The Empty Mirror

by Janwillem Van De Wetering

  During one of these weekends I found myself at a party, a party run according to the rules of what is known as fashionable society. For the first time in my life I wore evening clothes, borrowed from Leo. If I didn’t move about too much the suit seemed to fit me. The ladies of the party showed a lot of interest in me. It was a curious sensation to feel that I, the floor-scrubber and weed-puller of the monastery, was a mysterious man in this environment, romantic, a mystic. With a cigar in my mouth and a glass filled with whisky and tinkling icecubes in my hand, as rigid as an officer of the Dutch marechaussee (if I bent over I ran the risk of my trousers falling down, I had to press out my stomach to keep them up), I deigned to come down to the level of these ladies of the world and admired their breasts, gracefully pressed up by invisible structures of plastic, while a jazz combo deepened the atmosphere. I didn’t mind the part, but it became a little ludicrous after a while. The master would have grinned if he had been able to see me. “And the koan?” The ladies wanted to know about the koan, too. “Now what, really, is a koan supposed to be? How does one explain the sound of one clapping hand?” A book had just come out which listed a number of koans and Zen anecdotes and everybody in the company had read it. “Is it really true that a Zen master broke his pupil’s leg by slamming the gate on him? Do they use harsh methods like that to cause insight? Is it true that a Chinese disciple cut off his own arm to prove to his master that he was really interested in Zen?” “I suppose so,” I said. But my master never broke anybody’s leg and he had never given me the impression that he expected me to maim myself. It wouldn’t be a bad idea, I thought. If I could be quite sure that an amputated limb would automatically cause insight, the method might be preferable to the endless torture on the meditation bench.

  I was also asked several times if I had been given a koan, and if so, if I had solved that koan. A gentleman introduced himself as a graduate in Zen Buddhism. He had, he said, taken a course at Leiden university. “I know the sound of one clapping hand,” he whispered into my ear and looked at me as if we both belonged to a secret brotherhood. “I don’t,” I said. “Yes, yes,” he said roguishly, “real insight is never displayed openly.”

  I drank too much that evening but I don’t think anybody noticed. Leo took me, when the party was over, to a brothel where the inmates were boys, some of them dressed as girls. Homosexuality and transvestism were prohibited by law at that time, if linked with prostitution, and the brothel keeper kept a few real girls at the bar to keep up appearances. It was a rare phenomenon for a man who liked girls to come into the establishment, and when the girls discovered that I spoke Japanese, albeit badly, their joy knew no bounds. I was fondled and fussed over and Leo gave me a fatherly look, and had me fetched in the morning by taxi. He had gone home to think about Buddhism. “I am a Buddhist of course,” he said “but if I reflect a little it may be that I shall gain enough courage to practice my faith.” I wished him strength with a wave of my cigar. “I admire you,” he said, and bowed down over me, correct and courteous as always. “What you are doing I have always wanted to do. That’s why I am glad that I met you.”

  “Yes,” I said, “look where you have brought me.”

  “You wanted to come yourself,” Leo said, “and it has got nothing to do with it. The little dog has the Buddha nature, and these whores too.”

  “Happy Easter,” I said. My frivolity irritated him but the next day he was as kind and friendly as ever.

  Ten

  Rohatsu, week of weeks

  Sesshins, the meditation weeks of a Zen monastery, fill the first seven days of six months of the year. A week has seven days; I had forgotten that fact. I was still thinking that a week had five days of regularly repeated obligations, followed by two days of another order altogether, two days in which to forget the five days.

  But a week in a Zen monastery has seven days and not one minute is given away. Every meditation period lasts exactly twenty-five minutes, and the pause between two periods lasts five minutes. At eleven p.m. the last stroke on the large copper bell ebbs away slowly and only then is there sleep. Some sesshins contain more meditation hours that others: in summer, when there is a lot of work in the ornamental and vegetable gardens, seven to nine hours a day; in winter eleven hours a day.

