The Empty Mirror

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  And there is enjoyment, which is spoiled by the knowledge that it can stop any minute. And happiness, which is so airy that it is gone before it has touched the spirit. Suffering is perhaps a big word for someone who has grown up in the heavy porridge-with-sugar-and-butter atmosphere of Holland, but in a Dutch streetcar it can easily be spotted, disguised and nicely dressed to be sure—but it is there.

  And this suffering had bothered me, and it had driven me on to this ship. I had suspected, I still suspected, that suffering could be explained, and once explained, accepted. But Buddhism went further than that, it didn’t talk about “explaining” but about “doing away with.” I wanted to get rid of suffering altogether. I had tried to find a solution by going to church, by reading about Christianity, but the dogmas of the Christian faith seemed unacceptable to me—believing something because you had to.

  Only when I read the dialogues of Socrates had I begun to see a little light. The description which Plato gives of the death of Socrates really cheered me up. The imperturbability with which he, even at the forced end of his life, remained pleasant, indifferent, quite detached, fascinated me. But how did he get that way? Plato doesn’t say. I wanted to know what I should do to find true equanimity. It is possible to ascertain that life is suffering, a thesis which is easy to defend. But to get stuck in a thesis is frustrating, irritating. All right, so we suffer. Then what? How do you stop it? If you continue to think in this direction the result is a circle, and you just go round and round.

  Ouspensky and Gurdjieff seemed to point a way but they were both dead when I came across their writings. I found a lot of useful information in a book written by a Hindu master.1 But I was looking for something which I could do, here and now. Not a spiritual door I could knock on, but a real door, made of wood, with a live man behind it who would say something I could hear. In Japan there are Buddhist monasteries. Japan is a country easily accessible to westerners. Japan possesses living masters of wisdom, masters who accept disciples. I could have gone to India or Ceylon, but the stories I had heard about youthful idealists who had aimlessly wandered about, to die, in the end, of dysentery, didn’t appeal to me. If I got sick in Japan I would be able to find a doctor. There would be Japanese who could speak English. I wouldn’t be altogether lost should anything go wrong.

  On the ship I re-read Ouspensky’s The Fourth Way.2 He says there are four ways to find the ultimate truth, complete freedom. The way of the fakir is to conquer the physical body, a long, difficult and uncertain way, tried and rejected by Buddha. The way of the monk, a shorter and more certain way, is based on faith; one has to believe strongly before anything can be seen or experienced. The way of the yogi is an intellectual way, the way of thought and consciousness, evoked by certain exercises. And the last is the way of the “sly” man, the man who doesn’t believe in anything but who wants to experience, who looks for proof.

  Ouspensky then gives the method applied by the sly man. He always appears to be an ordinary fellow, he doesn’t wear a robe or a monk’s habit, but he is a member of a group and engages in exercises, at fixed times, regularly, supervised by a teacher.

  If I had lived in Japan I might have become a disciple of a teacher without moving into a monastery. Zen masters accept lay disciples who come to see him once a day, always early in the morning, and continue living in the world although they often meditate with the monks and take part in the monasteries’ activities. But now that I had a chance, because of an inheritance and lack of responsibilities, to give myself completely to something, I wanted to try and do as much as possible. At least I thought so on the ship, when I was still under the impression that I had a free choice. Now, as I write this, I believe I had no choice at all, and was doing no more than work out the results of causes which were buried somewhere in the past. A man’s “liberty” is quite small. Even when he thinks he is making a choice the result is already fixed. A man can only make tiny decisions. He can decide to get up early and it may be that he will succeed if he keeps trying. He can decide to obey traffic rules and he may succeed again, if he repeats the decision ten times a day. Every change in the daily routine is very difficult, but, fortunately, not impossible. There is freedom in the small things of daily life, and the mystical training is possible when we make use of this freedom. But a big choice, to go or not to go to Japan, is not free.

