Twelve

A shameless day and satori in the willow quarter

One day a year the Zen authorities declare a general amnesty for all Zen monks. It is a day without rules. The master leaves the grounds and the monks are free. Anything goes. The young monks had often told me about the coming feast and walked about grinning when the day came closer.

“Ha,” Han-san said, “it’ll be marvelous again. Last year we had a lot of fun, but you weren’t here then. I would like to see what you are going to do that day. We’ll make sure there’ll be a good supply of sake, and lots to eat. We’ll close the gate and we won’t let anyone in. If you feel like twisting the head monk’s nose, well, twist it. If you want to crash through your front wall again, fine but perhaps you should restrain yourself a little this time because I’ll have to do the repairs, of course.”

I told myself to be very careful. I wasn’t used to alcohol any more, and whatever the monks intended to do would float on liquor. And what can one do on a day without rules? I should have preferred to retire to my room, with a book and a packet of shinsei-cigarettes. To sit in the sun, perhaps, in a quiet corner of the temple garden, or play with the puppies which the monastery’s mongrel had produced. They were charming puppies, tiny bundles of fluffy wool who had just learned to walk and performed tumbling games in the graveyard all day long. I knew they were going to be drowned and that there was nothing I could do to prevent their untimely death. What could I, a lay-brother, do with five small dogs? Their barking would disturb the monks during meditation and nobody in the neighborhood wanted them.

The day came and everyone started it by sleeping late. At about 8 a.m. breakfast started and the monks wandered in and out of the kitchen without clearing the tables—normally the tables were cleared, scrubbed and stacked immediately after meals. I fried some bacon and eggs in the kitchen and made myself a large pot of coffee while the fat cook helped me curiously: bacon and coffee, in his way of thinking, were most exotic. In exchange I helped him to prepare the festive meal, fried noodles, vegetables and sizeable lumps of meat. We were going to have ice cream as well and I promised to go and fetch it at the last moment as the monastery didn’t have a refrigerator. At about eleven the sake bottle appeared and the young monks especially got drunk in no time at all. Nobody had any defence against alcohol and as sake is drunk quickly, although the cups are quite small, the effect is quickly noticeable. Sake is not wine, but a spirit, distilled from rice, and about as strong as whisky or gin.

Han-san sat next to me and dominated the conversation. When the others wanted to say something as well he lost his temper and demanded the right to finish his story. Another young monk, whose face had become as red as a sour plum and whose eyes swam about in blobs of pink jelly, took umbrage and the older monks had to separate the two fighters. Han-san stumped out of the kitchen and I found him, a couple of hours later, fast asleep in the shadow of a gravestone. I sat down near him and made myself comfortable with a thermos flask of coffee and a translation of the famous story of Shanks’ Mare,1 the story of two Japanese good-for-nothings who leave Tokyo because the bill collectors become too active, and wander down to Kyoto along the highway. It’s a good description of Japan in the early nineteenth century, and was an appropriate book to read on this day of freedom for the two heroes of the novel solve most of their problems by laughing and running away.

The sun went behind the clouds, it became chilly, and Han-san woke up, cramped on the cold stones.

“Give me some of that coffee,” Han-san said, “a free day like this isn’t much fun really. What can we do with it? I have a headache already and the evening hasn’t even come yet. The others will probably be milling about in the temple and the head monk is watching them, of course. He hasn’t had a drop himself, he is just pretending to join in the fun while he keeps things quiet so that there won’t be too much of a mess to clear up tomorrow.”

“What would you like to do?” I asked, “put on your suit and cap and scale the wall?”

“No,” Han-san said. “We shouldn’t. It’s tradition that we amuse ourselves within the walls of the monastery and the head monk will be counting heads all the time. It’s a dull life in this monastery. If I had the courage I would become a disciple of Bobo-roshi—he runs a different show altogether.” Roshi means master. I also knew that Bobo is a four-letter word meaning copulation.

“Bobo-roshi?”

Han-san sat up and lit one of my cigarettes, something which he would normally never do without asking; but this time he just grabbed the packet.

