Segaki, page 14
Ahead of him Yasumaro paused, but Muchaku was not alarmed. He could see from his brother’s springy intransigent stride, that Yasumaro had now determined on exactly everything they would now do, and so he need feel responsibility for nothing. The monastery had shown him how futile was responsibility. It was deeply satisfying to return now to the security of being told what to do. It freed him at last from the dissatisfactions and the loneliness of having to do the telling.
Only the dog was suddenly sedate.
Yasumaro parted the branches, and they stepped out on the shingle of a tiny cove between two high boulders, into one of those covert paradises that existed long before man came along with his absurd belief that the natural balance of the world can be upset simply because he is self-seeking.
There is something deeply moving about those nooks and cranies where the animal and vegetable world goes on as it did before man arose, calm in the assurance that it has only to wait to get its natural habitat back again, once man is over. They are one of the few places where we may still see the world for what it is, a perfectly articulated illusion, not logical in our sense, but with a self-contained logic of its own, a ravishingly abstract beauty, simply because it is a thought process without anybody to think it. Coming upon such places, we see very well how the world may be breathed out and in.
Sitting on the shingle, watching the ferns, we suddenly become aware that the world we are watching is not the same world we saw a second ago, even though it looks identical. It has been destroyed and re-created in one instantaneous respiration. And if we are very quiet, we can even become aware of that breathing. It is not precisely a sound, not even exactly a movement, but still, we know it is there.
There is nothing in knowledge that contradicts this, no matter how much we learn, for knowledge is irrelevant to this kind of knowing. Knowledge is merely phenomenal.
Animals and rocks live with this respiration better than we do, for the first have a life so brief, the second a life so long, that they have no choice other than to go with it, unlike man, who panics in the ebb and runs for a shore that is rushing away so fast that he can never reach it.
We did not do wrong to invent time, within our own frame of reference it is indispensable, but we did wrong to persuade ourselves that it was anything but a convenient system of artificial clocks, for time cuts us off from the eternal moment. The present is always with us, but the present has nothing to do with now. It cuts us off from the eternal now, for time can have no here and now. Time is always five past something, or else five to. A measureless instant cannot be measured. In the stream of duration, which is not a stream, but an infinite pond without surface, banks, or bottom, it is always now, and since the process is reciprocal and complementary, life and death are the same. In this eternal breathing in and out, everything is now.
The pool was altogether now.
It seemed natural to set down their hamper, throw off their clothes, and slip into the water. Yasumaro went first. Muchaku, having still much to learn, had to hesitate, and get into water like a man testing thin ice, waiting for it fearfully to give way, and then laughing with panic once it did so. For water, too, is time. It is always changing, always in motion, and always the same. It falls with the power to beat us down, and then, quite amicably laps around us in a quiet pool. Inevitable and without inner volition, it works the same changes and is never changed.
It is also cool or warm indifferently, cold when we enter it, but friendly and warm once we move in it, as it persuades us to do.
The dog followed with that surprised look on its face as it paddled that dogs swimming do have. Tadpoles scurried away from them in the water, but the still pool’s myopic minnows continued to nibble at food that was always a little farther away from their mouths than they thought it was. They always had to dart a little beyond their food, in order to reach it.
A spotted deer, thinking of nothing in particular, turned to stare at them with juicy brown eyes, sniffed, and went on with its self-contained meditations. It drank judiciously. And all around them the ferns were jostling about exuberantly, in the sheer green excitement of growth.
They splashed about for a while. Dragonflies threaded the air with their sudden expert dart and flow. Water scooters clambered jerkily about on the tensile skin of the pool. In these creatures, too, were reflected the stark vibrant colours of Japan.
Then, shivering with cold, they sat down on the shingle, to admire the waterfall and eat their lunch. It was an exceptionally good lunch.
They ended with a bowl of fruit, at which they looked for a long time before having any desire to eat it. Muchaku said the fruit looked self-satisfied.
Yasumaro was amused. He didn’t think so. “Self-satisfaction is not the same as contentment. Contentment comes only with the ability to overlook self-knowledge.”
They were lazy and excited at the same time, because of the water. Certainly the waterfall was a masterpiece, and the Japanese have always realized that a waterfall or a good tree is no less a work of art than a good scroll. Thus, war or peace, there was a tree in Kamakura that had forty gardeners in permanent attendance on it, for a gardener, too, is a curator.
There were of course other and bigger waterfalls. But this one was perfect. It was justly treasured, to the point where even the warring armies avoided it.
“But then great art is not necessarily better, in fact, it is not usually so good, as minor. Greatness has nothing to do with perfection, or, for that matter, with goodness, which is perfection of conduct, the perfect matching of motive and means. Perfection is an accident, it is like cooking. A really good cook can never tell exactly what she did, that out of ten superb meals, this particular one should be exemplary.
“Nor should a cook be sad. Cooking is the only one of the arts that cannot be understood without communion. One must eat it, to realize what makes it so perfect. One cannot do that with a painting. So only the painter can know how a good painting is, since he made it.
