Review of HANK HEALS: A NOVEL OF MIRACLES by David Guy

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Hank Heals: A Novel of Miracles (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2022) is David Guys follow up to Jake Fades: A Novel of Impermanence (2008). This latest novel continues the story of Zen teacher Jake’s successor, Hank. The story opens two years after Jake’s death, with Hank now situated in Durham, North Carolina and doing his best to build a sangha. Fortunately, where Hank is short on students he is long on patience, consistently performing the duties of a Zen teacher, even if he is the only practitioner at the zendo. One day while having coffee with an old flame named Julie, Hank learns of her recent breast cancer diagnosis and feels compelled to extend compassion to her for healing. This compulsion manifests in the form of Hank touching Julie’s affected breast. After this encounter, Julie is miraculously healed, and she becomes his first serious student at the zendo. As word of Julie’s healing spreads, the number of students at the zendo begins to increase, and so do the requests for Hank’s healing touch.

Guy continues with his humorous, down to earth characterizations in this sequel, and readers of both novels are rewarded with a maturing protagonist who is at a loss for explanation of his healing abilities. It is Hank’s need to understand his healing powers that drives the plot. Sure that his sensei Jake would have known something about healing, Hank’s first instinct was to search for an explanation from his Buddhist practice. “There are stories that the Buddha had extraordinary powers, stories about various practitioners through the years, events which can’t be explained. I hadn’t heard of many healings. . . All I’ve got is zazen” he said (p. 14). Unfortunately, the metaphor of the Buddha as a physician and the Buddhadharma as medicine is applicable to metaphysical healing but did not to Hank’s situation.

As the story continues, Hank describes his healing experiences accompanied by a feeling of energy in his hands that is similar to the energy he feels when he makes the dharmadhatu-mudra (hokkai-join) while sitting zazen. And while the feeling of energy was always there for Hank when he touched people to offer healing, the recipients of the touch were not always cured. Based on this description I searched for instances of physical healing in Buddhism that might involve some form of physical touch. There are, in fact, stories of the Buddha healing physical ailments in the Theravdin Vinaya (in the Mahāvagga Bhesajjakkhandhako: The Medicine Khandhaka is a story of the Buddha healing Suppiyā the female lay follower, Mv.6.23.3) and in the Suttas (the story of the Buddha and Sona’s leg pain is found in the Sona Sutta, SN 35.87), but there is no touching involved in the healing. Rather, healing seems to come from being in the presence of the Buddha. And there are supposedly several stories in various story collections of Japanese Zen masters physically healing blindness or sick children, but the healing seems to be based on some form of non-physical energy transference. None of the Buddhist stories involved the laying on of hands as depicted in stories of Jesus’ miracles, such as the healing of the leper (Matthew 8:2-3).

Despite the fact that Hank’s healing hands do not always cure physical ailments, his reputation as a healer grows. Julie not only garners more Zen students for Hank, she also urges him to perform healing work for people in the local community. Soon Hank finds himself immersed in a life of zen cushions and Virgin of Guadalupe candles as he develops a reputation amongst the local Hispanic cohort in his neighborhood. Eventually, his daily routine begins at the zendo and then moves to Julie’s house for a full morning of laying of hands on the mostly Latino people lined up outside the make-shift ‘clinic.’ Hank wonders if his work with the Hispanic community is more a manifestation of their devotion to the Virgin than any healing ability he may have. In his downtime, he considers concepts of faith in both Buddhism and Catholicism as a possible clue to his newfound vocation.

Hank’s new friend Padre Roberto acts as a guide to the faith that Hank sees in the Catholics who come to him for healing. In a conversation about the Catholic faith of Latinos from Mexico, Padre Roberto states:

“Those people don’t worry about Catholic theology. What they have is an utter faith that whatever happens, God is with them. The Virgin cradles them in her arms. In that way they don’t care. They’ve given up completely.” [Hank thinks in response] It was the way we were supposed to give ourselves up in Zen. These people just did it (p. 140).

Later, when Hank recounted the conversation to Julie, he notes his fascination by the devotion the Mexicans have to their Virgin of Guadalupe. Julie responds that Hank seemed devoted to Zen practice. Hank agrees and notes how his teacher Jake was utterly devoted to Zen practice, “through and through” (p. 141). “Attention heals everything, Jake used to say” (p. 168). Still, Hank seems hung up on the idea that the Latinos are devoted to a person, or rather the image of that person.

Julie recontextualizes Hank’s hangup and suggests that the image “represents a value. That maternal spirit. Compassion and love” (p. 141). This leads Hank to think about chanting the Metta Sutra: “Even as a mother protects with her life/ Her child, her only child,/ So with boundless heart/ Should one cherish all living beings.”

Even with this comparison, Hank responds to Julie: “It has a warmth Zen doesn’t” (p. 141). It is this lingering question about devotion and faith, moreso than Hank’s ability to heal, that pushes Hank further on his journey and carries the rest of the story.

Guy’s deft characterization of Hank is at the heart of what makes this novel a work of Buddhist fiction and religious syncretism. The writing style is playful yet thoughtful, and the plot arc of this sequel manages to incorporate the enduring influence of a dead Zen teacher that pushes protagonist Hank to new, rather complex experiences of interconnectedness. In all, Hank Heals is a story of ambiguity that renders comfort from uncertainty through the efficacy of surrender.