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Tears

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“It is indeed a conundrum,” Master Tokuyazamo said in his soft, almost inaudible voice. His was as a whisper; one strained to hear the words, and in the very act of straining, the dichotomy between the word and the sound of the word was often split in half, as the two wings of a butterfly rise to become one, then to part with a fluidity of colors, and as when one’s imagination of what was said, what one thought was said, and what must have been said, often becomes a mystery. His pupils, gathered in a semi-circle, all cross-legged in meditative posture, leaning ever so slightly, wide-eyed and ranging from ages 6 to 15, with an eagerness that made him smile with youthful glee. For, who was the child, the Master or the pupil, the withered hands of an old man or the fumbling feet of a gangly boy? Was it the mind which determined the age, or the weathered hands, leathery and sunburned, of he who planted the rice fields carved in the sculptured steps of the Totoyama district? On a linear spectrum, his life was arriving at the entrance of the exit; he did not view the convergence of being, time and the soulful call of his yearning mind in such an unbending fashion. And, perhaps that was the paradigmatic problem when the Jesuit gai-jin had visited his sanctuary, the Monastery which had been his home, his garden, his peaceful center of solitude which he tended as a gardener cares for the exotic in that moment of bursting revelatory fragrances when the flower opens the fullness of its beauty, only to reach its pinnacle of being, and then to wilt, wither and die; but for that mysteriously delightful, brief moment, and that is how he viewed his monastic temple, where he swept the rock gardens with such care and precision, where each pebble was a droplet in an ocean of singularity, but at the hands of the Zen Master, pebble upon pebble became a work of art. Ah, but what incisiveness, and that sharp mind, and to have reached such heights of knowledge only to be a lowly sweeper of pebbles? Was the servant not the God of the gai-jin? Would it that he was happier as the carpenter’s son, than a sweeper of pebbles in a Zen garden?

But the Jesuit gai-jin had insisted upon doctrine; he pointed to his sacred Book, and translated for him the wise words of his master, who was God and Man all at once. He could not deny the truth, for the words fit beautifully; the logic of God was irrefutable; the parables were insightful and profoundly moving; but in the end, it was the insistence in his voice which marked the rudeness of his teaching. And, moreover, the cross was too rigid, and did not flow as life must. A river winds through the soil and finds the bend of the rocks, smooths the hardness of creation, and whittles away at the rough edges. So must the words of persuasion, and while he could sense the softness of the voice of that God of Palestine, the harsh tone of the gai-jin grated upon him, and the manner in which he grasped at the wooden cross hanging from his neck on a leather chain, his stubby fingers clasped and somehow unable to encircle the horizontal piece of wood which seemed to jut out discordantly in an abrasive, offending manner; it was unlike the waving bends of the ink of Sumi-e, where life flows as a stream of quietude, curving and dancing and adapting to nature’s winding pathways. Was it so personal? Was the dislike of the gai-jin the basis of his refutation? But that enlightenment would defy such pedantic reasons, but being human, oh so human, meant otherwise.

His pupils wanted answers.

“A story!” Saburo, the abandoned boy left at the stone steps leading to the temple gates at the age of 4, shouted with gleeful abandonment.

“Yes, a story!” joined in the chorus of other boys.

Roshi Tokuyazamo played his best to put on a look of censure and reproof; eyebrows furrowed, his right arm cocked stiffly against the flow of art, elbow up with palm against his thigh, he grunted with disapprobation. “Have you all … lost your sense of decorum?” he roared, narrowing his eyes with exaggerated fierceness, jaw jutting outward, his lips pursed. Nevertheless, his voice still was barely audible.

Silence befell the youthful sea of eager looks. Furtive glances askance; quiet, and deathly silence; then, from the depths of the youngest, a giggle, uncontrollable, squeaking upward until it could not be contained; and the single burst of air restrained, broke forth, and then another, and another, and soon the sea of youthful semi-circle roared into a singularity of unrestrained giggling, until some of the older boys who were still unsure of their position as young elders before the Master, as examples to behold in their position as students before the learned and wise one, smiled hesitantly, until the giggles turned to open laughter, the laughter into guffaws of boisterous untidiness in a temple of Zen. The Master cleared his throat, himself unable to contain the wrinkle of his lips. “Well, then,” he said. “Since decorum cannot be attained, perhaps a story must be told!”

