by Richard Bell
Chapter 6
As if taking the captain’s body had placated the winds¸ the storm eased back to mere fierce winds; their roughness seeming benign compared to what had been before. Returning home westward would mean an impossible fight against the prevailing winds. Going north risked fearsome storms, icy-cold and certain death. By default, we were left to head toward the unknown void to the east; beyond chart, the lair of fearsome monsters.
Now our only hope of survival was based upon fairytales stretching back into antiquity. The most recent of the legends of Fu Sang was a thousand years old. A Buddhist priest named Universal Compassion (Hoei-Shin) accompanying the exploration wrote the report. Despite rumors of huge Chinese treasure fleets exploring the world, even the greed of modern merchants hadn’t drawn them far from China.
The essential truth was that we didn’t know where we were. We’d no idea how far we had been driven from China and no idea how far land might ahead of us. We might well sail off the edge of the world.
The wisest of the Emperor’s historians, admirals and explorers didn’t know for sure if Fu Sang existed. Our dead captain had been the only one among us with any grasp of navigation. We knew only that we were cradled in swells that loomed like mountains, that we had a splintered stump for a rudder and a single unbroken mast.
The sailors that seemed untouched by fear with the captain’s leadership now grew reticent and unable to work. Our lives had been forfeit; we simply awaited their collection.
The storm returned to rage again, shaking our ship as if it was a bone in a dog’s mouth. My life in the temple had been in another universe. Less than a speck and humbled by nature’s violence I longed to believe in the ancient gods of storms and weather. The equanimity of a Buddhist world seemed artificial. Clamped between nature’s bloody teeth Buddhism’s calm seemed an empty dream. The quietude of the monastery left me out of touch with such realities. Buddhism’s prescription for suffering provided no refuge.
Pulling in our sea anchors, we now flew as much canvas as we could rig. But nothing would raise our hopes. Our existence had shrunk to a narrow range of black to gray. Instead of desperation we drowned in resignation.
When for no apparent reason, the largest of our dark glazed water jars inexplicably split it was assumed a dire force had settled upon us. We were left with our two smaller ones and the small barrel used to collect rain from the sails. Thankfully those were nearly full. Staring at the broken vessel, the implications were ominous; but no one said a word.
RopLoLetracing our path back to China was impossible. Our single imagined thread promising life was looped about the frail dream of Fu Sang. Navigators and admirals had dismissed that illusionary land beyond the Eastern Sea, but we found ourselves believers. It was the fantasy of children’s stories and legends obscured by dust, but we believed.
Caught in east-blowing winds with neither rudder nor navigation we clung to that dream. Whether it be Fu Sang or oblivion, our fate lay somewhere ahead to the east. In seventeen hundred years no one had been there and returned. It was less than a spider’s thread of hope. It was merely a direction to stare when all real hope was lost.
When knowledge ends, dreams must suffice. We sailed relentlessly east. Death was almost certain whatever we chose; thirst seemed most likely to kill us, holding in reserve drowning and starvation. Though survival was beyond belief, we flew every scrap our mast could fly and stared into the future as if it mattered.
Before, we all but drowned in the downpour, now there wasn’t a single drop to refill our water casks. There wasn’t a drop of condensation, even the nets we pulled for fish we might suck seldom captured fins.
Day after day the sky was skimmed with a high gray haze. I performed a funeral for a sailor found dead, mindlessly mouthing the lines. I was as far from personal balance as I was from home. Existence became a blur. With the crew too weak to climb our sails remained untrimmed, the knots lashing our rudder grew crusted with salt. We simply ran before the wind.
Then one morning, with night at our backs and the early orange of dawn before us, the helmsman called attention to a thin line of clouds barely peeking through the haze.
“Land clouds.” he croaked through bleeding lips. Hobbling back to the tiller, he carefully readjusted our course.
I could see no difference between those clouds and others, but the sailors agreed and talk returned to Fu Sang and the miracle of finding it. Clinging to our frayed rigging hardly bearing to hope, I watched the smudge gradually stretch and darken until its substance was undeniable. Hour after hour we watched. The swells grew shorter, the sea more choppy. Cloud-capped mountains appeared beyond a dark ribbon, then finally we could see white streaks of surf giving evidence of coastal rocks.