  The ship touched Bombay. I went ashore and couldn’t move for beggars. A hungry city. I couldn’t budge without being bothered by crowds of small children asking for money or food. The hunger we knew in Holland during the winter of 1944/5 seemed to be a normal and permanent phenomenon here. A sailor told me that he had been in a brothel where women were locked away in iron cages; for a few florins a client could spend five minutes or so in the cage, while his successors waited their turn impatiently behind a curtain of jute bags. The sailor hadn’t entered the cage, but had thrown in some money through the bars. According to him it was better in China: everybody dressed in a blue overall and a cap, walking in processions and waving flags and small books, but there was no hunger and no women in cages. I wondered if the women in the cages, and the beggars with their maimed and rotting limbs, would be in a better position if I found enlightenment in Japan. Misery stays. Another clever person is produced, hiding non-transferable wisdom behind a mysterious smile, but hunger and disease and exploitation continue. Misery is perhaps not, most probably not, bound to this planet, but is a cosmic phenomenon, set up in such a big way that actual destruction of suffering is a hopeless task.

  On the ship I also read about the theories of karma and reincarnation. Karma is the law of cause and effect, reincarnation the law of rebirth. If I do something wrong in this life I shall be an invalid in my next life, not as a fine, but as an exercise, an extra exercise (as if life as a healthy person isn’t difficult enough already) to bring me finally to pure consciousness. The soul has to be chastened, and chastening goes with suffering. In one life the soul cannot be sufficiently purified, so more lives have to be lived, 500 or 600—then enlightenment comes and further lives are lived in other spheres where there is less suffering and more enjoyment. Also, there is an in between period, a pause between every death and every rebirth, a sort of holiday for those who have done well and a hell for those who have done badly. When I read about these theories and thought about them they seemed acceptable, but they did not provide a solution.

  It could be that the women in the cages of Bombay and the beggars were digesting karma; that would explain suffering, but not the cause of suffering. Why are beings created who have the chance to live in a wrong way and, as a consequence, have to do difficult exercises (like having to live as an invalid) later? I am not even talking now of such harsh ideas as crime and punishment and eternal hell. The Hindu theory is kind and tolerant compared with Christian teaching as it was formulated by the Christian churches a little while ago. The method of Buddha seemed to me in the end, for myself anyway, the best: no questions about the why of everything, but a disregard of doubt, an attempt to do away with being involved with the pain of the world, and a conscious start along a path which has been tried by one man who managed to reach its goal, a path which has been followed by many others who used the original explorer as their guide. A possible path, not a vague theory. A path which still has living guides today, the Buddhist masters. I knew that I would have to content myself with the idea that I could not expect any certainty, not even a firm faith in the masters. It would be a way of trial and error, a hesitating effort, a touch and go affair with, perhaps, a little success sometimes, maybe a glimmering of insight, a slightly deepening understanding.

  * * *

  The ship took me to Singapore and Hong Kong and stayed a few days in each port to load and unload. In every port I went ashore and looked around. In the slums I saw people sleeping in the streets; I had to look where I was going so as not to step on them. There were beggars again, and pathetic children and whores, although there was no comparison with the raw suffering of
Bombay. To suffer, and why? Caused by the eternal desire which we carry about with us. We want to have and to increase our possessions continually. We want to be, and to be more, and to continue to be, even after death, through our children or through the name of the firm we founded. We want to have a name, a personality, which has to grow in importance all the time. The desire is mainly subconscious; it keeps us going. We work, we boast, we advertise ourselves, and on every photograph our first concern is to see if our image has come out well. We do not suspect that our body is nothing but an empty shell which will go to the wastepaper basket of the cemetery or crematorium. The ego, the false I, which we carry about with so much trouble and feed continuously, is a little cloud, which changes its shape all the time and consists of snapshots ranging from baby to old man. What concerned us last year is of no importance now, and what concerns us now will be forgotten and senseless next year. But even if we realise this the desire will continue and we shall muddle about in the dark.

  Buddhism is not gloomy; only the first truth has a sombre sound. The thirst for life, which pushes us around and keeps us away from ultimate reality, can be broken. The situation isn’t hopeless. The destruction of self, as advised by Buddha, is not suicide.

