IN MEMORIAM

Garry Gelade

(1946 -2020)

Senior dharma teacher and leading light of the Zen Centre and the Buddhist Society in London, Dr. Garry Gelade died on Sunday, July 5th, 2020 at the age of 74. For those friends and students who knew him, his unexpected death is a great sadness. He will long be missed and his swift departure from this life represents an enormous loss to the entire Buddhist community that he supported with unflagging devotion for over forty-five years. For those who didn’t know him, he left a fine legacy of written articles and talks on the Buddha dharma. Yet above all he had a profound impact through his teaching and personal example on the hearts of so many people who have been inspired to follow and continue on the Buddha’s path because of him.

Garry had a brilliant mind and a deep, wide-ranging fund of knowledge,

as well as an acerbic, often rapier-like wit. He liked to say that contemporary society has replaced the rationalist philosopher Renée Descartes’s famous dictum, Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am) with Costco Ergo Sum (I shop therefore I am). He was also very down to earth and balanced his sharp observations on daily life and the pretensions of spiritual seekers with a gentle, compassionate side. Nonetheless he was a ferocious guardian of the true dharma. He would occasionally attend talks by celebrity guests at the Buddhist Society. If he heard a speaker wax lyrical on the magic of meditation or suggest a rapid route to enlightenment, he would quietly raise his hand and say, “I don’t quite understand.” If the illustrious speaker fell into the trap of then adding a long-winded explanation, he (or she) would swiftly meet their match. On the other hand Garry’s deadpan responses to ego-driven questions from genuine students managed to be both kind and hilarious and were often accompanied by a twinkle in his eye.

Garry studied psychology and statistics at Cambridge where he helped to found the Cambridge Buddhist Society and then took his doctorate in Experimental Psychology at Nottingham University. He then engaged in research at Oxford. He became Secretary of the Oxford University Buddhist Society in the 1970s. Some of his original research papers on memory and attention have become part of the A level psychology curriculum. Eventually he became a respected consultant providing statistical analysis for large organisations such as Lloyds Bank and Chelsea F.C. As a young man growing up in the heady days of 1960s, he played the guitar and experimented with LSD and various forms of Eastern mysticism before coming to Zen, but he always applied a rigorous scientific method to his investigations. One of these studies was a psychological experiment into telepathy. It concluded that conscious attempts at telepathy showed scant evidence of natural links between sender and receiver, but there was a definite unconscious correlation. In other words the receiver more often than not “knew” when he had received a genuine message.

In 1972, while he was still at Oxford, Garry first encountered Master Daiyu Myokyo, the Austrian geologist Dr. Irmgard Schloegl who once taught at Imperial College in London but had recently returned from her 12 years of training in Rinzai Zen Buddhism at Daitoko-ji temple in Japan. Ven. Myokyo-ni, as she was known to her students, had the distinction of being one of the first and only female Westerners to receive inka, the formal recognition in the Rinzai Zen tradition of the deepest spiritual realisation with the consequent right to represent and teach in the Rinzai tradition. Garry immediately took her as his spiritual mentor and became her life-long student. Over time he became a trustee and co-director of the Zen Centre as well as a regular dharma teacher known for his strict, no-nonsense style. He was on the Zen Gateway Board of Advisors and a popular speaker at seminars, Zen retreats, and the Buddhist Society Summer School.

Garry would occasionally tell the story of his first five-day meditation retreat. Soon after it ended, Ven Myokyo-ni asked him to account for himself and scrutinized him while he tried mightily to come up with the appropriate words. Finally he gave up and just shrugged. “Five days in silent meditation? Surely something changed in you!” she exclaimed. Suddenly the words emerged from his mouth unbidden: “Well, before the retreat I would drop my trousers on the floor at night and get into bed. After the retreat I found myself folding them neatly on the back of a chair.” Myokyo-ni smiled broadly, well pleased with this answer. The first slim ray of light had emerged from an opening heart. After many years of cultivation it would one day glow and radiate its warmth on a continual basis.

Garry gave his last dharma talk via Zoom for a Zen Centre weekend retreat in May just a few short weeks before his death. Nothing seemed amiss. Garry always spoke well and from the heart about Buddhism and Zen practice and he had polished his delivery over the years, but listeners that night would remark on how deeply moving a talk this was. He had not been well for some time but very few people realised that he was suffering from late stage lung cancer. The hospital asked him to sign a routine permission form for them to carry out any life-extending operations that might be warranted under the circumstances. Garry refused. Death in the Zen tradition is described as a process of going into transformation. He was prepared for it and went elegantly and most likely in full awareness into that good night. Goodbye Garry. We’ll always remember you fondly. You’ve been a wonderful example to us all.

Michael Haggiag