Mister Timeless Blyth, page 12
Tomiko’s parents looked on, reconciled to the match, smiling their approval.
Akio was here in the role of Best Man, nakodo, literally a matchmaker. I had told him that as he was responsible for bringing me here in the first place, that was entirely appropriate. Motoko and Katsura looked on and Shinki beamed at everyone, delighted and benign.
In deference to my status as gaijin (whether that was something to be admired or pitied!) I was allowed to choose a reading, which Akio did his best to translate.
I read from Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians.
Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly….beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
The wedding guests stood listening, attentive and polite. They suffered long and were kind. I caught Tomiko’s eye and she smiled at me, the white veil framing her face.
My love is like a red red rose. An extravagant statement if ever there was one, and yet…
The priest was chanting again, intoning a sutra, a final blessing in the name of Izanagi and Izanami. We drank sake (it could not be avoided) and exchanged cups. The priest clapped his hands three more times, and it was done. We were married. Mr and Mrs (Timeless) Blyth.
Tomiko loved the house, the simple Japanese style of it with wooden walls and sliding shoji screens, tatami mats on the floors, a low kotatsu heated table where we would dine. But her father had bought us, probably through the store where she worked, a western-style writing desk and chair, as well as two upholstered armchairs and a standard lamp. In the market I had found two tall bookcases. Already they were half filled and more boxes sat waiting to be unpacked.
I sat in one of the armchairs, slapped the arms, laughed.
Your father begins to know me a little, I said. For although I loved the Japaneseness of the house and its artefacts, the wonderful elegance and spareness of it all, the old armchair was damned comfortable!
Outside was the little square of garden, ready to be tended. We stood there a moment, enjoying the evening air after the heat of the day. We came back inside.
The bedroom too was Japanese, the low futon with its mattress, its quilt patterned with stylised cranes.
I felt the moment called for a haiku, something sensual but subtle. But what came to mind, unbidden, was a crude senryu, shouldering its way into my awareness.
The long summer night,
We’ll tumble together
In sheer delight.
My version of it came out rhymed, like some old East End pub song. Come, come, come and make eyes at me… Perhaps the sake from the ceremony had gone to my head.
The occasion deserved better. There was a poem written by Hakuin as a young man.
Miss Fuji –
Cast aside your hazy robe
and show me your snowy skin.
I had not yet seen Fuji (in the flesh, as it were!) but I imagined that response, that mix of tenderness and awe was just right. It felt just right for this too.
This.
I spoke the words now to Tomiko, in English, then more haltingly in Japanese.
She laughed, and she came to me, and oh, the sweetness, the sweetness.
By some miracle we had found each other. The age difference between us was not so great as to be grotesque – I was 38, she was 22 – and all would be well and all would be well. I was sure of it. All manner of things would be well. My friends – Akio and Motoko, Shinki – took to her, found her charming, engaging, down-to-earth. They were happy for me.
We settled to a routine. I had my work, she had hers. I read and wrote and taught. She seemed more than happy to clean and cook. She didn’t mind making vegetarian dishes for me but had no intention of becoming vegetarian herself. She was too fond of fish and could not imagine giving it up. I said she should try, and she screwed up her face, laughed and said, Doshite?
Why?
In the face of her laughter I had no answer.
I don’t think Tomiko ever fully understood my interest in Zen. (For that matter, did I ever fully understand my interest in Zen?) If anything she found it amusing (and I suppose that in its way showed a true zen spirit).
I told her I was planning to return to the temple, resume my practice.
Doshite?
Why indeed?
How to explain my experience of koan practice? How to put into words what cannot be put into words?
In any case, it is understood that such practice is secret and sacrosanct, so to describe it to others would be a breaking of trust.
(I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you!)
So don’t expect me to go divulging inner meanings and esoteric truths. No spilling of beans, no sir, not here.
Shinki told me with genuine horror that there existed a book-of-answers to the best-known koans.
What was that description I had read? Catechistic paradox. That was one way of putting it.
On the other hand.
Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?
Joshu’s answer was Mu. Nothing.
Meditate on this. Become this nothing.
Mu.
I was nothing but gratitude to Hanayama Roshi who tolerated my bull-in-a-china-shop blundering into the practice. (Ten bulls in ten china shops?) He challenged my un-understanding, prodded and probed my presumptions. He responded to my efforts, sometimes with encouragement, more often in silence with a kind of controlled exasperation, an exaggerated sigh. There were moments when I thought I had broken through, only for the Roshi to disabuse me with a grimace, an admonitory glare.
Not this. Not this.
Mu.
The sessions of zazen, paradoxically (!) became easier. Perhaps my muscles and joints, my sinews, were growing stronger, getting used to just sitting. (And yes, that experience was again vouchsafed, the sense of simply being there and nowhere else).
Nowhere? Now-here.