“None of which is true, exactly,” said Yasumaro and giggling, held out a peach. Immediately the dog came clambering around them, and then, seeing what it was, trotted some distance away, squatted on the shingle, and sat there studiously, with its head darting this way and that, its nose just above the surface of the water.
There is always something vulnerable about the self-absorbed. Muchaku watched it and blinked. Then the whole story of the soldier and the dog came out. He was surprised in the telling of it, to find how distressed he had been about that episode.
When he had done Yasumaro made no comment, but only looked quickly at his brother. There was nothing to say, for it was clear that though the dog put up a good show and had its own thoughts, still it missed its proper master.
“But why does it follow me? What does that mean?”
Yasumaro shrugged. “We shall have to wait and see,” he said. If it struck him as odd that Muchaku should be more concerned about the dog than about his betrayal of its master, he did not say so. Some people reproach themselves for one thing and some for another. And one can learn from a dog as much as from anyone else.
“Meaning?” he said, watching the dog’s cut velvet haunches. “Meaning and value have nothing to do with each other. Meaning is only the price we put on things. It defines nothing but our own predilections. But value is innate and intrinsic. The dog doesn’t mean anything, and as for its value, perhaps we shall find out about that, and perhaps we shall not.” Then he looked worried. “Do you suppose he would seek you out?”
“I would not blame him if he did.” Muchaku looked woeful. “Why?”
“There are soldiers from Noto in the district. Poor devils, everything has been looted already. No wonder they are desperate.” Yasumaro glanced at the waterfall and at the pool, in the late afternoon light. He looked as though he wanted to say something and did not quite know how, which made his face seem sad.
It is curious how fastidious nature can at times be. Sometimes it seems to landscape its own woods. Everything around them was in quietly joyous growth, fed by the drifting water spray. Yet reaching round beside him, Yasumaro picked up an autumn leaf from the shingle, like a dried out tiny hand. He looked at it seriously.
“Have you ever thought about sbumi,” he asked, “which we achieve with such trouble, leaving an untrimmed shrub or a dead leaf in a perfect garden, when nature does the same thing so easily? Perhaps there is a moral sbumi too. Perhaps in every good life there must be some isolated badness, like a dead leaf, to remind us how impermanent a thing goodness is. And in every bad life, even if accidentally, some deliberately good act, to reassure us.”
He looked up, with a serious smile, and then giggled, stretching his arms. But before they left he stood looking at the waterfall for a long long good-bye.
9
Yasumaro spent the cool low slanting evening alone in the garden, diligently loosening the soil around the plants, happily bemused in the midst of the parable of nature.
He seemed to reach some decision, which kept him lingering there for a long time. Even when it was dark, he sat alone on the veranda, listening to the small garden sounds.
Muchaku understood he wished to be alone. Vaguely troubled, he went to bed.
There was a high rustling wind that night, and the darkness was full of a continual many footed scurrying, hard to place, but always there. Perhaps the kami were out again, watching to do mischief. Those primitive creatures were always waiting to dart in whenever one’s self control was overstrained. Perhaps he heard the yapping of ghost foxes.
He had grown so accustomed to the rustling, that when it stopped, he did not at first realize that it had done so. He had the impression of a presence. Whatever it was that wanted him, it wanted him out there.
The dog got up stiff legged and stared out into the garden.
Whether Muchaku was awake or asleep, he could not be quite sure, but he did know that he was somewhere unfamiliar to him. He stood up and went uncertainly to the door.
It was moonlight in the garden, the area was full of a seething smoke-coloured flood of it, and in moonlight we always feel that someone is there watching us, whether they or we are there or not.
The dog refused to budge from the doorway. Muchaku ventured out on to the veranda and then became motionless.
Something was swaying out there, staring longingly towards the house. It was Lady Furikake. Tall, indolent, she straightened up from moving around among the flowers, touching now one and now another wistfully. They were drained of colour, and she had wanted to see colour so much. He wanted to flee before she turned towards him, but he could not move.
She looked right at him, her right hand still on the head of a flower, playing with it absent-mindedly, unseeing, and then aware of him. At first she looked startled and hurt. She smiled to herself from very far away, but she was too well bred to show what she must be feeling. She gave him a bemused, disdainful, almost affectionate smile and then faded out. The garden was dark, as though all the moonlight had been sucked out of it, but the blackness was saturated with her perfume. Looking up, he saw that after all there had been no moon.
He was filled with an unbearable melancholy. He felt he had been inadequate with her, not sufficiently refined in movement, and that haunted him.
There is a poem by the Chinese Emperor Wu-Ti, the sixth of the Han dynasty, who lamented the loss of a court lady. He said the sound of her silk skirt had stopped. Her empty room was cold and still. Fallen leaves had piled against her door. He tried to still grief, but could not. Instead he sent for magicians. These at last managed to project her shape upon a curtain. He had asked then:
Is it, or isn’t it?