Sudden awareness of our vulnerability struck us. There were ship-killing rocks ahead and with nowhere safe to land we needed to at least slow our headlong drive. The sea anchors were tossed out yet again, and our more accessible sales gathered. Our stub of rudder was freed and swung hard to starboard. If we could swing to the south and skirt the shoreline until morning we might find an accessible beach or inlet.
Dragging sea anchors and taking in sails must have helped, but I didn’t sense the slightest slowing. The muted sound of waves crashing headlong against the rocks could be heard as we swept sideways toward the barely submerged rocks before us. In a perfect world we would search for a safe haven allowing safe repairs, but barely able to steer we prayed to avoid immediate death. Our anchors dangled at full depth without snagging. There was nothing else to do.
In the descending darkness the wilderness loomed as both salvation and curse. If we reached land alive predators and enemies were as likely as water and food. But the sea was too dangerous to leave hope for survival. We had no small dingy and no way of pausing off-shore and awaiting tomorrow. Our only hope lay in somehow threading our way between rocks and finding a beach. The deafening pounding of surf lent little hope.
Suddenly, without the barest warning the weathered deck beneath my feet gave a sudden violent lurch and the hull shuddered and groaned as if alive. I clung to the edge of the passage outside my cupboard as the deck suddenly rose before me. After another impatient quiver the hull emitted a breathy gasp, then a pitiful, splintering moan. After shaking violently, the deck beneath my feet suddenly dropped away and the entire bow reared vertically before fracturing with a shriek and toppling into the sea.
Choking on saltwater I struggled from my robe and I clung to a length of broken board until it twisted from my fingers. I was lost in the churning seas and floundered, half-drowning until my hand struck the edge of a hatch-cover. Struggling onto it and clinging desperately I was dragged over the shell-encrusted rocks until scraping both arms and legs raw. Then, miraculously, I felt sand beneath my feet and I fought through the surging surf to shore.
Freezing and naked, I staggered through a maze of weathered logs until falling headlong into a trickling stream.
Exhausted and bruised, I sipped the sweet water until my stomach cramped and I vomited it all back up. Gasping convulsively in the moonless dark I slowly recovered. Sipping more water, again my stomach rebelled and I felt knives behind my eyes, but I drank again and then again, shivering violently as the earth continued to rise and fall as if still upon the ocean’s swells. I lay in the depths of that starless dark until I was more concerned for warmth than water, Shivering, I went into a frenzy, wrapping leaves and kelp about me, desperate to retain some warmth. Shivering, I huddled desperately under the battered roots of a storm washed tree, scraping myself a hole and burying myself in sand. Exhausted and sick, I gave myself over to oblivion.
My ill-fated journey had ended. But I was naked and freezing at the far-edge of creation. I was cursed to remain, painfully among the mortals instead of being granted the peace of death.
I woke into a drizzling dawn dreaming fitfully of an old man who insisted that I find three green stones I could exchange with a wolf for passage home. I’d found, then lost
them. Unlike any other dream I’ve known, it left a feeling of profound importance. Buffeted between sleep and the freezing cold, I agonized over finding and losing the stones and careened from relief to despair unable to distinguish truth from delusion.
Then as abruptly as the dark after pinching-out a lamp-wick, I was thrust from the warmth of the dream into full and painful awareness. I lay shivering; excruciatingly awake through the half-light of dawn, until a chill morning rain forced me up. It was clear the cold would take me quickly if I didn’t do something. I wrapped myself in lengths of gray moss then wrapped broad leaves to hold some heat. Leaning branches against my sheltering log I made a rough lean-to. There, I shielded myself against the worst of the weather, rising through the day to sip water and improve my shelter, Enduring a second night, I tiled the roof of my lean-to with kelp. Now out of the rain, I felt secure and clever.
