Zen Attitude

by Sujata Massey

  When the prickling feeling on my back changed direction, I could tell it was for real. From underneath my T-shirt, I flicked out a nasty red ant. I didn’t even yelp. There were worse things to be afraid of now.

  It was pitch dark when the alarm setting on my watch awoke me. Four A.M., which meant Zen meditation would be starting at the main hall in fifteen minutes. I rummaged through the clothes Akemi had lent me and came up with a pair of loose cotton pants that would be comfortable for sitting cross-legged. I pulled on a T-shirt and headed out in search of the public rest rooms, where I could clean up before entering the main Zen hall. The gray marble ladies’ washroom was spotlessly clean. Some guidebooks cited it as the best temple toilet in Kamakura. If only it had a shower, I thought as I hurried through a rough sponge bath.

  Still damp, I crept through the dark toward the sound of gongs, and discovered a surprising number of people ready to worship. Some wore traditional dark Buddhist robes, while others wore loose-fitting athletic clothes, as I did. Most looked fairly mature; in Japan, Buddhism was more of an old-age passion than a New Age one.

  I shadowed the only other foreigner, a European-looking woman in her thirties. We sat behind two rows of black-robed monks sitting in the lotus position. They appeared the picture of devotion, their eyes only half open, their legs crossed so that each ankle balanced easily on the thigh. I settled onto a hard, round cushion, hoping I would be able to stay in a half-lotus position for a reasonable amount of time.

  Abbot Mihori was already seated on the floor, a beautiful old brass gong at his side. I expected he might recognize me but wasn’t too worried. After all, it was an open worship session. All were welcome.

  The abbot hit the silvery-sounding bell smoothly and announced the first line of the religious sutra, a booming prayer. The worshipers added their voices to his, and the hall vibrated with sound. Did they all understand Pali, the ancient blend of Sanskrit and Japanese in which the sutra was written? I moved my mouth as everyone chanted, increasing speed or slowing according to the fervor with which a different priest hit a gong.

  It was very beautiful, sitting in the dark room with only the gilded altar glowing brightly in the candlelight. But the half-lotus was harder than I’d imagined; after fifteen minutes, I felt as if screws were being driven into the sides of my thighs, and my toes were going slowly numb. When the prayers finally wound down and it was time to stand up and then prostrate ourselves in the direction of the altar, I thought it had never felt so good to move.

  After the prostrations, we settled back down again in the darkness for zazen, the sitting meditation that was the hallmark of Zen Buddhism. Zen meditation was something I’d tried before without any success. But it didn’t matter if I did not float away—I’d come specifically to the main hall to think through what I’d learned the night before.

  But silence was not to be had. After perhaps ten minutes, Abbot Mihori rose from his position near the altar to slowly pace through our ranks, holding a four-foot-long wooden paddle.

  “Concentrate!” Abbot Mihori called out, sounding much blunter and ruder than I had ever imagined him. “Sit straight!”

  Was he yelling directly at me? I suddenly realized my preoccupation with enduring the crossed-leg position had caused me to drift to the left. I righted myself, subtly adjusting my ankle to a less ambitious height.

  I wasn’t the only person who was reprimanded. Abbot Mihori criticized the posture of my European companion, who showed no signs of comprehending Japanese, and he noted the lack of concentration shown by others. “Erase all thoughts from your mind!” he shouted at a woman in her seventies, who cowered so deeply her nose touched the floor.

  When his stick began slapping against worshipers’ backs, I wanted to flee. Physical abuse was not what I’d come for. I concentrated furiously on the slow, smooth breathing the abbot wanted. Incredibly, I felt myself start to calm. I wasn’t in nirvana—who could be, with all that yelling?—but I was philosophical. Zen worship would be over in forty minutes, and the worst thing that could happen would be that I’d be hit. The blow would last less than a second. If I could survive a right cross from Hugh Glendinning, I could survive a crack on the back.

