Four

Caught between the tigers

Hidden away at the back of the monastery gardens was a cemetery with small pagodas and gravestones, green and covered with moss. On these centuries old tombs, texts were chiselled in Chinese characters. I was sweeping leaves there, preparing heaps to be carted away to another part of the grounds. The head monk had ordered me to “tidy up,” a hopeless task, for the cemetery was neglected and overgrown with weeds. I did what I could and worked at a leisurely pace, secure in the knowledge that, in an hour or so, the kitchen bell would call me for a cup of green tea and a biscuit. The biscuits came from a tin brought that morning by an old lady as her gift to the temple. Every day somebody would bring something, biscuits and sweets, a bag of rice, or steaming noodles, boiled and presented on a wooden tray. These gifts aren’t just meant to cheer the monks, but have a deeper meaning: those who offer them are showing that they too believe in the way of Buddha, but that, because of their circumstances or mental constitution, they are not yet ready to take part. They hope that their compassion will enable them to be more active in the next life, to become a monk or a lay disciple of a master.

That day I had found a kitten in the cemetery, a very thin little animal adorned with a gaily colored ribbon. I picked it up, got it some water and milk and found it a place in the sun on one of the verandas. A few minutes later the temple dog arrived, a nasty creature which would lie in wait for me and suddenly dart out, snapping and growling. Without the slightest hesitation it rushed at the kitten, seized it by the neck and shook it till it was dead.

People from around the temple would often leave kittens in the garden. They wouldn’t kill the animals because that didn’t suit their religion; Buddha is compassionate and to kill is cruel. By taking them to a monastery garden they transferred the cats’ souls to Buddha and his monks. Meanwhile the monks were stuck with the helpless kittens and their doleful mewing. Usually the dog took care of them and if he wasn’t around the monks drowned them in the pool, at night, when nobody was about. Without being aware of it, I had dropped my broom and leant against a tomb. I was crying. I hadn’t cried in years.

A car came past with a loudspeaker attached to its roof broadcasting a loud march. The music was interrupted and a healthy hypnotic voice told me about the wonderful pain absorbing effect of aspirin or some similar drug.

I had been in Japan long enough to understand a little Japanese. The newness of the exotic, mystical Far East had gone. Perhaps the people here looked different and sometimes wore outlandish clothes; and it was a fact that I was living in one of 8000 temples dedicated to the higher spheres, and true, of course, that I was daily admitted to a wise, and probably all enlightened master. Even so, I couldn’t rid myself of the clear and painful feeling that nothing had changed.

That I cried did not surprise me. I was amazed, rather, that I had not fallen into the pit of despair earlier. There were no thoughts along the lines of “why did I involve myself in all this” or “this will never lead to anything.” I was just sad, without having to describe or define the feeling. Later that day, while sitting in the meditation hall, I reflected that I had trouble fitting in, that I felt like a chicken which has to live with ducklings, that I could not connect, could not communicate. The definition wasn’t very satisfactory. It was more than that; after all, I had been in strange environments before. I felt, not isolated, but hopeless. I saw no way out. This was the end of the world—I couldn’t go any further. I didn’t want to go back so I had to stay. There was no rebellion in me—I wasn’t against anything at all. But I did feel ridiculous: here was the tough rider of motorcycles, the seducer of sweet and innocent girls, the reader of deep and intellectual books, the guerilla fighter in eternal combat with the establishment, crying against a tomb in a deserted monastic garden.

Peter has told me that a man plays many parts, and none of these parts is real. Every part is another mask, unconsciously formed by environment and aptitude. A man is like an onion. When he goes into himself, by meditation and other exercises, by discipline, by fighting his “self,” the layers of the onion drop away, one by one, till the last layer disappears and nothing remains. I didn’t like the last part of this explanation: nothing isn’t much. Why go to all that trouble to become nothing at all, to dissolve into a vacuum? “But then,” I said, “one is no longer there. And if one is no longer there there is nothing left to enjoy the great insight, the immeasurable liberty.”

