Novice to Master Page 2
“Looking at it this way,” he continued, “if we use the yardstick of the Japanese, this war was a holy war, while by American criteria, it was a war of aggression. So your life’s work is not to label this ‘good’ and that ‘evil,’ but to search for as useful a standard as you can find to apply anywhere you go on this earth. But this grand yardstick is not something you are going to come by in a day. Each of you will have to transcend time and place to find a standard that can have meaning to as many people as possible—and in order to do this, I suggest, first off, that you get on with your high school lessons!”
And so, with that kind advice, we resumed our classes. We did, however, also continue our self-indulgent theoretical debates. And I, for one, remained in a quandary over this question of good and evil; the problem had lodged itself deep in the back of my mind.
I think, in fact, that this was a dilemma of the times for Japan, common not only among young people like us, but among middle-aged and elderly people as well. We had completely lost sight of any ethical norm. I believe Japan had fallen into a state in which people scarcely knew what standards to apply even in raising their own children.
On top of all this, there were major changes in my own private affairs. To begin with, the year before the war ended, I had lost both of my parents in one blow: even as my mother was slipping away, my father suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died the very next morning, August twenty-fourth, without having regained consciousness.
I have three older sisters, but all of them had already married and moved away. They were living in Moji, Shanghai, and Manchuria. Travel conditions being what they were in that day, none of my sisters was able to attend the funeral. As the sole survivor on the family registry, I was responsible for the funeral arrangements, which I completed within two days with help from relatives. Then, before I could settle any further affairs, I received my mustering order and found myself off to the army.
Upon my homecoming after the war had ended, I was greeted with the twin problems of property and inheritance taxes. I come from a long line of landowners, and the small amount of land we had was under tenancy in rice fields. My father had always told me, “There’s nothing as dependable as land. Even if there’s a fire, it won’t burn. If there’s a flood, it won’t wash away. If a thief sneaks in, he can’t cart it off on his back. No matter what else you do in this life, don’t you let go of that land!”
It so happened, though, that through no action of my own, my family’s land was lost to the government’s agrarian reform program. So now with even this gone, what was left to believe in? All that I had ever thought to be certain had turned out to be uncertain.
The war I had thought was holy turned out to be evil. I had not expected my own parents to die so suddenly, and yet there they went, one right after the other. The insurance money that my father had set aside to provide for his children in the event that something should happen to him was subject to a freezing of funds, and not a cent was available for my use. And our ever-dependable land was now lost.
At the same time, prices were constantly on the rise. What could be bought for one yen one day cost ten yen the next, and before one knew it, a hundred-yen note was needed! It was practically unheard of in that time for students to hold part-time jobs, and consequently, I hadn’t the slightest experience in using these hands and this body to earn wages. The problem of ethical standards aside, there was the very concrete economic question of how I was going to survive.
Looking back on myself in those days, I realize that it would not have been so curious if I had joined a gang of hooligans. Nor would it have been strange if I had committed suicide by hurling my body onto a railroad track. I woke up miserable every morning, and every day was as good as lost. Falling asleep in the worst of spirits, I would awaken to a new morning even darker.
This vicious cycle continued day after day, but somehow I managed to graduate from high school. However, as I had absolutely no inclination to enroll in university or to study anything at all, I went on to pass the days idly slouching around. Then, in the midst of that intense mental agony, I finally struck upon a realization: for as long as I could remember, I had done nothing but read books, acquire knowledge, churn up theories. The reason that I was now at a total loss for what to do with myself was, in the end, that I had never really used this body of mine in any kind of disciplined way.
the encounter at misery’s end
SO IT WAS, through these mysterious causes and conditions, that I was led to knock at the gates of Zen temples. I still feel very grateful that, after calling at two or three temples, I was brought to Daishuin in Kyoto, where I still reside, to train under Zuigan Goto Roshi. Zuigan Roshi, formerly the abbot of Myoshinji and at that time the abbot of Daitokuji, was a truly great man.
I showed up at Roshi’s door with long stringy hair, unkempt, with a towel hanging from my waist and heavy clogs on my feet. This great man’s first words to me were, “Why have you come here?”
In reply, I rambled on for about an hour and a half, covering the particulars of my situation up to and including my present state. Roshi listened in silence, not attempting to insert so much as a single word.
When I had finished my exposition, he spoke, “Listening to you now, I can see that you’ve reached a point where there’s nothing you can believe in. But there is no such thing as practice without believing in your teacher. Can you believe in me?
“If you can, I’ll take you on right now, as you are. But if you can’t believe in me, then your being here is just a waste of time, and you can go right on back where you came from.”
Zuigan Roshi, for his part, set forth in no uncertain terms from the very beginning the precept of believing wholeheartedly in one’s teacher, but I was not sensible enough at that time to yield with a ready and honest affirmation.