  The sounds of the gong flowed through me, and my senses stirred at the thought that I was enacting rites that had traveled from India and China to Japan fourteen centuries ago. The black-robed monks in front had shunned the materialism of modern Japan for a harsh life dedicated to inward seeking. Could I do that? In a way, it was like leaving Roppongi Hills to do my own thing.

  I felt a warning tap on my left shoulder and bowed, waiting for the real blow.

  “Take your shoulder!” Abbot Mihori instructed brusquely. He hadn’t recognized me.

  As I pulled my shoulder in the way the other worshipers had done, the discipline paddle crashed down on my back. It took a second for the pain to transmit to my brain; when it got there, it smarted fiercely. Now I understood that the abbot had asked me to guard my shoulder blade from being shattered. There was a humanity to this formalized violence.

  We bowed to each other, completing the ritual. The feeling in my back had evolved into a pleasant sort of ache; I treasured it for taking my mind away from my thighs and feet.

  As the pain faded, I thought about the unexpected toughness Abbot Mihori had shown. Priests were supposed to be stern. Zen enforcer was the role the abbot had to play, just as he had been a gracious host when Angus and I had talked with him outside the temple the previous Friday.

  Nana Mihori also played roles I didn’t know about. Her exact connection to Nomu Ideta was something I wanted to understand. Maybe she had longed to acquire a family heirloom, but because she was a young, female sibling, she had not gotten the chance. If that was the case, I could offer her the tansu again.

  The Zen family’s involvement seemed as clear as the sky growing lighter outside the arched temple windows. Still, something nagged at me. Two men dead, neither from natural causes.

  I tried to picture Nana Mihori, slim and slight in her kimono, following Nao Sakai from Hakone to Tokyo and deftly strangling him in a few minutes. It seemed impossible, given that the woman didn’t drive a car—just like her husband. He had told me he needed Akemi to drive him to the hospital.

  The connections between the Mihoris and the dead people were obvious; the motivation wasn’t. I sighed, then caught myself for breathing audibly and out of place.

  When the Zen session finally ended, I wasn’t sure my legs would work anymore. I stumbled up to take my place in the line that was silently heading into the dining room. Here, each monk unwrapped the small cloth bundle he’d been carrying to reveal a set of three lacquer eating bowls. I was handed my own set of three along with the other visitors.

  “Your first time?” the grandmother who’d been singled out for not concentrating whispered to me. When I nodded, she said, “They give us a complimentary bowl of rice gruel. I come three times a week for it.”

  If she attended so often, maybe she knew Kazuhito. I asked quietly whether she had seen him, and I was disappointed when she shook her head. Perhaps, as the vice abbot, he was more concerned with business matters.

  I settled down between the grandmother and the European woman, watching carefully as monks silently passed down the table a large wooden bucket containing the lumpy gray gruel, followed by a smaller one containing pickled daikon radish. When everyone was served, the head monk blessed the food and led us in the recitation of several sutras. We ate quickly, with no conversation allowed.

  At meal’s end I felt not quite sated and slightly nervous, given the clean-up procedures I was observing. A monk slowly advanced along the table, pouring a meager splash of tea in everyone’s bowl, which was circulated vigorously with chopsticks. Many worshipers slurped heartily from their bowls of dishwater. I slopped my bowl’s remains into an empty ceramic urn that was making its way down the table. Then the empty bowls were dried on small cloths that everyone seemed to have brought from home. Like the
Eastern European visitor, I handed my bowl back to a monk who I hoped would have an additional cleansing planned. Did the temple have a dishwasher? I thought about a terrible food-poisoning epidemic a few summers ago and shuddered.

  My Zen experience over, I followed a line of monks down the temple steps, each one holding a huge straw hat. This meant they were leaving Horin-ji’s grounds to collect donations for the temple. The hats served many purposes, among them protecting shaved heads from the sun or rain, and also falling so low they prevented the monks from being able to see the people in front of them, thus maintaining a Zen state while they begged.

  It was ironic to think how safe the monks were in the cloistered world of Horin-ji; the food hygiene and chronic pain from sitting in a lotus position were probably their biggest risks. But the temple duties looked hard. I watched a monk wearing a gray work costume digging hard in the soil under some hydrangea bushes, his back curved at a punishing angle. As I approached, he lifted himself gradually and turned, hands folding in the prayerful gassho greeting.

