The Lady and the Monk

by Pico Iyer

  She nodded gravely. “They must! If not so strong, then little big problem! But woman try man’s life, very difficult. Woman very lonely life — only thinking — very difficult. Woman need Nature!”

  As usual, I had no idea whether she meant this in some spiritual or elemental sense — that women were in constant touch with moon and tides and cycles of the earth — or whether it was a more social meaning she intended (that in this perfectly organized society of distribution of labor, their job was to raise children and nurture the men who were money-earning boys). Yet still I could catch her mood, even when the meaning vanished.

  Then, ruminative once more, she went on, “Man world, woman world, very different. Woman live in feeling world, man in reason world.” This was standard enough. “Man do baby-making ceremony, body only, very easy. Woman have two part: body and heart.” All this, I thought, was not so unusual. But then, as ever, she took me by surprise. “Man go away, woman heart very easy. But body much much miss him.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You mean the other way round? Body adjusts, but heart misses him?”

  She shook her head firmly. “Heart no problem! Heart have many memory. But body much need him.”

  This in itself I had not expected, though the notion that memory could appease the mind was familiar to me from every classic Japanese love poem I had ever read. Then she extended her metaphor to Japan. “I think all Japan two side: one very strong side, man side. Like Emperor. Many thing happen, he do nothing. You know Bushidō? Little samurai feeling! Other part, woman heart, see many thing, but little fragile. Not so strong. Very sad.” Stoicism and sensitivity, I thought; self-discipline and self-pity. That might almost be the warp and woof of this practical, lyrical land of down-to-earth aesthetes and self-denying pleasure-lovers.

  Arriving in Osaka, we walked among the early plum blossoms and, in the brooding shadow of Osaka Castle, wandered through a long avenue of pink and white flowering trees, chilled by the stiff February breeze. She stood stock-still and closed her eyes, imprinting the memory on her mind. By now, I was coming to know the alphabet of Sachiko’s smallest gestures: the way she’d whisper, as if in church, “Thank you very much, give me dream”; the way she’d turn down her eyes at moments that moved her, demure as a medieval maiden; the air of transported breathlessness that made her greet each moment like an explorer coming for the first time on the Taj Mahal.

  “Japanese person say, hidamari,” she explained, pointing to a small patch of sunlight along the otherwise cold stone of a nearby shrine. In the dark of the Kyoto winter, Sachiko was my hidamari.

  One cold, bright Sunday in early February, I awoke in the chill blue dawn, flakes of snow swirling across the sky in drifts, and, breath condensing, hurried across town to the chilly silence of Tōfukuji. Sachiko had offered to take me to one of the rōshi’s early-morning zazen sessions for the public — the Buddhist equivalent of a Sunday service — and by seven o’clock on this freezing morning, I found myself in a large, spotless hall, with perhaps fifty other people, all but Sachiko and myself elderly patrons of the temple. Four monks, baleful in black robes, stood silent sentry at the far end of the room, holding wooden sticks upright above their shoulders. All of us were instructed to take off our watches. Then there was absolute silence. Nothing but the early singing of the birds.

  For a while, as the zazen began, I entered the darkness and felt cleansed. Time and space and self were lost. Then, inevitably, the monkey mind began to frolic. Eyes still shut, I heard the almost silent padding of the monks, as they trod on patrol, step by step, down the line. Occasionally, the silence was cracked by the sound of a stick thwacking some sluggard — two sharp, swift blows on one side, two more on the other. Soon, the sound of hits took on a regular beat. I held my breath as if to disappear when I heard the footsteps approach; then, as they receded, I relaxed again, my mind still full of unsolicited distractions.

  Half opening my eye — a child playing hooky — I saw old people in their seventies bowing before the policing monks, asking to be cudgeled. The monk stepped before them with his stave. Then the miscreant laid his head on the ground, right hand clutching his chest to prevent his shoulder from being separated. The stick rang down on him. Then, changing hands, the meditator exposed the other shoulder and was whacked again. He bowed his gratitude, and the monk moved on, feet lobster red in the February cold.