Immediate silence befell the youthful pandemonium, as an axe falls, so laughter is shattered, and silence overwhelms. For to hear a story from Master Tokuyazamo was to learn a lifetime of lessons, one which went beyond decorum, beyond laughter, and beyond self.

The Master spoke: In the rocky pathways of the countryside, deep in the valleys of the Koishi Mountains, where the tributary of the Saitomo, Shinshiro and Kotaichi rivers converge, a stranger ventured unknowingly into the valley of the ronin, where bandits roamed the countryside. The stranger was attacked, robbed, stripped of his earthly possessions, then thrown down into a deep pit, the barren bowels of the earth, where he was left to die. For days he cried out, calling for help. It rained. He cupped his hands and, crippled and unable to stand, he whimpered like a dying mongrel, sipping upon the scarce handfuls of rainwater to extend the life that was no longer his to determine.

Master Tokuyazamo looked slowly around the semi-circle of young faces. Each of the faces revealed a stern serenity, a mask of serious concern; of them, he had a heart for Saburo, of that youth who, though never to be learned or wise, would have the heart of a man to feel the pain, and pain of others was often the pathway to enlightenment. This, few would understand.

He continued: From whence the Saitomo River flowed, a religious figure walked. The holy man of the Saitomo Province heard the mongrel’s whimpering, and at the mouth of the pit, he looked down and saw the dog of a man, half alive, famine-stricken with sunken eyes — and their eyes met. But it happened to be upon a day when God had set such a day apart, where human exertion was not allowed, the sacred laws of doctrine prevented the holy man from helping and…

“But, how could that be, Master!” came an interrupting shout from the semi-circle of youth. A loud chorus of “Shhh!” and “Shush!” and “Quiet!” and such reprimands quickly encircled the semi circle.

The holy man walked around and started away, saying to the dying figure below, “I will pray for you.”

Then, almost immediately upon the fading footsteps of the first holy man, from whence the Shinshiro River flowed, another religious figure walked. The holy man of the Shinshiro Province also heard the mongrel’s whimpering …

“But what about the first holy man – he cannot have been that holy to begin with!” blurted out a voice of youthful exuberance with an undisguised harrumph, only to be again shushed and reprimanded.

This holy man from Shinshiro Province viewed the world as merely the dream of a butterfly, and had achieved a state of cognitive and physical presence, or non-presence, as you might say, that only a Master of such Arts could achieve…

Silence. For, in the youthful semi-circle, even the exuberance of impatience inherent, wanting to burst forth, and helplessly unrestrained in the fertile minds of those lacking in years, could nevertheless recognize that this second holy man was a reflection of the temple pond. No chastisement was required, because the self-reflecting pool of thoughts and recognition, and the anticipation of hearing the story lead to a triumphant declaration of the feats and legendary discoveries and conquests at the hand and mind of the Master from Shinshiro Province, awaited with eager and hungry eyes. The Roshi surveyed the faces of inexperience and naivete, and smiled ever so slightly, as appearance paralleled the inaudible, and with wan acceptance, continued:

This second holy man was considered by many to be wise, though wisdom was always of a fleeting nature, as the soft film left behind when a man holds the wings of a butterfly in his hands. Ever the fragile being, the soft fluttering, yet when the predator snatches upon its wings and destroys a large portion, nevertheless the strength of the butterfly can tear itself away, partially destroyed and torn; yet, even then, the butterfly can continue to navigate skillfully for the remainder of its days with the aid of its antennas and adapt to its malformed and crippled essence; for neither the essence nor the being of the butterfly is defined by its wings, but rather the inner strength which propels its beauty, its dominance, and the dreams of those who fathom a world and universe apart from pain and pleasure. And, as the butterfly denotes the essence of this universe, so the Master from Shinshiro Province contained nothing more than the dream of the butterfly; for in the chasm where the suffering of such a man, gaunt with hunger, crying out with pleas for help, for pity, for…love. But if the nothingness is of no greater value than the mongrel, if pain is no more of reality than the one who feels the pain; if dreams converge in a world where that which appears is of no greater substance than that which is, then love cannot be of much consequence. The Master from Shinshiro Province looked down upon the blackness of the pit, and into the eyes of this pitiful, pitiable human mass of insignificance, and despite his wisdom, his age, his enlightened state of being, he could offer no help, because he could not feel the love of pain which the man below experienced. And so he turned his back and walked away…

“Good for him!” came a shout of triumph. The Roshi had his head bent downward, but his head tilted ever so slightly to spy upon the source of the statement. It was not Saburo, and for this he was glad. It was instead the fat boy, Kitaro, who sat with his arms crossed, fists beneath each opposing armpit, head tilted backward with an air of arrogance and triumph. “The man deserves to die for being so stupid! In any event, it will teach him to meditate and accept his fate with grace and dignity!”