  But it could be much worse, as I heard from the monks, although I didn’t believe them at first. The first week of December is Rohatsu. Rohatsu is the sesshin which rules all sesshins. Fifteen hours of meditation per day: from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m.; from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m.; from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; from 7 p.m. to midnight. That is seventeen hours altogether, but the visits to the master take time and are deducted from the meditation time.

  I couldn’t believe it. It had to be an impossible exercise, even if there were regular beating up and shouting. No human being can sit still for fifteen hours a day, and under stress as well, with an unanswerable question tucked away in his belly. I would faint or go raving mad. Certainly, Buddha had meditated for weeks on end, under a tree, on a rock. But that was 2500 years ago. A holy man, shrouded in the haze of antiquity. Christ had meditated in the desert for forty days on end. That was 2000 years ago. But I was a westerner of today—a restless, nervous, noisy seeker without insight, without power. With some sense of humor and a somewhat indifferent outlook on daily life one cannot sit still for fifteen hours a day. All right, I had managed to sit still for eleven hours a day, but with a lot of wobbling about and secret glances at others and at my watch, and with rest periods of an hour or more so that I could sleep or sit on a gravestone and smoke cigarettes and dream.

  I tried not to think about this coming horror, just as in the past I had pushed away the image of an approaching visit to the dentist or an examination, drawing nearer and nearer. But this was something quite different. Dentists and examiners had been pushed on me by strong powers around me, powers outside myself, grim and overbearing powers against which I couldn’t defend myself. But what had forced me to undergo a training which asked me to perform an absolutely impossible feat?

  * * *

  I sat on the little staircase leading down into the garden from my room, smoked and looked about and saw the ornamental fir trees, cut and guided into enchanting shapes, now lightly covered by a thin layer of snow: a miraculous and beautiful view. I had said something about it to the head monk who happened to pass by and he had stopped for a moment, looked politely at the indicated trees, and had admitted dryly that they were beautiful. “Just like a picture!”

  His remark annoyed me. “Just like a picture.” What an inane thing to say. Limited, bourgeois. And this was supposed to be an enlightened man in whom satori, the lightning of sudden real insight, should have taken place at least several times, for he had finished his koan study.

  A Zen koan exists which asks why Bodhidharma, the first Zen master, went to China: a symbolic question, an essential question, a question in the order of “What is the essence of Buddhism?” The answer which one Zen master accepted was: “The fir tree in the temple garden.” Just a tree, like the tree standing here in front of me. Because a tree shows the perfect beauty in which everything else is expressed, and especially the essence of Buddhism and the reason of Bodhidharma’s long wanderings through a strange country. I could feel that quite well. In any case, I liked trees. But if I were to say to the master that the truth of everything, the purpose of life, is expressed in a tree, he would pick up his bell and ring me out of the room or he would grunt and shake his head.

  And that was why I had come, to visit an old Japanese gentleman who ridiculed everything I said or could say, and to sit still for fifteen hours a day on a mat, for seven days on end, while the monks whacked me on the back with a four-foot long lath made of strong wood.

  I cursed softly. What on earth was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I live normally and do my best, like my brothers and sisters, like my father had always done? My grandmother, whom I never knew, would have said that one mustn’t break one’s head about questions which cannot be answered
. My mother had asked her what exists outside the universe. “If you come to the end of the universe,” my grandmother said, “You will see that everything has been pasted over with newspapers.” An intelligent answer, which had satisfied my mother. Why couldn’t I be content with an endless wall, built of wooden lathe work and pasted over with the New Rotterdam Herald?

  But while I mumbled to myself, and lit my fourth cigarette that morning, Rohatsu was coming closer and I knew that I wouldn’t run away from it. Han-san and Ka-san, and whatever the other sans might be called, the young monks would all have to get through it.