  As the minutes seeped on, meandering and ponderous, I felt my sense of stillness intensifying, as if I were gaining weight and depth; but then again my mind began to buzz like a cicada-crowded glade, with thoughts, recollections, plans, worries about punishment, anxieties over the form, questions about the purpose of the exercise. My legs began to ache, and I grew desperate to stir — to move my legs, to go to the bathroom, to steal a glimpse of Sachiko beside me, to do anything at all. The whole exercise began to seem like just another Japanese hardening of the will, an act of mindless discipline. How did everyone else know the proper way to bow? What if I, the only foreigner and the only newcomer here, inadvertently violated some sacrament? Where were these people going in the dark?

  Finally, the darkness lifted, as looked-for as the dawn on a night when one cannot sleep. The parishioners lined up in rows before the feet of the rōshi, and the rōshi delivered a ninety-minute teishō, or talk, on the Five Buddhist Precepts — a shorter and simpler version, as it happened, of the Ten Commandments. “Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not commit adultery. Do not drink.” When he was finished, the four lieutenant monks served tea and cakes, and questions were asked. Then we issued forth, out into the tingling air.

  One reason, I began to realize, as the winter deepened, why I was following Matthew’s progress with something more than mere sympathy and amusement was that he seemed to me the perfect advertisement for Zen: with his lawyer’s determination to do anything but follow his instincts, and the congenital self-contradiction that resulted, he was himself like the sound of one hand clapping. Yet the very equivocation and restlessness that made it so important for him to come to Zen was precisely what made it impossible for him to get to Zen. As Mark once put it, citing the old Zen parable, “He’s searching for the ox while riding on the ox.”

  One blue late afternoon, drifts of snow coming languidly down along the narrow streets, leaves blowing over the slow-moving canal, we met up in the Afternoon Tea coffee shop downtown. Pink Floyd was seeping out of the sound system, and Matthew, when I arrived, was deep in a book on Zen — in part, it seemed, in the hope that it might attract some stranger into conversation. Many a foreigner came here ostensibly to study Buddhism but in fact to find a partner; if he failed to find a girl, he’d leave, complaining about the lack of Buddhism.

  By the time we wandered out, night had already fallen. Tiny lanterns had come on along the doorways of the ancient tea-houses lining the narrow canal, and above them, their upper rooms glowed quietly, as quaint, in the falling snow, as in some child’s paperweight. Down and down came the flakes, all about us, silent and mild, “with the stately solemnity,” in Mishima’s phrase, “of an ordered ritual,” and as we crunched along the newly fallen white, we could see diners in rows along the upper windows and red lanterns reflected in the water, a winter scene of old stone bridges and weeping willows, silent as a photograph.

  More and more convinced — and alarmed — that he was being locked out of the real Japan and that his time was running out, Matthew was determined now to break through Kyoto’s walls at any cost. In the slim-waisted street of Pontochō, in the geisha quarter, he knocked on one locked door after another and finally, finding one open, jumped breezily into the entrance hall, calling, “Hallo? Hallo? Anybody home?” A frightened grandmother appeared before us, bowing.

  “Oh, hello,” he greeted her with all his London suavity. “Awfully nice to meet you. Do hope we’re not intruding. Could we come in, please, take a look?” He pointed into the inner sanctum. This, however, was too much for the lady. Violently shaking her head no, she made a cross w
ith her arms and brandished it in front of us as she might with a vampire. We headed back out into the gently falling snow.

  Matthew, however, was in no mood to be thwarted. Every time we passed an open alcove, he charged in, greeting the blinking proprietress with reckless good cheer and shooting out such a flood of accelerating pleasantries that even I could scarcely follow. At last, we passed the Pinky Pinkum, as private and barred a place as all the rest. Without a moment’s hesitation, Matthew led me in, and together we began hopping around, stork-legged, in the entrance hall, removing our thick shoes.

  There were only six seats in the Pinky Pinkum, and four of them were occupied — three by besuited businessmen and the fourth by a professional-looking lady in her early forties. One of the men was squeezing a microphone between his fingers, singing some ineffably sorrowful old ballad while video images of white-maned horses galloped, in slow motion, across the wall. A young girl slithered around gracefully from behind the bar, got down on her knees, and, bowing at our feet, welcomed us in. Then she showed us to the bar, barely two feet away, where a pretty young boy stood at attention.