Now, with silent footsteps came another holy man – from the flowing Kotaichi River, where is it said that the soft breath of the gods push the warm waters of the river, in such purity of rushing sounds that the animals from all of the surrounding provinces make their way up the extra mile to drink from its banks. Now, this holy man was somewhat peculiar; he wore a cross which hung from his neck –

Without looking, the Roshi could sense the faces of disdain sweep about the semi-circle – but for one.

He was what we call a Krish-chan, a gai-jin. Now, this holy man, upon hearing the whimpers of the dying man, immediately ran to cut some vines off of the trees, weaving the thickest of the wild vines into a triple-weave, and created a rudimentary but sturdy rope, fashioning a loop at the end, and lowered it down to help the man. After patiently prodding, directing, and with a gentle voice of encouragement, he was able to coax the weak and dying man to place the loop around and under each arm, and with that, the holy man pulled him ever so delicately up to the mouth of the pit. As he pulled, however, what he and the dying man were unaware of suddenly turned the circumstances of impending triumph into an unexpected tragedy. But of course, all of you boys know of this, do you not? For to think of life as mere pleasure and joy is to leave the other half undone; and to view the world of circumstances as a trifle of misery and hardships is the ignore the first half as unfinished; and so it is that life must always be a completed circle; and just as the wings of a butterfly do not constitute the essence of its being, so to expect life only as a vision of triumphs is to live only a half-life. In the deep crevice of the black pit was a nest of poisonous snakes, and as the half-man of a mongrel reached to steady his ascent to life, the fangs of fate struck, vipers of deadly venom, shooting death into the veins of the mongrel. He screamed. He jerked back in excruciating pain, pulling the rope-vine away from the grasp of the Krish-chan, and falling with a dull thud back into the blackness of the death-pit, whimpering as only a weakling could muster from the depths of a depraved and ravaged soul. The desperate, resigned and desolate sobbing of the poor, pitiful mongrel echoed from below, from the depths of darkness, with a despair of submission and surrender so profound, that the Krish-chan at first thought that it must, indeed, be another creature – a dog in pain, perhaps, downriver. He quickly realized, however, that the vine he held in his hands had burned and sliced his palms open, and he felt the sting of bleeding, and the momentary disparity and interlude between seeing the blood forming in clotting pools in his cupped hands, facing upwards toward the blazing sun, and the rush of pain which came thereafter to merge and coalesce into the knowledge that he had lost the one he was attempting to save. The sun was slowly fading into the unknown of the other world, that world between twilight and the ethereal red dusk of the mountain provinces. It is said that the tributary deep in the Koishi Mountains was where the goddess of beauty wept because, in a moment of anger, she looked down into the depths of the still waters and saw the darkness of her own heart, and realized that beauty is indeed but a fleeting figment; and in that instance the essence of beauty became shattered, man became revealed, and the knowledge that man was merely mortal became an undeniable truth. Ah, but that the pool of blood forming in the gai-jin’s hands could bring such clarity as the brightness of the red mountain dust in the dusk of the Koishi Mountains! Are we such saps that we believe that Zen is the only way to truth? Bah!

There was, indeed, curiosity in the faces of youth – even in the titled head of Kitaro. He stole a glance towards Saburo – were they eyes of tears? He could not tell. Whether of tears or merely of lost thoughts, or whether he merely wished that the boy would feel such pathos revealing wisdom in such tender years, he could not discern. He continued:

And so the gai-jin was lost.