“Look at the master,” Peter said, “there he is. You see?” The master happened to be passing by and we watched him enter the gate. Peter laughed, not an ecstatic laugh, veiling secrets, but a merry laugh, a pleasant, gay “ha ha.”

“Yes,” I said. But I didn’t understand. Yet I did understand. I felt he was right. I knew too that I would know one day, know clearly and without any doubt, that he had uttered a tremendous truth. That everything had to be destroyed, given up, every pride, every jealousy, every security, every hook or projection which the personality can grab and hang on to.

An American lady once said to the master that she, deep down in her mind or soul, possessed a holy kernel in which she could find peace, and that this kernel was always with her, sometimes hard to reach but in any case present.

“Yes,” the master said, “that causes you a lot of trouble, that kernel—it’s in your way. Give it up, whatever idea you have of it. Get rid of it!”

I think, from the way she reacted, that she felt very well what he meant, but to feel something is not the same as to know it, to be able to apply it. She left the monastery complete with kernel, as I had leant against the tomb, complete with sadness.

About that time I was told the famous story about the man who falls. He is hanging above an abyss, clinging to a thin branch of a tree growing between the rocks. He may, with some effort, be able to pull himself up, but there is a ferocious tiger there, growling and showing his teeth. If he lets go, he’ll fall into the claws of another tiger waiting below. And while he hangs there and worries, two mice come along, a white mouse and a black mouse, and start nibbling through the branch, his only security. Anybody who “studies” Zen will, at some time, get into a similar position. He is sure that he has to do something, to give something up. He cannot refuse to do something because the position he happens to be in is disastrous. But whatever he does will not improve matters. And while he hesitates and worries, the mice of “yes” and “no,” “this” or “that,” “good” and “bad” nibble away.

It isn’t a bad story, but even with stories one must be very careful. Some men are professional story collectors. I met one of them, a writer, greedily gathering more and more stories, anecdotes, juicy bits. That way all you’ll have is a book full of jokes.

In the monastery, stories were scarce. The training accentuated meditation and the importance of the koan. The master always asked the same question: What is your answer? He had given me the koan, and I had to find an answer to the problem. Every morning when I visited him he expected the answer—he seemed completely convinced that I would give it to him, on that particular morning, at that very moment. It would have to bubble up, somewhere out of myself.

He wasn’t prepared to give me a hint or to lead the way. The first koan is important, it is the gateless gate, the closed opening through which the pupil has to fight his way in (or out). He has to do it himself. And the fight is his meditation, his daily discipline, the change in the way he looks at things, in his own being. When the master gave instruction it was about the technique of meditation, about how to concentrate. “Become one with your koan, forget yourself, forget everything which is connected with you. When you are sitting there, sit still, in balance, breathe quietly, destroy everything in your mind and repeat your koan as if your life depends on it, quietly, over and over again. Don’t rush yourself, don’t get excited, but stay calm and indifferent, indifferent to anything which worries you, or seems important, or fascinates.”

“That’s difficult,” I would say.

“Of course it is difficult,” the master said. “Do you think it wasn’t difficult for me? I used to visit my master every day, as you do now, and I was a very slow fellow. For two years I mucked about with the koan without getting anywhere and then I had to go to China because the army wanted me.”

“Yes?” I asked, surprised. “But you are a Buddhist. Buddhists aren’t allowed to kill, are they?”

“Allowed, allowed,” the master said, “I had to. If I had refused I would have been shot. But in the army, in Manchuria, I meditated a lot. I was always doing guard duty; the other soldiers were very fond of me for I took their duty as well. Look, like this.”

He got up and stood there, on his platform, a little old man in a Buddhist robe, and stretched his body until he was rigid and fierce, to attention. “This was my rifle, I had my arm out like this. And then I concentrated on the koan which my master had given me, for hours and hours on end. You can meditate while you are standing up—it isn’t quite as good as when you are sitting in the lotus position, but it can be done. Of course you have to be careful that you don’t fall over, but I always had a rifle to lean on.”

“And did you solve your koan?”