But the hours of sitting could also leave me struggling, at a loss. More than once I left a session close to tears.
I thought of asking the Roshi about this but it was not appropriate. He was the one asking the questions. I looked at the unsui, the trainee monks, saw no light in their faces, only anger and meanness held in check.
But the young monk who had noticed me before, and had done the Oi! / Hai! routine, spoke to me after a morning session. He said his name was Gibun. Bun-san.
Buraisu-san, I said.
Yes.
The way is long, he said. It may take a lifetime. Or more. You should not be discouraged.
I was deeply moved by his kindness, saw in his face none of that tension I saw in the other monks. He offered to sit with me and said if I had questions to ask he would do his best to answer them.
Does a dog have the Buddha-nature? I asked.
Perhaps not that!
But he said I could ask anything arising from our practice or the teachings.
We sat facing each other, formal. I bowed and asked, Bun-san, do you cry?
The question, I could see, was unexpected, caught him by surprise.
What do you mean by this? he asked.
I cry often, I said. I cried yesterday when the light of the setting sun shone on our verandah. The bamboo poles turned red in the evening light. I saw this, and I thought of my mother, and I cried.
Ah, he said. If that is what you mean by crying, then I also cry. Everybody cries.
No, I said. Those who really cry are few.
Is that so?
And those who do not cry are no good. They cannot be trusted.
Perhaps, he said, you should not be so quick to judge!
Perhaps, I said. Then I framed another question.
I watch the trainee monks, I said, the unsui. And this means cloud – water.
Yes, he said. From a Chinese poem. To drift like clouds and flow like water.
Very good, I said. A very pure and noble aim. But what I want to ask is, Why do they have such angry faces?
I think this is only how you see them, based on your own ideas.
No, I said. They glare at everyone. Their faces are mean.
He smiled, said, You should try to see them with nothing-in-mind.
It was a little moment of reluctant insight, a thorn being removed.
Yes. I myself could be cantankerous and curmudgeonly.
He who treads the path in earnest sees not the faults of others. But from morning to night I saw nothing else!
I threw back my head and laughed.
We spoke often after that, and our exchanges filled me with a kind of exhilaration. I realised that all my life I had sought a friend like this, a David to my Jonathan, a Goldmund to my Narziss, a Han-shan to my Shih-te. (A Laurel to my Hardy!) I thought in Bun-san I had found such a friend and one morning I hurried to the temple, a lightness in my heart, eager to resume our conversation. But on this occasion he treated me with coldness, responding to my greetings by giving a curt nod then ignoring me, turning away to busy himself with other things.
I went home feeling quite wretched. My expectation had been foolish, and I resolved – the sourest of sour grapes – that I did not need a friend at all and was perfectly fine without one.
That evening I ate little – I did not have much of an appetite – and I sat in my study, trying and failing to read a page of the Mumonkan.
I heard a knock at the door – we were not expecting visitors – and Tomiko answered then called up to me that my monk-friend had come to visit.
I went downstairs and there was Bun-san, bowing and smiling with what I could only describe as a malicious twinkle in his eyes.
I told him how I felt and how his behaviour had affected me.
He smiled again, said, That’s because you wanted something from me!
Then he told me of a poem by Hakurakuten.
As I wandered round the lake and gazed at the fishes gliding to and fro,
I came across some boys fishing in a boat.
Both they and I loved the fish, but our state of mind was different:
I had come to feed the fish, they to catch them.
Here ended Bun-san’s lesson on attachment.
The way was long. A lifetime or more. I should not be discouraged.
The idea of a book had been growing in me. Suzuki’s writings had impressed me greatly, in fact they had inspired me, not to do what he had done – which in any case would have been impossible – but to follow what I can only call an inner voice. He had opened doors for me through which I might walk into limitless possibility, finding my own way, my own necessity.
I wanted, if not to justify the ways of God to men, then to illuminate the ways of Zen to a wider readership in the West. Nor would it be merely for scholars and academics – it was far too important for that.
I had already written the first words of what would be my preface.
Zen is the most precious possession of Asia.
There! I had thrown down the gauntlet (to myself as much as to any other reader). I continued.
It is the strongest power in the world. It is a world power, for in so far as men live at all, they live by Zen. Wherever there is a poetical action, a religious aspiration, a heroic thought, a union of the nature within a man and the Nature without, there is Zen.
I had nailed my colours to the mast, set sail for open seas, let the currents carry me where they must. I would show that what I called the spirit of Zen was something universal, something which infused all great literature, and I would draw on the works in which I had immersed myself. I would quote freely from Dante, Eckhart, Cervantes, but my main emphasis was the literature of the English language and its relation to the cultures of India, China and Japan. The title was fixed, all high seriousness: Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics. Shakespeare, Dickens, Wordsworth and Stevenson were my guiding lights. But I would lead my readers through the looking glass with Alice, into the dock with the Artful Dodger, into heaven and hell with Blake, and always, always, let paradox be my watchword.
