by Alan Spence
She poured more boiling water onto the leaves, this time didn’t bother with the twenty second wait.
Drink, she said, and I did.
Ah!
I set down the bowl and nodded, content.
Plain and simple, she said.
Plain and simple.
Reading nothing into it.
Nothing.
She squinted at me, her old eyes crinkling.
If I’d thought for a moment . . .
What?
She beckoned me to follow her behind the screen where she picked up an iron fire-poker, turned and brandished it in my face.
This is what I dish out to those curs and mongrels who come sniffing around for a whiff of Zen.
She prodded me in the chest with the poker.
A whack with this soon sends them packing.
I laughed and stepped back, bowed.
Thank you for the tea, I said.
After that I sang the old woman’s praises, told the young monks her understanding of Zen was profound.
But go to her for tea, I said, and nothing else. Otherwise . . .
The first monk to try his luck came back with a black eye.
She’s a monster, he said. She might have killed me.
She’s helping you die the Great Death, I said.
The second monk came back rubbing his shoulder.
All I did was quote Nansen when he said to Joshu, Everday life is the way.
You were stinking of Zen, I said, and she smelled it.
The third monk had a bruise on his arm from raising it to ward off the blow.
Don’t tell me, I said. You made some obscure remark about chanoyu and the Way of Tea.
I only quoted a haiku, he said, one I thought was apposite.
I shook my head.
You might as well have vomited in her kitchen.
And so it continued, as one after another they returned to Shoin-ji battered and shaken.
I turned the bowl, the way you do in chanoyu.
Foolish in the extreme.
I dropped the bowl and it smashed on the floor. Then I tried to make light of it, and said it was the bowl’s time to die.
You’d have been as well grabbing a sword and committing seppuku there and then.
I said her tea was a little bitter, too astringent. She drove me out with blows and told me never to return.
Quite right. You have to know when to discriminate and when to go beyond discrimination.
But . . .
Enough!
The tea was so strong I wondered out loud if the leaves had come from the plant that sprang from Bodhidharma’s eyelids when he threw them down after cutting them off. So he wouldn’t fall asleep in meditation.
You thought she wouldn’t know the story.
I suppose . . .
So you laboured it in the telling?
I . . .
Idiot! Have you ever been awake in meditation?
No answer.
Bodhidharma would cut off more than your eyelids if he heard you retching up his story undigested.
I didn’t say a word, but I sat staring at the old woman so long, waiting for her to do something, that I let my tea get cold.
Useless. The old woman’s fire-poker is her kyosaku, her wake-up stick. Perhaps I should get hold of one myself and crack a few heads with it.
Finally, after nine or ten monks had come home from the teashop battered and bruised, chastened, one young man came back to the temple unscathed and whistling an old folk song tunelessly to himself.
Well?
I was tired, he said, after an hour of reading scriptures. I just wanted tea, that was all.
Mindless, I said. You were lucky. The old woman must have been off guard. She should have split your skull with the poker, let in some light.
He looked startled, then grinned and bowed.
Nevertheless, he said.
Nevertheless.
And he went off whistling his tuneless tune like some happy Zen fool, showered with countless blessings.
TWO GOOD MONKS
I
had vowed to save them all. I had taught so many, and so many had taught me. I had dished out my poison to them – monks and lay followers alike, men and women, old and young – and I’d taken it when they threw it back at me. For the lay followers I’d used whatever would work – chanting the Nembutsu or the Daimoku or invoking Kannon Bodhisattva, hard-to-pass koans, tales of cause and effect. Expedient means. For the monks it was more rigorous, zazen and koan study leading to kensho. And after awakening, working to help others, to continue transmitting the Dharma. Old Shoju Rojin had told me how difficult it would be to produce even two good monks to succeed me. I could see his weathered face, his burning eyes, as he said it to me on the day I left his hermitage.
Produce two real successors and the old winds of Zen will blow once more throughout the land.
But the years had passed, each one quicker than the one before. One day you are forty. You blink and you are fifty. It was hard to believe, but now sixty was on the horizon, and these Dharma-heirs had still not appeared.
The autumn wind blew and I wrote a tanka.
Last quarter, last third
of my life?
Either way, it’s autumn,
shading, shading
into winter.
Then they both came, my two good monks, and they could not have been more different, one from the other.
Torei Enji was still in his twenties, and I knew him by reputation before he arrived at Shoin-ji, gaunt and sickly, bright-eyed. When I saw him I said, You really should have come here sooner.
He bowed and placed a gift before me, wrapped in rice paper. To my delight it was a package of konpeito sugared sweets.
You have clearly done research into the weaknesses of this old reprobrate, I said.
Like me, Torei had been awakened to the Zen quest at the age of eight. (I still remembered that cantankerous old monk and his hellfire sermon terrifying the life out of me, scaring me awake.) Torei had become a monk at that tender age, and at sixteen he had left his home temple and travelled as far as Kyushu in search of enlightenment. He received training from Rinzai masters and experienced a kind of satori. All this he told me on that first day over a bowl of tea and some of those delicious konpeito.
