The Empty Mirror

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  After the third day I began to be disturbed. The pain of sitting and the stress caused by the visits to the master began to have effect. The master had changed himself for this week into a raging lion. In his room I felt the power which came out of him, and his will which forced itself on me. I had to give an answer to the koan, a satisfactory answer to a question which could not be understood, determined or analyzed. I had already given every answer I could think of and none of them were any good. I wasn’t even anywhere near it, he kept on saying. The beginning of any real understanding hadn’t even come, I was miles, light-years, away from any indication of the truth. I was convinced he was quite right. But if I said nothing he wouldn’t accept it either. I came into his room, bowed, stretched myself out on his floor three times, came back into a kneeling position, recited my koan and the master looked at me and said: “Well?”

  “Well nothing. Well no idea at all.”

  But I didn’t have to say that. I didn’t know. It should be clear that I didn’t know.

  Sometimes he sent me back without saying anything, sometimes he said a few words, and once he spoke to me for at least ten minutes. When I left his room there were tears of frustration in my eyes. I hadn’t understood what he had been saying, I had too little Japanese. I had travelled through half the world to find a teacher, I had found a teacher, and I didn’t understand what he was saying.

  But the others had their problems, too. The head monk sat like a feared and powerful demon in the hall and shouted when he saw that we were falling asleep or dreaming off. He made us patrol regularly, and each of us in turn had to walk around with a long flat lath on the shoulder, moving slowly, dragging our feet in a threatening manner and looking at the others one by one. Whoever wobbled or was asleep was first touched on the shoulder. Then we bowed: the monk who was about to hit bowed because he was grateful that he was allowed to administer punishment, and the monk about to be hit was also grateful. Then we hit eight times. The monk who was beaten had to lean forward so that he could be hit on the muscles of the back. We hit quickly, allowing the lath to spring back so that it could only make contact for a split second. I had to learn the trick first, on a monk who had tied a cushion on his back. The lath, when it isn’t handled properly, can inflict real damage, especially when it hits the spine. The monks in the hall often wore padded waistcoats; I wore an extra jersey. Even so the pain was sharp, and at the end of the week I had a blue cross on my back. But this pain couldn’t be compared with the pain in my legs. When I was hit the pain would disappear very quickly but the pain in my legs never seemed to pass—even when I walked the torture continued. The monks showed their sympathy and enquired regularly how I was getting on. That helped. A young monk who had hurt his leg while chopping wood was in almost continuous pain, too, as his wound wouldn’t heal properly. I saw him cry when it was my turn to go round with the stick and when I passed him without appearing to notice that he was moving about and obviously not meditating, the head monk shouted and I was forced to go back and give him his eight whacks. He bowed politely and smiled when I met him later that day in the dining room.

  I began to mumble to myself and walked into walls and trees. When I said something the words weren’t connected and my sentences had neither beginning nor end. Gerald was also showing signs of abnormality.

  When we were cleaning the lavatories together and I had to control myself so as not to vomit, he suddenly started a story about whales.

  “A whale has a penis as long as a full grown man, did you know that?”

  I said that I had never thought about whales’ penises but Gerald didn’t hear me.

  “Yes,” he said. “Very big, unbelievably big. I have seen grey whales copulating, just off the coast of California. They jumped clear out of the water and fell back with a splash. You can hear a splash like that miles away. It’s really something.”

  When I looked at him his eyes weren’t focusing and he looked clean through me. The surroundings in which I lived began to irritate me. I was looking for a seat, a chair, a bench, anything I could sit or lie on. But there was nothing of that kind about. Empty rooms everywhere, with straw mats on the floor, and nothing but a few uncomfortable rocks and gravestones in the garden. I couldn’t lie down on the ground either: it had been raining a lot and the ground was wet through. My room was prohibited territory. I was allowed to sleep in it from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m., but for the rest of the day I couldn’t use it unless the head monk sent me there to lie down for half an hour and that didn’t happen every day.