  Country lads, given by their fathers to the monastery. If they could do it, couldn’t I do it? I can’t do it, I thought. These country lads were Japanese, easterners, quiet and patient boys with a large reserve of inherited tolerance. And I knew that some of them had already solved koans. Perhaps Japanese are privileged beings who have a special talent for attaining insight into the mysteries.

  Perhaps I’ll be able to do it next year, I thought. If I train myself for another year I shall be able to sit comfortably in half-lotus. I’ll ask for dispensation; the head monk will surely realize that I can’t get through this week of terror. He may be tough and severe but for me, a westerner with exceptionally stiff legs, he will make an exception. I cursed again for I remembered that I had called him, a few days ago, to the meditation hall to show him that I was sitting much better. My thigh muscles had grown a little for I could, with a little extra exertion, get my right foot on the instep of my left foot, and if I pushed and strained and pulled, even on the calf of my left leg. With an extra pillow under my bottom I could gain a reasonable balance. He had smiled and patted me on the shoulder. Why couldn’t I have restrained myself, why did I always have to show off and endeavor to show any so-called progress to the world?

  That day I was called to see the head monk and two of his colleagues. They spoke to me at length, but I didn’t understand them very well. After several repetitions I nodded. I had understood that they weren’t very happy with my progress and that this Rohatsu would be a final test. If I managed to get through the week all right I could stay in the monastery, and the master would continue to receive me. But if I gave up halfway through Rohatsu I should have to leave the monastery. They even gave me the name of a small hotel in the neighborhood where I could go and stay.

  I bowed and returned to my room. Very well. What has to be done has to be done. I swore that I would get through the week even if my legs were so stiffened with cramp that they would never be usable again, and even if my mind gave way. Even if I went insane I would sit it out, if need be as an idiot, dribbling at the mouth, but I wouldn’t enable them to chase me out of the monastery. I had another two days to prepare myself. I bought chocolate slabs and ordered a large bag of the peanut and raisin mixture via Gerald. I bought an extra heavy jersey and six undershirts; I would wear three at a time so as to keep the stick off my skin. I even bought the heating apparatus which most of the monks were using. It looked like a spectacle case but instead of spectacles contained smoldering sticks of charcoal. A monk had told me that these cases, if worn next to the stomach, gave a splendid heat which spread right through the body. The stomach is nearest the plexus solaris, the most important nerve knot of the human body. Once it gets warm everything becomes warm. I had heard a lot about the plexus solaris. The master always pointed to his belly. That’s where the real feeling is, the real center of observation. Music shouldn’t be listened to but felt, here in your belly. Other people should be felt. The koan should be tucked into the belly. Don’t think with your brain but concentrate here, in your belly.

  During the meditation exercises I had learned to regulate my breathing: first take a short breath, then press out the belly and “push the breath into the belly,” and then keep it there. The master was quite a small man but he had such strength in his belly muscles that he could push my fist, and the weight of my body behind it, back by merely extending his stomach.

  When Rohatsu began the head monk locked my room. During that week we wouldn’t just meditate in the hall but sleep there as well, if sleep it could be called, for we were only given two hours a day, from midnight to 2 a.m. I came into the hall with my sleeping bag under my arm. A small cupboard would hold my chocolate, nuts and raisins, toothbrush, soap and small towel. The clothes I was wearing would have to last all week. I sat down, moved into the most comfortable position I could find and the head monk struck his bell. Two o’clock in the morning. I had all my jerseys on and my three undershirts. The spectacle case glowed away, wrapped in a thin piece of cloth, against my stomach. It was freezing in the meditation hall but I didn’t feel the cold. The first period of the first day. I would count them all carefully, one by one.

  The head monk delivered a small lecture.

  “This is going to be heavy going. Use this week well. Think of nothing, become one with your koan. Forget your friends, forget the meditation hall, forget yourself, forget time. Don’t think of your body. Don’t think of food or cigarettes or sleep.”