  Matthew was exultant. “Yes, yes,” he cried excitedly. “This is it! Absolutely the same as the Japanese bars in Thailand! Video, singing, the whole thing! Quite charming, actually!” Newly invigorated, he ordered a whiskey, and a Coke for me. Meanwhile, the microphone was slowly passed along, precious as an Olympic torch, from one person to the next. Song followed heartrending song. Before long, the microphone had arrived at Matthew’s neighbor. He crooned a dirge.

  “Very good indeed! Awfully good, actually! Better than La Scala,” cried Matthew, beaming over at him, ever friendly. “Excellent! Really excellent!” The man stared back at him, perplexed, and then, very slowly, realizing that the praise was genuine, beamed back. The next thing we knew, the microphone was suddenly passing into Matthew’s hands, and the businessmen were bustling about to find a list of English songs: “Yesterday,” “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “Green Green Grass of Home,” “Love Me Tender.”

  “Oh no, no, couldn’t, I really couldn’t,” he smiled back at them, unaware, as yet, that in this country foreigners, like performing seals, were often expected to sing, quite literally, for their supper. “Awfully nice of you, very kind, actually,” he went on:, “but really I can’t.” The microphone passed down in the opposite direction.

  The first businessman received it and started unburdening his sorrow in a deep bass again, and then his neighbor, and then the woman, and soon the place was rocking. All of us were clapping along, the businessmen were delivering wrenching threnodies, and Matthew was slapping his neighbor on the back and smiling at him with an almost hysterical infectiousness. Just at this tender moment of cross-cultural communication, the bartenderess suddenly took up the mike and broke into sweet song. Matthew gazed up at her adoringly. “Will you marry me?” he asked, as she belted out some plangent ballad about a young girl’s errant marriage.

  “Absolutely wonderful,” he confided under his breath. “The real Japan! Maybe we should go before the moment fades. How much do you think it’ll be?”

  “Thirty-five dollars, maybe,” I answered, trying to soften the blow.

  “Oh, very good. Awfully good value, actually. Very good deal: native culture and all that.”

  Then the pretty hostess — his fiancée manqué — handed us the bill: sixty dollars for a whiskey and a Coke. Matthew stared at it unhappily.

  I refrained from reminding him that we had, in a sense, gotten off lightly: the traditional teahouses of Gion were famous for their expensiveness — that was one of their traditions, in fact, and that was part of the attraction for the Japanese, who came here exclusively to pay $330 for a single drink, with a bowl of special nuts. Matthew, though, was in no mood for consolation. Jet-propelled, he charged out of the place and started marching through the falling snow. “Noodle shop, noodle shop,” he shouted mirthlessly as we walked down the canal, past the soundless, lit-up teahouses. “Noodles! That’s what the evening calls for!”

  Finally, we retreated to the relative safety of a Mexican restaurant, and over enchiladas, Matthew started discussing the competing merits of the high life and the higher life.

  9:00 p.m.: “Really think I ought to make a go of it here.”

  9:15 p.m.: “Actually, if it doesn’t feel right, why force it?”

  9:30 p.m.: “But if I leave now, I’ll feel I’ve failed.”

  9:45 p.m.: “Really, though, Thailand’s so much more pleasant. If you’re not comfortable, how can you grow?”

  And on and on, et cetera, et cetera, und so weiter, for two hours or more: Thailand was seductive, so he ought to go there; Thailand was seductive, and therefore to be avoided. Japan was hard, so it was eminently good for him; Japan was hard, so it was not for him at all. He really wanted to try to find a home; he really ought to let a home find him. Unable to accept anything less than everything, he ended up with nothing, reminding me, often, of a man who has waited for so long to take a plunge into cold water that his legs at last have gone dead on him.

  “Thing is, I’ve got all the time and money, really want to be of service. Really ought to find how I can be of use. Could be a lawyer, I suppose, but that’s so corrupt. Should become a monk, maybe, but really takes a lot of discipline. Suppose I could go back to college, but then I’m not doing anyone any good at all. Could become a teacher here, but it doesn’t feel quite right.”

