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David Joseph Coady: Eulogy for A Zen Man

David Joseph Coady: Eulogy for A Zen Man

Last updated on: October 29, 2011 at 2:45 pm by James Ford

David Joseph Coady: Eulogy for A Zen Man 2011-10-29T14:45:00-07:00 James Ford

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David Joseph Coady

Seizan Yushin, Blue Mountain, Courageous Spirit

A Eulogy

James Myoun Ford, Osho

Delivered on the

29th October 2011

at the

United First Parish Church (Unitarian)

The Church of the Presidents

Quincy, Massachusetts

Francis, Frank Coady was born in Dorchester, on the 24th of July, 1935. His family was all immigrant Irish. His father worked for the post office, his mom did domestic work. While in High School Frank originally trained to do offset printing, but instead found himself working at pretty much everything from a chocolate factory to Boston’s docks to factories.

Sandra, Sandy, was also from recent Irish immigrant stock, born in Roxbury on the 21st of March, 1940. Twelve years of parochial school. Worked for a while in cafeterias, then as a receptionist and then doing relocation services.

Now you might ask where would two nice Irish kids meet living in the greater Boston area? Well, somewhere along the line Sandy decided to join a bugle and drum corp. I’m don’t think she was thinking of meeting someone in particular in doing this. Just one of those things kids did.

Well, it turned out Frank decided to change his routines, just to get out of the rut he was in at the time, and went to a rehearsal of that bugle and drum group. Right off, he spotted Sandy and was, how shall I say, smitten. But he had a concern. He asked his friend “That girl over in the corner. How old is she?” He had trouble believing she really was over fourteen, but, my goodness, she was so pretty. She was.

Through the mysterious currents of karma, they both ended up in the same circle of friends. However, while smitten, and seriously so, Frank felt asking Sandy out was over reaching. Figured she could do much better. Probably true. But, showing what I think may be a family trait, when after a year or so Frank didn’t make the move, Sandy decided to take matters in her own hands. She asked Frank out on a date.

They were going to a dance, but they didn’t make it. Instead, they ended up at a little Chinese restaurant on route nine talking well into the night. They kept company for another year, year and a half, and then married.

And the kids came along. When talking with them, Frank said, we had Irish triplets. As I was long told my brother and I were Irish twins, I understood. It meant the kids were born close after each other.

The oldest was Michael, born on the 9th of April, 1962. He would attend U Mass, Dartmouth, earning a degree in electrical engineering. Michael would marry the delightful Claudia, a Swiss national, and the two of them would live their lives all around the world. More important, perhaps, they presented Sandy & Frank with their grandchildren, Rebecca and Alex. Their part of the family currently lives in France.

Stephen followed on the 25th of June, 1963. He would earn his degree in Political Science and German from U Mass, Boston. He’s just left Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science where he as assistant director for human resources. There seems to be a general consensus in the family that he has been lucky beyond deserving himself in finding his spouse James.

The baby of the triplets was David. He was born on the 17th of July, 1965. He came in at eight pounds and thirteen ounces. Sandy offered, “That’s why we didn’t have any more.” Sandy said David was the sweetest of her babies, quiet and cute.

He would grow up with the wildest imagination. Frank described seeing his boy out in the backyard playing baseball by himself, alternating as the pitcher, the catcher, swinging the bat, as an outfielder trying to catch the ball, and as the engaged and rapt crowd in the bleachers. He loved playing actual sports as well, baseball in particular, but also hockey.

In the eighth grade he broke away from the tradition of parochial school. His friends asked, “Did you murder a priest or something?” He would be the only one of the kids not to go on to be an altar boy, even when Stephen pointed out there was money to be made serving at weddings.

By adolescence he had some strong friendship that would last for his life. Mike Coughlin and Chris Pinney came to mind immediately as I spoke with the family. Some friends from High School offered how funny David was. Smart and fast, with a sharp sense of irony that would never escape him. His friend Chris’s car once broke down in a storm, and so Chris pushed it along while David steered. Chris was cursing his fate pushing along soaking in the rain when David leaned out and said as sweetly as possible, “I’m parched. Want to stop at the 7/11?”

In his High School years he continued to love sports. Played tennis, ran track and cross-country.

Among his summer jobs, David did trail maintanence for the Trustees of Reservations. He particularly loved being out in nature. After High School among his jobs was one picking up and driving elderly people. It was observed a lot of the older ladies liked to flirt with him. And he enjoyed reciprocating. Sweet. Gentle. Compassionate.

David attended U Mass, Dartmouth studying engineering. He thought he was supposed to. But he didn’t enjoy it. Eventually he switched to the Amherst campus and studied philosophy. Restless, he left without a degree.

Looking for a shakeup he joined Stephen who was doing a year abroad in Germany. They traveled together for about seven weeks. Germany, yes, but also France, Paris was a highlight. And most of the time, four weeks, they spent in the ancestral lands, where they loved the pubs, but it was the land itself that pulled at some ancestral chord resonant in their souls. David would return again later for one more visit.

A small story from the time: They wandered into a pub where an American film crew had set up. As they made their way to the bar a regular yelled out to the crew that they owed the regulars a round. They were ignored, so the locals simply walked out, taking David & Stephen with them to the only other pub in the village where the youngsters joined in making jokes about the rude Americans.

Back in the Boston area David kicked around from one job to another. He briefly worked security at the Parker House hotel, the same institution where many years ago the young Ho Chi Minh worked as a bus boy.

