The Empty Mirror
Page 16
But they managed to teach me something else here. Not only has one to do one’s best, one must, while doing one’s best, remain detached from whatever one is trying to achieve.
Ke-san the thin assistant to the head monk had told me, while I was helping him in the kitchen, the story of the Zen priest and the moss-garden.
A priest was in charge of a small Zen temple, an island of silence and beauty, a few miles out of Kyoto. The temple was famous because of its garden and the priest had been given the temple because he liked nothing better than gardens and gardening. Next to his temple there was another, smaller temple. A very old Zen master lived there, so old that he couldn’t have disciples any more. The priest looked after the old master but there was no official master/disciple relationship. The priest had given up his koan study years ago.
The priest was going to have guests, and he had been busy all morning perfecting his garden. He had raked all the fallen leaves together, and thrown them away. He had sprinkled water on the moss, he had even combed the moss here and there, he had put down some leaves again, in the right places; and when finally, he stood on his veranda and contemplated his garden, could only tell himself that his garden was, in every respect, as it should be. The old Zen master had been watching the priest’s work with interest while he leant on the fence which separated the two temples.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” the priest asked the master. “Don’t you think that the garden is now as it should be? My guests will be coming in a little while and I want them to find the garden as the monks who originally designed it meant it to be.”
The master nodded. “Yes,” he said, “your garden is beautiful; but there is something missing, and if you’ll lift me over the fence and put me down in the garden for a moment I’ll put it right for you.”
The priest hesitated, for he had got to know the master a little and he knew that the old man could have extraordinary ideas. He couldn’t refuse of course. A master’s will is law, and that his master happened to be retired didn’t change the rule.
When he had lowered the master carefully into his garden the old gentleman walked slowly to a tree, growing in the centre of a harmonious rock and moss combination. It was autumn and the leaves were dying. All the master had to do was shake the tree a little and the garden was full of leaves again, spread out in haphazard patterns. “That’s what it needed,” the master said. “You can put me back again.”
According to Ke-san the priest had broken down and wept and stamped his feet and that wasn’t, said Ke-san, what he should have done. Right, I thought, after my trip along the precipice. So that’s what matters. To do your best and be detached. To come to the point where everything you have been trying to do comes to nothing, and be unmoved. Equanimity. That’s all I have been able to learn. A little theory. It has taken me a year and a half. I doubt whether I can practise the theory.
I spent the rest of the day doing nothing in particular. There would be no meditation in the monastery that evening, and I had nothing to do. I could have meditated in my room, studied Japanese or worked in the garden. I could have followed the daily routine, but I didn’t feel like it. Peter came home that evening and I asked him if he would mind telling the head monk that I wanted to have three days off. The master was ill, so I wouldn’t miss any of the early morning visits.
“Why?” asked Peter.
I told him that I wanted to lock myself in my room for three days and meditate continuously.
“You can’t do it,” Peter said.
“I know I can’t do it,” I said. “I’ll have to spend some time sleeping and eating, but I can try, can’t I? To try it won’t hurt me.”
Peter didn’t like my plan. He tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted. I was convinced that I should do something spectacular, that I should break my daily rhythm, that I had to get out of my depression some way or other, and this seemed the best solution.
“Wait till the master is better, and talk to him about it,” Peter said.
I didn’t want to wait. It was now or never. In the end he gave in.
I would start the next morning, at 3 o’clock, and stay in my room for three times twenty-four hours on end. If I had to go to the lavatory, or to the kitchen, he would pretend I wasn’t there.
The exercise came to nothing. After half a day I left my room. I couldn’t sit still, the room was too small, the walls moved in and suffocated me.
Peter tried to comfort me but I was now so depressed that nothing he said made any impression. The whole Buddhist adventure now seemed one huge failure, and I wanted to leave. There was no longer any reason to stay in Japan. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. There was enough money left for a boat-trip to Europe and some six months’ modest living. I assumed that I would be able to find a job within that half year, a simple manual job if need be. I could find a room in Paris or Amsterdam and continue my meditation during the evenings.
Peter, to my surprise, lost his temper. Perhaps he was worried about what the master would say to him, or perhaps he felt personally insulted by my failure—perhaps he thought that my failure was partly his failure. I didn’t listen to Peter, but walked to the gate without saying anything and started my scooter. That same evening I rode to Kobe and took a room in the harbor quarter. The next day I booked a passage to Marseilles on an old French steamer, third class. They wouldn’t give me fourth class. Fourth class is steerage, and the shipping clerk said that the steerage passengers would pass the time drinking, fighting and gambling and he didn’t want a dead white man on the company’s conscience.
