by Tracy Franz
I decline but promise to explain “my secret life” some other time. And then I am out the door, hurrying along the sidewalks to the parking garage, and then in my car speeding down the highway to Kikuchi. I have been given permission to stay a night at Shogoji again.
Arriving just in time for samu, I sweep leaves and debris from the stone stairs and take boxes of it all down to feed the bonfire, which sends clouds of smoke tumbling down the mountain.
Koun is the doan in the rotation today, and so I help Aigo-san in the kitchen when it is time. Like me, he also became a vegetarian at age sixteen, so he has no problem with vegetarian cooking. “But,” he explains, “it is a little difficult here because there is such a strong link between food and emotion, and this can create a problem when Japanese and foreign monks must dine together. Strong tastes, too much spice, mixing foods and colors incorrectly for the Japanese palate. . . . Sometimes there are very big problems when we get it wrong. Sometimes there are fights.”
“But I thought the goal was to transcend such mundane worries.”
“People get upset—it’s human nature. If it’s not something trivial in the outside world, then it’s something trivial here.”
After lunch, most everyone has gathered in the sewing room and Koun and I go to work on his okesa—he’ll need it for a ceremony at Zuioji soon. As we cut, iron, and sew, Koun tells me about a man from Oita who visited him yesterday morning. “He’d recently lost his mother, whom he had never liked very much, and then he saw me on TV. He said he immediately got into his car and drove here from Oita, just to see me. We talked for thirty minutes or so, he gave the temple some boxes of yuzu from his grove as an offering, and then he left.”
“What did you tell him?”
“What could I say? His mother is already gone. But we did talk about practice and compassion, what he can do in this moment to relieve the suffering of others.”
“Does everyone have a complicated relationship with their mother?”
“Probably.”
As the day shifts to evening, I think of the famous writer Junichiro Tanizaki and his assertion that all the splendor of a Japanese temple is best revealed in shadow. How right he was. As I step through the gaido doorway for zazen, I stop and watch as Koun chooses and then plumps up one of the larger zafu for me. A mosquito coil has already been lit next to my spot—the smoke rising in a thin, protective cloud. So this is true love, I think. I shuffle in oversized slippers to my cushion. Koun and I bow to each other before settling in. Three deep breaths. The rustle of robes behind me as others enter and take their places. The flicker of oil lamps. Outside, the living music of the night.
At nine, the taiko signals, and I’m off to bed. Slipping into my futon in the guest room, I switch off the flashlight. Brilliant light from the nearly full moon streams through the window as I drift off to sleep. My secret life.
Sunday, September 26
Zazen is weirdly intense in the monastery this morning—perhaps due to such a short sleep cycle. Bright flashes of my mother and I in Nome, standing beneath the northern lights on some distant winter night. Of wandering alone through the brush in Hatcher Pass in summer and finding that unexpected purple flower—monkshood—against endless green. All the colors of my youth.
Just as I settle in again for the second half of zazen, a fat cockroach bumps against my bare foot. Do I stay still and let the thing crawl up my leg? Or break the rules and brush it away? I opt for the latter, but it returns again and again. When the taiko starts up near the end of the session, I breathe a sigh of relief.
As I return to my room, I touch the switch on my flashlight, feel a wet smushy thing against my thumb and drop everything. The lamplight reveals a small, stunned frog on the floor. I pick up the flashlight and discover more frogs clinging to my bedroom door and all along the walkway.
“In the mountain, you live with the creatures of the mountain.” I startle at the voice behind me. Aigo-san. He bows, moves beyond me, the light of his headlamp quickly swallowed by darkness.
~
Koun and I sit together in the open back of our van. The door is popped up and our legs swing against tall grass. I’ll need to head out soon.
“I’ve been thinking about when we’ll actually leave Japan,” says Koun. “We have these special skills now. We’re very good at being foreigners in Japan. But these skills don’t necessarily translate well in America. And my time here in the monastery is like that, too. I can’t expect that my skill set will transfer, even if I do become an expert at all of this. I can’t hold on to that one expectation.”
