The Empty Mirror Read online

  But his fatigue was only on the outside; he was the same hard pusher and puller I knew from the former sesshins. His little room trembled with power, and more than ever before I had the feeling that I was crushing myself against a thick wall but that the wall, in some mysterious way, was trying to help me—that there was an opening, and that I could find that opening. The sixth day the pain became so bad that I began to groan and the head monk sent me out of the hall. I had to walk up and down on a slightly elevated stone-tiled path, and on both sides, some three feet below me, were low shrubs. I must have closed my eyes and suddenly I found I was lying in the brushwood, not knowing who I was or where I was. I hadn’t fainted, I had fallen asleep. The head monk heard the thump of my fall, then some rustling of leaves, then nothing. He came, exceptionally, for he hadn’t left the hall except for meals in the main temple, to see what was wrong, and he woke me up and pulled me back onto the path where he brushed the leaves off my clothes and hit me softly in the face.

  “Wake up, it won’t be long now.” In his eyes I saw warm friendship, an emotion which I hadn’t recognized in his face before.

  The seventh day passed reasonably quickly, I fell asleep, hit the monks, was beaten up in return, visited the master five times a day, and was marched to the dining room and taken back to the hall under escort of the head monk and Ke-san, his assistant. Nothing irritated me any more. The last day. At midnight the exercise would be over, the end was in sight, nothing worse than what I had already experienced could happen now.

  I counted the minutes of the last period. Another twenty-four minutes. Another twenty-three minutes. The bell was struck. I expected a general relaxing and joy, laughter, sudden talking, but the quiet tense atmosphere in the hall did not change. I looked at Gerald who was studying his watch. I hissed at him and he shrugged his shoulders.

  I went outside, washed my face with cold water and waited for the others to come out, but to my surprise the bell was struck again. The meditation continued and I was late. I ran back, bowed to the head monk to excuse myself and he pointed at my seat. When he saw that his order bewildered me he whispered that it would go on for another two hours. I was told later that he had only told me this; he had wanted to add another exercise by giving us the impression that he was going on for another complete day, but he probably thought that I had suffered enough and defined the duration of the added practice.

  I got through the two hours, slumped in my seat and dulled into a half sleep. The hall was not patrolled this time, and I could wobble if I wanted to. I felt no pain, only a soft buzzing in my legs, and the burn on my belly ached a little. All I had to do was fight the sleep which threatened to engulf me. I wasn’t sufficiently in balance to be safe when asleep. If I toppled over I would make a spectacle of myself and might crack my skull on the stone floor below me as well. At 2 a.m. the head monk struck his bell with force, and its clear sound sang through the hall. Gi-san jumped down, rushed outside and attacked the temple drum, and the two youngest monks began to strike the six-feet high, massive bell in the clock tower. We streamed out of the hall, after a last formal bow in the direction of the altar. I lit a cigarette and laughed at Gerald, who embraced me and mumbled something which I didn’t catch. The head monk shook me by the hand.

  “The bath is ready. I’ll wash your back. It’s tradition. The last will be the first. You jump in first!”

  I saw steam rise from the bathhouse: the cook had taken care of everything, he had done all the chores by himself all week and was, if possible, even more exhausted than the others. His soft wide face was split by a tremendous smile.

  My clothes were caked to my body and I didn’t know how quickly I could strip them off. I kept on pouring bowls of hot water down my back and front while the head monk, naked and tiny, massaged my back with his strong hands. In a corner sat Gerald flat on the floor with his legs stretched wide apart, brushing his teeth till his beard was white with foam. The young monks splashed contentedly and talked softly to each other. The story of the case which had burned my skin was repeated many times and everybody squealed with pleasure, even the head monk, even the master who came to see how we were doing and who had put on a clean bathrobe. We spent more than an hour in the bathhouse and I shaved my stubby beard hair by hair.

  When the head monk told me again how pleased he was with my effort I said that I didn’t understand him. Hadn’t he told me that I would have to get through Rohatsu? That I would be sent down if I dropped out?

