The Empty Mirror Read online

  I have read warnings that meditation can be dangerous and should only be done under the personal supervision of a master. I don’t believe this is true. If a group of reasonably sane people want to sit together for an hour or so, it will work perfectly well. However, if certain members of the group want to see mystical light and astral helpers and visions and lofty spirits bathing in a sea of high powered radiance, a nervous atmosphere may be caused which can have unpleasant temporary results. Buddhism is for the average, normal man. It is a method of transforming daily life, the comings and goings and activities of a common man, into a mystical training. Buddhism is no school for magicians. You can’t predict the future with it, and you can’t use it to find out if you were Louis XIV in a previous life. Nor is it advisable to use Buddhism as a means of developing the third eye, to see the colors of the auras of our fellow men.

  In China a Zen master travelled with a few disciples to the capital and camped near the river. A monk of another sect asked one of the disciples of the Zen master if his teacher could do magic tricks. His own master, said the monk of the other sect, was a very talented and developed man. If he stood on this side of the river, and somebody else stood on the other side, and if you gave the master a brush and the other a sheet of paper then the master would be able to write characters in the air which would appear on the sheet of paper. The Zen monk replied that his master was also a very talented and developed man, because he too could perform the most astounding feats. If he slept, for instance, he slept, and if he ate, he ate.

  In Tibet in particular, schools were developed which originated from mixture of Buddhism and other methods. The followers of these schools claimed that they had all sorts of supernatural powers: they could fly, they could manifest themselves in different places at the same time, they could make objects disappear and appear again at another spot. It is quite possible that these claims are true, but I wonder if this type of supernatural happening has any real value. Zen masters have often given their opinion of this sort of thing. Supernatural gifts are obstacles on the way to enlightenment, insight, true understanding. The Buddha himself never boasted about his supernatural power. He taught the method of the eightfold path and set an example to show the way.

  While I was in the monastery I was continually referred back to the daily routine, the simple everyday life. If I wanted to expound some clever theory I was either ignored or ridiculed or curtly told not to talk nonsense. What mattered was “here and now,” whatever I happened to be doing, whether I was peeling potatoes in the kitchen, washing rice, pulling out weeds, learning Japanese, drinking tea, or meditating. I had to solve my koan, the subject of my meditation, and I shouldn’t fuss.

  It is irritating, annoying, to be shut up all the time, to be unable to talk, not to be able to say: “Here I am, I have experienced something, I have thought of something, I believe I know something, I understand something, please listen to me.” What irritated me most, I think, was that nobody wanted to listen to me when I discovered that meditation, even the blundering sort of meditation I was engaged in, led to new experiences with color and shape. I noticed that when I walked through the temple garden, the observation of bits of moss on rocks, or a slowly moving goldfish, or reeds swaying with the wind, led to ecstasy.

  By losing myself in the colors and shapes around me I seemed to become very detached, an experience which I had known before, in Africa, after using hashish. The feeling wasn’t only caused by observing, being aware of, “beautiful” things, such as goldfish or pieces of moss; a full dustbin or dogshit with flies around it led to exactly the same result. And this “getting high” was much more satisfactory than the hashish experiences, because now I felt happy and quiet and sometimes pleasantly tense, whereas I had never known quite where I was with hashish—sometimes the experience was pleasant, but often it was nasty and full of fear. Hashish had also given me negative and confusing visions, such as the sudden appearance of endless highways in a strange, unreal light, while now I wasn’t bothered by visions at all. I merely seemed to really see what I was looking at. I tried to find an explanation and concluded that we are, under normal everyday stress and circumstances, much too tense and rushed to be able to be fully aware. None of the senses will then function properly; and we do and think too much at the same time, with the result that nothing succeeds. Alcohol, or hashish, or engaging in some intense and dangerous activity like riding a motorcycle, gives us the only chance to channel our attention in a single direction. A tree is a fantastic example of beauty, but who has time to look at a tree?

  And now that suddenly, unexpectedly, without even wanting to, I could suddenly observe and really see objects in my surroundings, I thought this event of such importance that I wanted my discovery to be acknowledged, accepted by qualified authorities. But the master didn’t show the slightest interest; he wouldn’t even give me one of his rare nods. He thought it quite normal that moss on rocks and full dustbins are visually interesting—a truth so obvious that any comment is wasted. Zen monasteries are severe and tough.