Harrumph! came the huffiness from the direction of Kitaro. The Roshi pretended not to notice. In the blackness of the pit below, as the sun was setting and the gods of shadows appeared in a realm of mirroring Kabuki movements, where figures danced in the periphery of one’s imagination simultaneously as fear and foreboding clash in a war of the real, the dreaded, and the trickling sweat of fear, the gai-jin could smell the sweat of his body, mixed with the blood on his hands, and as he peered downward, he could barely make out the figure of the whimpering man. And, indeed, the man was crouched in a grotesque curl of fetal hugging, but whether on his back with his legs up, or on his knees tucked beneath, he could not tell, but the shadows of darkness playing tricks of skeletal outlines, blurring the boundaries between form and substance, as a cross might bear a crucified man but lost in the starkness of the wooden pillars. The sobbing heaves of the dying man bounced within the echo chamber of the rocky pit, and as the venom coursed through the veins of this mongrel, the Krish-chan looked down. Without a sound, he crouched close to the mouth of the pit, and slid down the deep throat of the seemingly bottomless chasm of darkness. He was lithe and skillful enough to land away from the crippled body, now rasping for life. He could smell the stench of impending death. He knelt beside the dying man, and cradled the limp body in his arms. “Holy man,” the dying mongrel rasped, “what are you doing? There is no rope, no way for you to return…”

I am here to comfort you, said the holy gai-jin.

What kind of a man are you? rasped the dying mongrel.

I am merely an ordinary man, who has an extraordinary Lord. As my Lord washed the feet of sinners, so I am here to give you comfort during your last moments of life in this world. For the comfort I may give to you this moment does not begin to compare with the suffering and sacrifice of my Lord, who died because of the abundance of His Love.

Silence. It is always the unspoken word which reveals the essence of being. For, it is words which create a conceptual, parallel universe, that which serves as the skin of the lizard; but for the elegance of a butterfly, whose silent folding wings leave but a residue of the warm breath of gods, Saburo was silently sobbing; but on the other side, to the triumph of the Roshi, it was Kitaro who had turned aside to wipe a single tear which had found the tributary of pores, as the rushing waters of the Kotaichi River grew louder and the soft flutter of a butterfly’s dream faded into the distant echoes of man’s soul, deep in thought, in prayer, and in silence.

Between You and I (Part II of II)

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See also the first part of this blog series: Between You and I (Part I of II)

Shame – a coordinate and the reflection to reality

Consider the following:

For, Izukawa had specifically been designated by the Emperor as the Master Swordsman, the one who, as legend holds, had single-handedly defeated the three Katanoye brothers in a duel which left the eldest decapitated, the middle one without his sword & arm, and the youngest without a discernible face. All within a span of an hour, and without a single wound. Yet, before the noon of this particular day, Master Izukawa – the one whom, as he walked down main street of the Ishidori District of the bustling city, the peasants, the shopkeepers, the men and women of every class and structure, would bow, and bow lower than even he felt comfortable; for he was the Master Samurai, the one who could kill for a reason, or no reason; all with the assent of the Emperor.  At noon, he received the ransom letter – it detailed his actions as a young man; actions which he had relegated to the deep, secreted recesses of his mind.   Before noon, he had possessed the self-image of an invincible Master Samurai; but the Master Samurai has by necessity a personal image, hidden behind the mask of an impervious and emotionless face, for the samurai neither reveals emotion, nor unveils the eyes which reveal the emotion; then there is the public identity; the watchful eyes of the non-samurai class who sees the samurai as the protector, the feared warrior who could arbitrarily end one’s life with no fear of retribution; the one who lives by the Bushido Code.  For the Samurai’s code provided fixed coordinates – of behavior; of thoughts; of correspondence between one’s grasping of karma and the events which unfold in the dream in which we walk, the dream of a butterfly, fleeting and delicate, yet harsh in the reality of death and the sharp edge of a samurai’s sword.  For Izukawa, the fixed coordinates included a public persona of a person who was without fear, who had summarily defeated three swords with the sharp edge of one.  Yes, in his personal “I”, he knew of a shame; and the shame, if revealed, would fail to correspond to the public coordinates which are fixed by the Emperor.

He could find the “other” who knew and who sent him the ransom letter, and kill him; or he could commit seppuku.   Either act would not change the fixed coordinates, for his karma had already been determined long before, just as the butterfly already dreamed the dream which controlled his fate, and the gods dreamed of the butterfly who dreamed the dream which controlled his fate.

Once, in the dream of another butterfly, Princess Sakumito gave him the honored gift before going into battle against the Katanoye brothers – a duel which everyone, including the Emperor, had expected would end with his death.  Indeed, he suspected that the Emperor had pre-arranged his death, and was prepared to consolidate his power by offering Izukawa, whom many had considered to be an unknown quantity, a loner and a pawn in a complex political climate when the power of the Shogunate was being crafted in delicate steps, a cherry blossom opening in the morning dew of a Zen garden. The gift of a teardrop.  It was, for Izukawa, a foreign sensation.