  “What?” he asked. “What is this nonsense?”

  Gerald was asked to join in the conversation and I finally realized that I had misunderstood the instructions which the head monk and his two colleagues had given me. They had tried to explain to me that they didn’t expect me to be able to get through the complete exercise. But I could, they had repeated at least three times, give up. Only, they couldn’t have me wandering about the monastery while the others were trying to get through Rohatsu. That’s why they had given me the name and address of a hotel close by. It took a little time before it all got through to me. Gerald explained it again.

  “Never mind,” the head monk said. “I am glad you didn’t understand me. Because whatever your reasons were, you pulled through. That’s very good.”

  Gerald sat down and laughed till he had tears in his eyes, I had to throw cold water over him to make him shut up. “You,” Gerald said, “are such a nitwit that you’ll enter Nirvana by mistake.”

  After the bathhouse the monks went to the kitchen for breakfast. I saw a wide variety of Japanese delicacies on the tables, radishes, sour plums, seaweed, small bowls with sauces. The head monk put his hand on my shoulder. “Not for you. That’s for us, we like this type of food. You and Gerald have been invited out by Peter; he is waiting for you.”

  When I heard the pebbles crunch under my wooden sandals, felt the clean clothes against my skin, and inhaled the smoke of a cigarette, and knew that it was all over, that Rohatsu had faded into the past, I felt such a wave of happiness surge through me that I stopped. Gerald pushed me forward. “Peter has made an American breakfast, mark my words.”

  And so it was. There was a neatly laid out table waiting for us, with dishes full of crisp rolls, bacon and eggs, fresh butter, a large pot of coffee, and tins of marmalade and cherry jam. Peter kept on toasting rolls and pouring coffee and frying eggs till we rolled over backwards on the floormats. That day was a holiday. I slept for a few hours and then woke up. The rhythm of my existence was disturbed and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I read till I became drowsy again. The rest of the day I spent sleeping, walking about the gardens, and eating. All stress had gone. The koan rumbled vaguely on the horizon of my consciousness but that was all. It was very quiet in my mind; the only feeling I was aware of was one of intense contentment.

  Eleven

  The eightfold path and a jump into the swamp

  In India a hermit was meditating on the shore of a river when he was disturbed by a young man. The young man knelt down and said:

  “Master, I want to become your disciple.”

  “Why?” asked the master.

  “Because I want to find God.”

  The master jumped up, took the young man by the scruff of the neck, dragged him to the river and pushed his head under water. After a minute the master released the young man and pulled him out of the river. The young man spat out some of the water which he got in his mouth and began to cough. After a while he became quiet.

  “What did you want most of all while I kept you under water?” asked the master.

  “Air,” said the young man.

  “Very well,” the master said. “Go back to wherever you have come from, and come back to me when you want God as much as you wanted air just now.”

  I hadn’t come to the monastery to find God. I wanted to have an explanation of existence, an explanation so clear that all my questions would fall away by themselves. I wanted to know why everything had been started, because it couldn’t be, I thought, tha
t it had all been started just to finish again. Why all this trouble, this pain, this looking for something which couldn’t be found? Perhaps the explanation would be identical to the idea of “God,” but that wouldn’t make me a seeker after God; I would prefer to describe myself as an alarmed soul. But whatever I was, devout or alarmed, I had wanted to find something. I had come to a master who, I thought, had what I wanted to find or who at least knew the way to whatever I was looking for. He had shown me the way but I wasn’t following it.