  Finally, I could take no more. “Look,” I said. “The more time you spend wondering what you’re going to do for others, the less time you spend doing anything at all. And the more you keep looking for a perfect answer, the less likely you are to find one. Stop second-guessing your own emotions, and do something.”

  Captive to my own mind now, I started babbling on, determined to try to shake him out of subjunctives and optatives, into simple declaratives.

  “But what about understanding?” asked Matthew, a little plaintively. “Isn’t that any good?”

  “What good has understanding ever done you? When has understanding ever brought you happiness or goodness or peace? It’s useless; it’s got nothing to do with anything! The mind’s an obstacle; it teaches you only what you never need to know. Just be decisive, single-pointed. Make a choice — any choice at all — and you’ll be happier.”

  Matthew nodded gloomily, as startled as I was to hear this sudden burst of bromides. He didn’t know, I suspected, that one reason for the vehemence was that I was talking to myself. One reason I got so impatient with Matthew was that I saw so much of him in me.

  Sachiko, meanwhile, still and always had an unrivaled capacity for touching me, her gestures were so thoughtful. For my birthday, she asked if she could take me out to dinner. When I arrived at City Hall, at the time we’d arranged to meet, I found her standing there, waiting patiently in the cold, in a red and golden sari — as she had promised several months before; with it, under kohl-rimmed eyes, a thick mink stole and black high heels. She looked like a Rajput princess. Handing me a rose of the most delicate lavender, she began clopping along the street, not with her usual easy fluency but with precise, clear-stepping elegance.

  “Please,” she said. “I want give you present. We go Osaka?”

  Together, we rode the train through the winter afternoon. She opened up her Paddington datebook (which came here with a space for listing one’s “Tax Accountant’s Number”) and pointed at the paw mark on the day, symbol of a national holiday: my birthday, she reminded me, was the same as that of the Japanese Empire. I explained to her about Tibet, and the Tibetan New Year that I was going off to celebrate the next day, and she, nodding solemnly, said, “AH life there, very severe! All life, I think, little sesshin.”

  Later, when we got to Umeda Station, she led me through the crowds to the Hilton Hotel, and up, up, up in the elevator to the sixth-floor Photo Studio. Around us, clutches of apprehensive wedding parties stood around gravely, waiting to have their moment immortalized. I looked on i
n surprise as Sachiko fell into animated chatter with the startled-looking lady at the desk (not accustomed, I suspected, to seeing a Japanese girl in a sari asking for a wedding picture alone). Then, eyes alight, she handed over $160 for two formal portraits of herself.

  “But, Sachiko,” I protested, bursting in. “That’s enough to buy an air ticket to Thailand! Surely you can use this money better!”

  “Please,” she said, putting a finger to her lips. “Please don’t worry, Pico! I want give you something you always keep together. Photo never change; you take many place, always happy memory. Later, you old man, maybe you little look this photo, time stop; you always remember this time. In photo, I always very young, maybe little beautiful.”

  “But, Sachiko, it’s so expensive. You don’t have that much money!”

  “Please stop. This very cheap price, I give you all-life present. I not: so rich, not so special. I cannot give you many thing. Then I want give you dream!”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Later, on a night of pale light and water and mist, I told her, with regret, that I had never seen Kyoto in its full winter dress, steeples blanketed with snow, temples covered in white. The next morning, when I awoke, the flakes were coming down in long silent flurries, falling soundlessly upon gray roofs and canals, falling down upon dark temples and back streets, leaving scant trace of the buildings, making no sound as it made the city new.

  With that, another cycle seemed to end, the drifts smoothing out all imperfections and presenting me with a world reborn. I looked around at the other presents I had received: the photo from Sachiko, together with an elegant, high-tech case of writing implements and a temple charm; a merry Falstaffian tanuki from the Brooklyn lawyer Shelley, wrapped in paper scattered with red and green cherries and inscribed with cheery cherry quatrains: “To make you happy, my pretty many cherries / I wrote you a netter my dear cherry / We play on the garden our hand are touch / We take each other and run away.”