Night Boat

by Alan Spence

  May I be bold enough to make a suggestion? he said at last, and he bowed deep, uncertain.

  Of course, I said.

  He hesitated, then came out with it in a rush.

  Perhaps we could call the cat Joshu.

  I laughed so loudly, a sudden percussive bark, the cat squirmed free and ran away.

  That’s a very good idea, I said. Joshu it is.

  He smiled and nodded, and I saw again how gaunt he was, and I felt a huge gratitude towards him for this life he had chosen.

  These koans are not easy, I said. Have you heard of master Ta-hui?

  He shook his head. No.

  Ta-hui lived a long time ago, I said. Hundreds of years. But he knew the importance of the koan. He said quiet sitting on its own is lifeless and empty. It’s mere escapism, hiding from reality.

  Teki bowed, looked solemn, receiving my instruction.

  He said the words life and death should be written on your forehead.

  Teki touched his own forehead with his fingertips.

  He said you should feel as if you owe a huge amount of money to someone and he is right outside, hammering on your door, demanding payment NOW!

  He jumped, startled, and I told him more of what Ta-hui had taught.

  Meditate with your head on fire, with urgency. But don’t be in too much of a hurry.

  It’s like a musician tuning the strings of a koto or a samisen. Not too tight but not too slack.

  Or it’s like looking after a cow. (Or a cat, I added.) Don’t neglect it, but don’t fuss over it too much.

  I left another silence, let some time pass.

  Do you understand? I asked after a while.

  Teki kneeled and bowed, pressing his head to the old worn tatami.

  Ta-hui taught that we all have the Buddha-mind, I said. We just have to realise it.

  The cat reappeared in the doorway, inquisitive.

  Come in, I said. You’re safe enough here. And I held up my hands to show they were empty. No sword.

  The ceremony was concocted to coincide with a feast day that fell on the anniversary of the death of my first teacher Tanrei Soden. The connection was spurious – the old man had taught me for no time at all before sending me away. But he had shaved my head and given me the name Ekaku. So for that much I was grateful, and for the abbot at Seiken-ji it was as good an excuse as any.

  The formalities were basic, minimal. The chanting of a sutra, the handing over of an embroidered robe which I wore over my old moth-eaten jacket, a few formulaic exchanges and vows, and I was installed as abbot of the wonderful ruin of Shoin-ji. I made my way back with the robe stuffed into my pack along with a little hand-bell, an iron incense-holder and a bundle of good quality pine incense sticks, each one good for two hours of zazen, and a precious tattered copy of the Blue Cliff Record restored to our library.

  Word gradually spread that I had returned, and little by little there were offers of help. A carpenter from the village, or a passing monk from Seiken-ji, would pitch in with a few hours’ work. A hole in the roof would be repaired, a blackened tatami mat replaced, a torn shoji screen papered over. The place was far from wind-and-water tight, and when it rained I still wore my straw hat and wooden sandals indoors. But I reclaimed a small room, set back from the main courtyard, and with the repairs it stayed comparatively dry. At night I still sat trussed up in the palanquin, grappling with the koans, their poison fangs and talons.

  In another dream or vision my father came to me. He draped the embroidered robe over my shoulders, then he handed me a scroll with dense black calligraphy on it, a message I couldn’t read.

  When I climbed out of the palanquin at first light and straightened out my aching limbs, the old servant Shichibei was standing outside, waiting. Without one word being spoken, I knew my father had passed over.

  Again I sat in meditation, saw my father’s face, contorted in a grimace of pain, the corners of his mouth drawn down like a demon-mask. Then I felt my own face twist into the same expression, and the pain tore at my heart and I called out. The pain subsided and my features realigned, and I stared out with all the grim seriousness of the Bodhidharma confronting the void. I saw the calligraphy my father had given me in the dream, and it came into focus, the single character shi.

  Death.

  I found my father’s old brush and inkstone that I’d made my own, took them from their wrapping of oiled cloth. I wet the stone, softened the tip of the brush with my teeth. I unrolled a single sheet of rough paper, weighed it down with stones at each corner to hold it in place. Then I wrote the character, filled the whole page with it, the lines thick and dense, and underneath I made an inscription in smaller letters, like a haiku.

  DEATH

  a one-word

  koan

  When I’d come here to Shoin-ji I had resolved to endure it as long as my father was on earth. Now I was free to go my own way. I could go back to the hermitage at Mount Iwataki, I could make another pilgrimage, find another spot.

  I unrolled a second piece of paper, held it down with stones.

  Again I took up my father’s brush.

  Teki and Kakuzaemon stood watching, anxious. The cat passed by, not caring.

  Mind empty, I wrote a tanka.

  Good and bad, both

  fade away to nothing.

  Here now in this place

  no need to go seeking

  another mountain.

  I held up the scroll and read out the poem. The young man laughed then stopped himself, bowed. The old man cackled, shook his head and wiped his eyes, shouted out.

  Ha!

  FIVE

  HIDDEN-IN-WHITENESS

  B

  asho had written that days and months were travellers on eternity’s road, and travellers too were the passing years. How long had I been at Shoin-ji? Years passed by, wind-blown clouds.

