Night Boat. Alan Spence

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      Very well, he said. You had better wash your bowl.

      Now I recognised his question as another koan, another case from the Mumonkan, another story about Joshu. A monk comes to Joshu for instruction, and Joshu asks if he’s eaten his rice-gruel. The monk says Yes. Joshu tells him to wash his bowl.

      Was the priest assigning me this new koan? Was it because I had made progress with Mu, or because I was making no headway at all.

      Well? he asked.

      Do you want me to meditate on this now?

      Not at all, he said. I just wanted to know if you had eaten. That was all.

      Not only have I eaten, I said, I have also washed my bowl.

      Excellent, he said. Such diligence. Such discipline. Now, does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

      Mu, I said.

      I returned to painting the symbol Mu. I filled the whole page with it written large, in thick broad strokes. Mu. With the tip of a finer brush I wrote it again and again, covered the page in it like tiny bird-tracks. Mu. I made patterns with it, the words arranged round a central emptiness, a void.

      MU MU MU MU MU

      MU MU MU MU

      MU MU MU MU MU

      NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

      NOTHING NOTHING

      NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

      Does a dog have the Buddha-nature? I drew the old dog I’d seen in the rain, barking out Mu. I remembered the dog that had barked at me the first time I’d gone to Yotsugi-san’s home and taken tea with Hana.

      I drew the dog, barking, barking, Mu emerging from his open jaws. I laughed and drew a cow, bellowing Mu.

      Does a cow have the Buddha-nature?

      Mu.

      Whether it was the koans, or the place itself, the mind-numbing rigour, the repetitive routine, I began to feel constrained. I felt a great agitation, a need to get out on the road and walk. I needed movement, a break from the endless sitting. I asked permission from the head priest, and reluctantly he gave me leave to go.

      You can keep up koan practice while walking, he said. In fact it may help you break through. He also insisted I visit other temples, make the journey a pilgrimage rather than rambling and meandering to no great purpose. As I took my leave he called out to me, Have you eaten?

      Yes, I said. And I’ve washed my bowl.

      So it’s empty, he said. You can feast on nothing.

      Walking was good, in all weathers, in wind and rain, scorching sun. I was drenched and frozen, burned and weather-beaten. It was freedom, and I could happily have walked the whole length of Japan. But I was mindful of the head priest’s injunction to visit other temples, so I stopped wherever I could along the way, to lay down my staff and hang up my bag. I ate my rice and washed my bowl, but nowhere was koan study part of the practice. I made the best of it, threw myself into sessions of zazen, and reading texts. I recited the sutras, made endless prostrations. And after a few days I would move on. But everywhere I found the same listlessness, the same lack of intensity, the same quietism, the stagnation of sitting-quietly-doing-nothing.

      I spoke of it to a monk I met on the road, a wild-eyed old reprobate from a village in Kyushu.

      They’re everywhere, he said, with their do-nothing Zen. They sit in rows, hugging themselves. They pick up some leavings from Soto, lick the leftovers from an unwashed bowl, then they dribble it from their mouths and call it wisdom.

      Heaven is heaven, I said, and earth is earth.

      That’s the kind of stuff, he said.

      Men are men, and mountains are mountains.

      Ha! Next time I meet one I’ll tell him, My arse is my arse!

      We laughed as we walked on, along a steep, stony path.

      Bring them somewhere like this, said the monk, and they can’t stand or walk. They can’t take a single step but cling to trees, or crouch down and grab at plants and grasses, anything to keep them rooted to the spot. They’re bloodless and their eyes are dull. They are unable to move for fear of falling.

      They don’t value koan study, I said.

      They don’t even value the words of the great masters, said the monk. The written word terrifies them. And the koan terrifies them most of all. They call koan a quagmire that will suck you under, a tangle of vines that will choke you. But how can your self-nature be sucked under? How can it be choked?

      The wind whipped up and blew in our faces. Heads down, we pushed on, and the monk continued his rant, shouting above the elements.

      I pray for just one mad monk burning with inner fire. Let him perish in the Great Death then rise up again, flex his muscles, spit on his palms and roar out a challenge.

      At this the old monk stopped and let out a great roar that turned into a throaty laugh.

      Break through to kensho, he shouted, to true enlightenment. Only then can you make sense of it all. Only then can you live it.

      I could have continued walking with the old monk, listening to him rave, but he said we had to go our separate ways.

      Sip this poisonous wisdom if you will, he said. But your way is your way. You have poison of your own to dish out.

      At a crossroads near Mishima we went in opposite directions.

      Kensho is all, he called back to me. Break through! Then he waved and was gone.

      TSUNAMI

      I was back on the Tokaido, walking alone. It grew even colder and the wind stung. At one point I felt the ground shake, heard a deep distant rumbling, and the sky darkened and I was caught in a storm. By the time I found shelter, in a patched-up outhouse at a wayside inn, I was drenched and frozen, but grateful to have even the semblance of a roof over my head.

      By the morning the worst of the storm had passed and the rain had eased to a thin soaking drizzle. There were more travellers than usual on the road, coming from the east, from beyond Izu, many of them exhausted and bedraggled. I stopped a few and asked, and the story emerged.

      A huge earthquake had shaken Edo and the surrounding area. The city had burned. The quake had caused a massive tsunami, a great tidal wave that swept inland, drowning everything in its path. The upheaval, the fire and flood, had destroyed half the city and killed thousands. I bowed my head and prayed where I СКАЧАТЬ