zen piece^[1]

All this time I’m thinking how ridiculous this is, there has to be an easier way to wherever. I have been given no directions and though invited I feel something of a interloper; although I have to admit this feeling can be quite tantalising. On arrival, Eiheiji Temple looks forbiddingly gaunt and self-enclosed nestled, among mountainside

cedar. Founded by Dōgen in Fukui Prefecture in 1243 to train monks in the tradition of the Sōtō Sect of Zen Buddhism, it continues to be a major institution known for its rigorous ascetic discipline. And here we are, following in the founder’s footsteps, a group of university colleagues stepping outside of our secular concerns for a day, stepping for an interval within these austere walls.

Guided inside, we remove our shoes and are ushered into a reception area where one of the blackrobed monks greets us and has us rehearse the three hand positions that we will use during our sittings, reminding us also of the rule of silence that applies anywhere outside of the overnight quarters. It feels an odd role to be assigned. Already I see that for each this is an experience that is to be had alone, a performance we must individually undertake, and things have gone too far to even think about turning back. There is no opportunity, for now, to tour the place, maybe later. I expect ruins, instability, but inside there is mostly evidence of the restored original monastery. I notice modern lighting, an elevator, air-conditioning vents.

16 men – the women sleep elsewhere. We drop our overnight bags in a room about six by four metres square, remove our socks (a rare but welcome throwback to New Zealand), don track pants and white t-shirts, and then the appearance of the blackrobed monk calling us to the prayer hall.

First meditation. Standing outside the prayer room, on the slate surface, one monk lights an incense stick while another slides open the door. Inside, the incense is placed before the small elevated Buddha figure just beyond the entrance and dim lights flicker on; the scent spreads, dense, vague. What’s this? Near knee height there’s a platform or stage about a metre deep that runs around the perimeter of the large room, as well as on either side of the thin partition that divides it. Zazen: sitting meditation. I am directed to a position in front of a black pouf-like cushion which is situated at the centre of a metre-square of tatami mat. A small white tag, kanji characters inked on it, faces me. We’re given instructions on the position to assume. Mutual bows. Take the cushion, pump it by slapping, place it down, sit on it and rotate to face the wall, blank and expansive. Check the white tag faces out. Fold legs in lotus position, soles up. Head straight, eyes directed 45° downward, lids easy. Form hands in the prescribed third position, fingers overlapped with the right hand on the outside and thumbs touching, in front of the lower belly, forming a fisheye. First performance. Narrow the eyes, anyway sight here seems useless, except for that which I use peripherally to check on my immediate neighbours, only to realise that that will not present me with a way in. For a while I am afraid there is actually no access point. We must find, or make, our own. For a minute or two the physical sensations, with the feeling of my own aloofness, are pleasant enough. But then the contortion starts, my left leg becoming lifeless below my knee and a feeling in the stomach that will not be easily assuaged. It takes a lot to keep from panicking.

Thwack! Not my shoulder – someone else’s. Later it is explained that, should one wish to be eligible for such surveillance, one takes the option of joining the hands before one’s face, position one. Apparently one of our number has assumed this position, must have twitched somehow, and is first lightly touched so that he bends forward then is struck firmly once across the shoulder. In my listening outside myself I hear the shuffle of the monk’s sandals, bringing in the outside, and at that moment I feel the same jolt. What a strange and unlikely single audience he is, I think to myself, to this unlikely performance. And I’m sure it’s not me he’s observing. This session my mind is meshed in my own physical discomfort. Also, as Mac (a colleague and computer technician with that nickname) later explains, usually the person struck in this manner indicates apology and thanks, before resuming his singular station. And from the film in the evening that we watch together the image that remains with me is of the monk with the wooden kyōsaku raised in front of his body as he glides along the rows of robed bodies lining his way.

Our quarters is the only place where we can relieve our silence and on our return this is exactly what we do. Then a warm, soapy shower while squatting or sitting on low plastic stools, followed by a plunge in the steaming communal tub. Strange, the most intimate view I have of the Japanese body and in a place where the body seems oddly remote and vacated. And of course, silence, silence as the restricted domain in which we meet and exchange.

Dinner: brown miso soup with chunks of tofu and seaweed, more fried tofu, a few beans and carrot slices, eggplant prepared in sesame oil with another vegetable, followed by a dessert of a small triangle of jelly with a slice of kiwifruit (kiwifruit!), a crackly biscuit which tastes terrific, and a quarter of an orange. The monks apparently eat no meat or fish, and traditionally only rice in the mornings, small servings at that. This is saying something about the appetites, our bodies. Underlined by the fact that, throughout the meal and the leading monk’s words spoken before and after, some 200 guests filling the dining hall must kneel on a strip of red carpet that covers the wooden floor. Standing up is extremely awkward. At the end I am simply pleased to be ushered out, with the others, to return to our room – a place of withdrawal where we can relax the body and have it adopt any position it chooses (within the decorum of social etiquette).

In the evening a second zazen, in which I allow my body to assume what it considers to be a more comfortable posture. Any such notion, however, is within a few minutes proved baseless. At the same time, not so apprehensive about making the smallest movements it takes to allow my body briefly to be relieved, I start to enjoy some intimation of spaciousness.

My feelings about this as a kind of mute performance begin to change. Others are here too, of course, but we’re not going to say ‘hello’. There’s something happening notwithstanding. Have I just caught my first glimpse of it, something that involves a kind of seeing that’s not a mere looking, a performance to do with space and perception itself? As if, in our own vastness however separated, we are constantly and unavoidably aware of one another, an overlapping or communication – a disarming maybe – made available in another way. Consciousness is more than just opening one’s eyes. The hall is a place which makes being in it difficult and it seems it may have been chosen for that reason. The size, the ‘dangers’ it presents, the feeling of being not quite legitimately or even wittingly here, of being somehow inside the thing you’re wanting to observe.