“Yes,” he said, “have you never heard about him? Peter knows him but it isn’t like Peter to talk about Bobo-roshi. The head monk knows him quite well, I believe. Bobo-roshi is a Zen master, but different. If you like I’ll tell you what I know, but I don’t know if it’s all true; I only know about him by hearsay and I have only met him once. He seems to be an ordinary man but he laughs a lot and he has a very deep voice and he dresses strangely. He never wears the Zen robes but usually dresses in a simple kimono, like artists do, and sometimes he wears western clothes, jeans and a jersey, like you do. They say he has spent years in a Zen monastery, in the southern part of Kyoto. It’s a severe monastery, the rules are applied very strictly, more strictly than here. For instance, I believe they get up at 2 a.m. every day. He is supposed to have been a very diligent monk, rather overdoing things even, making extra rules for himself and all that. But he didn’t understand his koan and the master was hard on him; whenever he wanted to say something the master would pick up his bell and ring him out of the room. He was treated that way for years on end. He was doing extra meditation, sleeping in the lotus position, trying everything he could think of, but the koan remained as mysterious as ever. I don’t know how long this situation lasted, six years, ten years maybe, but then he had enough. I don’t think he even said goodbye, he just left, in ordinary clothes, with a little money he had saved, or which had been sent to him from home.

“Now you must realise that he had been a monk a long time and didn’t know anything about civilian life. He had never climbed the wall at night. He was a real monk, sober, quiet, always in command of himself. And there he was, in a sunny street, in a busy city, thousands of people about, all doing something, all going somewhere. He wandered about the city and found himself in the willow quarter, perhaps within an hour of leaving the monastery gate. In the willow quarter there are always women standing in their doors, or pretending to be busy in their gardens. One of the women called him, but he was so innocent that he didn’t know what she wanted. He went to her and asked politely what he could do for her. She took him by the hand and led him into her little house. They say she was beautiful; who knows? Some of these women aren’t beautiful at all but they are attractive in a way, or they wouldn’t have any earnings.

“She helped him undress—he must have understood then what was going on. She must have asked him for money and he must have given it to her. Then she took him to her bath, that’s the custom here. Your shoulders are massaged and you are dried with a clean towel and they talk to you. Slowly you become very excited and when she feels you are ready she takes you to the bedroom. He must have been quite excited after so many years of abstaining. At the moment he went into her he solved his koan. He had an enormous satori, one of these very rare satoris which are described in our books, not a little understanding which can be deepened later but the lot at once, an explosion which tears you to pieces and you think the world has come to an end, that you can fill the emptiness of the universe in every possible sphere. When he left the woman he was a master. He never took the trouble to have his insight tested by other masters, but kept away from the Zen sect for many years. He wandered through the country and had many different jobs. He was a truckdriver, driving one of these huge long-distance monsters. He also worked as a waiter in a small restaurant, as a dock worker, and sometimes he joined the beggars and the riffraff of the cities. They say he never forgot the link between his satori and sex, and he is supposed to have had many friends and girlfriends. Then he came back and rented a ramshackle house here in Kyoto. He has some disciples there now, odd birds who could never accept the monastic training as we have it here. They do as they please and observe no rules. He works with them in his own way, but he does use the Zen method, koan and meditation. The other masters recognize him, acknowledge his complete enlightenment, and never criticize him as far as I know. There are, of course, a lot of young monks who think that life in Boboroshi’s house is one eternal party; perhaps it is really like that, but I rather think that it isn’t.”

I had listened to Han-san with increasing surprise and it took me some time before I could think of an answer.

“So Zen training can be really free?”

Han-san looked at me sadly.

“Free. What is free? Those fellows have to work for their living, that is one discipline to start with. And they meditate, and I am sure it isn’t just half an hour when they feel like it. Bobo-roshi may have fetched his satori from the whores’ quarter but he had been through a long training before he went there. Water suddenly boils, but the kettle must have been on the fire for some time. There’s always a preparation. And then he wandered about for many years before he started teaching; that must have been quite a discipline, too. I think that the training in Bobo-roshi’s house is just as hard as ours, but it has a different form. You get nothing for nothing, I have learned that. Maybe they have a party there every now and then, but I climb the wall sometimes. And there are many things which our master can teach us.”

Han-san looked very disgruntled and I began to laugh.

“Ha ha. You haven’t got the courage to go there, Han-san.”

“You come with me,” Han-san said. “We have rested and we are sober again and now we can have some cups of sake. And when I have drunk enough I’ll beat you up.”

And so it happened. Han-san got drunk again and became very troublesome. I think I took him to bed at least four times, and he came back every time and pushed everyone who strayed in his way.

The next day he had a headache.

“Was I very annoying?” he asked when we were working in the vegetable garden together.

“I wouldn’t know, Han-san” I said. “Yesterday we were all invisible. People made out of transparent clear glass. I didn’t see you. That’s the way it is in Japan, isn’t it?”

“That’s the way it is,” Han-san said.