  It was the runner who’d intruded on Akemi’s trail the night before. A flash of recognition lit his face, and he bowed.

  “We meet once more,” he said when he came up.

  “Yes. I’ve just been worshiping.”

  “Really? You’re foreign, aren’t you?”

  “Half Japanese. I live here,” I said a bit defensively.

  “In the teahouse?”

  I wanted to say in Tokyo, but perhaps he’d peered through the teahouse’s torn screens and seen the signs of my residence.

  “I’m staying in the forest for a few days of meditation. I have permission,” I added.

  “The Mihoris are very generous, it’s true. But what a funny place to stay.” He put down his shovel and came closer to me.

  “I have a strong desire to learn about Buddhism,” I said, backing away.

  “How do you like it?” He didn’t move, but his eyes followed me, seeming to go into my soul.

  The appreciative words I meant to offer couldn’t come. Instead, I found myself saying, “I think Zen practice is very regimented. It hurt.”

  “After a while, pain becomes your friend,” he said softly. “But you already know about pain.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You practice judo with the Mihori daughter, don’t you?” He gestured with his hands toward the loose pants I was wearing, which I realized now were part of a martial arts uniform. “Your injury—” The monk stretched out a finger to lightly touch my bruised cheek.

  I was paralyzed, first from shock that a Japanese stranger had touched me—not even my relatives felt comfortable embracing me—and also from the undeniable sensuality of the touch. Even after his hand was gone, I felt a strange warmth where it had been. Like Abbot Mihori’s blow to my shoulder, the pressure felt transforming, as if he’d glided across the bruise and taken it away. There was something unearthly about this man and his touch; I wondered if he had training in acupuncture or another healing art.

  “I’m not a martial artist. I just had an accident,” I said, finding my voice at last.

  He picked up the shovel again. “This temple has always been a refuge. In shōgun times, women could not be legally divorced, no matter how abusive their husbands. Still, if they ran away and were admitted here, their husbands could not retrieve them. Women called Horin-ji the divorce temple.”

  “But it’s not a nunnery anymore. The priests and monks are all men! And women have no chance of joining the ranks ever.”

  “In Zen, some traditions cannot change. But women certainly are welcome to visit our zazen practice every morning or evening, for that matter.”

  “Since you know so much about the temple’s history, may I ask you something about the Mihoris?” I asked.

  “The good friends who gave you permission to stay here?” He sounded amused.

  “What is Mrs. Mihori’s family background? I understand she’s not from Kamakura.”

  “Tokyo, I think. But I have no gossip. We are primarily silent in the monastery and temple. A chance meeting with a visitor such as yourself is very unusual.”

  “Well, I must go. It was very instructive to speak with a monk.”

  “It was not much of a formal meeting. I do not know your name.”

  “Shimura Rei.” I said my name in the proper backwards fashion. “And you?”

  “My name is Wajin. I look after the place.”

  A groundskeeper. I felt a rush of sympathy and said, “Akemi’s going to be away today. You could jog on the track again without her noticing.”

  Wajin laughed lightly. “You mean you won’t tell stories about me again?”

  “I only said something because I was worried you saw me in a nontourist zone. I didn’t know what you’d do—”

  “But you have permission,” he said sarcastically. “Why would my comments matter?”

  He’d made his point, so I left for the women’s rest room in a highly embarrassed fluster. I rinsed my hands and face because I sensed Wajin’s touch had left a smudge of dirt below my eye. When I looked in the cloudy mirror above the sink, I did a double take. My bruise was gone.

  Chapter 18

  Back in the teahouse, I ran a finger over the perfectly normal patch of skin under my eye. I’d always thought faith healing was a crock, but now I wasn’t sure. Buddhism was full of miracles—trees that wept pearl-like tears, dead men returned to life. If Wajin had such a gift for healing, he was being wasted on the garden.