Comforting my grinding stomach with streamside greens, I gathered armloads of moss for my shelter, burrowing beneath the bulk of that storm washed tree. Though my spirits improved I lay exhausted; huddling and unthinking, eyes fixed beyond the breakers where the sea became the sky. Instead of celebrating survival, I resented it. Lost, miserable and shivering, my world felt very small.
When it didn’t rain I explored my beach, but I found nothing but the helmsman’s decaying body. I didn’t have the strength to bury him, so I stripped off his ragged shirt and rolled him respectfully into the waves.
Unscaleable cliffs lined my little cove, curving into the ocean, north and south, like fortress walls. The unstable slopes were as much protection as anything; I felt safe enough there, above I might be vulnerable to predators. Fu San’s ferocious beasts might not be myths.
As the day ended, I made two more trips for the hanging moss, sipping my fill of water and addressing practical needs, As meditation was what I knew, I sat looking down the beach to the a rock the waves beat spectacularly. I decided to rebuild my shelter, deciding to assemble my materials and see what offered itself. Then I inventoried my beach’s substantial amount of driftwood, mostly whole denuded trees. The next day I carefully disassembled my lean to, making it substantially bigger , with a recessed bed and plenty of dry coverings. Curled in my burrow I wasn’t as chilled. Remaining dry and out of the wind was important. I worried about not finding the stones,
Two more nights passed. I improved the roof of my lean to; a great deal of labor for minimal progress; and my pitiful lot improved, if marginally. The dream returned most nights often more than once. In it I woke confused because the dream and the non-dream worlds seemed identical. At last I decided the reality with the stones was the dream because I reasoned that magic wasn’t real. But I didn’t believe my logic.
Shuffling along the edge of my beach I found shards of glazed porcelain similar to what I imagined our cargo was. Day after day, shards were left like seashells in receding waves. Pieces appeared with each low tide. An unchipped cup and larger pieces of more, then a whole, intact bowl, its blue designs stark against glistening white.
An unchipped rice bowl and four cups appeared. Large fragments found a place upon my altar.
Deep between barnacle encrusted rocks I envisioned the spilled crates weakening with the tugging currents until splitting open and spilling their contents across the sand-floored spans between rocks. The swirling currents would catch the porcelain, breaking many and sweeping more into the deep, but a few washed up on my beach. By chance a few whole pieces survived as I did. I felt a deep affinity with each shard that washed ashore.
Sitting before my shelter, I remembered the old story of Master Zhaozhou Congshen who advised a wandering monk to “not stay where the Buddha is, but to move quickly to where he isn’t.” I dissolved into giggles, for I’d followed that advice without intending. I laughed until I cramped and gasped for air.
The seldom mentioned punch line to that story is that the monk was so convinced of Zhaouzhou’s wisdom that he didn’t travel, but stayed there to study Chan. Zhaouzhou told him to “sweep willow blossoms.” The ending stressed common life instead of venerable teachings. That alone was heresy enough to keep from being quoted in dharma talks.
Then one day the clouds cleared and a glint of sunlight snapped my mind from its husk of despair. By some fluke of karma I was alive, somehow I’d washed ashore and found shelter. But even in this wilderness I was of the linage of Bodhidharma. I was like untold thousands of priests before me trudging obscure paths to teach the dharma. As they had, I would accept whatever appeared; the tradition was within me.
I dozed, shivering in the damp through another frigid night dreaming of porcelain teacups and the three green stones but also that I lay nestle in my moss with no awareness that I might be sleeping. I didn’t remember a transition between being awake and suspecting I dreamed. Both conditions felt equally vivid; in each the other was a dream even when I felt them simultaneously. Both were identically real.
Raw mussels turned out to be delicious, sometime later I ate a small crab. Hui-Neng, the Sixth Patriarch ate fish while hiding for his life. All life might be sacred, but it was also true that all life lives on life. Eating flesh wasn’t as important as coming to grips with that difficult truth.
I spent the afternoon unsuccessfully trying to start a fire before drifting, half-sleepless through the night, nestled in my moss-lined burrow, not freezing, but certainly not warm The next day I was able to make a wisp of smoke, then a few tiny embers. It took another day to kindle the smoky little fire that became the center of my life. From its first smoldering wisps I lived in perpetual fear I’d lose it. I returned every few minutes to feed it twigs.