“Yes, I feel that, and also how other habits and ways of being are always slipping away. For both of us.”
It becomes dark as we talk, and Koun realizes that he hasn’t switched on the generator. I turn the car around, aim the headlights at the stone steps to the monastery, and off he goes into the night. That last image of him turning and waving at the top of the steps. This, among the string of moments that makes up a life. I can’t let go of what I don’t want; I want to hold on to what I can’t keep.
Tuesday, September 28
In pottery class there is much speculation about the nature of the “Alaskan tea”—a commercial brand from the supermarket—that I brought for Sensei as omiyage. “Perhaps it has cinnamon because of the weather or because of recurring sore throats or . . .” The cups of tea are sniffed, then tasted, between each comment. I am enjoying listening to the speculation so much that I don’t bother to explain that it’s a common tea blend, and it is not Alaskan in origin.
When we get down to work, the cone I form from new clay is not at all well-centered, so the walls of my first cup are uneven. I decide to keep it anyway because it still looks fairly pleasing. Sensei gives me the evil eye. “Renshu!” (Practice!)
“Hai, Sensei.” The verdict is clear, so I cut the form off the hump, discard it in the scrap bucket, and keep going. When the exact same thing happens again, she allows me to fold the rim over and back into the cone so that I’ll still have plenty of clay with which to practice. I precisely repeat my mistake again and again. Clearly, my sense of balance is off today. Giving up early, I go outside to clean my things, and Sensei follows.
“The radio says a typhoon is coming again.”
I look doubtfully at the sky. “Really? It looks calm.”
“Help me protect things so they won’t blow away.”
“Hai, Sensei.”
Thursday, September 30
After yesterday’s typhoon, cold last night and this morning too. I move through yoga poses in that delicious air before settling into zazen with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. Flipping through the goldenrod pages of the sutra book that Koun has lent me, I find the Heart Sutra. The sound of my voice and the thin stream of incense smoke is pulled in a slow curl out the window and to the neighborhood beyond.
Kan ji zai bo satsu
Gyo jin han-nya ha ra mit-ta ji
Sho ken go on kai ku
Do is-sai ku yaku
Sha ri shi
Shiki fu i ku
Ku fu i shiki . . .
When I finish, I sit in the center of my doubt. I am no monk. I know that I am trying this on. I know that I am pretending. What happens when we dedicate our lives to pretending to do or be something? When does the unreal become real—the dream a reality? And does any of it matter?
OCTOBER
Monastics
Friday, October 1
On my way to work, an overwhelming cloud of scent thickens around me as I draw close to campus. It is, like memory, unrelenting. Pausing along the path, I do a slow turn in search of the cause of that powerful perfume and, when I find nothing out of the ordinary, look up into blue sky. There. Koun and I in Hawaii on the day of our wedding, the fragrance of exotic flowers ebbing and flowing through the open-air temple. We stand in formal posture, our hands held in endless gassho. His teacher chanting in long, soothing riffs. The few attendees growing drowsy in their uncomfortable metal c
hairs. Me thinking, Is this America or Japan? America or Japan? And also:
What is real?
What is real?
What is real?
What is real?
What is real?
What is real?
“Kinmokusei,” says a voice behind me. I startle and turn to find one of my students investigating a neatly manicured shrub covered with clumps of tiny yellow flowers. “Gold olive flower—it has autumn smell. My mother says is stinky. But I like. Do you like?”
“I like it, but I think I might be just a little bit allergic.”
“Arerugi? But still like?”
“Yes, I seem to love many things that I’m allergic to—cats, dogs, flowers, certain trees. It’s a big problem for me.”
“Oh, very big problem! Paradox?” This, a word we recently encountered in English class.
“Ironic. Mother Nature played a joke on me.”
Her head tilts in that Japanese expression of surprised contemplation. “You LIKE things that are bad for you?”
