Novice to Master

by Soko Morinaga

  For this reason, before entering the monastery, the novice lives the life of a young monk, a stage in which he must pass through many gates of self-denial. I do not mean denial of the original self. I mean, rather, facing head-on and acknowledging, no matter how bitter, the unripeness and the artificialities of the self in its existing circumstances—denial of the self in its present state and recognition of the dignity of the original self.

  The sixth ancient teacher of the Zen sect, Hui-neng, who lived from 638–713 C.E., came from Hsin-chou, in the south of China, a part of the country considered barbarous in those days. Hui-neng had lost his father when he was very young and supported his mother by gathering firewood in the forest and selling it in the town. One day when he was making his peddling rounds, Hui-neng happened upon a house where someone was chanting the Diamond Sutra. When Hui-neng heard the chanting, his mind suddenly opened, the aspiration for enlightenment arose within him, and it came to be that he climbed Yellow Plum Mountain to call on the fifth ancient teacher, Master Hung-jen.

  Hung-jen saw at a glance that this visitor, Hui-neng, was someone very remarkable. Yet when he heard that Huineng had come from Hsin-chou, in the south, he deliberately insulted him, asking, “How could a beast from Ling-nan expect to practice and become a buddha?”

  Hui-neng did not color or flinch, but replied boldly, “There may be a distinction in the way humans lead their lives in the north and in the south, but for essential buddha-nature, there is no distinction of north and south.”

  When Hung-jen heard this answer, he knew that Huineng would succeed him in the Dharma.

  Spiritually, we Zen monks are really descendants of the beasts of Ling-nan. Although we don Buddhist robes and live inside monasteries, we do not readily manage to shake off all our ornamentation and get beyond our easily injured impurities.

  Now let us talk a little bit about what kind of lifestyle young monks, as we have just described them, lead inside the monastery.

  routine in the monastery

  THE USUAL DAY begins at 3:00 A.M. with the sound of a ringing handbell and a voice shouting, “Kaijo!” (“Get up!”). The monks jump out of bed and pour from a small bamboo dipper into their palms the three scoops of water that they are allotted to rinse their mouths and wash their faces. They go to the toilet, put on their robes, and present themselves in the main Buddha hall.

  Each action of every person is orchestrated so that the group works together as a whole. When the gong sounds in the main hall signaling the monks to appear, the leader of the zendo—the hall where the monks eat, sleep and meditate—rings his small bell and everyone files out in silence. The morning sutra chanting in the main hall lasts about one hour.

  At four in the afternoon on the last day of the year, priests make a chanting round throughout the entire temple, beginning in the main Buddha hall and finishing in the kitchen, where the deva Idaten is enshrined; it is said that Idaten can circle the earth in a flash, and thus he is the god in charge of finding food for those in practice. Years ago, when I was just beginning to learn the sutras, I was first set to making this end-of-year round of chanting through the temple. Soon after I had finished, Zuigan Roshi, without warning, inquired, “With what mind did you chant those sutras?”

  I lost my bearings completely; I was at a loss for what to say that would please the roshi. Then, when I hastened to respond with a good Zen answer, “I chanted with nomind,” I got a sharp reprimand.

  “You fool. Why don’t you chant in gratitude: ‘Thank you for giving me this year to practice in peace’?”

  There was still another time when Roshi bellowed at me, “Your voice trembles because you are trying to be good at reading the sutras. Just chant the sutras with all your might.”

  Sutra-chanting is one activity that afforded me countless opportunities to meet my own mistaken notions head-on.

  After the morning chanting, the monks return to the zendo and the zazen period begins. At the clang of a special bell, they set out for sanzen, a private meeting with the teacher. One by one, they go in to encounter the roshi face to face. What takes place now is not a convivial meeting between equals but a very pointed question-and-answer session. Each monk has received from his teacher a koan, which he must answer at this private meeting. (A koan is a brief teaching taken from the words and actions of Shakyamuni Buddha and his successors in the Dharma and meant to stimulate awakening.) The monk must master the true meaning of the koan through earnest zazen, not mere cogitation.