Roshi was then seventy years old, and I told myself, “That foolish old man! So what if he is the head of Myoshinji or the head of Daitokuji. Lots of ‘important’ people in this world aren’t worth much. If believing were so easy that I could just believe, unconditionally, in somebody I had just met for the first time, then wouldn’t I have believed in something before I ever showed up here? Didn’t I come here in the first place because I don’t find it so easy to believe?”
All this ran through my mind, but I knew from the start that if I were to say it aloud, I would be told straightaway, “In that case, your being here is a waste of time. Go on home now.”
Figuring that, even if my words were a lie, this man would have to let me stay if I spoke them, I said, “I believe in you. Please.”
At that time, I had no idea of the weight of the words I believe, but it was a lesson I was to be taught before the end of that very day.
there is no trash
FOLLOW ME,” directed the roshi, and he assigned me my first task: to clean the garden. Together with this seventy-year-old master, I went out to the garden and started sweeping with a bamboo broom. Zen temple gardens are carefully designed with trees planted to ensure that leaves will fall throughout the entire year; not only the maples in autumn but also the oaks and the camphors in spring regularly shed their foliage. When I first arrived, in April, the garden was full of fallen leaves.
The human being (or, my own mind, I should say) is really quite mean. Here I was, inside my heart denouncing this “old fool” and balking at the very idea of trusting so easily; yet, at the same time, I wanted this old man to notice me, and so I took up that broom and swept with a vengeance. Quite soon I had amassed a mountain of dead leaves. Eager to show off my diligence, I asked, “Roshi, where should I throw this trash?”
The words were barely out of my mouth when he thundered back at me, “There is no trash!”
“No trash, but…look here, “ I tried to indicate the pile of leaves.
“So you don’t believe me! Is that it?”
“It’s only that, well, where should I throw out these leaves?” That was all that was left for me to say.
“What should I do then?” I asked.
“Go out to the shed and bring back an empty charcoal sack,” was his instruction.
When I returned, I found Roshi bent to the task of combing through the mountain of leaves, sifting so that the lighter leaves came out on top while the heavier sand and stones fell to the bottom. He then proceeded to stuff the leaves into the sack I had brought from the shed, tamping them down with his feet. After he had jammed the last leaves tightly into the sack, he said, “Take these to the shed. We’ll use them to make a fire under the bath.”
As I went off to the shed, I silently admitted that this sack of leaves over my shoulder was perhaps not trash; but I also told myself that what was left of that pile out there in the garden was clearly trash, and nothing but trash. I got back, though, only to find Roshi squatting over the remains of the leaf pile, picking out the stones. After he had carefully picked out the last stone, he ordered, “Take these out and arrange them under the rain gutters.”
When I had set out the stones, together with the gravel that was already there, and filled in the spaces pummeled out by the raindrops, I found that not only were the holes filled but that my work looked rather elegant. I had to allow that these stones, too, failed to fall into the category of trash. There was still more, though: the clods of earth and scraps of moss, the last dregs. Just what could anyone possibly do with that stuff, I wondered.
I saw Roshi going about his business, gathering up these scraps and placing them, piece by piece, in the palm of his hand. He scanned the ground for dents and sinks; he filled them in with the clods of earth, which he then tamped down with his feet. Not a single particle remained of the mountain of leaves.
“Well?” he queried, “Do you understand a little bit better now? From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.”
This was the first sermon I ever heard from Zuigan Roshi. Although it did make an impression on me, unfortunately, I was not keen enough to attain any great awakening as a result of simply hearing these words.
From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash. These words point to the fundamental truth of Buddhism, a truth I could not as yet conceive in those days.
“Wonder of wonders! Intrinsically all living beings are buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue. Only because they cling to their delusive thinking do they fail to realize this.” This was Shakyamuni Buddha’s exclamation at the instant of his enlightenment. To put it in other words, all beings are, from the first, absolutely perfect, but because people are attached to deluded notions, they cannot perceive this innate buddha-nature.
In the classical Chinese sutras it is written that Shakyamuni said, “I attained buddhahood together with all the grasses, the trees, and the great earth.”
In a split second, the mist before his eyes cleared, and Shakyamuni Buddha could see the true form of reality. “Up to now, I thought all beings in this world were living only in pain and misery, in deep unhappiness. But, in reality, aren’t all beings, just as they are, living in buddhahood, living in a state of absolute perfection? And doesn’t this apply not only to those who are healthy and sound of body, but also to those who are blind, to those without hands, to the ones who are barely dragging themselves along? Isn’t each and every one, just exactly as he or she presently is, a perfect and flawless being?” Awed and astonished, the Buddha called out in the voice of satori.
Every year, I go to Hokkaido to lecture, and one year, there was a woman present who asked to meet me after the talk. The young woman, an ardent believer in Christianity, had this to say: “Listening to your talk today, I could see that about all Buddhism tells us to do is throw away our desires. On the other hand, Christianity says, ‘Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened to you.’ This teaching answers the hopes of young people like myself. What do you think about this, Roshi?”