Then Mike Coughlin went out to California. He called David and told him about this strange and wonderful place called Green Gulch Zen Farm and suggested he might like it there. David hesitated, a shadow he dealt with, along with the specter of depression. But not long. He decided to go for it. As his mom commented, a courageous move.

And it was a good move. David had always been a seeker. He explored Wicca. Liked crystals. Kind of born for California. Now he could easily laugh about the more woowoo aspects of his quest, but he was also a real seeker. And it was time to leave the old behind and find something new and maybe deeper for him. The only sadness was that he couldn’t leave the depression behind in New England as he left for California.

He found Zen his spiritual practice. In his own way. He took to zazen, Zen’s primary discipline. Absolutely. And sat serious retreats and joined in the regular life of a Zen community. But, I did mention in his own way. Famously, David liked to sing as he went about chores, not so common when doing tasks in Zen centers. He spent seven years within the training complex of the San Francisco Zen Center, fat Green Gulch in Marin County, at Tassajara the rural retreat center inland from Big Sur, and at the City Center in San Francisco. I think he most loved Tassajara.

During these years exploring the Buddha dharma and the ways of Zen practice he found a home and many friends. Among his friends who’ve shared remembrances, the author and Zen teacher Brad Warner writes about David. He commented how he, Brad, was pretty sure they’d first met at the City Center, but it was at Tassaraja when Brad, like David before him, was walking along and in violation of the general practice was singing, he claims quietly, Bob Dylan’s Odds and Ends. David heard and joined in with the chorus, ending with “lost time will not be found again.” They were instant life friends.

David loved music and David loved his Zen life.

He also had a lifelong love of animals, and there are any number of anecdotes about times with Ginger, Tassajara’s dog, or Boomer the rural center’s cat.

There are many stories about David. Many. Here are just a few brief anecdotes, peeks into David’s heart and the hearts of his friends.

Shoho Kuebast wrote of their time together at Green Gulch. In particular Shoho recalled how there was a large propane tank, which as he described it, while originally beige, it slowly “grew green and grey through layers of moss and dirt.” It was also a bit of a hazard and needed to be cleaned. Shoho says he resented the task of cleaning it off and making an eyesore all that more prominent as it sat nestled in a very lovely location. He described how David joined him and assumed an air of complete seriousness, throwing himself into the project with such focus that it reduced Shoho to helpless laughter. David’s style, something of David’s Zen.

Shinzan Trevor wrote, “I remember running into him on a trail in the mountains above Tassajara. I suggested that we hike together, as we had before, but he politely and sheepishly declined. He said he was having such a fine time alone in the forest, looking out for birds and lizards, enjoying the stunning scenery, and just being alone in that amazing wilderness.”

Shinzan also recalled how at other times David tried to knock him off his concentration, whether studying or working. David used various tools for this task that he seemed to find very important. Most notably at a particularly inappropriate moment David walked by Shinzan who was engaged in something that seemed important, and without even looking in his direction, how do I say this in a religious service, made an ancient hand signal in Shinzan’s direction. This would become a regular feature of their encounters. As Shinzan writes, “It got to a point where we wouldn’t even have to flip the bird; we’d just look at each other and laugh and shake our heads at our stupid, stupid joke.”

The intimacy of people engaged in a serious project, one that demands everything. Including laughter. Of course. Let me tell you, if its real Zen, there’s lots of laughter involved. And laughter trailed after David a very long tail.

Amy Parker writes of when they were doans together, “we squabbled like children and shared our experiences with depression and self-worth.” She added, “He could come up behind me when I was in a funk, say something brief and pungent and make me roll on the floor laughing.” She recalled, “Streaks of dust on the back of my robes from laughter.” And then “Getting frowned at by the Ino next to the samovar for laughing so hard during silence–laughing.” Amy concluded, “So much laughing.”

Another touch of David’s Zen: Renshin Judy Bunce shared her thought of David, addressed directly to him. “I think, of course, of our time at Tassajara, of working the compost together — or, rather, of your working the compost while I stood around and talked.”

He was the real deal. He really showed up. And he brought it all into that Zen life.

Who knows how long David would have stayed at Tassajara. The terrible fire that nearly destroyed the rural center interrupted their rhythms in a harsh and ubrupt way, and left many people questioning themselves and how the whole matter had been handled, and, and what to do next.

David moved to the City Center, and it became clear he needed to go to a next step, to have a skill that translated outside the cloister. This is a perennial problem for Zen practice in the west, where there are few opportunities to spend one’s whole life within the center doing the work in that monastic way. He undertook the training to become a Pharmacy Technician, and did well, and even received his certification.

But the demons in his heart wouldn’t allow him to see the successes.

Depression is a terrible thing.

And, sadly, sadly for him, sadly for all whose lives his life had touched, he ended it.

Of course the measure of a life is the full course of it. And David left in his wake many friendships and joy and so much laughter.

I asked his mom and dad and his brother Stephen for words that caught him. The first was kind. The second was gentle. Sweet. The easiest person to be with. David knew other people were in the room. He was someone to confide in. Funny, very funny. You didn’t want to play trivial pursuit with him. Well read. Smart. Sweet. He loved poetry. He loved music. Philosophy. An earnest seeker. A seeker.

For me the image of David that lives inside me was something a young woman Emma, perhaps, told of him. It’s back at Tassajara. She was hiking by a waterfall when she came upon David. He had his arms spread as wide as he could. And he was singing to the waterfall.

A Zen life.

A whole life.

Too short, no doubt. Too short.

But a blessing to all he met from beginning to end.

Would that that could be said for any of us.

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