When I studied with Katagiri Roshi in Minneapolis, I never thought of going to Japan. I had my own little Japan with him. But when he died, I had a great desire to go. I wanted to see where he came from and the country that produced him—and that produced the Japanese Zen I was studying. I had a heart-to-heart connection with him, and that personal connection was really what carried me.
So I wanted to go to Japan, but I was scared. I had bought airplane tickets twice in the eight years since he died and then forfeited them.
But this time I decided I had to go. My partner, Michèle, agreed to come with me.
Right before we went, I visited Katagiri Roshi’s wife, Tomoe, in Minnesota. I asked her for exact directions to his old temple. When his teacher died, it had become his temple. No one since had been abbot there. When I studied with Roshi, he’d told stories about it all the time. Only he and his teacher practiced in this temple.
Tomoe gave me directions, and this is how precise she was: she not only told me where to get the bus after I took the train, but she opened up a photo album and showed me photos of the train station, the bus stop where I should get off, the spot where I should turn at the corner. And I thought, Oh, Tomoe, I can find it.
We arrive in Japan on a Thursday and go to Kyoto. The following Thursday morning I get up my courage to go out into the country. It is pouring rain. Pouring may be no big deal to someone who lives in San Francisco, but I live in New Mexico, where rain is an auspicious event. The rain in Kyoto scares me—it’s flooding the streets. I think, Should I go today? And then I think, Well, I planned to; okay, I’ll go. Michèle and I wear our green slickers. The Japanese only carry umbrellas, and they think it’s very American and cloddish to wear these big plastic things on public transportation, where you have to sit all wet next to someone else.
We travel first on the subway, climbing four deep flights down. We take the subway to the train station, where we will catch the train to a town called Tsuruga. It’s going to leave at 9:31, which in Japan means it leaves at exactly 9:31. This is really the only way we know that it’s the right train. It shows up at 9:31 and we jump on.
I ask people sitting in their seats with newspapers and box lunches of pickles, rice, sushi, and seaweed on their laps, “Tsuruga? Tsuruga?” “Hai.”Yes, we’re on the right train, and it is pouring hard and the clouds are dark gray.
The train ride is an hour and ten minutes. We get off in a little town. We go to the small tourist station, but they don’t speak a drop of English and I don’t speak a speck of Japanese. I have the name for the next destination. I say, “Kitada?” “Kitada,” they say, nodding. I want to ask, “Bus Two? Three? Where?” I hold up fingers. They point to two. It’s bus two, leaving at 12:25. They write down “Kitada” in kanji on a slip of paper for us, so we can match it with the sign on the front of the bus.
We find the bus, but it’s only 11:25. We have an hour to walk around.
Usually in the United States I don’t eat lunch at the Greyhound bus station. But when I’m in other countries, I’m suddenly wide open, and we’re hungry. We go into a tiny—I mean one small table width—restaurant. The waiter stands by us, pen poised to take our order. We point to something on the menu—not knowing what it is. The waiter speaks quickly with hands jerking and we nod and say, “Hai! Hai!” He shakes his head and goes into the back room.
A few other people are being served noodles, vegetables, and pieces of white fish. We aren’t served, and the time goes by. I whisper to Michèle, “I think he was trying to tell us something important and we didn’t get it.” We have fifteen minutes until the bus leaves.
I screw up my courage, run into the kitchen, point to my watch, and hold up my hand. I flash five fingers three times—fifteen minutes till the bus leaves—but what my motions mean to the cook I have no idea.
I go back to my seat, and Michèle says, “So it’s going to come?” I say, “Oh, yeah; he understood.”
Ten minutes before the bus leaves, the waiter places an omelet before us. We’re thrilled it isn’t octopus. We eat it up quickly and run to the bus. I ask the bus driver: “Kitada?” He nods. “Kitada.” Again I say “Kitada?” “Kitada.”
We sit down, hoping someone will motion when we reach Kitada or that I’ll recognize the bus stop from Tomoe’s photo in the album.
People on the bus are staring at us—we are giants in green slickers with no umbrellas. And it is still pouring out, the kind of rain that hits and bounces.