That, I think, is the most common paradox of all.
Sunday, October 3
While driving to Shogoji early this morning to assist with what I have only been told is “an emergency sewing project,” I am greeted by rice fields turning to yellow. Last week’s brilliant red spider lilies have almost all withered away—the “flowers of death” are dying. The sky is half-cloudy, the air cool and breezy. Fall, it would seem, has arrived.
Rolling down the car windows, I savor the slight chill before taking on the final treacherous climb up the mountainside. When I reach the top, I park and sit with the view of a valley. What an unexpected life, I think.
As I step out of the car and gather my things, I see Koun descending the stone stairs in his blue samu-e. “What took you so long?” he asks when I meet up with him on the last step. “Meditating?”
“Something like that.
“You’ve come to the right place.”
“So I hear.” We stop at the top of the stairs and smile openly at each other. The face of a loved one—one of many transmissions beyond words. And then we continue onto the stone path, slipping out of our shoes at the temple’s entrance before it strikes me that we have yet to see or hear another soul. “It’s quiet today. Where is everybody?”
“Most of them have gone to visit with the Catholic monks. Those of us who need to sew were left behind. Jisen-san is here, too, but that’s about it, until the fukudenkai and Otani-sensei arrive.”
“So for the moment we have the place to ourselves.”
“Yes—well, almost.”
“What’s the emergency anyway?”
“A transmission ceremony. The date has been moved up. We have to finish sewing the new okesa.”
“Right. Monk problems.”
“Yes. It’s interesting what becomes important when all else falls away. Getting the rice cooked just right or the bath heated on time can feel like a life-or-death situation. It feels that weighty.”
“Maybe being able to see you, here, on weekends has become that for me. Such a small thing, but also a really big deal.”
“I know, T. It’s the same for me—a huge comfort. We’re very lucky that it worked out this way.”
Together we shuffle along in our slippers to what I now think of as “the sewing room.” One monk, Aigo-san, is present. He is pulling a needle and thread through muddy-gold mokuran, the color only a priest who has been given transmission may wear. He greets me warmly—“Ah, Tracy-san. Welcome!”—and then turns back to his work. I imagine he is taking refuge in his mind, in the proper way of sacred sewing, as he forms each stitch:
Namu kie butsu (I take refuge in Buddha)
Namu kie ho (I take refuge in dharma)
Namu kie so (I take refuge in sangha)
Koun and I settle into assembly-line work on the okesa—him ironing, measuring, and cutting, while I push thread through cloth. Both of us share a permanent smile, a silent communication between us. At some point I become aware that the members of the fukudenkai have filled the room, talking in hushed tones with occasional spurts of muted laughter.
“It seems there is a bubble around us today, or around whatever it is that we’re doing.”
“Yes. This is a new kind of intimacy, isn’t it?”
Tuesday, October 5
It is early evening, and I am in the back yard, lost in thought as I labor over a big plastic bucket of clay scrap and slurry, pounding at it all rhythmically with a found chunk of wood. There are splinters in my hands; both arms and shoulders ache. I know I’ll pay for this violence to the body later, when the rush of determination (or whatever it is) wears off.
I am thinking about Koun, about hypothetical conversations. Something I have never told you—maybe because it points to some wickedness in me or some belief in magic—is that I touched the groove of your back once in passing, the palm of hand against cloth and the smooth muscle beneath, and there was an electricity there, a little shock that startled me. An awakening or some spark of desire. The touch was not intentional—something to do with moving chairs and desks around in a closet of a classroom and I lost my balance. That was early in our program at the university. I was married to another man then. I didn’t look you in the eye for a week. I’m sure you had no idea why.
KA-CHUNK. A screen door yanked open on a rough track. Jennifer emerges from her home, gathering one of her cats to her as she approaches. The smell of cooking wafts after her, something tomato-y and Italian. “Still working on that clay?” She asks, looking doubtfully at my bucket.
“Yes. I’m pretty sure it’s hopeless but I have to try.”