From childhood, of the Daikusu clan, he was destined to be a warrior.  Left with the Zen  Monks at age 3, Izukawa was trained to become a master of the sword:  to meditate; to fear nothing; to master the sword; to serve the Emperor.  Training to be a samurai meant long hours of disciplining the body and the mind; the discipline of the former was an easy task; it was always the latter which presented a question.  The tests implemented were harsh and brutal – for a child, it often meant near death.  Though the ‘sword’ was merely a bamboo pole slit so that when it hit the flesh, the slits would open and catch the body upon impact, then close and tear the skin off when pulled away; for a young boy, the pain of such raw separation of flesh from body left deep ravages.  Pain became a daily confrontation; avoidance of pain taught young Izu to be quick.  Quickness is taught; while some may have inherent swiftness, pain is a master teacher which enhances that inherent swiftness.  For most young boys, swiftness was learned in order to avoid pain; for young Izu, he learned first to bear pain; then, once mastered, he disciplined his mind to welcome pain, to embrace it, to savor and to gently preserve it; and only then did he allow himself to fight to avoid pain.  Pain first was his friend; as would be fear.

The beauty of a butterfly is felt in its silent flow of grace, where color flutters effortlessly in a deafening roar of silence; for in the very soundless folding and unfolding of its wings, mirroring a sensu held with delicate ease in the palm of a Kyoto-trained geisha, opened in fullness in unfolding quietude, then as a stream guided back to its essence; or as the fingers strum the shamisen in the still dawn to evoke neither music nor rest, but a twilight as marked by the flowing entrance to a Shinto Shrine, where the kami resides; and it is here that the warrior became a swordsman; the swordsman became a master; and the master became a legend.

Ah, but that legends should die, as worms and other creatures found within the crevasses of soil and filth; so the truth of the blood which coursed through his veins, Izukawa could not rid of.  Once, while still at the Zen monastery, young Izu witnessed a gaijin enter the sacred grounds; a krish-chan, a priest in black, who spoke his language, but with a haughtiness of oral delivery unbecoming of one who was neither a warrior nor a Zen master.

“Who was he, Master?” young Izu asked humbly, eyes cast down, after the gaijin had departed.  He could feel the piercing eyes of his teacher searching, perhaps with his customary mocking grin, as one who reads the essence of his soul through the tonal unfolding of his voice, words, and wisdom of ages.

“The young butterfly inquires, but to what end?” The master responded.  Izu could not detect whether the question to the questioner was asked in an admonishing manner, with sincere inquisitiveness, or with cunning mockery.  With the Master, any one, or all three together, could be contained in a single sentence.

“I just wanted to know.”

“To know for knowledge’s own sake, without an end?”

“Yes.”

“That would indeed be strange, but that would mean that the answer given would have no end, as life would not end in death, nor birth in life, nor mind in consciousness, nor…”

The silence of the trailing statement meant that the Master was engaging in the third of the tripartite avenues; of cunning mockery; he quickly looked askance at his Master, and saw the glint of mischief in his Master’s soul; young Izu now knew how to proceed with his Master.

“But does a gaijin have consciousness, as he is less than human?  Can he therefore have true life, as he was not truly born a man?  Can he have the mark of a man, of honor and shame, if he cannot be a warrior?”

These questions, Izukawa remembered in his youth.  The shame which he had attributed then to the gaijin was not of his making, and of course, even as a youth, he recognized that fact; but the karma which governed the krish-chan’s life was the same which determined his own, and in that sense neither mattered.  But shame, for a samurai, was a reality; it was the disjointed disharmony which arose between that which is seen, that which is known, and that which is perceived.  It is a cultural judgment, a potential corrective action by a community upon an emerging discordance – between you and I.  For you see me as X as I have conveyed to you the X; but there is a Y coordinate which I have either failed to disclose, or deliberately covered.  When that Y coordinate emerges, and is finally uncovered; as the being of “I” presents itself in the full clothing of truth; when revelation unfolds, in that moment when the geisha unravels the sensu and pushes the warm air of the summer evening to brush upon the forming droplets of sweat – perspiration formed in the heat of the season, or the anxiety of truth, for truth is indeed an angst, an anxiety-stricken state of being, an explosion of tension built up from an admixture of object, coordinates, perception, personality, language, the depths of human complexity formed by a chasm deep and mysterious, a strangeness and tension lost by love, between you and I.