  My regime of long hours seated in zazen through the night, propped up, staring down the darkness and the vicious koans, had to be balanced by days of walking in the hills around Hara, great Fuji in the background, changeless, ever changing, always different, always the same. I would still walk miles to hear some discourse on the Dharma, listen to an illuminating talk, take part in a memorial ceremony or a recitation of the sutras.

  Young Teki usually came with me on these trips, eager to help me, to beg for alms and forage for food. He also thought he might protect me from bandits and brigands.

  What would they steal? I asked him. This old begging bowl? The dust from my feet? Or would they try to squeeze the enlightenment out of me and run away with it?

  They might harm you, he said, so earnestly I felt my hard old heart soften, and I fell to thinking about Ganto, murdered by robbers in his own temple, letting out his great death-roar.

  How to understand birth and death? I said to Teki. Everything changes, everything dies. At your final moment, what will you say?

  He had no idea how to answer.

  Very well, I said. There’s a wonderful tanka poem by Daito.

  When you see with the ear

  And hear with the eye

  There is no doubt –

  The way the rain drips

  From the eaves, just so.

  Meditate on this, I said, and we walked on in silence. Our way took us along a narrow trail, and I recalled old Shoju challenging my own realisation, battering away at my consciousness. He had grabbed me and shouted into my face, so close I smelled his rank breath, felt the spray of his spit.

  Where did Nansen go when he died?

  And now, right here, years later, striding along this narrow path, my own disciple trailing in my wake, I stepped into a deeper understanding of it. I saw with the ears and heard with the eyes, the way Shoju had done.

  I stopped so abruptly young Teki stumbled into me and started to apologise. But I startled him by beating the ground with my staff and shouting out, ecstatic.

  Where did Nansen go? Where indeed? Where do any of us go? We’re all here!

&
nbsp; Teki stared at me, dazed and uncomprehending as I roared with laughter, beat the ground again.

  Here! I shouted. Here!

  In spite of my obvious craziness, and the nonsense I spewed out by way of teaching, because of my craziness and the nonsense I spewed out, my reputation grew. Individually, and in groups of two or three, monks would make their way to Shoin-ji, or stop off on their way along the Tokaido, in the hope of sitting at my feet to receive instruction.

  At first I was gracious and welcomed them all. It was good that the old place was beginning to live again. There was still much work to be done by way of repair; it was still dilapidated, and there was never enough food to go round. But the visiting monks understood all this. They came for the teaching, and nothing else. I repeated to them the name I had adopted on my arrival.

  I am Hunger-and-Cold, I said. The Master of Poverty-Temple. Welcome.

  I gave lectures to small groups. Breaking Through Form, and Precious Lessons of the Zen School. I instructed them in zazen and in koan practice. One or two showed a flair for calligraphy, and I gave them verses to copy out, tried to instil in them the sense of discipline and freedom, both essential.

  Then one morning I emerged from my quarters after a long meditation, blinked my eyes in the dawn light, and blinked them again, not sure if what I was seeing was real or imagined.

  I looked again and there they sat, twenty monks – I counted them – seated on the ground in two rows. I counted them again. Twenty monks.

  Who are you? I asked, with a certain gruffness. Where have you come from?

  We are monks from Rinzai temples throughout Japan, said one of them, seated in the middle of the front row. We met in Myoshin-ji where we heard tales of your teaching. We want to stay here and study with you.

  He bowed where he sat and touched his forehead to the cold ground, kept it there, and the others did the same.

  Twenty monks.

  Impossible! I shouted, and they tensed and straightened their backs but kept their eyes downcast as I continued ranting.

  Do you think this is a children’s school and you can all just crowd into the classroom? You think I can just teach a mob all at once? Or should I throw the teaching at you by the handful and see where it sticks?

  We are eager to learn from you, said the spokesman. We are willing to do whatever it takes.

  Well then, I said. My first instruction to you is to listen to what I am telling you. And what I am telling you is that this is impossible. You cannot stay here and I will not teach you.

  The spokesman motioned to the others to stand up, and he led them to the gate where they stopped and regrouped. He seemed to be discussing the matter with them, but he spoke in a low voice and they were too far away for me to hear.

  Did I not make myself clear? I shouted. You should leave.

  Once again they all bowed, but then they continued their conversation.

  Apart from anything else, I said, there is no food for you here. If you stay you will starve.

  We understand, said the spokesman, and he led them out through the gate and down into the village, a ragged pack, black-robed, straggling along the road.

  Old Kakuzaemon stuck his head out of the kitchen.

  Too many mouths to feed, he said. Just as well you sent them packing.

  But later, towards evening, they returned, each of them carrying a small quantity of food – a few vegetables, a cupful of rice.

  We begged from door to door, said the leader. There’s enough here for all of us, including you and the few resident monks and helpers.

  Locusts, said Kakuzaemon, reappearing from the kitchen. They’ve stripped the village bare, picked up every last grain of rice.

  But he supervised the delivery of the supplies into his kitchen.

  I said it would be inhospitable not to feed the visiting monks. They had come a long way, and now they had provided their own food. But that would be an end of it. They would leave after they had eaten. Once more they all bowed, heads bobbing.

