by Alan Spence
He had brought a jar of soya beans from the kitchen and he took a handful, and held them out towards her.
How many beans am I holding?
By the time he had asked the question, there was no ghost there to answer it.
The young monk who had asked for more light went round the room serving tea. Suio looked up at me with an expression I had come to recognise, a look of exasperation and barely suppressed disdain.
You don’t approve of my poison tales of the beyond? I asked him.
Your poison’s diluted, he said. It’s sickly sweet, no more than an emetic.
Spew it up, I said.
Tales to frighten children, he said. As you were frightened.
My childhood name was Iwajiro, I said, quoting myself. And I was eight years old when I first entered at the gates of hell.
Thus have I heard, he said, also quoting. But perhaps you should keep the tales for your lay followers.
Perhaps you might do well to take heed of them yourself, I said. Even great masters have been known to fall into the abyss. A fox spirit once approached Master Po-Chang and told him his sad tale. He had once been a high-ranking Shinto priest, the abbot of a great temple. At that time he had been asked whether an enlightened man could fall into cause and effect. He had replied glibly, There can be no fall for such a being. And for this alone, for this alone, he was condemned to be reborn as a fox for five hundred lives.
Cause and effect, said Suio. In that case I’ll go to hell in my own way.
He finished the tea in his bowl, stood up and bowed, and left the room. I sensed that he was walking straight out the gate and into the night, putting some distance between us again.
Abbot Suio . . . I said.
I have written down these stories, said Torei. I will make fair copies and add them to the rest.
Yes, I said. Who knows? Perhaps they will frighten some grown-up children into wakefulness.
But when the others had gone, and I sat alone through the watches of the night, I felt Suio’s departure like a blow, a punch to the stomach.
I had to keep driving the older disciples. There were degrees of kensho and they had to keep going deeper, intensify the experience.
I had written a poem.
The sound of the rain on fallen leaves is an awakening.
But how can it compare to this richness –
The warm glow of sunset clouds
Over fields of yellow grain?
Ever deeper, till they died the Great Death, embraced post-satori practice.
With Suio gone, and Torei ploughing his own field, who would succeed me at Shoin-ji?
I called to mind the great Master Daito’s final words of instruction, before his passing.
After all my travels, many temples flourished, with splendid images of the Buddha, and great libraries of scriptures, some written in silver and gold. They have large congregations, monks who spend all day in meditation and reciting scripture, rigorously upholding the vows, eating only once a day, carrying out observances at appropriate times. But even so, even so, they do not have in their hearts the Sublime Way taught by the Buddha. When I’m gone not one of them will be my true descendant.
But if just one solitary individual, living and practising in the wilderness, under a thatched roof, subsisting on a handful of roots cooked up in an old pot, is focused utterly on understanding the self, then this is someone who meets me every day.
Would you dare look down on such a one?
Now, work on this.
Work on this.
RYUTAKU-JI
T
ime did not just rush past, it actually accelerated. Year by year, it moved ever faster. A child’s toy, a cord fastened to the top of a pole, its other end tied to a ball, weighted. Spin the cord round the pole and every time it turns, the loop gets shorter, the ball moves quicker and quicker till it stops. Just so. The years were speeding past. I was an old man and still had made no real provision for the continuity of the teaching. My Dharma-heirs had appeared, but Torei was unwilling and Suio was downright hostile. I could see no way forward.
Then I hatched another plan, or rather it came to me unbidden, and the vehicle once more was my physician friend Ishii Gentoku.
You want to prescribe another remedy for me, I said, administer more of your poison, cure me by killing me.
We are all duty-bound, he said, to expedite your journey to hell.
The good doctor had a friend, another of my lay followers who lived a few miles away in Mishima. This man, Takahashi, was a successful trader in tea and silk and had amassed considerable wealth. He had also come to the realisation that he should invest in his future, not in a worldly sense as he had all he could ever need, but in order to gain merit and atone for past karma in his business dealings. He had bought and sold property in his time, and when a particular piece of land became available, the site of an old ruined temple, he became interested in buying it for himself.
The location was beautiful, nestling among hills on the outskirts of Mishima, and Takahashi thought he could build a house there where he could spend his later years in quiet and contemplation.
Gentoku said it was an excellent plan, but might he suggest something even better, something that would bring him lasting merit and abiding peace?
Takahashi was shrewd, and he knew the doctor of old.
What do you have in mind?
We have benefited from Master Hakuin’s teaching, said Gentoku, perhaps more than we will ever know. What he needs now is a teaching monastery where many more monks can receive his curative poison.
When Gentoku reported this to me, I was enthusiastic, excited, and felt the compassion of Bodhisattva Kannon descending like rain. Finding a place for a new temple was no easy task. The government was hell-bent on restricting the building of monasteries, the spread of our poisonous teaching. They had effectively put a ban on any expansion, the development of new sites. But there was a loophole in the regulations. It was sometimes possible to buy the site of an existing temple and rebuild it. If the old temple was listed on the government register, it should be a matter of transferring the title deeds. Gentoku and Takahashi negotiated the transfer, and the payment of the fee, and the sweetening of various officials involved.