“What is truth?” the Master asked.  Young Izu immediately suspected that this was a koan.  But the Master did not turn away; instead, he looked upon the young lad with eyes anticipating a response.  He hesitated.  “It is, well, it is…”

“It is, above all else, not easy.”

“But should not truth be simple?”

“Is the village simpleton easy to direct?  Or is simplicity the most difficult to grasp?  To attain truth, one must have the perspective of the kami – neither of you, nor of I; not a man’s view, but a view based upon a removal of one’s self.  This is the true nature of a Zen Master – not to answer a koan rightly, but to answer it without the self.  And, young Izu – remember that shame is the surest path to truth.”

These thoughts rushed through as the kami rushes through the valleys of his village, swirling around the green moss growing upon the rocks of the Eh-Daiji Temple.  The Emperor, noble and great in his position, was constrained by his culture and society.  His society required his subjects to possess a purity of coordinates – from the Emperor’s perspective; the public reputation of Izukawa; the known reputation of his warrior samurai.  Yet, Izukawa recognized that he was the same man before receiving the information about his past; the sense of shame resulted from his knowledge, lost to a relegated past, in conflict with the human perspective of “the other”, now revealed  within the historicity of the time he lives in.  But truth was not necessarily that which would explode in full authenticity at a given time in history; it might take generations before it would come to fruition.  Shame was the tension which would force the truth to emerge.  For the butterfly, beauty would never fade, for moral judgments could not be made upon such beauty.  It was only for man – between you and I.  Shame was for man, for shame was the arbiter of human secrecy – that act which was a conscious and deliberate act by a man to conceal.  But the thoughtful act to conceal was the same consciousness of man which forced him to reveal – shame.  For shame merged the coordinates of human consciousness, the objective world as I perceive it; as you perceive it; and the attempt to conceal truth.

Izukawa knew what he would have to do.  He would disappear, and roam the countryside as a ronin.   He would find his extorter and kill him.  In the process, his shame may be revealed; but as the truth would be revealed, it would be his shame which would reveal it.

 

A World Without Shame – Leaving only I

We live in a world of “I”s.  We are shame-less.  The exponential explosion of information, the complete abandonment of objective coordinates, the total embracing of subjectivity, has resulted in the inverse but victorious consequence of Syme’s vision of the world:  “The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect”; or, conversely, it will be complete when there is utter imperfection.  Thought has become thoughtless because the infinite world of information has come to fruition; there can be no truth where shame does not exist; shame is the surest path to truth.  It is the guiding principle between you, I and the world “out there”.  For, if it was merely between you and I, we would be battling between the power of your subjectivity as opposed to mine.  The world I perceive and the one you perceive must have a corrective principle.  Once, when legends no longer explained, and myths no longer persuaded, Truth was thought to be the prevailing compass, and the guiding coordinate.  For brief centuries, the primacy of Truth prevailed; but just as legends faded and myths merely entertained, Truth became replaced with information, and information resulted in deconstruction, meaninglessness, and the loss of Being.

Being became merely a language game.   Yet, there would one day come an age of resurgence.  The uncovering of Being was always an inevitability, and as shame is the surest path to Truth, the convergence of Man, Shame and Truth was only a matter of time, between you and I.

Postscript

Years later, the decapitated head of a man was found in a ditch a few miles south of the Eh-Daiji Temple.   The grotesque, gargoyle-like expression, frozen in timelessness, purple tongue jutting out with eyes white and rolled upwards in fear and agony, Kyoji Katanoye was the fourth and last brother.   He had died in fear.  He had attempted to avenge the shame of his three brothers’ deaths, only to fail at the hands of the Master Samurai, of whom legend holds became a faceless ronin, wandering the countryside, emerging when necessity arose, as when the soft wings of a butterfly became trapped in the thorny bushes of concealed human stories of shame.

 

See also: Between You and I (Part I of II)

Fourth parable and lessons: Job owned, but he was not owned

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One cannot, of course, improve upon the Book of Job; how Job’s wealth was vast and plentiful; where he was surrounded by his wife, seven sons and three daughters; the company of his friends, a reputation as a man who was blameless and upright; and in an instant, everything was lost.  Yet, when his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity?  Curse God and die!”