  When the sanzen period is finished, it is breakfast time. For the first four years I lived in the monastery, the food we ate did not appear to be food at all; gradually the diet moved toward what we could call traditional. Even then our gruel consisted of round, unprocessed barley, not the pressuresteamed and dried barley usually used in cooking. Gruel is so much the standard morning fare in Zen monasteries that the very word for breakfast is derived from this dish.

  Regardless of how long unprocessed barley is boiled, it does not thicken the water, so that the end result amounts to nothing more than salt water in which grains of barley have settled at the bottom. Along with this gruel, for about three years, we were served nothing but two smelly, brackish slices of what were called “perpetual pickles.” We would carefully suck the saltiness out of those two pickles as we ate, or I should say drank, our three bowls of gruel.

  It is often said that Zen monks eat pickles without making a sound, but the truth is that the pickles that we have to chew aren’t crunchy! No matter how frugally and gingerly one licks at such a pickle to make it last, before you know it, the pickle has dissolved and slid down the throat.

  It is indeed the case, not only with eating pickles, but with every movement in the dining hall—raising and lowering the chopsticks, picking up and setting down one’s bowl, sipping on hot gruel—that absolutely no sound is allowed. Whispering being out of the question, all action is orchestrated with certain designated gestures and the sound of wooden clappers. The dining hall, along with the bath and the toilet, are known as the three halls of silence, where quiet is strictly enforced. It goes without saying, of course, that silence is always maintained in the meditation hall.

  All the fledgling monks reside together twenty-four hours a day, each in his assigned space of one tatami mat, in a hall with no partitions, so that there is practically no such thing as private time or private space. Consequently, the only occasion when one is completely alone is in the toilet, and so requiring the monk to maintain silence even there is probably the only way he can be prevailed upon to continue being mindful uninterruptedly.

  Bath day in a monastery occurs on every date of the month with a four or a nine. The monks not only take baths on this day but wash clothes, mend their robes and kimonos, and take care of any personal affairs that have arisen. At any rate they get a bath only once every five days.

  No matter who a person is, if one rises early and goes to bed late, doing zazen and manual labor day in and day out, the pleasure of stepping into a bath will be like an ascent to heaven. One’s spirits rise to exhilaration despite oneself. For this reason, the bath is one of the three halls of silence.

  But let us return to the dining hall. It is important that quiet be the rule here because regardless of how poor one’s food is, it is easy for a monk to allow his mind to wander. Indeed, I might even say that the poorer the fare, the more likely it is that the mind will wander.

  After breakfast, the monks clean inside and outside the dojo before setting out just after 7:00 A.M. on their begging rounds. Days for begging alternate with days on which the master gives a talk, so that if the talks are given on the second, the fifth, the seventh, and the tenth of the month, then the first, the third, the sixth, and the eighth will be begging days. As there are seven training halls in Kyoto, the schedule is set up so that monks from neighboring monasteries do not go out to beg on the same day.

  Year-round the mendicant monks weave their way through the city streets, their bare feet wrapped in str
aw sandals. They are not permitted to stand at the doorways of the houses they pass, but instead they form groups of three and walk single file, some thirty meters apart, chanting “Ho!” in loud voices as they move.

  The houses in Kyoto are narrow, deep, and close together, like a row of eels. I was taught by an elder monk that we should walk at a great enough distance apart from one another so that the lady of the house who is in the backyard hanging out clothes can hear the “Ho!” of the lead monk, wipe her wet hands, prepare some small change or some rice, and make it to the front door at least in time to catch the third monk in line.

  We are living now in a time of plenty, a time in which it is not difficult to accept money and goods from others. Almost all of the monks who went out to beg right after our defeat in the War, however, felt in their hearts a deep reluctance to engage in this practice. I, too, found it very hard to simply hold my head down and, without reserve, accept the small change held out to me.