The boat would leave in a month’s time. A few days later one of Leo’s acquaintances met me in the street and told me that Peter had telephoned Leo and that they were now both looking for me. I didn’t want them to waste their time and called Leo from the nearest telephone booth, telling him that I was safe and on my way to Europe. He asked me where I was staying and when I came back to the hotel I found his car waiting for me. When Leo saw me he shook his head but didn’t comment. He took me to his house and Peter came that evening to try and talk me into coming back. I refused. He offered to find me a job so that I could stay in Japan for a number of years. I could work for one of the film studios in Kyoto as a bit-player, or he might even get me a proper job as a correspondent and public relations man in a mercantile company. When I kept on refusing he became angry again and left, mumbling a farewell. Leo, on the contrary, showed no emotion whatever. I wanted to go back to my hotel. I didn’t want to live at Leo’s expense for a month.
“You can pay me,” Leo said, and worked out how much the hotel would have cost me. The money I gave him was passed on to the servants who all refused to take the tips I offered them when I left.
Three days before the ship sailed I rode to Kyoto to say goodbye to the master. The head monk gave me tea, didn’t show any disappointment, and took me to the master’s house. The master received me in his living room. He gave me a cigarette and sent the head monk to the meditation hall to fetch a stick, the sort of stick which the monks used to hit each other. He drew some characters on it with his brush, blew on the ink, waved the stick about, and gave it to me.
“The characters mean something which is of importance to you. I wrote down an old Chinese proverb, a saying taken from the Zen tradition. ‘A sword which is well forged never loses its golden color.’ You don’t know it, or you think you don’t know it, but you have been forged in this monastery. The forging of swords isn’t limited to monasteries. This whole planet is a forge. By leaving here nothing is broken. Your training continues. The world is a school where the sleeping are woken up. You are now a little awake, so awake that you can never fall asleep again.”
The head monk looked at me kindly and the master smiled. The heavy gloomy feeling which hadn’t left me in Kobe fell away from me. I bowed and left the house.
When the ship detached itself from the quay Leo Marks and Han-san stood next to each other on the wharf. A very tall westerner and a very small eas
terner. Leo waved and Han-san bowed. Then they disappeared in Leo’s limousine.
I went into the bar and ordered a cold beer.
Notes
1. The gate of the monastery, a chicken, and a vendor of noodles
1. In this position the legs are crossed in such a way that the left foot is turned round to rest on the right thigh and the right foot on the left thigh. The back is held straight and the hands are folded, resting in the bowl formed by the feet.
2. Meditating hurts
1. The Life of Milarepa, by his pupil Lobzang Jivaka, translated into English by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, John Murray, (1962).
3. Life is suffering
1. Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, How to Know God (Allen & Unwin, 1953).
2. P. D. Ouspensky, The Fourth Way (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957).
12. A shameless day and satori in the willow quarter
1. Ikku Jippensha, Shank’s Mare (Tuttle, Tokyo, 1960)
Also by Janwillem van de Wetering
The Butterfly Hunter
Bliss and Bluster
The Sergeant’s Cat
Inspector Saito’s Small Satori
Murder by Remote Control (with Paul Kirchner)
The Amsterdam Cop series
Outsider in Amsterdam
Tumbleweed
The Corpse on the Dike
Death of a Hawker
The Japanese Corpse
The Blond Baboon
The Maine Massacre
The Mind Murders
The Streetbird
The Rattle-Rat
Nonfiction
A Glimpse of Nothingness
Afterzen
Children’s Books
Hugh Pine
Hugh Pine and the Good Place
Little Owl
About the Author
Born and raised in Amsterdam, Janwillem van de Wetering moved to South Africa when he was nineteen. After living and working there for six years he went to London, where he studied philosophy for a year. From London he went to Kyoto, Japan, and lived in a Zen monastery for the next two years. His travels next took him to Peru and Colombia in South America where he got married and spent three years. From South America he went to Australia for a year and then returned to Amsterdam. He went into business and joined the Amsterdam Reserve Police Force where he swiftly rose through the ranks. Van de Wetering and his wife moved to Maine ten years ago and still make their home there.
He chronicles his Zen experiences in The Empty Mirror and A Glimpse of Nothingness. Novels in the Amsterdam Cop series include Outsider in Amsterdam, Tumbleweed, The Corpse on the Dike, Death of a Hawker, The Japanese Corpse, The Blond Baboon, The Maine Massacre, The Mind-Murders, The Streetbird, The Rattle-Rat, and Hard Rain. Inspector Saito’s Small Satori introduces us to a new cop, and The Sergeant’s Cat is a collection of short stories. Murder by Remote Control is a mystery told in comic book format.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
THE EMPTY MIRROR. Copyright © 1973 by Janwillem van de Wetering. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
ISBN 0-312-20774-3
First published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Company
First published in Amsterdam under the title De Lege Spiegel by De Driehock
eISBN 9781466874664
First eBook edition: May 2014