Fifteen

A court lady discourteously treated

Peter, who had lived in Kyoto some ten years and who spoke Japanese fluently, made contact easily with the Japanese. Almost everyone in Kyoto knew him, and it was well known that he was an advanced disciple of the Zen master; apart from that he was fairly famous as a musician who appeared regularly on radio and TV. But it did sometimes happen that he ran into a Japanese who had never heard of him and who would be very surprised when this miracle appeared—a tall, wide-shouldered, blond, blue-eyed westerner who spoke Japanese with a Kyoto accent and understood even the most subtle allusions. If I was present as well the Japanese could relax again, for my knowledge of the language was faulty and my adjustment to the eastern environment only very partial. Occasionally Peter would take me to meet some friend or acquaintance, and we would break the afternoon’s routine by making a trip on the scooters. His scooter had the trade name “Pigeon,” and was light and dainty compared with my roaring “Rabbit.” I was never allowed to follow him too closely because he claimed to be bothered by the powerful surge of my engine. During a trip through the mountains near Kyoto he held back till I was riding next to him and asked if I would like to visit a hermit. We turned into a narrow mountain path and arrived after a short ride at a temple on a mountain top, a small Buddhist temple consisting of two buildings surrounded by a high wall and locked in by a solid gate. It was very quiet. Only the wind could be heard, moving the branches of the pinetrees, and a songbird trying out a long pure trill. A panel opened in the gate and I saw the face of a young monk.

“Is he the hermit?”

“No, that is the hermit’s servant; he doesn’t live by himself.”

The monk, or acolyte, who would have been about sixteen years old, opened the gate, bowed, and bade us welcome. He seemed to know Peter well and showed his metal teeth when he was introduced to me.

“Jan-san,” Peter said, “another disciple of the Zen master.” “Welcome, welcome,” the monk said, and brought us to the temple. The sliding doors opened and a man in his early thirties bowed and smiled.

After we had been served tea and cake the hermit told me that he belonged to the Tendai sect and that he had promised to spend seven years in this temple without ever passing through the gate. He was now in his fourth year. It turned out that he spoke English well and Peter didn’t have to translate.

“And what are you doing here?” I asked.

“My master gave me a program!” The Tendai priest said. “I keep to it all the time. I have a daily routine which starts at 4 a.m. and finishes at 11 p.m. I meditate, I work in the garden, I study English, I chant the sutras of our sect, and every day I spend a lot of time on the fire ceremony.”

Later on I had a chance to see the ceremony. Fire forms only a small part of it, for the ceremony consists of a large number of precise gestures and small activities (such as shifting objects about on the altar) which have to be executed with utmost concentration. If the ceremony is done with complete surrender and devotion, the Tendai priest said, peace will result which, in turn, will give rise to insight.

“Do you remember the story of the mirrors?” Peter asked. “You told me the story once. That story of the Tendai master and the court lady?”

The Tendai priest nodded.

“Would you mind telling it again? My friend has come to Japan to learn something, but so far he hasn’t made much progress. Perhaps your story will help.”

The priest laughed.

“I assume that your friend has come to deepen himself. Is that the right word? Deepen?”

Peter said it was.

“Hmm,” the priest said. “By listening to stories you don’t deepen yourself much. You know that surely. Unless, of course, the story comes at exactly the right moment, when the mind happens to be open already. Then perhaps a whiff of insight may arise, and if you are in a certain training, or can produce some discipline, the insight may stay alive and even increase. But I don’t mind telling the story again.”

He called the young monk, who brought bowls heaped full of rice and salted vegetables and another pot of green tea, and placed them on small red lacquered tables.

All right then. The story is set in China, when Buddhism had become popular over there and the Zen and Tendai sects were large and strong. Even the emperor was a Buddhist, and a certain court lady felt herself attracted to the mysterious teaching. She visited a number of priests and so-called masters, but didn’t find much except splendor and a lot of difficult words. The temples which she saw were beautifully designed and built, she saw magnificent gardens with all sorts of surprise effects and the clergy who controlled this environment pulled holy faces and knew the answer to any question. The lady was intelligent and knew how to observe, and she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that she had been transported into a play, a fascinating show, but a show without substance. She asked and obtained audience with the emperor and described what she had seen.

“Is this Buddhism?” the lady asked.