  The red-light districts—euphemistically called the flower districts—were still in existence in those days, and one time, as we were begging in such an area, some loose coins were thrown down to us from a second-story window by a girl of the establishment and her customer. A monk who had only just graduated from the university and entered the monastery grabbed the change without thinking and made to throw it back. Upon returning to the temple, he received a sound scolding from the senior monk, who spelled out in no uncertain terms the twofold meaning of the practice of begging. On one hand, it is a practice of tolerance or patience for the monk; on the other hand, begging provides others with the opportunity to throw down their covetousness. In the practice of mendicancy, benefit for oneself and benefit for others function together as the two wheels of a cart, and the young monk was told that he had acted thoroughly without prudence.

  I overheard this monk being reprimanded, and the words touched me deeply. It occurred to me then that the “Ho!” we shouted while begging meant “Dharma” and that we were walking our course, spreading the Dharma throughout the world. I then proceeded to go begging with the notion that I was purifying the area as far as my “Ho!” would reach, as if I were a giant vacuum cleaner. One day when I was visiting Zuigan Roshi, I happened to express these sentiments—thereby earning for myself a thundering roar.

  “Fool!” he cried. “Don’t delude yourself. That ‘Ho!’ you’re shouting stands for the bowl you are carrying to receive the alms. Just become that bowl. Don’t worry about who is doing what for what reason or about what anyone is receiving or about anything else. Just go out begging without seeking anything, like flowing water, like a cloud blown by the wind.”

  It was thus that another of my silly notions met its demise. In the course of spiritual practice one is apt, from time to time, to get sidetracked down various lanes of warped and backward impressions.

  When the monks return from begging, after 10:00 A.M., it is time for lunch. This meal consists of barley-rice, miso soup with greens, and two pickles. Approximately one part rice is added to bind nine parts unprocessed barley. After the mixture is boiled to its softest possible consistency, it is mashed with a ladle so that the crushed barley becomes at least a bit sticky. Unmashed, the barley will remain crunchy and quite inedible. For supper, the leftovers from lunch are thrown together to form a kind of hodgepodge. When the monks eat too much barley rice at lunch, extra water must be added to the hodgepodge at supper, making for an especially watery concoction.

  Lunch is followed by a period of manual labor, called samu. Tasks might include working in the monastery vegetable garden, pruning shrubs and trees, pulling weeds, and splitting firewood. Work is given special emphasis in monastic life, and the monks are constantly cautioned not to consider the weight of a job in relative terms but to simply drop all analysis and apply themselves wholeheartedly to the task at hand.

  Pai-chang, who lived in ancient China from 720–814 C.E., is given credit for establishing the standard for regulations followed in Zen temples. This Master Pai-chang continued working even after he had reached the ripe old age of eighty. When his disciples, concerned about his health, hid their master’s tools, Pai-chang was forced to quit working. At the same time, however, he also quit eating. When his disciples begged him to take sustenance, he answered them with words that are now famous: “A day without work, a day without food.”

  Once when I told this story to a student he remarked, “I see. Those who don’t work shouldn’t eat. Right?”

  While the two statements, that of Pai-chang and of the student, may appear to be superficially similar, they are, in fact, completely different. The difference between facing someone else and saying, “Those who don’t work shouldn’t eat,” and saying of oneself, “If I don’t work, I don’t eat,” is the difference between heaven and earth. The former is a seed of aggression and dispute, while the latter is a precept rising from deep within oneself.

  After the work period and the “medicinal” supper of hodgepodge (the word for supper is literally written “medicine stone”), the monks enter the zendo and do zazen until 9:00 P.M. During this period, they have another sanzen encounter with the master. At 9:00 P.M., special sutras are read before “bedtime,” the literal meaning of which is “to lift the rules (for the day).” This does not mean, though, that when the sutra is finished and the lights go out, everyone goes right to sleep. Once the sutra is chanted, the monk in charge rings his bell, and the monks quickly take off their robes, take their bedding down from the shelf, and fall in an orderly line into bed— for the time being, that is.

