More on the death of Whalen

Here's the obit for Philip Whalen from today's S.F. Chronicle. They were on the ball.

Yesterday morning in the zendo is when I heard of this for the first time. The doshi announced Whalen's coma and immenent death after the sitting period began, asking us to "sit with his passing." That certainly got my mind off my back for once. And we finished with a couple of special chants and invocations.

Then this morning Whalen's picture was on the altar, along with his name and dates. His zen name was "zenshin," which I'm not sure what it means, but I'll find out sometime. It's probably in some book I have at home.

He has to be one of the last original Beat Generation figures. To change the subject slightly, Joey Bishop is the last surviving member of the Rat Pack -- Sinatra, Martin, Davis and Lawford all having died in the last fifteen years. For the last five years I've been writing a novel called Make Nice in which I make liberal fictionalized use of Bishop, renaming him and using him as a character in a book about the world in 1960. Now I find out someone is coming out this fall with a biography of Joey Bishop. Man, I wish I had finished that novel a couple of years ago. But I won't even finish the first draft until at least the end of this year -- and that's working on it every chance I get.