  Gerald thought that I was living a luxurious life. He asked me whether I was meditating in the garden.

  “In the garden? What do I have to do in the garden? We meditate in the meditation hall don’t we?”

  “Yes,” Gerald said. “But you are expected to meditate for an extra half hour in the garden every night. Just go into the garden at eleven o’clock at night tonight. You’ll find us all there; we sit on the rocks and on the gravestones—everybody has his own place. Half an hour free meditation, that’s compulsory.”

  I didn’t believe him, and took a few minutes off my cherished sleeping time that night to see for myself. He was right. But I didn’t feel any compulsion to follow the good example. I thought I was doing enough, more than enough. I would start meditating in the garden only if they dragged me out there by my hair, and that night I dug myself into my sleeping bag, grunted with pleasure and dropped far away before I had even managed to touch the bottom of the bag with my toes.

  Nine

  A little black magic

  Every morning the master made the rounds of the temple and we, the monks and I, followed him through the long corridors of the monastery. At every niche he stopped, and we stopped too, of course, and recited a prayer, mumbling and slurring the words, for our own benefit or whoever was represented in the niche. Sometimes there were statues of Bodhisatva’s, sometimes a Buddha was shown, in meditation, or while lecturing, but there were also Chinese or Japanese gods who had no relation to Buddhism at all. There was even a fat little God of physical well-being. Flowers were placed in vases and the master lit incense sticks. During one of these performances I remembered that my passport had to be renewed. This meant I would have to go to Kobe. Have to, because the authority of worldly power, in this case that of the queen of the Netherlands, could not be ignored by the monks.

  The head monk, for this reason, allowed me to break my promised eight months’ continuous stay in the monastery and gave me an entire day off, and I took the tram to the station. I had put on a new nylon shirt which wouldn’t let perspiration through and it was a warm day. I looked at freedom through the open windows of the bumping and shaking tram and realised that I had lived for almost five months in seclusion. I had been through the gate every now and then but never further than, at the most, half a mile. I saw crowds of people, enormous advertisements for films, showing half naked women and aggressive men handling firearms, show windows full of puppets dressed in new clothes, and grey heavy buildings housing banks and trading companies. I felt relieved but also irritated. I hadn’t chosen the monastic life but rather had accepted it, as a means to an end, but now that I was free of the pressure of the monastery, I longed for the silence of the garden with its lovely grey and green shades and the monotonous robes of the monks. Here there was too much bustle; it was too full, too exaggerated. The screaming colors of the advertisements weren’t necessary, the shouting and laughing were annoying. Perhaps it would be a good idea to force everybody to meditate regularly, in halls which would be built in all the cities of the world. Every evening from seven to nine, compulsory silence, and every morning at 3:30, an unavoidable visit to a master. A master to every street.

  And nature would have to be restored so that all cities would be surrounded by vast forests, and in the forests huts could be built for hermits who didn’t feel the need to work under a master. A public soup kitchen in every forest. And as a means of transport we could use the horse again, or the camel
, perhaps elephants as well so that we would all learn to live with animals again, with beings of another order. And meanwhile technology could continue, with efficient factories holding monopolies and producing the best quality which scientists could develop, and fast noiseless trains and ships and airplanes and rockets so that everybody could have his food and drink and clothes and other necessities with a minimum outlay of energy. The tram bounced along and I reached the station. There were a lot of people about and because I didn’t want to push my way through them I almost missed my train. There was plenty of room to move about but Japanese always seem to push each other on platforms; at first they wait calmly and behave in a civilized manner, but when the train appears they are suddenly caught up in a fierce panic and everyone has to get through the door at the same time. That I didn’t want to push with the others seemed, to my mind, proof of having gained a little by the monastic discipline. I had, obviously, become calm and selfless. But I had to admit that I had never pushed, not in Rotterdam either when the trams were full. I had preferred, in those days, to walk to school or to wait for the next tram. The need to find out whether the training was having any effect had long been an obsession, as if satori, enlightenment, reaching the holy goal, were bound to a certain place and I should be getting closer and closer to that particular spot. “Have I got anywhere or not? Am I getting more detached from whatever is happening around me? Am I understanding more? Am I getting lighter, more loose?” I kept on asking myself, although the master often warned me against the folly of such measuring.