  I did, during the months following Rohatsu, all sorts of things. I had found possibilities of making monastic life pleasant. When I “meditated” I didn’t even try to concentrate. I counted the minutes, estimated how long it would take to the next bell, dozed, trained my body not to fall over when I slept, and dreamed. I imagined whatever can be imagined, to get through the time. The pain bothered me much less now and I began to enjoy sitting, nicely balanced, without being troubled by my legs or back. I enjoyed the meals which I ate, on medical prescription as before, in the restaurants of the neighborhood. It was pleasant after a good meal, to sit quietly, smoke and sip coffee. I always carried a book and would spend another half hour reading. The lessons in Japanese, which I was still taking, were very interesting as well; and the hieroglyphics, which had once been so mysterious, now began to have meaning and I exercised diligently and filled notebook after notebook with scribbles. I could make myself understood and when the Japanese, always polite, complimented me on my progress I would glow with pride. And there was the bathhouse and the laundry man who washed and ironed my clothes so neatly. I had even discovered a barber’s shop which employed girls and I went there regularly to be shaved and have the muscles of my neck massaged.

  A book on Tibetan Buddhism told me that whoever knows how to organize his life can be comfortable anywhere, even in hell. I quite agreed. I had managed to be comfortable in a Zen monastery.

  That I couldn’t solve the koan, I accepted. Koans are difficult, anyone knows that. Nobody really expected me to solve the koan in a hurry. Hadn’t there been Zen monks who had fought their koan for sixteen years before they broke through the wall? Well then. And although the master still gave me the impression every day that he really expected me to solve the koan that very day, well, that was part of his game. He had to pretend that I would bring him the answer here and now. But he knew, of course, that I wasn’t anywhere near the answer.

  But the sesshins kept on coming every month, and then my pleasures stopped and I would have to make an effort. During sesshins nobody could escape the pressure of the monastery; the young monks saw their roads of escape cut off and exerted themselves to accomplish the hopeless task. The head monk pushed and the master pulled and they were beaten up and shouted at and sometimes I even meditated when I didn’t have to and sat in my room, or somewhere in the garden, and tried to lose my thoughts and grab the koan which always slipped away again.

  I noticed that the young monks had discovered ways to break the rules of the monastery. They couldn’t, as I did, visit restaurants and other public establishments, because they wore the monastic garb and had their heads shaved. But they did have civilian clothes, hidden in their rooms or in a corner of the temple where nobody came. When they put on a suit and a cap nobody would recognize them, and I saw them climb over the wall at night. They even had a special little ladder for that purpose.

  “Whatever do you do when you are over the wall?” I asked Han-san, the youngest monk, who had become my friend.

  “As long as you don’t tell anyone,” Han-san said. “We go to the cinema, and sometimes to a pub to have a little sake, but it’s difficult because at 3:30 in the morning we have to visit the master and we can’t be smelling of alcohol. And sometimes we go to the whores.”

  “Do you have money for it?”

  “We get money from home. My mother is always sending parcels, usually there’s some special food in them, and sometimes an envelope. That way I got my suit and cap. My father isn’t supposed to know, but my mother pities me; she didn’t want me to become a monk. And I have an uncle who sends me money every now and then, but he thinks I use it for some Buddhist purpose.”

  I couldn’t imagine that the head monk didn’t know what was going on behind his back. He must have seen the ladder, for he knew every corner of the monastery. And he wasn’t only wise, but also very clever.

  Sometimes we had a weekend off and I spent them in Kobe, in the house of Leo Marks, but after the visit to the brothel nothing happened there which could offend against the most narrow morality. Leo obviously thought that it wasn’t his task to bring me into temptation; he only made sure that I ate well and that nobody troubled me. Sometimes we walked in his garden, or on the beach. Most of all I enjoyed the use of his library. I didn’t get up too late, and I meditated in my room.

  A holiday came along. I don’t remember now why it was a holiday; perhaps it was a national holiday or some day which the Buddhists celebrate. I knew that Leo wasn’t in Kobe, and I wondered how I could spend this sudden gift of time. I wandered into the city without any set goal and found a café where jazz records were played on request. I found some trumpet music which I remembered from my days in Capetown and drank whisky. In the afternoon I watched French gangsters killing each other in technicolor. I had another drink and decided to visit Gerald.