  The last stretch of the ship’s journey, from Hong Kong to Kobe, was the most difficult, as I had expected. I was alone now, the Danes finally having found their ship in Hong Kong. The daily discipline of reading and writing interrupted by meals couldn’t be kept up any longer. I began to wander all over the ship and visit the bar regularly. The monastery was getting very close. It had been a vague shape on the horizon for a long time but now it began to have a very definite outline.

  I foresaw a lot of real and imaginary difficulties. I wasn’t quite so sure if I wanted to break my ego and give up everything which up till then had had some value for me.

  A story told by Ouspensky, which he must have heard from his mysterious teacher, Gurdjieff, an Armenian who graduated from an esoteric school in Tibet, cheered me up considerably. Gurdjieff compares the man who has no answer, who knows of no solution, to a prisoner who spends his time aimlessly in jail.

  Now there are prisoners who claim that jail is the only possible place to be in and that there is nothing outside jail. That type of prisoner, Gurdjieff says, should be left alone. They are stupefied, and they don’t want to do anything, and as long as they remain in that state of mind they can’t be helped.

  But there are prisoners who want to escape, who are not content with their surroundings and who suspect that there is a much more attractive area outside their jail. They can’t really know this, because they are born in jail, or else the memory which they might have retained of free life has been artificially removed. But they do believe in the possibility of getting out and away, and they believe there is a lot of sense in trying.

  But the jail is well guarded, there are towers with searchlights, and trained, ever alert warders armed with the latest make of machine gun; and there is a deep moat around the building, filled with sharks and hungry crocodiles. The walls are high, strong and smooth. It is almost hopeless even to think of escape. But it can be done. Prisoners have escaped, in groups, well prepared and brilliantly led by masters. The masters know the area outside the jail and can live within as well as outside the jail. But they can’t carry anyone outside; all they can do is point the way and they know all the tricks.

  The ship approached Kobe in the early morning. I had got up at dawn so as not to miss anything. There was nobody on deck and the sea around me was empty. All I could see was one small fishing boat. An old Japanese was busy pulling up his nets. He saw me and I waved. He waved back. It seemed a good omen: at least I was welcomed cordially.

  Four

  Caught between the tigers

  Hidden away at the back of the monastery gardens was a cemetery with small pagodas and gravestones, green and covered with moss. On these centuries old tombs, texts were chiselled in Chinese characters. I was sweeping leaves there, preparing heaps to be carted away to another part of the grounds. The head monk had ordered me to “tidy up,” a hopeless task, for the cemetery was neglected and overgrown with weeds. I did what I could and worked at a leisurely pace, secure in the knowledge that, in an hour or so, the kitchen bell would call me for a cup of green tea and a biscuit. The biscuits came from a tin brought that morning by an old lady as her gift to the temple. Every day somebody would bring something, biscuits and sweets, a bag of rice, or steaming noodles, boiled and presented on a wooden tray. These gifts aren’t just meant to cheer the monks, but have a deeper meaning: those who offer them are showing that they too believe in the way of Buddha, but that, because of their circumstances or mental constitution, they are not yet ready to take part. They hope that their compassion will enable them to be more active in the next life, to become a monk or a lay disciple of a master.

  That day I had found a kitten in the cemetery, a very thin little animal adorned with a gaily colored ribbon. I picked it up, got it some water and milk and found it a place in the sun on one of the verandas. A few minutes later the temple dog arrived, a nasty creature which would lie in wait for me and suddenly dart out, snapping and growling. Without the slightest hesitation it rushed at the kitten, seized it by the neck and shook it till it was dead.

  People from around the temple would often leave kittens in the garden. They wouldn’t kill the animals because that didn’t suit their religion; Buddha is compassionate and to kill is cruel. By taking them to a monastery garden they transferred the cats’ souls to Buddha and his monks. Meanwhile the monks were stuck with the helpless kittens and their doleful mewing. Usually the dog took care of them and if he wasn’t around the monks drowned them in the pool, at night, when nobody was about. Without being aware of it, I had dropped my broom and leant against a tomb. I was crying. I hadn’t cried in years.