  The dining room was packed, and as usual we sat in silence, broken only by Kakuzaemon crashing around, dishing out the food, from time to time cursing under his breath.

  I ate a meagre amount, even less than usual, not wishing to take what the monks had begged for themselves. But I thanked them and took my leave, wishing them a safe return to Kyoto, and I returned to my room, resumed my chanting and zazen, my study of the sutras.

  Next morning the twenty monks were seated once more on the ground in front of my quarters. They sat in their two rows, backs straight, awaiting instruction. This time I ignored them completely, walked straight past without saying a word.

  They stayed for three days and nights, eating only the food they had begged for themselves. I continued to ignore them, acted as if they did not exist. One or two of the younger ones looked as if they might keel over from sheer exhaustion.

  Eventually, on the fourth day, I stopped in front of the leader.

  Very well, I said. You have showed one-pointed determination, and at least that is a start. You are anxious to receive this poisonous teaching I dish out, so come to the meeting hall and I will deliver a Dharma lecture.

  They were overjoyed and piled into the hall. I gave a talk entitled Swampland Flowers, on the letters of Zen master Ta Hui.

  Ta Hui’s master had challenged him. This Dharma is everywhere equal without high or low. So why is Yun Chu Mountain high and Pao Fang Mountain low? Ta Hui answered, This Dharma is everywhere equal, without high or low.

  His teaching was for everyone, I said, monk and layman alike, without high or low.

  When I had finished my lecture, I bowed and left the hall, told Kakuzaemon to do what he could to give them one last mouthful of food before they left. He grumbled but managed to boil up some watery gruel, slop it into their bowls.

  We are grateful for this, said the leader, as we are for the teaching.

  One kind of slop followed by another, I said. Slurp it down before it gets cold.

  He thanked me again, then the monks lined up one last time and bowed in unison before heading back on the road.

  The next day the leader returned, alone.

  The group can manage without me, he said. I need more of that Dharma-gruel.

  His name was Gedatsu and I accepted him as my student.

  As the months passed by, there was a steady trickle of pilgrims making their way to Shoin-ji, seeking the place out, looking for instruction. A few tough monks were willing to stay, ready to endure the poverty and the regime. Our numbers grew from two, to six, to thirteen. The sleeping quarters were barely big enough, and the latest arrivals bedded down where they could find space in Hara, in any old hovel – a run-down hut, an abandoned cottage – anywhere with the semblance of a roof and walls. The food they managed to beg supplemented the meagre rations and old Kakuzaemon continued to grumble as he doled it out, greens and gruel, gruel and greens, picking out the maggots from the rancid shoyu.

  The monks endured. They sat in zazen, studied the scriptures, listened to my lectures, and one by one I battered them with koan practice. I led them through the winter retreat, drove them on.

  Not for the first time I questioned what I was doing. What could I give these monks? What did I know? Could I really teach them, the way Shoju had taught me? Zen corpses. The cold deepened. They sat like stone.

  By accepting them as disciples I was engaging with their karma, taking on their suffering as my own. Shoju had faced down wolves. Master Gudo had endured the bites of a thousand mosquitoes, draining his blood.

  Alone in my quarters, I longed for Mount Iwataki and the solitude I had known there. Snow fell and the wind blew it in through a gap in the shoji screen. I made a poem but didn’t write it down.

  How cold it is –

  I can’t even sweep

  the snow from the floor.

  I recalled another poem I had written, alone on a winter journey.

  If only I could

  make you hear it –<
br />
  sound of the snow falling

  late at night,

  the old temple

  deep in the forest.

  I addressed the words to myself, and suddenly I revisited the satori, relived it, entered into the stillness and silence at the heart of it. The snow fell endlessly, into itself.

  Emerging from an intensive sesshin, I gazed up at great Fuji, completely covered in snow, and above it the full moon, a shining pearl. All my life I had looked at this mountain towering above Hara, above the world of things. I had seen it erupt and burn, throw rock and smoke and fire into the air, and yet it remained, changed but unchanging. Now as I gazed up at it once more I felt an identification, I felt myself expand into its whiteness, felt it in the depths of my own heart.

  I had painted this mountain a thousand times, in a thousand different aspects. I had inscribed the paintings with poems.

  Miss Fuji,

  Cast aside your hazy robe

  And show me your snowy skin.

  I laughed now when I remembered the poem, the audacity of it. How young I was when I wrote it! That old rascal Bao had encouraged me. The mountain hidden in mist, clearing to reveal its true form, pure whiteness. Like Dogen’s poem, white heron in the snow, hidden but still itself. Still itself.

  I understood with sudden and absolute clarity what I had to do.

  I had been the child Iwajiro, and the monk Ekaku. Renewal was constant, and now another cycle was about to begin. I would take a new name, accepting the role of master. I would call myself Hakuin, Hidden-in-Whiteness.

  When the old priest had shaved my head and named me Ekaku, I had chanted it out loud a hundred and eight times. Now I did the same with this new name I had chosen.

  Hakuin. Hakuin.

  Hidden-in-Whiteness.

  Hakuin.

  I inhabited the name, stepped into it.