But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks.  Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”  In all this Job did not sin with his lips.  Job 2:9-10.

It was Job who had great wealth, vast possessions; but upon losing his material wealth, he remained steadfast in his faith and joy.  For Job owned, but was not owned.  We mistake sometimes, and think that by not owning, we show virtue; but virtue is the ability to remain faithful upon a test; if the test is forever avoided, one may never know whether your virtue was real, or merely the butterfly’s dream.

 

Lessons from these four parables:

We must always be able to discern between the real and the absurd; to see beyond words; for words must match deeds; words must not merely be a playground of conceptual potentialities, though such conceptual frameworks sometimes have their value and place in the world of humanity.  Yes, a mud puddle could potentially drown a child, but the reality of such an event is remote, and must be viewed as such.  The test of a man may one day come; one must always be prepared for such a test.  And so the sword of a samurai must be ready to be unsheathed; but ever remaining in its sheath, if never used; yet, ready to be used, when called upon.  And virtue cannot be true where no test is ever encountered; un-ness is not a virtue when it is embraced; the virtue of un-ness is in the having, not in the vanity of viewing the Koishu Gardens, and thinking that by not owning, you have grasped the serenity of life.

Third Parable: Kitaro and the Blind Beggar Boy

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Kitaro was a Monk of the Fifth Order; he was ranked by the Society of Elders to be “other-worldly”.  He had lived through the Purge of the Daiku Shogunate; he had survived through the Winter of Three Famines.  He was known throughout the Kinshu Province as The Wise One.  Wisdom was spoken without words; strength was displayed through a stare; Kitaro was visited by princes and royalties from the world over; he owned nothing – but a teapot and two teacups.

On this beautiful morning, with the sparrows chirping in the blossom of the radiant rock garden of Koishu Gardens, where the gravel had been carefully swept in symmetrical flowing waters around the moss-covered boulders, Kitaro was about to sit down for his morning tea.

The morning had seen many beggars wandering about, asking the Monastery for some rice.  One such beggar had been a child of ten who was blind from birth.  What irritated Kitaro – well, perhaps ‘irritated’ was too strong a word, for he had shown no such emotion – was that the boy was, in his opinion, slovenly as well as being blind.  A man can shut out the world with total darkness, Kitaro had thought to himself; but the world still sees such a man.

He prepared to sit down for a cup of tea; he could smell the sweet aroma of the boiling tea in the teapot; he stood just a foot away from the table upon which he sat each morning; and as he customarily did, he turned to the Koishu Gardens to survey the meditative serenity, so that when he would sit, he need not turn to the garden for further refreshment; his mind’s eye would already hold the butterfly’s dream, to enjoy along with the taste of his morning tea.

As he surveyed the beauty of the garden’s lack, he marveled at how beauty is not in the abundance, but in the un-ness; that life was not to be discovered in possessions, but rather in the joy of less-ness; and these life-lessons he had learned well, for he owned nothing – but for the teapot and the two cups, of course – and his joy was not found in material wealth, but rather the simple chirp of a sparrow landing upon the twig of a decaying tree, unbeknownst to the world, as decay is merely the lifespring of age, both of the soul, as well as of the body.

The material world had no hold upon Kitaro, and Kitaro had long ago renounced the materiality of the world around him.  By owning nothing – except for the teapot and the two cups – matter could not matter to him.  As he surveyed the vast desolation of the beauty of the Koishu Gardens, the right side of his lips curled ever so slightly, as if to scoff at the world around him; for the butterfly’s dream was the world he embraced; the material world had no hold upon him; the serenity of un-ness was the world he sat on top of; the rampant greed, and world of capitalism, the vulgarity of consumerism, and the unhappiness of the surrounding universe – he had conquered it all.

Kitaro embraced the serenity of the moment; the moment was as a grain of sand, its quiet beauty as uncomplicated as his own soul; the smallness as significant, as relevant, as existential importance, as man himself.  Kitaro felt no emotion; felt only oneness with the grain of sand, with the peace of the Koishu Gardens.

