our love of Maezumi, and our love of the Dharma, which was Roshi’s life.

Everyone has the opportunity and an invitation to come to the Hazy Moon, where they might meet a teacher. But as you know, that’s for the individual to do. There is a wide-open opportunity to practice with Nyogen. I remind myself of that all the time.

Are your relationships different with people who practice and people who don’t?

I don't see any difference. I just see people doing their best. Struggling. I see we’re all so much alike. It gives me great reassurance and reinforces oneness. Most of the time we think we are falling way short. Because of circumstances in my life, I spent a long time feeling I was inadequate to practice and that I would fail. I couldn’t be at the Zen Center enough, I didn’t spend enough time and I lived too far away. I apologized to Nyogen when I got pregnant because it would take me away from the center! Practice is not about manufacturing a life different from your own.

I have to make my home a place of living practice or I will do nothing but hurt others. At a Zen Center, protocol ensures you keep your hands to yourself and not bother others. But see how quickly you create havoc at home.

Once I realized the practice wasn’t a thing I did on certain days, in a certain place, in a certain way, I learned literally how to enter the monastery. That same turn is available to everyone everywhere.

There is a theme in your book about being grateful to your grandmothers and learning from their wisdom. Your grandmother died in pain and cynicism. What lesson is there in that? What does your book say about it and what do you say now after having written the book?

Until I began to live a life as ordinary as my grandmothers’ lives, I didn’t have any idea what selflessness was. I didn’t start out holding up ideas of grandmothers as saintly. I was inspired by the dedication [in our service at the Hazy Moon] “to all our female ancestors whose names have been lost or forgotten,” and by Nyogen’s insistence that we include them. I don’t say that line only for my Zen ancestors. Can we say that for all female ancestors?

Sometimes the title and dedication of a book come to me before the rest of the content does, with no idea what will appear after. I dedicated this book to all my female ancestors. Through the real stuff of life--breakfast, lunch, dinner, and household work--I came to appreciate not only grandmothers but the fact that our own Zen ancestry is a practice of household management. Community, administrative activities and samu (mindful housework) are not different from everyday family life.

I appreciate the faithfulness of grandmothers to do this work day after day, by their devotion and constancy in caring for others. You may not see this rich and ripe wisdom until you have been tenzo (cook) for 365 days a year for 60 years. That’s true practice whether it's called Zen or anything else.
It’s a powerful teaching to see what becomes of a life where no peace is found. My grandmother's life ended tragically. Her last words were, "Look who's here." When you strip away the cynical interpretation of the comment, you can see it as a perfect summation of our practice, to intimately experience ourselves and life as it is. My grandmother's last words were a wisdom-teaching left for all of us to hear.
 
What do you hope for with this book?

Nothing really. I wrote it because I was asked. It’s a valuable process for me. It is a teaching. It will find its own place and have its own purpose. I am ready to do whatever else appears.

What made you choose not to pursue a career? Did you move into writing right away? Why did you start? What did you want to say?

It’s just how it happened. I was a junior in high school when an English teacher pointed out I could write. I didn’t know before then. Professionally, I only wrote for others and never felt I had anything to say. And I didn’t!

I didn’t decide to be a stay-at home mother. Necessity showed me what needed to be done, not what I thought needed to be done. A tremendous benefit of practice is that you gain clarity. You always know what to do. The thing is, you've always known, but just run away from it.

I never envisioned a byline in my own name until Momma Zen. Since all I had to say was Dharma, attributable to anyone but me, I made a point of only publishing in my Dharma name. Even then I was only writing to get clarity on the experience I was having. We have difficulties with everything unless we practice with it. 

What do you hope for your daughter, as a mother with a practice?

Whether I like it or not Georgia is always demonstrating perfectly what it means to have a mother with a practice. I don’t have to harbor wishes for her. She has her own life and it is magnificent. What I need to deliver to her is my company.  No matter how her life goes, whether its called high or low or successful or not, I need to keep company with her. Increasingly that means silent company, without trying to steer or correct or divert.

The same way I’m not worried about my writing, I’m not worried about her.

What’s next?

No idea. I’m not in a hurry.

Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life is available now at Amazon.com

View the new trailer for the book.