Читать книгу Night Boat - Alan Spence - Страница 14

MU

I threw myself into the work with even more intensity.

Beyond zazen and the reading and chanting of the sutras, the heart of the teaching was the koan study, grappling and struggling with these insoluble problems, unanswerable questions, battering against their impenetrable barriers till something gave and broke. There were two great koan collections, the Blue cliff Record and the Mumonkan, the Gateless Gate.

The head priest told us that to awaken to the meaning of a koan required intense concentration, and great doubt. He quoted master Mumon.

It’s like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to spew it up, but you can’t.

I felt myself choke, felt that solid iron blocking my throat, and once again I was the child Iwajiro, terrified of the burning hells. Swallowing a red-hot iron ball. I felt the panic begin to rise.

The priest recited the first case from the Mumonkan.

A monk asked Joshu, Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

I had heard the question before. Yes or No? To answer Yes was wrong. To answer No was just as wrong. What then?

Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

Joshu answered, Mu. Nothing.

The nothing that opens up when you realise, fully realise, the impossibility of answering Yes or No. And yet.

Meditate on this, said the priest, till you sweat white pearls.

And then what?

Meditate and find out.

Mu.

Concentrate on Mu with your whole being, wrote Mumon, without ceasing. Then your inner light will be a candle flame illuminating the whole universe.

I meditated on Mu day and night. In zazen I chanted it to myself, a silent mantra. I took my brush and copied out the symbol, again and again. Mu.

I lived with the koan, thought about it, struggled with it.

You cannot get it by thinking, the priest said, quoting Mumon. You cannot get it by not thinking. You cannot get it by grasping. You cannot get it by not grasping.

I am sure this is helpful. I said. Nevertheless.

The question has to be answered, he said. According to Mumon it is the most serious question of all. Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

He also says if you answer Yes or No, you lose your own Buddha-nature.

Dog! said the priest. Now you’re swilling Mumon’s words around in your filthy mouth and spitting them back at me.

If I’m a dog, I said, do I have the Buddha-nature?

Cur! he said. Jackal! You’re rolling around in your own muck.

I lived with the koan. It was with me in the meditation hall and walking the streets of Hara with my begging bowl. It was with me when I ate and when I lay down on my pallet to take rest.

Mu.

I’m eating, breathing, sleeping it, I said.

Try pissing and shitting it, said the priest.

That too.

Well then.

I continued, determined to break through.

At times I felt I was so close, a single step away. It could be as close as my own heartbeat, my own breath. Then I would lose it, feel overwhelmed, beaten down by the sheer weight of it. I choked and gagged on that red-hot iron ball, unable to swallow it, unable to spit it out. It was stuck there, lodged in my throat, burning.

And if you do break through, said the priest, you will be like a dumb man who has had a dream. You will know but be unable to tell. Meditate on that.

Again the feeling of panic took hold. To be mute, unable to speak. To know it and have no words. Mu.

One morning, early, I came out of the temple gate and walked through the village, head full of the koan. A thin drizzling rain fell, and I listened to the sound it made pattering on my kasa. It was too early to beg from door to door, or at any of the wayside stalls or teashops, so I kept walking, head down, thinking of Mu, concentrating on nothing else.

Nothing. Else.

Before I knew it I had reached the end of the village and I turned to head back. A scrawny old dog wandered out from an alley, and it stopped and raised its head when it saw me. We stood and looked at each other, acknowledged each other’s existence. He too had been soaked by the rain, his fur damp and bedraggled.

Well, I said. Here we are.

He sniffed the air, turned his head away.

So tell me, I said. Do you have the Buddha-nature?

Without hesitation he barked, at me, at the rain, at the day, at everything, and I threw back my head and laughed, then bowed to him three times.

Later I wrote it as a haiku.

Does this dog

have the Buddha-nature?

Hear him bark!

I recited the haiku to the priest.

So you’re showing your teeth now, he said. What next? Cocking your leg against the temple gate?

But then he laughed. Hear him bark!

The next time I came to him for koan instruction, before I could sit down he asked if I had eaten.

Yes, I said, wondering why he was asking.

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.