  You may not have had a chance to see the inside of a zendo, but you can get the picture by imagining an army barracks. I have heard it said that when the Zen sect decided to build a zendo, they looked to army barracks for their example. There is a long row of tatami mats on each side of the hall, and each monk is allotted a single mat for doing zazen, sleeping, and otherwise conducting his life. The aisle between the two rows of mats is covered with Chinese-style tiles.

  Bedding consists of a single futon, which is folded in half and serves as both the mattress and the cover. This is referred to as an “oak leaf futon” because the monk fits inside the futon like the sweet-bean ricecake that is wrapped in a single oak leaf. The monk who is accustomed to such bedding can skillfully wrap himself in like a rolled sea tangle and be quite warm. At any rate, summer and winter, this one layer is the monk’s only bedding.

  Just as soon as the monk in charge of the zendo, carrying a stick known as a keisaku, has finished his inspection of the long rows of rolled sea tangle, the lights are switched off, and the senior monks then leave the zendo. This is the cue for the others to simultaneously get out of bed and back into their robes and, carrying their zazen mats under their arms, head outside to find a space under the eaves of the main hall or on a tombstone, each to his own choice, and do some nighttime sitting.

  I myself used to choose the tombstone with the highest base I could find for nighttime sitting. I had in all sincerity come up with the childish notion that perching atop a high stone—clearly a dangerous place to doze off—would prevent me from growing drowsy.

  Until nine o’clock everyone sits together in the zendo. Then, after the rules are lifted for the day, everyone voluntarily sits on his own. For the monk new to life in the dojo, customs of this sort are nothing but arduous. It gradually dawned on me, though, that the practice of nighttime sitting truly makes sense.

  Just as everyone is endowed with his own particular facial features, so is each person’s situation uniquely his own, making for a boundless variety of circumstances. The heart with which each one of us is born is a wonderful thing, but the aftereffects of accumulated experiences and knowledge vary with each person. For this reason, the time set up for individual sitting after the lights go out is needed.

  In order of their seniority, the monks return to the zendo to sleep, and this means that the most junior of the monks do not get to bed until around midnight. It follows, then, that even on regul
ar days, they only clock in about three hours of sleep. Weakling that I was, I always had the feeling of fainting rather than of falling asleep. What’s more, during the one week of the month devoted to intensive zazen, called sesshin, sleep is curtailed still further.

  To describe zendo customs in this way may paint the picture of an inordinately severe lifestyle, but during the period of life when one is most flush with energy and vigor, it is impossible to settle into quiet zazen practice if one sleeps whenever the urge to sleep hits and eats just because the urge has hit to eat. By the same token, following a plain vegetarian diet helps to still the mind to some degree and is, I believe, necessary.

  In the zendo lifestyle, private ownership is strictly limited. The monks carry out their lives in the barest necessities: loincloth, thin cotton undergarment, wide belt, unlined kimono, and light outer robe.

  Even in wintertime, there is no thicker or lined kimono. I myself never owned an undershirt until I reached my mid-thirties. There was slightly thicker cotton wear for winter, but still only the thin undergarment, unlined kimono, and robe, so that the only place on the body where the wind did not directly strike was around the middle where the belt was tied. It was as if we were living naked, with most of the body always exposed to the air. Because one feels the cold most acutely upon being rousted out of bed in the mornings, in the dead of winter, the monk hurriedly chills his body—because once the skin is thoroughly chilled, one hardly feels the cold. To do zazen in the winter, I found, is to intimately know the cold air, as it moves up through the sleeves to be slightly warmed by the body, then up from the chest, and out to the chin in a tepid flow.

  Regardless of the season or weather, the monks wear socks only for special ceremonies. Both the straps of the wooden thongs, which are made of braided bamboo bark, and the strings of the straw sandals rub and harden the skin on the feet, so that the hide on a monk’s instep is even thicker than the skin on another person’s heels.