That fire defined my existence. Finding burnable wood and drying it became more important than finding food. Only after that was seen to could other needs be met. The shelf below my altar was piled with shards, teacups and bowls. Each morning I chose a new one as the centerpiece on my altar.
In my mind my lean-to became a venerable abbey. Daydreams absorbed me; from a mere hole in the sand, my shelter sprouted a stately roof, cloisters and meditation halls, residence cells, library, offices, kitchen and schools. Instead of the cramped hovel of a marooned priest I imagined a temple and ocean-side abbey.
It seemed that some old cedar logs that washed ashore miraculously split themselves into clean edged planks that offering the aromatic scent of incense. Using wedges to encourage their splitting, I dragged manageable slabs to my shelter, pulled apart my earlier creation and started building anew. I sank a retaining wall to lower my floor and bed and rebuilt the side with overlapping planks that shed rain quite well. It was crude work, but to me it had beauty.
Some days later a rib attached to a length of framing washed up from the wreck. I dragged it to my shelter to serve as a doorframe. Wanting the best for my abbey’s first abbot, I added another great bundle of moss to my bed.
The effort brought considerable pride and increased my comfort. I became convinced I was establishing a wilderness abbey and I clung with desperation to the conceit of being its abbot. Sobered by the responsibility, I committed myself. As abbot I would teach only what proved itself meaningful and teach nothing without reason.
The Fifth Patriarch passed-on the linage to Hui-neng, then advised him to hide from the senior students that would kill him. Hui Neng had been my childhood hero. Illiterate, but profoundly gifted; he valued clarity, disrespected hierarchy and shrugged off the unimportant. As a novice chafing against rules I relished stories suggesting that tradition wasn’t important.
Eccentrics were common in Chan. But the idea that our traditions might be empty seemed an illicit, scandalous secret. Though that was fully acknowledged by sages; teachers almost universally discouraged such talk. Even after ordination I worried about others knowing that I knew.
If our Chan tradition was illusion, what could be said of our teachings and precepts? If all outer forms were empty, what was important? Teachers were almost inevitably traditionalists, they didn’t approve of such deviati
ons…for they encouraged awkward questions. Teachers were seldom the most insightful of Buddhists; tradition was easier to teach than enlightenment.
Marooned on my beach I was free to consider heresy, perhaps I was even obliged to. I’d long thought the core of Chan was the most essential. Abbots and teachers had monasteries to sustain; they had responsibilities that sages avoided. And money invariably came from lay students wanting reassurance of their attainment. Encouraging adherence to tradition filled coffers. Teaching enlightenment discouraged patrons. Teachers stressed tradition even though sages and the Buddha taught the path to bodhi. I found myself on the side of the sages.
Sitting before my little hut, I chuckled with uncontainable glee at the idea of abandoning questionable teachings. As abbot, I was responsible for such things. I would teach as our sages did; Buddhism was illusion.
I giggled at the paradox. Illusion that it was.
The thought lifted me from my enveloping gloom. Suddenly light flickered off the rocks and tide pools; glancing and ricocheting and blinding me with sparkles until I had to turn away. Glistening flashes of silver and violet, then a shaft of incredible blue; tingling and numb, it felt as if I’d been struck by lightening. Despite hunger and discouragement I felt in touch with existence. I became acutely aware of life. Awareness exploded within me, life abounded upon the rocks, within them and all about.
It wasn’t just the obvious; existence itself seemed to assert itself and the cliffs and ocean hummed as if alive. All about me the miracle of existence resonated. Following those steps I was led away from Buddhism’s shell. It looked as if religion simply didn’t matter. I figured it was a sign that I neared insanity.
I certainly knew such insights weren’t profound. I also knew they weren’t original. But they were overwhelming. The miracle was obvious even if I was marooned and starving; a profoundly mundane, everyday sort of miracle that was neither wholly Taoist or Buddhist.