“How many months now until Koun comes home?”
“Five.”
“That many.”
“That’s right—not until March. Possibly later.”
“Do you have any plans for travel at least? Something to fill up the time during the winter holiday?”
“No, I think I just want to be right here for a while and just see what I can learn or experience or—I don’t know exactly.”
“What have you learned so far?”
“Well, clearly I’m a terrible potter.”
“I don’t know about that,” she says. “But you might want to rethink that bucket.”
Bending down, I see for the first time that the blue plastic has begun to crack—a wild set of hairline tributaries from top to bottom.
“That might be sexual frustration,” I explain, laughing.
“A vacation, Tracy. Think about it.”
~
In pottery class, all of my energy is focused on trimming the only two surviving cups from the last session. Sensei barks orders the whole while, urging me to do every step in proper form. While she is helping another student, I stop the wheel, try to etch away at a stubborn bump that just won’t give.
“Don’t cheat!” Sensei appears at my side, slapping at my hand. “You must trim it as the wheel turns.”
“Wow. Sensei has eyes on the back of her head,” I mutter in English. To my dismay, Yoko-san interprets my words into Japanese, and the ladies all begin to giggle.
“Hai!” replies Sensei. “Eyes all over!”
Wednesday, October 6
Between classes, I encounter a small group of my first-year students moving en masse along the hallway. When they spot me, there is a collective scream of delight, which is followed by joyous shouting: “Tracy-sensei! On TV! Husband too! Famous, famous!”
It seems the local NHK program about Kikuchi and the Shogoji monks is being rebroadcast over and over throughout the country. This, in and of itself, is a bit surprising. What is more surprising is that somehow my students were able to spot me at all—from what I recall, there is just a brief periphery clip of my profile in the introductory credits. I am sitting zazen beyond the pained posture of the show’s host as he tries to lean and shift out of his agony.
Koun is the primary focal point throughout the video—much of the program features
him working on the temple grounds or talking about his experience of monastic life in Japan, a thin line of text below him “translating” his already good Japanese. So that, in the end, it is clear that the real star of the show is his and others’ foreignness set in such a traditional place. It is a much-enjoyed juxtaposition in a nation that takes great pride in its impenetrability.
What was it that Koun said in one of his letters? No matter that most Japanese do not know the slightest thing about the workings of a traditional Zen monastery, let alone having ever stepped inside of one—they will claim an inherent knowledge of it as birthright. On some level they are correct. But not entirely.
In pottery this evening, after much discussion about Koun’s rise to TV fame, there is disgusted talk of yet another typhoon—Japan is now on number 22. It may become a record year for the violent windstorms. “Such a nuisance,” says one of the ladies. “I’m always repairing my roof.”
“Tracy-san, do you have taifu in Alaska?” asks Makiko-san in her cautious English.
“No, I have only experienced them in Japan. I remember there was a typhoon the first night that I moved to Kumamoto City. I thought it must be a very windy place! My apartment was on the third floor. There were terrible sounds all night long, and I was scared because I lived alone and also I did not yet have a phone, so I couldn’t call anyone. In the morning I found a thick plastic door on my balcony—something from a greenhouse, maybe.”
“Oh yes. That year—was it 1999? I remember. An outhouse appeared in my grandparents’ garden. Nobody in our neighborhood knew where it had come from.”
“Typhoon. Such a nuisance!” Sensei repeats as she scoots her stool in close and examines the cup I’ve just formed. “Looks okay,” she says. “Let’s try making a vase now.”
“What?” Surely I did not hear correctly. Or I’ve misunderstood her Japanese.
“Let’s make a vase.”
“So—not . . . not cups?” I ask, pointing to the creation still attached to the wheel in front of me. This cup had formed beneath my hands as if of its own accord, my fingers the conduit for its simple, pure expression. I had already imagined sipping perfectly brewed tea out of this perfectly formed cup, a perfect thread of steam curling up from within.