  “You’ll find out anyway,” he would say, “you shouldn’t worry like that. Your achievements are quite unimportant; rather try to solve your koan. What is the answer to your koan? What do you have to tell me? Say it!”

  But I said nothing and continued counting nonexistent milestones.

  In the train I found myself pressed against several people, one of them a woman, some twenty years old perhaps. I had already looked at her and noticed that she was beautiful, with rather a sensuous body, large slanting eyes and thick black hair. Attracting the attention of women I don’t know has always been below my sense of dignity, or perhaps I am too shy for that sort of thing; anyway I didn’t try it that time either, although I was enjoying the contact with her body. I thought of the concentration exercise I had been doing for months. It could be tried. Before I knew it I began to breathe deeply and very slowly and fixed the image of the woman, as I remembered it from one short glance, in my thoughts. I tried to think of nothing else and when I knew that I had gained a certain measure of concentration I ordered her to press herself against me. And miracle of miracles, she obeyed. I felt how she rubbed herself, softly and furtively at first, but gradually more firmly, against me and I heard her breathing becoming deep and heavy. And while she rubbed herself against the side of my body she trembled.

  “What now?” I thought, for the contact made my blood surge. “Shall I talk to her? Shall I ask her to get off at the next station? We can go to a hotel room—I have enough money on me. And I can go to Kobe this afternoon. The consul has time to spare.”

  But my excitement broke my concentration, the woman was released and moved away a little. She looked up at me and I saw a troubled look in her eyes. The train happened to pull up at a station and she got out. My skin was prickly under the nylon shirt and sweat was running down my face. “Black magic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I thought. “A lot of trouble and waste of energy. Suppose she had gone with me, so what? An adventure, a step into a vacuum, a memory to disturb future meditation. One shouldn’t shy away from it, Gerald said. Maybe he went in for tricks in trains as well?” I asked him later, but he pretended not to know what I was talking about.

  I didn’t tell the master. The experiment seemed clear enough and I could do without his sarcastic wit. That someone who has trained his will can influence others, without saying anything, without doing anything observable, had now been proved. The monks told me that there are witches in Japan who, for a certain fee, are prepared to perform tricks. A troublesome competitor or a rival in love can be forced to break his leg or catch a nasty cold, depending on the price and on the concentration of the witch. “But,” the monks said, “you have to be very careful; the power which is caused by concentration continues to exist and will in the end turn itself against whoever created it. Witches punish themselves, and their clients pay a heavy price in the end.”

  I comforted myself by the idea that I hadn’t wanted anything evil, just some sexual pleasure, shared cosiness with a climax and no harm done.

  * * *

  In Kobe I faced a heavy, colorless concrete building, and admired the lion of the Netherlands, growling and snarling on a colorful gilded sign above the entrance. Somewhere in this building a representative of the Fatherland sat behind a large desk, and the little black book in my back pocket proved my membership of this club. Not that they would do anything for me, except ask for money in exchange for a rubber stamp; it said so in the little black book. I couldn’t expect anything, couldn’t count on anything, except the right to be recognized as a fellow countryman. And that is what they did, although they did go further. I was given a cup of good coffee and a Dutch cigar and was allowed to sit in a heavy leather armchair.

  “You are staying in a Buddhist monastery,” the chancellor said. “We heard about you. There’s someone in Kobe who would like to be introduced to you. If you agree I’ll phone him; perhaps you would like to meet him.”

  I agreed. I had nothing further to do and although the monastery gate would be closed at 9 p.m. as it was every evening, I knew that I would be able to get in through the side entrance, by lifting a small secret lever. The head monk had promised not to close the side entrance that night. I could stay out till 3 a.m. the next morning.