I answered her with a question of my own. “Is that to say that no matter how you knock, no matter how you seek, you shall receive and the door will be opened to you? Is it not the case that unless one knocks and seeks in a way that is in accord with the heart of God, the door surely will not be opened, nor will one’s desires be granted?”
I have heard the Christian teaching, “You devise your way, but God directs your steps”—you desire and choose and seek as you please, but it is God who decides whether or not your wishes are to be granted.
So, too, Buddhism does not say only to throw away all desire, to toss aside all seeking. It is especially in the Zen sect that we seek, that we knock at that door through a practice so intensive as to be like carving up our very bones. Buddhism points out, however, that after all the seeking, what we attain is the realization that what we have sought was always, from the first, already ours; after all the pounding away, we awaken to the fact that the door was already open before we ever began to knock.
So you see, Zuigan Roshi pointed out the most basic truth right from the start when he said, “From the first, in people and in things, there is no such thing as trash.” Unfortunately, I did not understand him. I went on pretending to be a disciple who trusts his roshi, while inside my heart I criticized and resisted. To tell you the truth, I found almost everything he said irritating.
consumed with cleaning
MANY PEOPLE look down on activity that pertains to the basic necessities, but I myself do not regard such work as menial. If you desire to gaze out over wide vistas, you do well to climb up to a high spot. But if you wish to gaze into the human heart, you must climb down and look from a low place.
As soon as I entered a Zen temple, I was made to do just that through a routine of all-out cleaning. From morning to night, my mind came to be consumed with cleaning. This led to quite a preposterous experience, and one that illustrates a thorny aspect of practice.
If a person knows that they can come to some understanding of truth through the practice of cleaning, they just may get caught up in the practice and find that they are actually moving further away from seeing truth. Their own heart has become fettered by that practice.
One morning, after I had prepared the meal and given the call to breakfast, Zuigan Roshi slowly entered the dining room and said, “Hey, go into my room and, from my desk, look toward the alcove.”
Generally, to the ears of a novice monk, the Zen master’s manner of speaking comes across much like anger. So when I heard Roshi’s words, I thought with a start, “Uh-oh, I bungled the cleaning again!” and immediately rushed to his room.
Roshi’s room was small, four and a half tatami mats. The distance between his desk and the alcove could not have measured two meters, but though I carefully inspected the area, I could not find even so much as as a bit of dust or a drop of water left from the swab. I crawled about the room on all fours, but I could not find a problem anywhere.
I planted myself there for a while and tried to think it out, but I hadn’t a clue as to why Roshi was irritated with me. It couldn’t be helped; I resigned myself to being yelled at again and returned to the dining room. “I don’t understand what I did wrong in the cleaning,” I nervously admitted to Roshi. “Please show me.”
“You fool!” he came back at me. “Who said you did anything wrong in the cleaning? This morning I put that single rose of Sharon in the bud vase. It goes well with the scroll and looks so beautiful, so I told you to go take a look at it. You did see the flower, didn’t you?”
It dawned on me that I had not, in fact, noticed a flower. I went back into Roshi’s room to look. The wall of the alcove, which had been standing for over 250 years, was darkened. Against the smoky wall there was a scroll with the single large calligraphy of the ideograph for dew.
When a Zen monk writes the word dew, it is not to the natural phenomenon that he refers, but to direct revelation. Nothing concealed anywhere. Truth, revealed in all things. Buddha revealed in all things. Dhar
ma revealed in all things. If you all just let the scales drop from your eyes, you realize then that everything everywhere is filled with truth; everything everywhere is filled with Buddha; everything everywhere is to be appreciated! This is what the scroll of dew was hanging there to say.
Beneath the scroll, a large pure white blossom seemed to float out from the old plastered wall and bathe the eye with its beauty.
Just moments before, I had failed to see that flower. My eyes had been tightly shut to it. And herein lies the difficulty of practice.
My oversight was to become grist for my teacher’s lectures. After I made this blunder, Zuigan Roshi was wont to say during talks, “If the heart is caught up, fettered, you cannot see even what you are looking right at. Why, just the other day, that idiot who is sitting right over there….”
confucius gives jan yu a scolding
THE SEVENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD roshi who took me in as his disciple had worked hard at Tokyo University and graduated at the top of his class; he had seen his way through Zen training and had served as the head of the Daitokuji temple complex. Such was his personal history, and here I was—twenty or thereabouts, with nothing to offer but a high school education under the old system, no university training—becoming his disciple. From my own lowly state, I looked up to Roshi as one would look up to the Himalayas.
So there I was, in the early days of practice, already despairing of my future, as if there were really no use going on, torturing myself with the notion that there was just no way I would ever be fit to walk in Roshi’s footsteps. Every now and again, sensing some indication of praise from Roshi, I would soar to the heavens, but soon enough I would drive myself back down to the bottoms of despair.