  In the excitement over my transformed face, I’d forgotten to go to the Mihori house to pick up my pocket telephone. I’d have to return in the afternoon, when Miss Tanaka was doing errands in a different part of town. For now, I’d walk into Kamakura and use a pay phone.

  After changing into the sundress I’d worn while making my balcony escape, I walked south on Kamakura-kaido, a long, narrow road lined with smaller Zen temples and a few restaurants and shops. As I strolled beside women taking their children to school, I noticed many of them were shielded by parasols, a hangover from the old days when pale skin signified aristocracy and brown skin meant fieldworker. I knew I should follow the legions of Japanese women who used parasols since their girlhood and had entered their fifties and sixties with absolutely unlined faces. It was hard, though, because my skin rarely burned; it just soaked up the rays and glowed. That’s what it had felt like when Wajin had touched me: as if I had been caressed by the sun.

  None of the restaurants was open yet, so I killed some time sitting on a bench near the grounds of Hachiman Shrine, Kamakura’s grandest Shinto worship site. Workmen were everywhere, erecting concession stands that were being decorated with artificial flowers and colorful streamers, symbols of the upcoming Tanabata festival. I overheard some workers talking about an archery demonstration. They needed to block off a long, narrow stretch of roadway that would be used for the horseback riders—the question was, how would they get all the VIP seats around the path? And how close could the seats be to the archers, while still remaining safe?

  By now it was 9 A.M., so Hugh would be off at work and I could safely call the answering machine. I went to a pay phone, slid in two hundred yen, and dialed.

  “Yo.” Angus answered the phone sounding as though he was chewing something.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Angus. If you hang up, I’ll just phone back and check the answering machine.”

  “Rei?” Angus sounded gleeful. “Hanging up’s a daft idea, seeing as Shug already listened to your calls and erased them.”

  “Tell Hugh he’s a bastard. To think of how I’ve made sure he gets all his messages!”

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist,” he grumbled. “It was just some guy who left a message in Japanese we couldn’t understand. I think my bro had a feeling who it was because he started going on about Japanese Elvis.”

  “Oh, that’s Jun Kuroi! Anyone else?”

  “Well . . .” Angus paused. “The last call was from a guy speaking
English with an accent thicker than yogurt.”

  Mohsen. I’d have to track him down in Ameyoko Alley. “Thanks, Angus. I’ll get going now.”

  “Don’t you want to talk to me, hear how I’m doing?”

  “I know Lieutenant Hata found out about your telephone cards and spared you. Do you know how lucky you are? If only you knew what Japanese prisons are like.” Lounging in a phone booth forty kilometers from his smirking face, I felt free to be frank.

  “Well, that cop kept my cards, so I can’t call my friends overseas without using the flat telephone. You’d hate it. I can picture you ranting and raving!”

  “It sounds like you miss me,” I said sarcastically.

  “Well, even you’re better than my brother’s new girlfriend, that bitch from upstairs—”

  Winnie Clancy? I was so shocked I temporarily lost my grip on the receiver. I regained it and said, “Winnie’s married.”

  “That isn’t stopping her. She drops in for supper nightly. It’s always meat—I reckon that between us we’ve put on half a stone. I can’t speak for Shug, but I’ve got terrible indigestion.”

  “Don’t tell me you want to become a vegan.” I tried to concentrate on that irony and not the disturbing fact that Winnie had supplanted me.

  “I’m not! All I’m suggesting is that you should drop by for a meal sometime. And stay afterward. Winnie’s bum is wearing a hole in the sofa, and the next thing you know, it’ll be the bed.”

  “I understand. But it’s impossible—it’s over between Hugh and me.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be such a quitter.” Angus’s words hung like a taunt as I hung up mad at Hugh, and also at myself.

  After leaving frantic messages for Jun Kuroi on all five of his telephone numbers, I ordered a sugar-lemon crêpe and coffee at the crêpe shop I’d gone to with Mrs. Kita. The middle-aged woman spreading the crêpe batter on the huge skillet smiled at me as if she knew how long I’d been waiting for something to eat. I smiled back. With caffeine and sugar in my system, I was finally ready to work.