  The chancellor telephoned and within ten minutes a gentleman by the name of Leo Marks presented himself and greeted me enthusiastically. He thanked the public servant for his cooperation and invited me to lunch. In his car, an oversized Chrysler, black and either brand new or very well kept, I had the opportunity to study him. A tall man, in his early forties, graying at the temples and obviously homosexual. I was quite sure of this although I didn’t have any proof. A lot of men wear old-rose colored ties, and the whiff of perfume could be everyday after-shave.

  “I don’t suppose you want Japanese food,” he said. “You must have enough of that in the monastery. What would you like to eat?”

  The Chrysler looked expensive enough, so I didn’t have to be modest.

  “Real turtle soup,” I said, “with a drop of sherry in it. And a large underdone steak with salads on the side, and something with whipped cream to finish it off. And coffee. And a cigar.”

  “It’s a good sign when a man knows what he wants,” Mr. Marks said, and parked his car with some difficulty. “This car is far too large but I need her. I work for a company which deals in large objects. We sell ships and complete installations for factories and we deal in expensive art sometimes. In our game one has to make an impression. Solid. A lot of ready cash behind one.”

  As I would learn later, he was, in spite of the glamour which surrounded him, a pleasant and modest man. At table, in a small Japanese restaurant where the western style was imitated to perfection, so perfect that the result seemed better than the example used, he told me about his interest in Zen and Japanese art. He had started, years ago, a collection of Japanese woodblock prints. Anything which he considered to be a prize item in his collection turned out to be inspired by Zen and he had begun to study this form of Buddhism. He had been living in Japan for a long time and spoke the language reasonably well. He had visited Zen priests but had never risked a meeting with a Zen master.

  “It would be going too far” he said, when I got to know him better. “I don’t want to expose myself. Koan study seems to be real torture. It isn’t that I can’t detach myself from my possessions or my way of life, or the expensive impression I make on others, but I don’t wa
nt to give up my own idea of what I am. If one solves a koan one commits, to my way of thinking anyway, suicide. Not by putting a bullet into one’s skull or by poisoning one’s stomach or blood, that way you only destroy your body. All of us think that we will continue after death, in some spiritual body or something to that effect. A Christian goes to heaven, a Buddhist starts a next life. Even an atheist doesn’t really believe that he will be obliterated altogether, he hasn’t got the courage to think himself into such absolute negativity.”

  “And meditation?” I asked. “Have you ever considered meditating? Did you ever try?”

  “No, of course not. I have tried but I can’t fold up my legs. And why should I be able to fold up my legs? I am a westerner; we should be able to follow other possibilities in the way of training.”

  “Like what?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t insist. A good Buddhist, according to the books I had read, is no missionary, but tolerates the thoughts, decisions, way of life, of others. Toleration leads to friendship. Friendship always wins. There has never been a Buddhist war.

  * * *

  Leo Marks became a haven to me in Japan. When the sesshins were over and the discipline in the monastery relaxed a little I was allowed to spend an occasional weekend in Kobe, and the Chrysler, handled by an impeccable driver, would meet me at the station and whisk me to Leo’s house where I could do whatever I wanted to do. I read on his balcony overlooking the sea, sank deeply into a well upholstered cane chair, and rested my feet on the balcony railing. I smoked cigars, watched the fishing boats setting out at dawn, ate solid Dutch meals and drank jenever. His Japanese paid friends, graceful in their kimonos, didn’t disturb me. He never introduced them to me and I smiled at them when I happened to meet them in the large three-storied mansion. I selected books from his library, and read for the first time the work of van Gulik, the Dutch ambassador and sinologue who wrote thrillers about ancient China and the famous magistrate Dee. Judge Dee thinks along strict Confucian lines and believes firmly in morality but when confronted with real Buddhist and Taoist masters, who make fun of him, respects them because Dee himself is a man of genius, with an incorruptible and sincere mind, capable of realizing the depth of their teaching.