Suddenly, the serenity of the Koishu Gardens was shattered by a loud crash.  Kitaro turned.  Before him, just a foot away, was the stupid blind beggar boy.  Beside the stupid blind beggar boy were the remnants of what used to be Kitaro’s teapot and two cups, the sole possession of the Monk of the Fifth Order.  “Bakka!” Kitaro shouted, his face turning a crimson radiance.  “Bakka!”  The Koishu Gardens, with their serenity of un-ness, remained unmoved.  The upheaval of the world around never witnessed this episode.  The sudden heaving; the blind fury directed at the beggar boy who was blind from birth, but who committed the unforgivable sin of being stupid, and showing that stupidity by shattering the sole material possession of the Monk of the Fifth Order, revealing how such a small matter, indeed, mattered to Kitaro.

Second Parable: The Dream of a Butterfly

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In life, the rarity of humanity arises once, if at all, in the lifetime of a life.  And so it was that Taburo walked his customary walk along a green and lush riverbank.  It had rained for many days before, and the swift and dangerous roar of the rising floodwaters dumping into the Kozuichi River reverberated with an echo of serenity, as the life of a river mirrors the calm and turbulence of a soul.  Taburo walked in meditation as he did each morning.

Morning was the calm of one’s soul; walking was the exercise of the mind; the world around was the dream of a butterfly; the silence of his body the wakefulness of the moment. And the whimper was heard; had Taburo not paused to reach with a finger to stroke the side of a common green river lizard which had momentarily frozen upon its way up a birch tree, he might not have heard the whimper, and perhaps his life would not have given rise to that rarity of humanity, and the test of life in the humanity of his very own life.

Taburo heard the whimper, and looked down.  There, down below, clinging to an overhanging tree branch, was a boy of nine, perhaps ten, his feet partly submerged as the riverwaters were rising; wet through and through, whimpering, too weak to do much more.  Thought was a robber of time when action was required, and Taburo did not think.  He did.  He was a strong swimmer.  The river was rising rapidly.  Time was not on the side of thought. He ran swiftly, as the samurai ancestor’s blood had trained him, tearing off his robe and shedding his sandals, and in a graceful singularity of movement, as an acrobat from a trapeze swing, he dove and cut through the waters.

The undercurrents were overpowering, but Taburo was a mighty warrior; his arms slashed through the currents, and within moments he was with the boy.  The branch which provided the lifeline for the young lad snapped just as he reached the shivering body, and as the rushing waters were about to sweep the lad under, Taburo grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and pulled him tightly towards his chest, wrapping a powerful arm from behind, around the boy’s chest, under each arm.  With his free arm, he slashed through the battling rapids.

Taburo was the son of a warrior, the grandson of the Ishido Clan, known for the ferocity of their skill in swordsmanship, and with this same triumvirate of virtues:  fearlessness, courage, and kindness, he slashed at the enemy.  Yes, as he swam and as he neared the riverbank, the serenity of exhaustion and fatigue was slowly, imperceptibly overtaking him; and he knew that the river was no enemy.  It was not a warrior to be feared; not an opponent to have courage against; not a worthy adversary to feel kindness towards.  It was, instead, the dream of a butterfly.

These thoughts flashed quickly in his mind, like the silent fluttering of the butterfly, and Taburo laughed in silence.   The rocky banks passed swiftly by; in his doing, he knew that he would have only one chance, as his strength was waning.  He timed it well; for a warrior and a master swordsman, the three elements of a battle ensured victory:  swiftness, accuracy, and timing.  Such virtues, of course, were merely for the physical battle; missing was the fourth virtue, that of wisdom; but in this battle where the opponent was merely the dream of the butterfly, wisdom was not called for; only the agility of the first three virtues.  Of the three, the latter was the most important.

He used the current to his advantage, and positioned himself; as it carried him towards the rocky embankment, he knew that he would hit a jutting boulder or tree root.   At the precise moment, he  slashed both feet towards the embankment, pointing like waiting spears…and as his toes touched surface, he felt the moment, and with the force and agility gained through years of swordsmanship, he pushed fiercely upward, lifting himself momentarily into the air, as he would with a sword about to slash his opponent; but this was a different battle, a different opponent, and in one movement, suspended above the roaring riverwaters, he threw the young lad high into the air.

Taburo slashed back into the dirty waters; at the same time, the lad landed on all fours onto an overhanging boulder several feet above, in the safety and calm of dry land.  The eyes of the lad met the eyes of Taburo.  With the serenity of a butterfly’s dream, Taburo became submerged, and disappeared into the timelessness of nature.