FROM THE other side of the shoji a voice called out: “Nonaka-san, Nonaka-san.” Still half asleep, Sōsuke was sure he had answered this call; yet before uttering a response, he had in fact lost consciousness and fallen back into a deep sleep.
Later, when he awakened for a second time, he leapt to his feet in consternation. Going out on the veranda, he found Gidō clad in a gray robe, with the sleeves tied up to free his hands, energetically wiping down the floor. As he squeezed out a wet rag in his benumbed red hands, the monk said good morning to Sōsuke with his customary gentle smile. Again this morning, the first meditation long since over, he had been busy attending to his chores around the retreat. Reflecting on his indolence, staying in bed even after attempts had been made to wake him, Sōsuke felt utterly ashamed.
“I’m sorry I overslept again today,” he said, as he sidled away from the kitchen door toward the well. He drew some cold water and washed his face as quickly as possible. His beard had grown out enough for his cheeks to feel prickly to the touch, but he had no room in his head to bother about such things. He brooded ceaselessly over the contrast between Gidō and himself.
The day Sōsuke had received his letter of introduction he had been told not only what a decent man this monk was but also how advanced he was in the practice of the discipline. And yet Gidō had turned out to be as self-deprecating as some unlettered lackey. To see him like this, sleeves rolled up, scrubbing away, surely no one could imagine that he was the master of his own retreat. He looked more like some sort of temple bookkeeper or at most a postulant.
Prior to this dwarfish young man’s ordination, while still a lay practitioner, he had evidently sat in the lotus position for seven days straight without moving a muscle. The pain in his legs was such that he could hardly stand up; eventually he could only make his way to the privy by leaning against the wall. At the time he was working as a sculptor. On the day he was enlightened into the True Nature,[85] he had dashed up the hill behind the temple in an excess of joy and shouted out in a loud voice, “Everything on earth, plants and trees, mountains and streams, without exception they enter into Buddha-hood.”[86] It was only then that he shaved his head.
Gidō told Sōsuke that it had been two years since he had been entrusted with this retreat but that he had yet to sleep in a proper bed with his legs stretched out comfortably. Even in winter, he said, he slept sitting up, fully clothed, leaning back against the wall. When he was still an acolyte, he added, he had even had to wash the Master’s loincloth. In those days, whenever he managed to steal some time from his chores to sit and meditate, someone would sneak up behind him and play some nasty trick, and people were always saying vicious things about him, such that during his novitiate he often found himself reproaching the ill fate that had landed him in a monastery.
“It’s only lately that things have gotten a little easier,” he said. “But I still have a long road ahead. Sticking to the practice is a tough business. If there were an easier way to go about it, I wouldn’t be so foolish as to keep slaving away like this for ten or twenty years.”
Gidō’s account left Sōsuke in a demoralized fog. Besides the frustration over his own lack of commitment and spiritual resources, there was the obvious but unanswerable question of why, if success in this arena required so much time, he had come to the temple in the first place.
“You mustn’t think that what you’re doing is a waste of time,” said Gidō. “Ten minutes of meditation yields ten minutes worth of achievement, of course, and twenty minutes of meditation doubles the merit you accrue. And once you’ve made the initial breakthrough, you can continue your practice without having to keep coming back here all the time.”
Sōsuke felt duty-bound to return to his room and meditate again.
He was greatly relieved when, while he was thus engaged, Gidō came to announce that it was time for the Exposition of Principles. There was nothing but misery in sitting here rooted to the spot, agonizing over a conundrum that was as hard to grasp as a bald man was by the hair. Rather than this, any sort of active, physical exertion was preferable, no matter how much energy it might require. He simply wanted to move about.
The location for this event was about as far from the retreat as was the Master’s temple, some one hundred yards away. They reached it by once again passing the lotus pond, then, instead of turning left, following the path straight ahead to where the building stood, its majestic roof tiles soaring among the pines high above. Gidō carried a black-bound book in his breast pocket. Sōsuke naturally had nothing to bring. He had not even known until he came here that “exposition of principles” meant something like what in school would be called a lecture.
The high-ceilinged hall was surprisingly spacious and very cold. The faded tatami blended with the ancient columns in a manner redolent of the distant past. The people seated here all appeared appropriately subdued. Although everyone had sat down wherever he pleased, in no particular order, there was no noisy conversation and not so much as a chuckle to be heard. The monks, wearing vestments of navy-blue hemp, sat in two rows facing one another, arrayed on either side of the barrel-backed officiant’s chair that was placed front and center. The chair was painted vermilion.
Presently the Master appeared. Sōsuke, who had been staring down at the tatami, had no idea when he had come in or what path he had taken to cross the room. He only noticed the Master when his impressive figure was already perched, utterly serene, in the officiant’s chair. He then watched as a young monk standing close to the chair undid a purple silk wrapping and produced a book, which he proceeded to set down reverently on a table. Sōsuke followed the monk with his eyes as he made a deep bow and retreated.
At this point all of the monks in the congregation pressed their palms together and began to recite from The Testamentary Admonitions of Musō Kokushi.[87] The lay congregants who were scattered about near Sōsuke all joined in at the same droning pitch. The recitation had a melody-like rhythm to it and sounded somewhere in between sutra-chanting and normal speech: “Among my students there are three grades: those who can be said to have gone the limit, who have cast off all bonds with others and have single-mindedly examined themselves—they are known as the highest grade; those whose practice of the discipline is not pure, who indulge in eclectic studies—they are termed the middle grade . . .” The passage was not very long. Sōsuke had at first not known who Musō Kokushi was, but he learned from Gidō that Musō and Daitō Kokushi[88] were the patriarchs responsible for the resurgence of the Zen school. Gidō went on to tell him about how Daitō had been lame in one leg and unable through the years to sit in the lotus position. He was so exasperated by this failing that, shortly before he died, determined to force his body to do his bidding, he wrenched his leg until it broke and finally assumed the full lotus position, spilling enough blood in the process to soak his robe.
Presently the recitation proper began. Gidō removed the black-bound volume from his pocket, opened it, and slid it over the tatami to where Sōsuke could see the first page. The work was entitled On the Inextinguishable Light of Our School.[89] Gidō had explained to Sōsuke when he first inquired about the book that it was an especially suitable work for him. According to the monk, it had been compiled by a disciple of the Abbot Hakuin,[90] an eminent priest named Torei or the like, with the purpose of presenting in proper order the various stages of Zen training, from the most basic to the most advanced, along with the psychological states that accompanied each stage.
Sōsuke’s visit to the temple had come in the middle of this recitation series, and he found it difficult to absorb everything that was said. The speaker was articulate, however, and Sōsuke, as he listened in passive silence, found many things of interest. Clearly with the aim of spurring on earnest novices, the recitations regularly included anecdotes about Zen adepts who had struggled mightily along the way, thus lending some spice to these expositions.
Today’s session had proceeded in this fashion up to a certain point when, changing his tone abruptly, the Master launched into a denunciation of those who manifested a lack of sincere commitment in the course of his individual interviews.
“Just recently,” he said, “there was someone who actually complained in my presence that even now, in this place, he was under the sway of illusion.”
Sōsuke shuddered in spite of himself. For he in fact was the one who had made such a complaint during his interview.
An hour later, as they returned together side by side, Gidō said to him, “The Master often interrupts the recitations with cutting remarks about the novices’ indiscretions during their interviews.”
Sōsuke said nothing in reply.