“Not then,” he said. “Later, when I was back in Japan and had become a monk again. I began to understand and it didn’t interest me any more to prove my understanding to the master. I visited him again every morning and during one of those visits he nodded. He immediately gave me the next koan, an easy one.”

“And you said nothing to your master?”

“No, why should I have said anything? I knelt and kept quiet, as I had been quiet so often.”

“So there was no laughing, or shouting, nobody hit anyone?”

“You have read too much,” the master said. “I told you you shouldn’t read so much. You identify yourself with all sorts of heroes and fools and try to swallow their experiences. It isn’t wrong to read, but it shouldn’t lead to dreaming, or living through another person.”

The conversations with the teacher were laborious. He tried to use words which he thought I knew. Sometimes I returned mumbling from such a visit and tried to remember the words I hadn’t understood, so that I could look them up in my dictionary. Most times we didn’t say much to each other. I came in, recited my koan and looked at him. He would wait for a few seconds, pick up his small bell and shake it. The bell was my cue to leave. I knew I could grab the bell and that then he wouldn’t be able to send me away unless I returned it to him. The bell is always next to the teacher, within reach of the pupil. Should the disciple think that the master doesn’t pay enough attention to him he can, in this way, force the issue. I never made use of it. I didn’t think I could bully the teacher into sharing his insight with me.

It is a tradition in Zen that no one ever reveals the koan he is working on, it is a secret between teacher and pupil: not a very strong tradition, for I discovered that discussing koans was a popular pastime to the monks. They made a status game out of it. “Which koan are you on? I have already reached such and such a koan.” One would think that such childish boasting must mean a total lack of real insight. I am not sure whether this is true. Most of the monks were sent to the temple by their parents. They have to stay three years and will then graduate to a priesthood and be sent to head a Zen temple somewhere. The organization is similar to that of the Catholic Church. The monk will then be somebody in his own right, no longer a slave of the master or head monk. He can start to use his training and do social work, he can take charge of temple services, listen to the troubles of his flock. He can supply peace and quiet to those who look for it, for Zen temples and gardens are designed to provide a soothing influence. He can teach meditation and organize groups. He is even allowed to marry. But the comparative status and luxury which waits for him at the end of the three years’ monastic training is not enough to pull him through. There must be another stimulus. The teacher cannot let him sit and muddle with the koan for too long, so when he shows some insight, even if it is very little, the teacher may pass him. The voluntary monk and the layman are a different kettle of fish; they do things the hard way. A priest who returns to the monastery, after some years of playing the part of priest, will find his teacher rather different from what he remembers.

But forced or voluntary, the monastery’s schedule is the same. Each disciple starts off with one of the “big” koans. He may get the Mu koan, an extraordinary story about a monk who asks his teacher whether a puppy dog, who happens to be around, has the Buddha nature as well: a senseless question to any Buddhist, because Buddha said that everything has Buddha nature, so the puppy cannot be an exception. The teacher answers by saying “Mu.” Mu means no, nothing, emptiness, denial of everything. The monk doesn’t understand and is told to meditate on the word Mu. His training has started. Another “big” koan is: Everybody knows the sound of two clapping hands. Now what is the sound of one clapping hand? A third koan is: Show me the face you had before your parents were born. Show me your original face.

All koans are illogical and go beyond the reasoning mind. The monk may try to give a sensible answer, but if he doesn’t it will be just the same: the master will ring his bell and the monk has to leave the room.

The answers which, after many years of hard work, despair and near insanity, may be accepted, will be diverse. Perhaps the monk will make a nonsensical remark; maybe he laughs, or looks at the teacher in a peculiar way or does something, like knocking on the floor or waving. If the master nods, the next koan will follow, to deepen the monk’s insight. There are rows and rows of koans, and the monk who solves them all has to leave the monastery to practise his insight in the world, perhaps as a teacher, perhaps as an inconspicuous civilian. Only very few disciples come to the end of the road, which doesn’t matter, for the monastery is not a school intended to produce nothing but masters. Everybody is required to do what he can, and the teacher helps, quietly, often passively, sometimes by force. If you do anything at all, do it well. Don’t look at the result. The result is important, did you say? Don’t talk nonsense.