  Even so, I was occasionally praised, even specially invited by the head monk to his private room and treated to bitter tea and sweet cakes, without having any idea of what it was that I had done right. At one time I was tea “monk” in the meditation hall for a few weeks (I never wore monk’s clothes in the monastery always jeans and a black jersey, and in winter a black duffel coat). After the third meditation period I had to slip out quietly, rush to the kitchen, make tea in a large kettle, and then get back as quickly as possible. In the hall my return was greeted by the head monk striking his bell and I had to bow to the altar. Then I gave everyone tea, I didn’t have to bother about the cups as another monk provided them beforehand. But on one occasion I found this hadn’t happened. I stood there with the kettle and nobody had a cup. I looked surprised, understood that I couldn’t just stand about, put the kettle down, bowed to the altar and went back to the kitchen to fetch cups. Everything which is done in a Zen temple is part of a scheme, even the most trivial activities are part of a ceremonial tradition, but there is no tradition for cups which aren’t there. So I created a new ceremony on the spot, came back with a tray full of cups which I had found in a cupboard (they weren’t the right cups but I hadn’t had the time to look for them properly), bowed with tray and all to the altar and the Bodhisatva, gave everyone a cup, put the tray against the back of the altar, and poured tea. It seemed an acceptable way of dealing with an unexpected situation. My teachers, the master himself, the head monk, and later Peter, thought this a matter of importance. I had proved, so I was told three times, that I was a good pupil. Zen training fosters awareness: it produces somebody who concentrates on everything he does, who tries to do everything as well as possible and who becomes aware of his circumstances and of the part which he plays within his environment. If an unexpected situation suddenly develops he will know how to handle it, and will, by saving himself, save others. The monk who had forgotten the cups wasn’t scolded—everyone had had his tea.

  Zen masters are actors. The feather which had been stuck in my cap three times, by the head monk who called me to his room, by the master who spoke to me in the garden, and by Peter who patted me on the shoulder when he met me in the kitchen, was in itself of no significance. Teacups or no teacups, the case in itself wasn’t worth mentioning. I had felt flattered at first, but when they really overdid it I understood that they were really trying to tell me something about awareness.

  Meanwhile the meditation continued, day after day. Sometimes six hours a day, sometimes eight, sometimes twelve. The first week of the month the monastery closed its gates, the monks received no mail and the telephone was cut. The master saw us not once, but three times a day. After a month I was admitted to the master’s room for the first time. First I had to practise the ceremony of “seeing the master” while he wasn’t there. The head monk took the part of master. He sat on the platform and stared at me with a nasty glint in his eye. I had to come in slowly
, with my hands folded, bow, prostrate myself three times on the floor, and then kneel. After the interview was over I would have to do the same in reverse, and leave the room walking backwards. I had to try a few times before the head monk was satisfied and he told me to learn to walk more softly, because my greater length and weight caused the floormats to start bouncing a little and the movement might bother the master.

  Although I was beginning to feel fanatical about Zen, I thought this approach was overdone, just as saluting and coming to attention in the army had seemed ridiculous and senseless to me. I shooed the rebellious thought away by producing the idea that the Zen master himself had to be a free, completely detached man and these were no more than good manners, of no real importance and merely created for appearances of order and respect.

  The head monk had advised me not to read while I was in the monastery. I didn’t pay much attention to this and read a biography of Milarepa, the most famous Tibetan Buddhist holy man.1 Milarepa hadn’t had an easy start either. When he found his teacher Marpa, Milarepa was a black magician who had repented and seen the errors of his ways. Marpa made Milarepa do exercises to counteract the results of his own evil deeds. He had to build houses, and every time he finished a house Marpa said that he had made a mistake about the site. The house shouldn’t be here, but there, on that hilltop. And then Milarepa had to take his house to pieces again and carry the stones, one by one, to the hilltop where he would build the house again only to be told to pull it down once more. It didn’t seem such a terrible punishment to me. I should have preferred to build houses, even while knowing that I would have to take them down again, rather than meditate in a hall where I was being slowing torn to pieces. Further on in the book I found descriptions of Milarepa’s meditation, but nowhere did it mention that he had any trouble. There was nothing about pain in the legs or back, the fight with sleep, the confused and endlessly interrupting thoughts.

  Sleep had never been a source of trouble for me, but now it had become a fierce opponent. I slept for four hours a night and another hour during the day, provided nobody interfered by ringing a bell or beating a gong indicating that something had to be done somewhere. I had learned the meaning of the various signals. Every day sutras were sung in the temple room and I would have to be there with the others. I couldn’t join in, the chanting was too foreign to me and I couldn’t read the characters of the text, so I had to content myself with kneeling down and listening to the monks; sometimes I literally fell over with sleep. Because I couldn’t master the lotus position I couldn’t achieve balance, while the monks, who were very comfortable in the lotus, could afford to fall asleep while meditating as they didn’t risk falling over and making a spectacle of themselves. There were days which seemed so hopeless that I had to use all my strength to get up in the morning. When I tried to visualise the immediate future I saw nothing but pictures of bondage and assorted difficulties. Sometimes I didn’t get up and pretended to have a sore throat or a headache but I couldn’t do that too often. I hadn’t come to the monastery to try and escape from the monastic training.

  I missed the company of my friends. The monks made jokes but they were different from the jokes my friends would invent. I wished for the company of just one of my former mates, so that we could laugh together about the many seemingly illogical or contrasting situations. I missed my motorcycle and it annoyed me that I couldn’t listen to jazz, although the music of the temple, the chanting voices of the monks, the clappers, cymbals, wooden drums and gongs fascinated me. I would have liked to have some coffee now and then and not just Chinese tea. And most of all I wanted to sit on a western-style lavatory, with a cup of coffee, a cigar, and a book, and not, as now, have to squat down uncomfortably above a hole in a board with flies coming out of it.