  A car came past with a loudspeaker attached to its roof broadcasting a loud march. The music was interrupted and a healthy hypnotic voice told me about the wonderful pain absorbing effect of aspirin or some similar drug.

  I had been in Japan long enough to understand a little Japanese. The newness of the exotic, mystical Far East had gone. Perhaps the people here looked different and sometimes wore outlandish clothes; and it was a fact that I was living in one of 8000 temples dedicated to the higher spheres, and true, of course, that I was daily admitted to a wise, and probably all enlightened master. Even so, I couldn’t rid myself of the clear and painful feeling that nothing had changed.

  That I cried did not surprise me. I was amazed, rather, that I had not fallen into the pit of despair earlier. There were no thoughts along the lines of “why did I involve myself in all this” or “this will never lead to anything.” I was just sad, without having to describe or define the feeling. Later that day, while sitting in the meditation hall, I reflected that I had trouble fitting in, that I felt like a chicken which has to live with ducklings, that I could not connect, could not communicate. The definition wasn’t very satisfactory. It was more than that; after all, I had been in strange environments before. I felt, not isolated, but hopeless. I saw no way out. This was the end of the world—I couldn’t go any further. I didn’t want to go back so I had to stay. There was no rebellion in me—I wasn’t against anything at all. But I did feel ridiculous: here was the tough rider of motorcycles, the seducer of sweet and innocent girls, the reader of deep and intellectual books, the guerilla fighter in eternal combat with the establishment, crying against a tomb in a deserted monastic garden.

  Peter has told me that a man plays many parts, and none of these parts is real. Every part is another mask, unconsciously formed by environment and aptitude. A man is like an onion. When he goes into himself, by meditation and other exercises, by discipline, by fighting his “self,” the layers of the onion drop away, one by one, till the last layer disappears and nothing remains. I didn’t like the last part of this explanation: nothing isn’t much. Why go to all that trouble to become nothing at
all, to dissolve into a vacuum? “But then,” I said, “one is no longer there. And if one is no longer there there is nothing left to enjoy the great insight, the immeasurable liberty.”

  “Look at the master,” Peter said, “there he is. You see?” The master happened to be passing by and we watched him enter the gate. Peter laughed, not an ecstatic laugh, veiling secrets, but a merry laugh, a pleasant, gay “ha ha.”

  “Yes,” I said. But I didn’t understand. Yet I did understand. I felt he was right. I knew too that I would know one day, know clearly and without any doubt, that he had uttered a tremendous truth. That everything had to be destroyed, given up, every pride, every jealousy, every security, every hook or projection which the personality can grab and hang on to.

  An American lady once said to the master that she, deep down in her mind or soul, possessed a holy kernel in which she could find peace, and that this kernel was always with her, sometimes hard to reach but in any case present.

  “Yes,” the master said, “that causes you a lot of trouble, that kernel—it’s in your way. Give it up, whatever idea you have of it. Get rid of it!”

  I think, from the way she reacted, that she felt very well what he meant, but to feel something is not the same as to know it, to be able to apply it. She left the monastery complete with kernel, as I had leant against the tomb, complete with sadness.

  About that time I was told the famous story about the man who falls. He is hanging above an abyss, clinging to a thin branch of a tree growing between the rocks. He may, with some effort, be able to pull himself up, but there is a ferocious tiger there, growling and showing his teeth. If he lets go, he’ll fall into the claws of another tiger waiting below. And while he hangs there and worries, two mice come along, a white mouse and a black mouse, and start nibbling through the branch, his only security. Anybody who “studies” Zen will, at some time, get into a similar position. He is sure that he has to do something, to give something up. He cannot refuse to do something because the position he happens to be in is disastrous. But whatever he does will not improve matters. And while he hesitates and worries, the mice of “yes” and “no,” “this” or “that,” “good” and “bad” nibble away.