After your satori, I said. What then?
I continued the search, he said. Satori is just the beginning.
I wish there were more who realised that, I said.
At the age of twenty I returned to my home province of Omi. I entered into a solitary retreat and sat in zazen for many days and nights. I became so exhausted I could no longer sit up straight.
Zen sickness, I said. I know it well.
I became desolate, he said. I let out a great cry that I was useless and no longer had the strength to follow the Way. At that I fell over, but just before my head hit the ground I experienced an enlightenment and saw things clear.
Good, I said. And then?
Enlightenment was one thing, he said. Carrying it into everyday life was something else entirely.
This wisdom too is hard earned.
I heard of your teaching from other monks who had been here.
Tiger-fodder, I said. They lapped up my poisonous drool.
They said you were rigorous, and I confess it was fear that held me back.
Fear of what?
Of ending up totally humiliated, knocked to the ground and lying flat on my back.
That was how old Shoju taught me, I said. Knocked the stuffing out of me. So what do you think? Did it work?
He bowed, said, I’m here.
And still fearful?
A little.
Again I remembered that fierce old monk who had terrified me as a child. He had said the fear was a good place to start. My mother had consoled me, said perhaps a little fear could help us do the right thing.
A little, I said.
I’m afraid my health is still not good,
said Torei.
Many years ago, I said, I met an old sage who cured my Zen sickness.
How did he do that?
Like with like, I said. Hair of the dog. The cause of the sickness is also its cure. Zazen made you sick, zazen will cure you.
Torei bowed, touched his forehead to the floor.
I crunched another sweet between my teeth.
Torei came to me for instruction, hands folded, after many hours of zazen. I challenged him.
Suppose right now a great demon came up behind you and grabbed you in a tight grip. And the more you struggled the tighter he held. And suppose he carried you off and threw you into a blazing pit of fire. Right there and then, in that moment, would you have any way out?
He looked stunned, as if I had struck him a blow to the head.
Well? I said. Here and now. Is there any way out?
He sweated and shook, numbed, unable to move.
Too late, I said. You’re burned to a crisp.
He told me later he couldn’t even breathe. The universe itself felt cramped and small. The sun and moon were dark.
Every time I saw him, I asked again. Well? Do you have any way out?
He could say nothing, do nothing.
At least you’re not like some of these glib young fellows who come through the door, I told him. They throw off some facile answer to cover up their ignorance. Or they try to get away with a piece of third-rate theatre. They shout or stamp their feet. But they fool nobody. They’re bound for hell.
Now, I said. Do you have any way out?
I continued to challenge Torei, although his realisation was true, his understanding profound. I continued to challenge him because he was true. But he was not physically strong. I resolved to teach him naikan, the meditation imparted to me by the ancient Hakuyu in his cave outside Kyoto. Torei was immediately suspicious of the story.
This hermit was four hundred years old?
At least.
It’s a wondrous tale, he said.
Indeed.
And he lived by the Shirakawa River?
Yes.
We sat for a time, saying nothing, till I broke the silence.
You know the old story? Night Boat on the Shirakawa River?
I have heard it told, he said. The country bumpkin who boasts to his friends about his visit to Kyoto where he’d seen all the wonderful sights of the city. Someone asks him about the Shirakawa River . . .
Which in fact is nothing more than a small stream.
. . . and he replies that it was night-time when his boat sailed on the river, so he couldn’t get a clear view and was unable to describe it.
In other words, his visit to Kyoto was a fabrication, a tale he’d made up.
Idle talk.
Expedient means.
He smiled and bowed deep.
I would be honoured to learn this introspective meditation from you.
I began to teach Torei techniques for improving his health. I told him to imagine as he sat there that a little piece of pure soft butter, sweet and fragrant, the size of a duck egg, had been placed on top of his head, on the crown chakra, the sahasrara. He sat, back straight, breathing deep, eyes closed, visualising.
Slowly the butter begins to melt and flow down over your head, soothing and calming. It continues to flow down, moistening, inside and out. You feel the sensation, exquisite, as it reaches your neck and shoulders, your chest and your spine, your lungs and all your internal organs, your stomach, your bowels . . .
At this, Torei seemed to flinch a moment, then he steadied himself and I continued.
It flows on down through the hips and the lower body, carrying with it all the accumulated ailments, the aches and pains, down through the legs to the soles of the feet, permeating your whole being with warmth. It is as if you are seated up to the navel in a hot bath suffused with fragrant healing herbs. Balance is restored. Body and mind are in harmony.
The ten thousand things are filled
With the vital energy of creation.
After the session Torei breathed deeply and thanked me. He had experienced a sense of wellbeing he hadn’t known since he was a child. He smiled.