The place was purchased in the autumn when the hillside was a riot of bright red maple. The only buildings were a run-down meeting hall, a cottage, a few dilapidated outhouses. But I saw it as it would be in years to come, a thriving monastery where generations of monks could throw themselves into the maelstrom of zazen and koan study, drive through the barriers to kensho and satori, then carry the Dharma out into the world.
I see it clearly, I said to Takahashi and Doctor Gentoku, and I could feel a choke in my voice as I spoke. Tears of gratitude were not far away. Then a fine rain began to fall, soaking my old robe.
Grace descending, I said, and I thanked them from the bottom of my heart.
The site is perfect, I told Torei on his return from another trip to Kyoto. It’s a place of exceptional beauty, in the foothills close to Fuji, surrounded by forests. The atmosphere is one of great peace and tranquillity, and it’s truly sanctified. There is a shrine to the guardian deity, Azuma Gongen, and there is an image of the Buddha carved by the great Kobo Daishi who founded the original temple on the site.
Torei remained silent and looked troubled, a small vein pulsing on the side of his head.
You are reluctant, I said, as you were with Muryo-ji.
I have already spoken to some of the other monks, he said at last. They accompanied you to look at the site, and they say it is damp and marshy, practically a quagmire, and you have to wade through mud to get to the buildings.
I was stung, partly because what he said was true.
They have no stamina, I said. They say they’ll drive through the Zen barriers, batter down the gates of hell and leap beyond, but they’re afraid of getting their feet wet.
Torei half smiled at that. If I could still rant, then
he hadn’t cut me to the core.
A few days later he came to me again.
Perhaps there is a solution, he said.
I am listening.
If the temple could be moved, as it were, one hill over. I understand the site is just as beautiful, but the new buildings could be constructed on solid ground. Access would be easier, so I’m told, and the drainage would be better. So.
So!
I shouted out loud and clapped my hands.
You see? A little imagination and we leap the barriers!
Torei bowed and I felt a depth of gratitude to him. He knew in my enthusiasm I hadn’t been entirely honest with him about the site, and yet he had come up with this solution, to spare my feelings as much as anything else.
Thank you, I said.
By the following spring, an old well had been re-opened, a small meditation hall and the monks’ quarters had been built on the new spot, with dormitories and a kitchen, a room that would be a library. Further up the hillside a few small shrines had been placed, and in a small inner courtyard a miniature stone garden had been laid out. The work had been done by the monks from Shoin-ji, with a great deal of help from the lay followers and some of their friends from the surrounding villages, tradesmen and artisans, carpenters and builders, labourers happy to pitch in with lifting and hauling and digging.
I took Torei to one of the shrines, high up and overlooking the whole site, the pine and maple, the bamboo groves, shade on shade of green.
We stood, getting our breath back after the short climb, looking out at the vista, all of it.
Well? I said.
He was silent for a while. He knew what I was asking.
Again you try to persuade me, he said.
You have made it clear you will not succeed me at Shoin-ji. And Muryo-ji was in decline. But this . . .
With a sweep of my hand, I took it all in. His breathing was serious.
It would be a completely fresh start, I said. It would be yours to run exactly as you wish. You would even have time for your own practice, for your writing, your painting. The younger monks would benefit greatly from your guidance.
A light spring breeze blew through the forest, shimmered the leaves.
Well?
He stared into the green depth.
I will need time to think, he said.
Will you go to the shrine at Mount Akiba to pray for my health?
He bowed his head.
And will I then hear you are in Kyoto?
That was wrong of me, he said. I was confused, and reluctant, and fearful.
Yes.
I am still confused, he said. I am still reluctant. But I am no longer fearful. I will answer you straight.
Good, I said. Good.
The next morning Torei stood before me, hands folded, and I knew he had meditated long and hard. I quoted his own words to him, from The Undying Lamp.
Great compassion is like the sky. It covers all living beings. It produces all the great teachings, pure knowledge for the sake of others.
He bowed and responded from the same work.
Great compassion makes it possible to go beyond, for the sake of others.
I continued.
Great compassion brings great blessings in the form of expedient means to teach others.
Again he responded, and we exchanged the lines.
Great compassion can remove conceit in our dealings with others.
Great compassion gives rise to benevolence towards others.
Great compassion brings detachment and bases everything on truth, for the sake of others.
Finally, I said, great compassion enables us to enter into the real. There is nowhere it cannot go for the sake of others.
I am humbled, he said, that you know my work.
I have devoured it, I said. Now I’m spewing it up, word for word.
Again he bowed.
And? I said. What now?
I’m hanging over the edge of the sheer cliff, he said. Now I have to loosen my grip and let go.
Let go, I said. Die to be reborn. It’s like falling into water. If you struggle and thrash around with your arms and legs, you’ll grow tired and drown. But let go, let your feet touch bottom and then you can push and rise again to the surface.
