Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey and Robert Aitken’s Mu Koan
Fran Miller, Ph.D. ©
To get to Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Abbey, you drive south from Portland on Highway 217 and make a right onto 99 West, follow 99 past Newberg until you get to the little town of Lafayette – you make a right turn there and follow the road straight ahead. (In recent times the route has changed.) It’s a small monastery, with several inviting new wooden buildings, spread out around a pond, and nestled among the trees in open and vast rolling hills.
I knew about Abbot Bernard McVeigh from some Catholic contacts. In 1987, I started to go regularly to the Abbey to mass and to meet with Bernard as we called him. He mentored young Catholic contemplatives. He had started a group at the Abbey that sat in meditation in Buddhist form on the First Saturday of the month. He encouraged me to join the group. Leonard Marcel is a psychiatrist here in Portland who has a Buddhist group in Lake Oswego. Back then he was helping with the organization of the First Saturday group. (Its now called Seven Thunders and I was there at the meeting that voted to incorporate and name the group.) I asked Leonard to show me the procedures so I visited him in Lake Oswego. He patiently showed me meditation postures, and described the schedule. There were – five – 25 minute sittings, each with a five minute walk in between, from 9:00 to 11:30. Then a short mass, communion, and a brown bag lunch. In those days there were another two sittings in the afternoon – that made seven sittings. In Buddhist terminology, a day of sittings like that is called a zazenkai. I actually didn’t realize what a big step I was taking, and that sitting and practicing in this way was such a gigantic step and huge challenge. That was the procedure, and I just did it.
So I would go to First Saturdays and then on some occasions I would meet with Father Bernard. We developed a close relationship, like I did with Robert Aitken a few years later. He became a spiritual father figure for me guiding me with wisdom and kindness. He and Robert Aitken were the two spiritual fathers and guides for me that encouraged and mentored my spiritual growth.
After two years, I met with Bernard and told him that I was thinking of participating in a Buddhist group. Would that be OK? After some discussion, he gave me his blessing. I started at Dharma Rain Zen Center, and after a year there, I went again to Father Bernard and said I was eligible to take the precepts, and would that be OK? We discussed that and then he gave me his approval. After my second year at DRZC, I met with him again and said I would like to find a Buddhist teacher to pursue Buddhist study and formal training. We discussed three options for Buddhist teachers. He recommended Robert Aitken. They had a history together as he had asked Robert Aitken to mentor the First Saturday group when it first began.
I didn’t think about this at the time, but I remember this with sadness, as it led to the separation that was later to minimize our contact. I had the extremely unique experience that Bernard McVeigh, a Catholic Abbot, had literally given me his blessing three times to study and train in Zen Buddhist practice, and he had also provided the name of the Buddhist teacher that I was to know and revere for the next 19 years.
After his approval, I reflected on exactly how I was going to approach Robert Aitken who lived in Hawaii He had founded the Maui Zendo and the Honolulu Diamond Sangha. I decided to buy his most recent book, recent at that time (He has written about 13 books.) — The Gateless Barrier, an advanced book about Koans taken from the koan compilation, Wumenkan. After I bought the book, I placed it on my nightstand.
That night I had a dream. I dreamt that I was climbing up a mountain by myself. There wasn’t much of a path and I was trying to find my way through overgrowth and brambles. Wild animals were roaming nearby. I finally got to a clearing where there was a dark cabin-like small building. When I approached it, I saw the door was wide open. I looked inside. There was a wide open space like a dojo. A man stood at the other side. I could barely make him out. I stepped in and bowed with my arms at my side, like you do in a dojo. (That was interesting in hindsight because later I observed that Robert Aitken often called a zendo, a dojo.)
I woke up and was shocked! I picked up the book, The Gateless Barrier, and started reading Chapter 1. I got to page 11. I was shocked again. This is what I read:
Wu-men unpacks Chau-Chou’s “Mu” for us most compassionately in his comments giving us one of the few expositions in classic Zen literature of the actual process of zazen up to and including realization. Phrase by phrase it opens the Way. “For the practice of Zen,” Wu-men begins, “it is imperative that you pass through the barrier set up by the Ancestral Teachers.” Then Robert Aitken writes, “The oldest meaning of “barrier” in English , and in Chinese and Japanese as well, is ‘checkpoint at a frontier.’ There is only an imaginary mark on the earth to distinguish, say the United States from Canada, yet our two countries have placed checkpoints along its length.” Then he said, “There is no line in your essential nature to distinguish insight from ignorance, but in Zen Buddhist practice someone in a little house by the road will say, ‘Let me see your credentials. How do you stand with yourself? How do you stand with the world?’ You present yourself and are told, ‘Okay, you may pass.’ or ‘No, you may not pass.’” The Gateless Barrier, p. 11.
Robert Aitken goes on to say: “The barrier is an archetypal element in human growth—an obstacle to be surmounted by heroes and heroines from time immemorial. It is said that Bodhidharma, the revered founder of Zen in China, faced the wall of his cave in zazen for the last nine years of his life, though he had long ago found that wall , that barrier, to be altogether transparent. For his part, the Buddha saw through his barrier when he happened to glance up and notice the morning star. Down through the ages there have been countless Buddhas whose barrier turned out to be wide open after all.” Robert aitken states: “You too face that barrier. Confirm it as your own.”
I was so shocked, I immediately telephoned Robert Aitken. I didn’t tell him about the dream and the passage until years later. But he agreed to be my teacher. In Zen practice in order to work individually with a teacher there are requirements to the agreement. Robert Aitken called them zazen, dokusan, seshin, and samu — zazen-meditation, dokusan-formal regular meeting with the teacher, sesshin-retreat, and samu-work practice.
It is worthwhile to think of our own personal growth. How have I grown and improved myself in recent years? How have I developed personally? What do I want to learn? How can I go about learning it? How can I continue to grow and develop in the future? What are my special interests and skills? How can I develop myself and make use of my gifts in my life ahead?
It is interesting as a therapist, that many people come to therapy to work on psychological issues, but as I point out in the first article that I send to clients when they enter therapy, you can work on psychological growth, but there is a whole other level of development that you can enter into, if you are drawn or have curiosity. You can open yourself to spiritual teachings and let them guide you into a whole other level of development.
Like in Robert Aitken’s writing in The Gateless Barrier, we need to realize that there is a difference between insight and ignorance. If we find ourselves at a checkpoint and meet someone in a little house by the road, we need the courage to ask, “How do I stand with myself? How do I stand with the world?” And the courage to hear an answer, “OK you may pass, or “No, you may not pass.” Robert Aitken wrote: “The barrier is an archetypal element in human growth—an obstacle to be surmounted by heroes and heroines from time immemorial. You, too, face that barrier.” He said, “Confirm it as your own.
October, 2025