“Well,” the emperor said, “the eye wants something too. And religion isn’t unhealthy for the people. It gives them something to do and there is always the possibility that they pick up some wisdom from the sutras of Buddha. The eightfold path is sublime, and there are priests and monks who try to walk the path, and their example is not without importance.”

“But are there any real masters?” the lady asked.

“Yes,” the emperor said. “I know a master. He is an uncouth old man and my predecessors would have cut off his head if he had addressed them as he addresses me. I have never been able to get him here, but when I visit him, and I don’t take more than two bodyguards, he may deign to receive me, if he hasn’t got anything better to do.”

“But you are the Son of Heaven!” the lady stuttered.

“Yes, yes,” the emperor said. “So they say. I myself never really believed it, and I am quite sure the master doesn’t believe it either. When he speaks to me I am often reminded of the old Taoist scriptures. You know the sort of thing I mean, to rule by doing nothing, to speak by remaining silent, to own the universe by giving up everything.”

“But,” the emperor said, “if you want to look him up I’ll tell you where he lives. Dress yourself like a common woman and I will give you two disguised sword fighters to defend you on the way. He lives in a deserted part of the country, a few days’ distance from here.”

The court lady was a sincere woman, and courageous, and she succeeded in finding the temple of the master. When she arrived a hurricane had passed through the district and the roof of the temple had been torn off. The master lived in a ruin.

The master was a man of few words, and unkind words at that, and he tried to send her away.

“I don’t teach. I am an ignorant old man and I live here by myself. I pass my days in dreams and usually I sit and stare; what passes through my mind would be of no interest to you.”

The lady insisted and the master refused again. Finally she made him a proposition.

“I am rather a rich woman,” she said. “I should like to do something for another person, and it wouldn’t be very kind of you to hinder me in this. I should like to have this temple restored and come back later and spend a week here to find some peace and be able to listen to you.”

The master listened, thought a little, nodded and shuffled away. The lady sent workmen, the temple was repaired, and the lady returned. Instead of a week she stayed three months. She meditated, she learned the fire ceremony, and sometimes the master spoke a few words. She did her utmost, but when it was time to return she had to admit that she had learned nothing and that the mysteries which she had tried to comprehend were as veiled as ever. She blamed the failure on herself and didn’t complain, but said goodbye politely to the master and thanked him for his trouble.

The master was a little upset. His temple had been repaired beautifully, the lady was a noble and sympathetic woman, and there she was, rather unhappy and very discontented with herself.

“Just a moment,” the master said.

The lady climbed down from her horse and bowed.

“Have you got a large room in the palace?”

The lady nodded.

“Good,” the master said, “see if you can gather together about fifty mirrors. In about a month I will visit you. Tell your servants that if they find an old bald-pated bum at the gate they mustn’t beat him up straight away. Perhaps I shall be able to teach you something after all.”

The lady smiled, bowed again, and rode back to the palace. When the master came he placed the mirrors in such a way that they reflected into each other. Then he asked the lady to sit down in the middle of the room and to look about her and describe what she saw.

The lady had sat in the lotus position and remained quiet for a long time.

“I see that everything which happens is reflected in everything else.”

“Yes,” the master said. “Anything else?”

“I see that every action of any man has its result in all other men, and not only in all men, but in all beings, and in all spheres.”

“Anything else?”

“Everything is connected with everything.”

The master waited but the lady kept quiet.

In the end he grunted.

“It isn’t much,” he said, “but it is something. You haven’t come for nothing after all. But there’s still much to learn.”

After that he left. He refused all food and drink, and with a nod by way of goodbye walked, bent and a little lame, through her gate, knocking the iron end of his stick against the pebbles of the path.

When she wanted to visit him again later he had died. According to the legend she moved into his temple herself and reached, by doing the exercises which the master had once taught her, the sublime enlightenment.

Peter and I bowed to thank the Tendai priest for his story. He laughed shyly, poured tea and presented cigarettes.

“Yes,” he said, “it is a good story. My master told it to me. It is a story from our tradition but it could have been a Zen story as well.”

We got up and the priest took us to his gate. He bowed, staying on his side of the threshold, and closed the doors. I looked at the closed gate and was about to kick the starter of my scooter when I saw that Peter was watching me as if he expected me to say something.

“Those mirrors are empty,” I said, “there is nothing. Nothing reflects, nothing can be reflected.”

Peter walked towards me and gave me one of his rare proofs of friendship; he put his arm around me and pressed me against him.

“The empty mirror,” he said. “If you could really understand that, there would be nothing left here for you to look for.”