  And don’t move. The young monks shouldn’t move either. Neither should the newcomers move. Nor the westerners. There were only two westerners, Gerald and myself, and Gerald never moved. I did, but I wouldn’t be able to do it now. He had meant me and he would pay special attention to me, and shout: “Jan-san, sit still. You are disturbing the others.” I didn’t want him to shout at me. I wanted to draw attention to myself because I was doing something well, not because I was always doing everything the wrong way. Not to be able to do things well was getting a bit of a bore.

  The head monk was also becoming a bit of a bore lately. I would show him that I could handle him for a change, that he didn’t have to pour his will all over me all the time.

  And when the spectacle case became too hot for comfort I didn’t move.

  My belly was getting strangely warm. I didn’t understand it, couldn’t I manage this either? All the monks had these cases and I saw them sitting all around me, apparently at peace and quietly happy in their concentration. Why did I have this glowing belly? The feeling of warmth was slowly changing into pain. I had the unmistakable feeling that my skin was getting scorched. But I didn’t move; another ten minutes and the bell would be struck. For the first time I felt no pain in my legs. It seemed as if I didn’t have any legs. But I did have a belly, and my belly was on fire.

  When the bell was struck I jumped off my seat and rushed out and pulled all my shirts out of my trousers. I had a burn of several square inches. Gerald, who came to see what ailed me this time, shook his head and looked puzzled.

  “Did you just wrap the case in that thin piece of cloth?”

  “Yes,” I said; “shouldn’t I have?”

  “No, you shouldn’t have. You should have wrapped it in a towel and then have stuck the whole bundle in a belly-wrap. You can buy them in any store.” He started to laugh but controlled himself. “That’s a nasty burn. It should be treated.”

  He went back to the hall to speak to the head monk and we were both excused for the next period. The cook, the only monk who didn’t take part in the meditation as he had to cook for thirty people, spread some ointment on the wound and bandaged it neatly. He tried to behave in a compassionate manner but finally broke down and began to laugh as well.

  “These cases are really prohibited,” the cook said, “just like the padded vests and waistcoats the monks wear.”

  “Yes,” Gerald agreed. “And you don’t need a case at all if you concentrate properly, you can sit in the snow stark naked. You could sit in a fire as well.” He addressed the cook: “True or not?”

  “Yes,” the monk said. “With concentration you can do anything. But you are in my way, both of you. Go back to the hall. The head monk is waiting for you.”

  The first day passed. The second day passed as well. The third day wasn’t too bad. The fourth day was one long interminable hell of pain and boredom and frustrated restlessness. That day I was being hit regularly an
d I hated the monks. I had to use all my strength to keep myself from jumping off my seat to attack them. Gerald, who wanted to say something to me during one of the short breaks, stepped back when he saw the murderous expression on my face and found another spot to lean against a wall and relax for a few minutes. The head monk snapped some command at me and I snarled and ground my teeth in response. I had to light three cigarettes one after another, the first two had become powder in my hands.

  The fourth day is the worst, the others confirmed later. Six laymen from the neighborhood had come to join us that week: a medical doctor, the local baker and four men I didn’t know. During the fourth day they all disappeared. Even their cushions had gone. Their disappearance wasn’t discussed by the monks. Japanese are polite, if something goes wrong; the fact is recognized and greeted in silence. But Gerald and I were rough foreigners, barbarians from the west, and we grinned at each other.

  Gerald’s face had become hollow, his cheekbones jutted right out, and his eyelids were red and seemed inflamed. Our hands were thick and puffy from lying in our laps, hour after hour. We stumbled as we walked. The master seemed very changed as well. For the first time I saw him in the meditation hall and he was with us continuously, except when he was away in his little house to receive us. His eyes had sunk well back into their sockets, and his shrunken face bristled with the beginning of a sparse beard and moustache. Instead of his usually gleaming skull I now saw a fringe of grey down.