In the early morning hours of the last day of 2013, fire monk Myogen Steve Stücky left this world for the great beyond.
Read more about Myogen’s life here.
I was tremendously fortunate to spend time with Myogen during the research and writing of Fire Monks. He was warm and encouraging from the first time we spoke. He was patient and curious and engaged my questions thoughtfully and openly. I remember sitting in the abbot’s cabin at Tassajara going over the proposal before I had a contract with Penguin Press for the book. He wasn’t sure about the title “fire monks”–none of the five Zen priests featured in the book were particularly enthused with it. He suggested “Sitting with Fire” instead, after the blog started during the fire. The phrase “fire monks,” he told me, “characterizes us in a particular way that none of us feel. We’re monks, not fire monks.”
Myogen didn’t insist on his view—I kept the title I believed best–but he always told me what he thought then let me make my own decisions. He also told me (and I quote in the book), “I realized a long time ago I can’t convince anyone of anything.” But Myogen convinced me every time I was in his presence, by being who he was and thoroughly investigating his own mind and experience, that this Zen practice I love is a life-affirming way to live.
In the fall of 2011, I spent three months practicing with Myogen at Tassajara, the Zen monastery I wrote about in Fire Monks that he played a crucial part in sparing from the Basin Complex fire. We had an exchange during that practice period, during a ceremony in the zendo in which each student asks a question of the teacher.
I said, “I’ve been carrying this sword around for a long time. Would you take it for me?”
Myogen paused, then replied, “I can hold it for you for a while.”
I held out my imaginary sword and placed it on the ground for him, then bowed and went back to my seat.
People asked me later what my question meant. What was this sword I was carrying? Most simply, it was the sharp edge of judgement, used to cut down everything in its path. Judgement of myself, but also of others.
Tassajara, as it was meant to do, had softened my edges. I didn’t want to carry a sword anymore, yet I didn’t want to leave it around for someone else to use either. Completely wholeheartedly, without even knowing what he was signing up for, Myogen agreed to hold the sword for me.
I was unable to visit Myogen after he got sick and announced his terminal diagnosis in October, though I wanted to. I wanted to tell him I was ready to take that sword back. He had taught me by example how to use it not for judgement but for discernment, which can look like judgement but is something different. Myogen didn’t blame the firefighters for leaving Tassajara during the fire–he didn’t judge or begrudge them. He clarified for himself what he needed to do and then did it. That’s discernment. That’s wisdom. That was Myogen’s teaching.
Myogen wasn’t just a fire monk. As he himself said, he was also an earth monk, a water monk, an air monk, and a plain old monk, sitting down every day and vowing to wake up. He bravely protected life when a wildfire threatened in 2008, and he bravely let it go when pancreatic cancer came to claim him. He will be missed like the last of a rare breed.
There can only ever be one Myogen, yet it doesn’t feel right to end there. The Myogen we knew and loved endures after the last breath, in our remembrance, in connection, in love.
I sat with Myogen’s body today at his home, grateful for the chance to see him again and say goodbye. Friends, students, colleagues and family members wandered in and out, scattering flowers and shedding tears over the body. The cancer had diminished Myogen severly in size–he was tall and strong and vigorous just a few months ago–but to me he looked radiant, uncontained. He died with a wonderful slight smile on his face. Myogen’s son James described it beautifully: “almost a secret smile as if he had confirmed something he had long suspected and it filled him with happiness and love and peace.”
As is traditional for Zen adepts, Myogen composed a death poem which was on display next to his body. The phrase I remember best is apropos and went something like this:
this breath of mine, is also your breath, my darling
Goodbye, dear Myogen. Thank you. Thank you for your songs and teaching and laughter. For the ferocity of your vow. For the sharp blade of your kindness.
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