I took delight in chapter headings that would challenge and intrigue: What is Zen? Directness is All. The Unregarded River of Our Life. And further in, Words, Words, Words. The Pale Cast of Thought.
In my university days, back in England, in another life, I had realised that the world of scholarship and research was not for me. I lacked the inclination for nit-picking specialisation and – dare I say it (of course I do!) – the requisite dullness. I had also been granted a kind of revelation, an insight you might say, and it was this: Whatever connections a researcher might endeavour to make in pursuit of a thesis, he would eventually discover there was no end to it. One thing led to another, and another, and on ad infinitum, everything connected to everything else. (And that way madness lies!)
It was like Indra’s Net as described in the Vedas – the entire universe a net strung with jewels, linked together, reflecting off each other endlessly, a web of interconnection and interdependence – the universal in the particular, the world-in-the-grain-of-sand.
This revelation (let the word pass) opened up the way for me, showed me I had the capacity to make the necessary connections for my aim and purpose. It gave me the confidence to proceed.
The other day I came across a little notebook from those days. It was the size of a pocket diary, the kind of thing I used to carry around with me for scribbling down random thoughts, ideas, observations. This one had a brown cover on which was embossed a stylised lotus. God knows where I had picked it up, but inside, over the first few pages I had written a little note, an injunction to myself.
When you write a book, don’t worry about whether it will ever be published or whether anyone will ever read it. All that is God’s worry. Let God worry about it.
After that, something had been scored out, then the thought continued.
When you work just work. Don’t worry about whether others are working or not, or whether the temple will burn down next week or not. Just work, that’s all.
Act, but surrender the fruits of your actions. Just work. That’s all. With no thought for the morrow.
And I did. I threw myself into it, con gusto. I wrote in the early mornings, in my lunch breaks at school, at the kitchen table in the evenings after dinner, and when I wasn’t writing I was thinking about it, giving it shape (or finding the shape it wanted to take). I had never felt so engaged, so happy. Once again I had found my work, which was also play. (And as Herbert wrote, By mere playing we go to Heaven).
The book had a life of its own. It grew, chapter by chapter, into its own form. I looked on my work and saw that it was good.
For a time my schedule was such that I had no classes on a Friday afternoon. By happy coincidence (or perhaps through clever manoeuvering) Akio was in the same situation, and so too was Shinki. We would often spend the time together, eat lunch – our favourite haunt was the Sushi Kyu – and we might even take in an art exhibition or watch a film.
One Friday Shinki said he wanted to take us to a gallery-museum set up in an old palace building in the centre of town. He said it specialised in what he called Mingei, roughly translated as popular craft. So, he said, it’s the Korean Folk Art museum. It had been established by an eminent Japanese art collector, Soetsu Yanagi, with the aim of preserving and displaying indigenous arts and crafts.
It is about the beauty of zakki, said Shinki. Ordinary, miscellaneous objects. Everyday things.
Shinki was in his element, expounding on the anonymity of the creator (a subject close to his heart). He spoke of the similarities and differences between Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, said Mingei drew on both.
Pure Land is for everyone, he said. Not just for few.
Akio picked up a little tea-bowl, said he liked the feel of it in his hand.
Shinki said Yes, it was for use.
Akio passed the bowl to me and I felt the weight of it, satisfying, the roughness of the glaze, the not quite regular shape.
Pleasing, I said.
Because it is natural, said Shinki. And making it was also natural, unselfconscious. No ego.
Everyday mind, I said. Nothing special.
Yes!
Next time I was in the market I noticed a stall selling local pottery, among it a box of tea-bowls not unlike the ones I had seen at Mingeikan. I started looking through them, examining them, weighing each one in my hand.
The stallholder, an old Korean woman, watched me, eyes crinkled, lips turned up in a faint smile. I shrugged, indicated I did not know what to choose.
She said they were all good. Every one was the best.
I laughed, chose two at random. She wrapped them carefully and I carried them home.
The Zen master Bankei recounted how one day he was walking through the marketplace near his temple and he overheard a dialogue between a butcher and his customer.
The customer asked which cut of meat was the best. The butcher said, All of them. They are all the best.
On hearing this, Bankei became enlightened.
Remembering the story, I laughed again.
In our kitchen Tomiko unwrapped the bowls, looked slightly bemused. I explained they were like ones I had seen in the museum.
So, she said, noncommittal.
She washed the bowls and dried them, put them on the table, used them at dinner for our miso soup.
So.
I came into the staffroom one day and saw Shinki sitting with a journal open in his lap. I said Hello and he glanced up, distracted, a look in his eyes I had not seen before and which I could only describe as desolation.