I didn’t count days and seldom saw the moon, but time passed…weeks at least, probably months. With plants back in my diet my bleeding gums and cracked lips healed, but I was plagued by cold and hunger. Far from the schedules and duties of Nan Hua, I built myself routines with meditation and chores.
Days came and went. Thoughts came and went. My practice grew ever more basic. I simply avoided distraction and thought. Without teacher, scrolls, or colleagues, my Buddhism was daily experience. I remembered the sayings of Chan and Taoist eccentrics; little else seemed relevant. I retained the parts that resonated and felt I experienced the Tao anew. I felt reborn. Each moment was pristine.
The simplicity of Hui-neng and Lao Tzu became my path. My scholarship and priestly training were worthless. A monk might live alone, but a priest was defined by service. Marooned, I might be a Buddhist, but could I be a priest?
The Buddhism I’d been taught dimmed and flickered like a lamp needing oil. Was there substance to Buddhism without its surrounding culture? I foundered and felt I barely held on. Fearing insanity, I remembering Master Lu’s advice when I admitted fearing the Void.
“Fear is normal, but it isn’t real,” he counseled. “Let yourself fall into the void. What good is sanity if you’re snared in illusion?”
That I considered about such things seemed to confirm that I was still a Buddhist even while I realized that it didn’t matter. Still, I was only concerned because I continued to walk the Path. For thousands of years the winds of karma had swept the dharma to distant shoals. I bowed to reality. I was simply one of millions of storm-tossed seeds. It wasn’t a question or choice…it was an observation of reality. Instead being a monastic priest I was a wandering one like untold thousands of others before me. And, just as the dharma promised; acceptance brought a strange, calm peace.
Then after so much cold and rain, the skies cleared and the heavens offered sun. The balmy feel of spring filled the air. Above the reach of salt spray, where a week before there was only rock and barren twigs, pale sprouts and swelling buds appeared. Branches swelled fat and sparks of flowers appeared. On the cliff above my abbey, flocks of tiny birds feasted on the insects that emerged to their season.
I wanted to believe I’d found the mythic Fu Sang. I clung to the idea because it meant someone had made it back to tell the tale. If the purpose of Chan practice is to “Raise the Great Doubt,” being marooned served perfectly; I questioned who I was, my value and the significance of life itself.
Strangely, my practice deepened I grew weaker. It strengthened even as I struggled with the flooding darkness. Mornings and afternoons I sat facing the ocean; simply sitting, aware of existence, watching distractions. Trapped between sheer cliffs and the endless horizon my existence was simple. Though constantly hungry I felt strangely free,
My head had grown inch-long stubble and my limbs and ribs showed skeletally. Despite obvious signs of spring, icy rain kept me huddled inside. When free of the grip of depression I slipped into my raincoat of leaves to wander the beach and poke about tide pools, pleased with all I saw.
It is normal for our attention to skip from one sensation to another. When we focus on one thing all-else blurs and becomes indistinct. Meditation can connect our sensations so awareness resembles a seamless whole. Though my senses were heightened, I knew I was out of balance and near crazy. Starving and freezing and nearly deafened by the incessant surf, I went around smiling like a madman.
My scholar-soft hands had been scraped raw and toughened. When rain poured I wove cedar bark into mats for my temple. When I realized my foraging was stripping the most available greens I cut back and allowed myself more mussels and crabs. But I never had truly enough.
Chores became coveted rituals carefully rationed to keep insanity at bay. I had fourteen rice bowls, two serving bowls, three soup bowls, nine teacups, a whole, unbroken plate and ever growing collection of shards. Each piece reminded me that despite lack of clothes and food I was civilized. I was Chinese and from a world of knowledge, culture and refinement that still thrived beyond the ocean. They survived on my altar, relics to be contemplated as I sat beside my fire.
Wrapped in thought and staring into the coals, I occasionally lost myself in memories. I remembered childhood games, my mother and father and glimmering sunrises beside flooded fields, humid, monsoon evenings in the temple and stolen minutes reading.
But I was a priest. The bowls were not mine. They’d only fallen into my hands by chance. I gazed at them with a quiet sadness. We had dropped off the edge of the world together.