  Three

  Life is suffering

  The ship which took me to Japan carried very few passengers. There was sufficient second class accommodation for a hundred people but there were only three of us, and my two fellow passengers turned out to be moody Danish soldiers who spoke nothing but Danish. They were travelling to the Far East at their own expense to catch up with their ship, which they had missed in Durban because they got drunk. They hardly talked to each other, and spent most of their time hanging dejectedly over the railing. Sometimes they drank beer and sang sad songs with a lot of “ø”s and “flø”s.

  I didn’t mind having to spend five weeks at sea. It meant another five weeks’s holiday in the shadow of the monastery, and I had time to read. I thought that a little theoretical knowledge in the Buddhist field might come in useful, and I read dutifully and made schemes on large sheets of paper, with neat arrows and connecting lines. In this way I learned something about the teaching of Buddha. The first truth of Buddhism is that life means suffering. Life = suffering.

  According to the myth Buddha was guided to awareness of the first truth by highly placed heavenly personages who wanted him to show the way to a better pattern of life. Buddha had once been a spoiled prince who lived in a luxurious palace. At his birth a peculiar and mysterious light had been observed in the sky and some courtiers said that they heard heavenly music. His father, ruler over a small kingdom, called in astrologists who predicted that the child had an exceptional personality and would become either a world ruler or an enlightened spirit who would solve the questions of the universe and who would be able to show the way to the mysteries to others as well. The father decided to take his son along a purely worldly path. The son should be given the impression that material things, wealth, success, power, are ideals which have a permanent as well as an essential value. Old people, sick people, poor people, depressed people, anyone miserable in any way, were kept outside the palace fence and the prince saw nothing but seducible young women and happy young men instead. He took part in sports and made music, and the courtiers arranged parties. One day the prince, curious to know what happened outside the fence, asked permission to go out. The king made sure that the prince wouldn’t see anything unpleasant: he arranged a conducted tour, briefed the carriage driver, told the people around the palace what to do and what to say, and had the miserable removed. But the heavenly personages materialised and took the forms of a beggar, a sick man, a very old man leaning on a stick, thin as a rake and almost blind, a corpse at the side of the road, and a wandering monk in a yellow robe. The driver of the carriage was questioned by the prince. He had to admit that the world knows a lot of misery, a lot of suffering.

  The prince asked about the wandering monk in the yellow robe.

  “He is a man, your highness, who has given up the superficial life and who tries to approach reality through discipline and meditation.”

  “So you think there is a reality which is more real than what I see, and hear, and smell, and feel, and taste, and can imagine?”

  “Yes, your highness.”

  “And do you know that reality?”

  The coachman didn’t know what to say. He did believe there was a higher reality, but he couldn’t say he knew that reality. The driver was a devout Hindu who believed that the apparent injustice of earthly suffering is an illusion and that behind, or in front of, or next to that illusion, or perhaps somewhere in the illusion itself, would exist a reality which could explain everything.

  “Life is suffering,” Buddha concluded. He wasn’t a Buddha then, but Gautama Siddarta, an Indian prince. Even happiness, enjoyment, gaiety are forms of suffering, because these feelings are limited in time, and will stop. The essence of happiness is suffering because we always know that there will be an end to it because the subject, or the person, or the thought which causes happiness is temporary. The energetic businessman who is successful has a heart attack, the happy couple suddenly apply for a divorce, the promising child falls out with his parents and runs away from home, the fertile pastures are flooded, the ship sinks or is broken up, the loved pet is run over by a car. Everything is temporary, will die, will cease to exist. The baby which is now gurgling and burbling i
n its cot will die, now or later, but it will die.

  What the Indian prince surmised then, has been surmised by everybody. Every human being who reflects, who observes, suspects that life is suffering. Perhaps he doesn’t like talking about it and prefers to push the thought away, but he knows that life is a difficult road, a way of the Cross which will continue till it is ended by death. The thought is suppressed by drinking, by work, by spending time on hobbies, but the thought will always return. It is possible to find temporary relief in books, or in conversations with friends, but books begin to bore after a while and friends don’t really have an answer either. So doubt returns. If life is suffering, and if death approaches a little more every day, then why live? If Buddhism hadn’t gone any further than this first truth, that life and suffering are synonyms, then Buddhism could be called a negative religion, without anyone arguing the point. But there are another three truths, stated by Buddha:

  suffering is caused by desire, the desire to have and the desire to be;

  the desire, the desire to have and the desire to be, can be broken;

  the desire can be broken by applying the eightfold path.

  It was a monotonous, rather cheerless trip. Nothing happened. Three meals a day, a cup of coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon. A blue, almost flat sea, tidily enclosed by the horizon on all sides. I began to long for a gale or a collision, but the only adventures offered to me were to be found in the Buddhist books neatly arranged on the shelf in my cabin, one of which I took to my deckchair every time I set out for the sundeck.

  I thought I could understand the Buddhist theory. Life is suffering. Of course. There is pure suffering, the physical suffering I remembered from the war years. There is also boredom; I had experienced it at school.