  “You’ve been drinking,” Gerald said. “Have you run away from the monastery? Do I have to take you back?”

  He still hadn’t forgotten that he had become a disciple of the master before me. When I told him about the official holiday he smiled and asked me to come in.

  He lived, as I did, in a Zen temple, with the difference that his temple wasn’t a monastery. The priest who took care of the temple seemed to be a simple old man, a friendly quiet priest who had chosen the road of least resistance after his three years in the monastery, a long time ago. He was in charge of the temple and let rooms, while a few old unmarried women kept the temple clean and worked in the kitchen, in exchange for board and lodging.

  The central administration of the Zen complex, to which our monastery belonged as well, gave him a small amount every month, enough for repairs and food. The temple was a national monument so the government paid him a little, too. For the rest he had nothing to do, and he did nothing. Once in a while another Zen priest would visit him. He owned a television set, he read the newspaper, he took part in the temple services of the main temple. According to Gerald he never meditated, because nobody told him to meditate; meditation is only compulsory in the monasteries. Every morning he conducted a short service in the altar room, the old women coming as well and kneeling down respectfully, some twelve feet behind him. He would recite two or three sutras, strike his gong, prostrate himself a few times, bow to the altar, and shuffle back to his room. The best rooms in the temple were let to Gerald and he paid, in those days, a sizeable rent, about £10 a month. The priest, who knew that Zen attracts westerners, had prepared the rooms in western style and provided a bed and chairs which had been immediately removed by Gerald who preferred to live Japanese-style. But, and this was a special attraction for me, there was a western-style lavatory, and I would walk the mile and a half between the monastery and Gerald’s temple to sit at ease instead of having to perform feats of balance. Gerald invited me to dinner and I helped him, in his small modern kitchen complete with gas stove and refrigerator, cleaning vegetables and cutting meat. He studied my way of working.

  “You know,” Gerald said, “you still haven’t learned much. Just look at that. You don’t concentrate on what you are doing. You are starting on the next tomato before you have finished the first. You are making a mess of it. You are trying to do two things at the same time.”

  I had been getting used to criticism and didn’t answer, but after dinner, and after several cups of sake, I returned to his remark.

  “Zen,” I said, “as far as I have understood anything about it, is a meditation training, and no more than that. Buddha ha
s found a way which leads to the answer to all questions, and the way is called the eightfold holy path, the noble path. The eight parts are clearly defined, to wit:

  1 right understanding (understanding the four truths, knowing life is suffering, that the eternal desire, the will to have and to be is the cause of suffering, that desire can be broken and the breaking of desire is caused by walking the eightfold path)

  2 right intention (always to intend to walk the path)

  3 right speech (to be friendly, not to insult or hurt people by words)

  4 right action (to try to do everything as well as possible)

  5 right means of livelihood (to earn your living in a decent manner)

  6 right effort (to continue producing the energy needed to continue)

  7 right awareness (to know the situation in which one happens to be, so that one can control one’s reactions to that situation)

  8 right meditation.

  “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  Gerald moved about on the floor, refilled the sake cups and said that I had droned my way nicely through the list.

  “I don’t like this ticking off, this numbering. But there is no other way to formulate, to define, the path, of course. If you want to mention them all you have to list them one by one. But in reality the sequence isn’t right, one moment of the day the second step is important, the next moment it is the seventh, perhaps, I am only giving an example. In fact you need them all, all the time, every moment of the day; one step supports the other and they all belong together, like the weave of a fabric keeps the fabric together.”

  “Yes.” I said, and slurred my words, for the sake wasn’t blending well with the whisky I had been drinking earlier on, even if they were separated by a substantial meal. “That’s what I wanted to say, too. All these steps fit in with each other, but what do we hear in the monastery? Meditation, and meditation again. And the koan, but the koan is the subject on which one is supposed to meditate. Always the eighth step, never the others, except when you said just now that I wasn’t cleaning the tomatoes properly, that would have been the fourth step.”