You know my mother was skilled in the use of herbs. So I had no difficulty in imagining those scents.
And the pure butter?
I can still smell it.
This is the power of the mind.
For a time Torei’s health seemed to improve, but his body had been badly damaged by the long periods of austerity he’d undergone. In particular he suffered from a weakness in the stomach and bowels. (I had noticed that flinch during his meditation). At times he would have to interrupt his zazen and rush to the privy – a miserable ramshackle structure built over four holes dug in the ground. The atmosphere in there was rank at the best of times, but when Torei was caught short it was downright fetid. The other monks could be ruthless.
So that’s what they mean by stinking of Zen.
I’d heard Torei could sit for hours at a stretch.
Did you say sit?
Smells like hell.
And stinks to high heaven.
He bore it well, but he grew weaker again. He needed rest, and some of those herbal potions his mother could brew, and better food than the Shoin-ji staple of greens, greens and more greens. Reluctantly he decided to go home for a while, to Omi, in the hope that he might regain his strength. I was sorry to see him go, and I prayed he would return.
The second of my two good monks was called Eboku. He was almost thirty and he came from Shimotsuke, north of Edo. Another student, Shojo Domu, arrived at the same time, riding on the back of an ox, and when Eboku saw him he threw back his head and laughed.
This layman has outdone all the monks in the temple, he said. He’s caught the bull and he’s riding it home!
So you know Kakuan’s Ten Bulls, I said.
I’ve seen the pictures, said Eboku. I’ve read the words.
And where does that leave you? I asked. Have you set out on the way?
I’d like to leap to the end of the journey, he said, and live in the world.
Barefoot and bare-chested, I mix with ordinary folk.
Clothes ragged and dusty, I dwell in endless bliss.
It’s easy to recite the verses, I said. But where are you? Are you searching for the bull? Have you discovered its footprints? Have you seen it for yourself?
You tell me, he said. You’re the one doing the teaching.
And who are you? What do you have to say?
I am known as Eboku, he said, from Shimotsuke. I like to draw and paint, and to drink sake.
And without those, I asked, what then?
You tell me, he said again.
Layman Domu had dismounted from his ox, the actual flesh-and-blood animal, and tethered it to a post. It raised its head and bellowed long and loud.
Such wisdom, said Eboku, and he bowed to the beast, to its great understanding of Zen.
After that Eboku came to Shoin-ji whenever I was giving a talk and at no other time. He would sit at the back of the room, listening attentively, and leave as soon as I had finished speaking. Once I sent one of the younger monks to run after him and bring him back.
Tell him I want to speak to him, I said.
The young monk returned, flushed and out of breath.
Well? I said.
He refused to come, said the young monk.
Why?
He said you might want to speak to him, but he didn’t want to speak to you.
I laughed.
What am I to do with this vagabond?
He refused to live in the temple compound, preferring to stay on his own in a simple hut some miles away. The communal life held no appeal for him. But in time he began to linger after the meetings. He still didn’t speak, but I could tell by his manner that he would not object if I spoke to him. I had heard he was fond of playing Go and I invited him to join me in a game. He said he would beat me easily. I showed him a drawing I had done of mys
elf as Hotei, playing the game. In my drawing there were no counters and no markings on the board, and Hotei was grinning, contented. Eboku laughed and sat down opposite me, cross-legged, ready to start.
He played with a skill and calculation that seemed at odds with the freedom and spontaneity he valued so highly. For my part I went at it with gusto, banging down the counters without pausing to think or keep track of the moves. My tactic unnerved him and I won as many games as I lost. He bowed, realising my teaching had begun.
I took my brush and inkstone and added a little haiku to the scroll, by way of commentary.
No markings on the board
His hand is empty
He makes his move.
By this time Torei had returned to Shoin-ji, a little healthier but still not strong. I was overjoyed to see him and immediately appointed him my personal attendant, to the great disgust of some of the older monks.
He’s hardly been here five minutes.
Just in the door.
And there he is at the master’s right hand.
He’s no more than a boy.
No substance.
A puff of wind would blow him away.
He still stinks of Zen.
And the rest.
I overheard a group of them, outside my room, cutting Torei to shreds with their words. Without opening the shoji screen I roared at them, told them they were the ones who stank, and I knew who they were, and if they continued their niggling and backbiting I would personally kick their arses and send the lot of them packing. They fell silent, moved away from my door.
The same useless halfwits were even more critical of Eboku.
He’s a layabout and a drunkard.
The bastard son of some nobleman in Edo.
That would make sense.
The arrogance of the man.
I doubt he’s read a scripture in his life.
Wouldn’t recognise a koan if it headbutted him in the face.
This time I didn’t even waste words on them. I just let out a roar that scattered them. Next time I saw them, huddled outside the meditation hall, I glared at them, gave them my tiger-eye, and that dispersed them even more quickly.