I stand and look,
hearing the swish, swish of a silk skirt,
but how slow she comes.
For of course, though she might come, she would never arrive. That was how Muchaku felt. It was unbearable to withdraw from the world and fail, only to fail the world and have it withdrawn from you.
When he woke he found Yasumaro staring at him, sitting cross legged and content.
“Was it a ghost?” asked Muchaku. He did not stop to explain. He knew that his brother knew what he had seen.
“A ghost? Who knows. What a thing seems to be perhaps goes on living when what it was dies. So only our appearances are immortal. For everyone is three people, himself, what he thinks he is, and what others think him. We can never know what he is, any more than he can. But we never forget what we think he is.”
Muchaku did not listen. “She seemed so hungry.”
Yasumaro became less bland. “Oh we shall be hungry ghosts ourselves, whether we survive or not, for a war does not only kill men. It also kills the world they live in. So even living, we yet move in the ghost of a world, and it is better to be a ghost than to live in a ghost world.”
“I can’t believe it was she.”
“Why try? There are some things the mind cannot conceive of. We can only believe in something we cannot understand, for otherwise we would know it, and knowledge is not belief. Everything we remember is a ghost. It comes and goes. She will always be here until you really want to forget her.” He looked down at Muchaku anxiously. “Are you well enough to get up?”
Muchaku nodded.
“Good. I’ve decided we’ll go to the Pearl Cloud temple. I go there every year to paint. Besides, it is pleasant up there.”
Muchaku sensed that there was another reason for this journey, but thought it wiser not to ask what. He rather liked being protected by his brother, even if it did involve him in a plan the purpose of which he did not understand.
“There is no hurry,” said Yasumaro, and seemed relieved. “Stay here, and I’ll bring you breakfast. There is a lot to be done first, so you may as well rest.”
Muchaku did as he was told. But as he sat there, bathed in the fumes from his tea, he was aware of a new sad restlessness in that ordinarily peaceful house. It was as though everything well loved was going away. It was so unwonted that at first he did not recognize it, and when he did recognize it, he found he was reluctant to find out its cause. Yet he could not lie there in hiding. He went in search of his brother.
He found him in the back quarters of the house, carefully packing the valuable rocks in the sand garden. He must have been prepared for such an event. There was a low opening in the basement wall of the corridor, ready to receive them, with its cover leaning to one side.
It might seem odd to take care of rocks. Desperate soldiers would not notice them. But these were famous, valuable, and old as men date things old from that time ago that they first discovered them. Besides, perhaps the soldiers would disrupt their arrangement, and Yasumaro wanted no one to do that but himself, for each one was not only venerable in itself, but had come from a famous collection, and the arrangement of them in the sand had been done by a master, whether that master was himself or no. One must have the courage to recognize ability, even in one’s self.
Yasumaro looked up startled, but when Muchaku said nothing, seemed reassured.
Muchaku did not care to watch the disassembly of a world. The far wall of the court was oiled, but that on the left was plain plaster. Against it, from the garden beyond, was cast the shadow of a dancing bough of tiny maple leaves. He watched it for a while. The shadows were only sometimes precise, but no matter how often they were vague, they always came back to precision again.
They were a little like Yasumaro himself. He was so completely fraudulent that that made him thoroughly genuine, and when people realized that, they could trust him. But very few people ever did realize that, least of all Muchaku. They were so much more content not so much to be amused, as to be found amusing.
However Yasumaro was not bashful about his rocks. Them he loved in a matter of fact way, since clearly, unlike the snails, they could not seem to have any affection for him.
Rocks, he said, like all art, formalized the horror of life without concealing it, and removed it by staring it in the face. To formalize anything was to understand it. Rocks are ethical, not moral. The ethical necessity is the higher, for morals are an illusion. They are an effort to control how people behave by pretending that they behave otherwise. Whereas ethics are designed to ameliorate conduct simply by recognizing behaviour for what it really is and then pointing out how these pieces may fit most efficiently together. Tuberculosis may have an ethic. There are various ways to make the progress of that disease as comfortable as possible. But the venereal has only morals, an example of the carelessness of being so careful as to pretend that things are as they are not.
True, as for rocks, if we knew more about them, and after all we know little but that they breathe and sweat and to a certain extent are capable of feeling, we might find that they had pretences too, but as it is they seem ethical and realistic. They are subject only to a natural senility. It is therefore inaesthetic to tamper with a rock. They make themselves, and so one can only find them, though life, it is true, wears them away into the most beautiful of shapes.
And of course, for proper conduct, which is ethics, one must be realistic, and this is not possible without a sense of humour. Rocks are very humorous. One can detect that in their immobility. Like all humorous people, they are content merely to watch. This is called irony. God has it, we may be sure, and a few, a very few, men, those usually humorous enough to perceive the Tao’s indifference. For of course there is no God. There is only Tao.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that indifference is passive. It is passive only as water is passive. Just by passing by and doing nothing, we alter the shape of everything.