Now, I said. Do you have a way out?
He had been meditating on the koan, The Old Woman Burns Down the Monk’s Hut.
And?
I had missed it before, he said. I hadn’t seen the subtlety.
Burning down his hut? Subtle?
She would have shocked the monk into serious depression and baffled him half to death.
So what should he have done? What would you have done?
I’d grab the old woman, he said, and yell at her, I’ve been receiving your support these twenty years . . .
Before Torei could even finish what he was saying, I saw he had penetrated to the very depths of the koan. I let out a great roar that rattled his bones and stopped him dead. His chest hurt, his head was dazed.
So, I said. Now do you have a way out?
When Torei had run away to Kyoto rather than take over the running of Shoin-ji, he had left behind the old brocade robe I had tried to give him. Now once more I presented it to him, and once more he refused.
This filthy old rag is for your successor at Shoin-ji, he said. Not for me. I won’t drape it over my stinking carcass.
Nevertheless, I said, and I pushed the robe towards him.
Nevertheless, he said, and he pushed it back.
The robe sat there between us, faded and moth-eaten, the dulled gold of the brocade catching the lamplight. I let out a great exaggerated sigh and folded up the robe. It smelled faintly of sweat and old incense. I put it away in my bag to take back to Shoin-ji.
The next day at dawn, as a cool breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees around the temple, Torei was formally installed as Abbot of the teaching monastery Ryutaku-ji. The clang of a bell. Thud of a drum. Assembled monks chanting. Incense sticks burning, for purification.
This will be a fine temple, I said.
I will do my best to make it so, said Torei.
There is no one else who could do this, I said. Your best will be more than good enough.
In Torei’s eyes a lingering trepidation, but nevertheless, nevertheless, a look of gratitude.
BODHISATTVA OF HELL
I
had always known in my bones I would live a long life on earth. This was my blessing and my curse. On into my seventies I drove myself. I still travelled, still beat the Dharma drum. When I could no longer walk great distances, some of the younger monks carried me in a palanquin from temple to temple.
Look at me, I said, like some debauched old potentate. Now I am the Daimyo of Poverty-Castle!
I refused to bow to illness, to the miseries of old age, though the Zen sickness of my youth was as nothing compared to what I experienced now. I lived in pain. But I had known from the outset this was how it would be. In taking the karma of others, I would suffer on their behalf. The sharp knives of Black Line Hell, the pain endlessly renewed.
I endured. I still wrote, still drew and painted, still poured out my poison and spread it shamelessly.
Now here I was, past eighty. Another year gone and this old body still barely holding together. Out of breath, eyesight fading, limbs aching, but still here. Still here.
New Year’s morning, among the high peaks.
This old monk’s face is wizened and thick-skinned.
Eighty-four and welcoming another year.
He owes it all to the sound of one hand.
A few months ago old Master Hakuyu came to me in a dream. Then I woke from the dream and he was sitting there in the room, exactly as I remembered him. He didn’t speak, just sat in profound silence, meditating. Then he opened his eyes and smiled at me. And my eyes filled with tears.
When I looked again he was gone.
I told this story to some of the young monks, and one of them bowe
d low and apologised for having to tell me, but Master Hakuyu had passed away.
How can you say such a thing? I asked. Hakuyu was no ordinary human being. He was an immortal, walking the earth. How could he die?
That was exactly how he died, said the monk. Walking the earth. He was striding along a mountain path and came to a great ravine. He tried to leap across but fell to his death on the rocks below.
Hearing this I knew my own time was close at hand.
I had entered a cave and followed a stony path that led ever downwards. All around was darkness and yet somehow I could see the way ahead, as if I carried my own light. But with every step I took, the darkness closed behind me.
Then all at once the way was blocked by a great stone wall right in front of me, a sheer cliff stretching endlessly in every direction. I could hear the trickle of water down the rock face, though I couldn’t see it. And I heard my own breathing and the beat of my heart, and beyond that, behind it all, a deeper beat like the thud of a great far-off drum.
The narrowest of cracks appeared in the rock, immediately before me and exactly my own height. As I looked, the crack widened just enough for me to step inside, the sides of the crack pressing against me. I pushed forward and it gave, again just enough, inch by inch. But still I could feel it pressing on all sides. My heartbeat and breathing grew louder, and for the first time I felt fear. Perhaps this was the gateway to the Great Crushing Hell. The rock closed me in completely, and so did the dark.
I was unable to move. My chest was constricted, but I breathed as deeply as I could, invoked the compassion of Bodhisattva Kannon. I chanted in silence, then out loud.
Enmei Jikku Kannon Gyo.
The distant thudding grew louder, seemed to vibrate through the very rock, through my bones and sinew. The pressure increased, grew tighter about me, the rock turning to clay and moulding itself around me, gripping me. I was buried here and being crushed. Still I invoked Kannon.