Later there is an hour’s talk from a senior monk. He makes a joke about our degree of discomfort. The rest I don’t understand. Then the film: Eiheiji through the seasons, snow piled on the steep roof of the temple gate, the monks’ daily routine, the eerie beauty of the sprawling hillside temple halls. At 9pm we are on our futons and immediately asleep.

3am. No smiles – was that a gong? Folding, tidying our white futons, the blue edged sheets, the red quilts. Washing our faces in the wash room. Later I think I notice one of the young monks smile. Another takes us to the hall for a third zazen. Shorter, nearer 25 minutes, and some sense of the large expansive realms that are there, to be sure. Towards 5am we are led up a series of stone and wooden steps and long corridors, up the side of the mountain toward the large hall where the monks make morning prayers. Several of them flurry about the rear and front altars, arranging, placing smouldering incense bowls. The wooden roof beams are massive. The front altar is tiered, laden. There are great golden chandeliers hanging from the roof, flower shapes, lanterns. Once we have our places, the monks begin to file in from either side. First the younger blackrobed ones, then several older monks in brown; order is only apparent when they stop, forming a number of straight rows on either side of the altar. Finally, a monk enters in a white robe with a saffron one over it and another piece of red cloth draped to the side, carrying a small crooked wooden stick. In pairs we are led up, hands joined before our faces elbows out, to bow deeply before the altar. Meantime, throughout, the monks chant, a low sonorous growl, reminding me of the Gregorian chants I have recently listened to. Sutra recitation? One lets the sounds be just sounds. Every morning the same ritual occurs, lasting perhaps hours. As we file out to commence our tour of the temple site, the sun is rising.

Currently there are about 420monks housed in the complex, while up to 1,000 are catered for. Stays are for up to three years, before a monk returns to his home temple. We view the school room, the room for the priests’ study, the special temple which houses the remains of the founder and his successors. This wooden building is 200 years old. The kitchen temple, dedicated to the god of speed (encouraging the service monks to deliver the food with alacrity); the temple with the remains of the ancestors’ ashes, thousands of little black and gold tablets, rooms within rooms; down the steps leading to the entrance gate, flanked by the fiercely grimacing gods of protection – the gate guards. Only monks may pass through, and then only twice, once on arrival, once again on completion of their stay. Interspersing the spaces that separate the corridors and buildings are cedars as much as six or seven hundred years old, their foliage commencing after several meters of upright, slender trunks. Sunlight and mist gather in the lower branches. Finally we are shown the bathroom where, we are told, the monks may bathe on their days off, that is every day of the month which has either a number 4 or 9 in it. Though right now, due to the extreme temperatures of the summer, the monks have permission to do so daily. Water is used sparingly. Years ago, when the physical deprivation was more severe, it is said that the monks would place hot stones against their bellies to quell the hunger pains. In the hallway, where there’s a painting of the temple complex, we are shown how it has been arranged to represent the figure of the Buddha, with structures representing the head, elbows, hands joined in prayer, knees, and so on. The building that represents the heart of the Buddha, and so the heart of the entire complex, is the Temple of the Buddha. Unfortunately, the Hall of Pictures is under reconstruction, so we are unable to see its historical artifacts and other treasures. I feel somewhat overwhelmed in any case, maybe it’d be hopeless trying to explain.

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On the bus trip home I fall asleep, expecting we will follow the same route taken to get here. But when I awake, about 30 minutes into a journey of four hours, I am gazing over the western Sea of Japan. It is stunningly beautiful; blue, calm water, blue sky, grey angular rocks. So clear, it reminds me of home and it is the first occasion on which I have had the chance to take in such a view of the rugged Japanese coastline. During the following week when I speak of my excitement to a Japanese friend, he inquires whether I had had a chance to view the Tōjinbō rocks, which he informs me are on the Fukui coastline? I report that I had not, and I listen as he tells me a little of the history. It appears it is well known as the place from which Japanese, especially the young, will leap to end their lives. The cliffs are high, with rough seas beneath, so that often the body is never recovered. To the left of the jump point there is a small sign, admonishing those who might be contemplating such a drastic action to please reconsider. My friend tells me that typically on the rock nearby a written note is left, typically too the abandoned shoes are left there neatly arranged. Why, he counters when I raise my eyebrows, should one change what is after all a deeply ingrained cultural habit of orderliness just because this final endeavour cannot be undone? The detail does jar a little, seemingly at odds with the dire nature of the event – also it seems at odds with the entire Eiheiji experience. Of course, there is the same fastidiousness with outward form as a measure of intention, and maybe other connections. Anyway, I include Michiaki’s explanation. It’s as if what matters, what finally matters, is not so much our firm establishment of identities as our attending to how our assigned parts might be most usefully performed.

note

[1] Here narrative and poetic criticism combine. As well as being about the Zen experience it recounts, it is about my friend Wystan Curnow’s ‘Night Piece’ (first published in Parallax Vol 1 No 2 in Summer 1983 and included in Alex Calder’s The Writing of New Zealand in 1993), an account of a nighttime Roche-Bois private performance in a disused Auckland gas works, from which my piece takes assorted phrases and sentences, its narrative form, and in some sense its eyes and ears. ‘Zen Piece’, Printout 10 (Auckland: Printout Group, Summer 1995-96), pp. 13-18.