The bus moves through the wet countryside, and the road becomes narrow. People in the bus continue to gawk at us. Several times I run up to the bus driver and ask, “Kitada?” He nods. Finally everyone on the bus knows, so when we get there they yell in unison, “Kitada!”
We stumble out into the rain. The bus takes off, and we’re left on the edge of the road next to a Japanese version of a 7-Eleven and a car repair shop.
Then we see a road. We begin walking down it. As soon as the road curves, we’re in the Japanese countryside of rice fields, reeds, and ponds. In the distance we can see a village. No shops or bakeries, just little houses and farmed fields. It’s beautiful through the slate-gray rain.
A heavy, powerful bird swoops down in front of us—feathered something like an owl but the royal size of an eagle. I say to Michèle, “What kind of bird is that?” It’s the only bird out because it’s raining so hard.
We trudge into the little town, where all shutters on houses are closed. The intricate flower pots drip with rain. Over a hill I see the Sea of Japan. I remembered Tomoe saying there was a sea. And so we keep going, and finally there is a marker in kanji.
I take a chance. “This is it,” I say, hoping I recall it from one of Tomoe’s photos. Behind it we see a mud path—the old entryway, Tomoe told me. We both hesitate. Michèle says, “Let’s follow it,” and we step off the pavement. The earth is soggy, and we squish with each footstep.
In the distance I see a red-tiled roof—I know it is Taizoin Temple. There’s one person in a paddy field in the rain, working with a hoe. He sees us walk by, and he turns. I wave, and he nods. Other big white people have come over time to visit Roshi’s ashes.
The temple is deserted; there’s no one to practice here anymore, since Roshi left for America more than thirty years earlier. The little village takes care of it. They open it for burials.
I see a little cemetery and say to Michèle, “Can I go by myself? I’ll meet you.”
It is an ancient cemetery with stone buddhas, tombstones, and decorative rocks. It is wonderful.
Then I panic. What if I don’t find his tombstone? I walk around lots of old stones. Then, in the distance, I see a clutter of rounded tops. I know the rounded part signifies the marker of the teacher lineage for that temple.
I hurry over. At the very end is a newer tombstone. I know it is Roshi’s. It is still pouring, but I push off my hood and throw off my slicker. I prostrate myself three times on the wet earth and then kneel in front of his stone. Pushing the dripping hair from my face, rain running down my cheeks, I speak to my old teacher. “I’m here. It took me a while, but I made it.” I cannot say how good I feel to finally be there near some of his ashes.
I look around. Two rhododendron, a few trees I cannot name, but I can see them even now—dark green, tall, with drooping needles—a camellia bush, rice paddies, the Japan Sea, and the village. For years Roshi told me about this place. It was just him and his teacher practicing together. As a young monk, he thought that it was silly to get up in the morning. But his teacher kept a schedule, got up at five, sat zazen, made breakfast, and then he’d go and shake Katagiri. “C’mon, it’s time to eat.” And Katagiri would say, “Oh, I’ll just sleep late.” And his teacher would say, “It’s good to follow the schedule, even if no one else is here.”
Every few days they’d walk into town to formally ask the villagers for food with their begging bowls. And every time it was just the two of them, the teacher in front and the student behind.
When the student decided to come to America, he told his teacher. His teacher didn’t discourage him, but Roshi told us, “When we walked into town, I could tell from his back that he felt lonely.”
I remember the two of them as I sit in the rain in the cemetery. I make a vow to him, and I pick up a single black stone and put it in my pocket.
I go over to the temple. I was told it was locked, but Michèle finds a way to unlock it. We take our shoes off and go in.
It is a really old temple with a brick oven for a stove. We slide open paper walls, discovering spaces with tatamis on the floor.
The final place we find is a formal meditation hall with a large altar and a faded picture across the room. It must be Katagiri’s teacher. A little photo is tucked into the bottom of the frame, very faded. I step closer. I can make out Roshi’s profile. He must have sent it from America.
I stand in front of it a long time, as the rain thunders down on the roof.
When we leave, walking down the road, facing the Japan Sea, I know this is the path he took into the village.
Suddenly that brown bird swoops down in front of me and flies right back to the eaves of the temple. I follow him with my eyes and turn. I watch him open and close his wings as he clutches the edge of the roof with his claws. I swallow, lift my hand, wave good-bye, and keep walking.