Seiobo There Below (8 page)

Winter has come to an end in the monastery, the cold is for the most part behind them: the uplifting memory of the ango meditation lasting three and a half months, but also that of their eternal daily torments, the biting cold, the heavy snowfalls, the numbing frosts, the icy winds; their hearts are filled with joy, they can now stand in between the choka at dawn and the peal of the evening bells, immersed in the beauty of the enormous magnolia tree behind the hondō, they can see how life begins to take shape on the early-blossoming trees, as the first buds appear on the plum-tree’s branches, how the morning is ever more bounteous, if they open their windows upon rising, with the humming of birds — in short, the Zengen-ji is replete with a sense of relief and happy excitement, and the children, the jishas, run around during the rare pauses more freely, although they feel in their souls, after the trials of the winter, a somewhat more serious hue, and the food in the jikadō tastes better, and the afternoon work in the monastery’s vegetable gardens is more appealing, and everything, but everything is filled with ever more hope that it shall be, it shall come, that spring is nearly here, when the abbot makes the announcement that word has come from Kyōto, the work has been completed, and hence they request the monastery to decide which day, before the beginning of the springtime ango, should be designated as the precise date of delivery, the beginning of March, they write back, there is not much time for reflection, a group of the most eminent monks immediately sit down together and even contest the authority of the abbot over what day would be the best, essentially everything has been prepared, everything has been studied and memorized, they know nearly every element — by heart, interjects the abbot, by heart! — of the great ceremony, the kaigen shiki, that awaits them, says the shikaryo; we’ll see about that, says the abbot, shaking his head; but later on, even he has to recognize that they have done all they could, the invitations to the two guest abbots and many other illustrious guests were sent off long ago, now only the specific date has to be announced to the citizens of Inazawa, from whence — with regard to the spectacular nature of the ceremony — a larger mass of visitors (and perhaps of donations as well!) can be expected; the determination of the exact conditions for delivery is child’s play, for it is exactly the same, the abbot notes, only in reverse order; it’s only that — for a moment he falls silent — it’s only that, he continues, shaking his freshly shaven pate again, there is a problem with preparing the kaigen shiki beforehand, in his view the monks are prepared only in their heads, that is to say as for the actual practice in how to proceed in this ceremony without error — well, he shakes his head again, they are doing pretty badly with the concluding section of the kaigen shiki, that is the ceremonial preparation for the return of the Buddha, because — the abbot rubs his bald head forward and backward — they don’t know the sequence of the kaigen shiki well enough when practicing it; it’s one thing to have something in your head and entirely another thing for it to work out in reality, he will have to see, because it’s difficult, he shakes his head, of course he knows full well this ceremony is difficult and complicated, indeed much, much more difficult than the Hakken Kuyo a year ago, difficult, he repeats, and that doesn’t mean that it can be treated in such an undisciplined manner, because in his view there is simply not enough rigor in the Zengen-ji, and that can be seen when, during their practice of the kaigen shiki, the monks all
make mistakes
, on every occasion they
make mistakes
, either they don’t know the sequence or one of the musicians comes in at the wrong place, not to speak of themselves, to begin with
themselves
first and foremost, since even they, yes, precisely they, the foremost monks of the monastery, with he himself the foremost of the foremost of the continually uncertain: either there is a problem with the memorization of the texts — used less and less or even not at all — of the sacred sūtras and dhāranīs, or accordingly, during this or that point in the ceremony, even knowing where their place is, and even more, grumbles the abbot, for everyone to know where they should stand and where they should go often causes problems, it can’t be like this; he raises his voice with a bit of irritation, he requests, starting tomorrow, greater discipline from everyone, and they will have to explain this to the rest as well, but first and foremost they themselves should fully understand that the kaigen shiki is a
public
ceremony, and there could be many attendees, the abbot of Nanzen-ji monastery will be here, and the abbot of Tōfuku-ji monastery, and quite a few lay people, they have to be ready for that, and they have to prepare for it — this is true, the shikaryo interrupts, but so much has already happened, let us not forget, the shikaryo says, slightly offended, how much has been done already, particularly under his, the shikaryo’s guidance, because please kindly consider, esteemed abbot, all of the countless invitations, writing them out, putting them in the envelopes, sealing them, addressing them, mailing them, then all the planning: who will receive the guests, where will they be accommodated, which monks will be receiving visitors; then the memorization, here the jikijitsu decorously takes up the thread of the discussion, teaching them sūtras they’ve never even heard before, beating the dhāranīs into their heads, drilling them on who has to go where and when, how many times have I myself tried with them as well, sighs the jikijitsu, how many times — fine, says the abbot with a conciliatory expression, but then scratches his freshly shaven head again; all of this is fine, but everyone clearly agrees that things are not proceeding without error; time is pressing, so he has no desire for any more fruitless chatter on this question, let us begin from tomorrow, everyone with his own task, with redoubled zeal; and that is how they leave it, with redoubled zeal, all of the monks taking part in the discussions accept this, it’s just that from the next day onward the abbot somehow does not sense that redoubled zeal, or it does not somehow appear at all that the zeal of anyone entrusted with drilling the monks in a given task has been redoubled, the abbot walks through the monastery rooms, he hears the monks reciting the sūtras, he watches attentively when a jikijitsu or a rōshi holds a rehearsal in the hondō, and he sees what he sees, he just rubs and ever more nervously rubs his skull, which, as the hair begins to grow in again, is ever more itchy, because he hears, he sees, he senses that not only is it not flawless, not only is it not yet correct, let alone perfect, but it will never ever be so, given the material in the Zengen-ji that they are able to summon forth; it will never be any better than this; he paces back and forth from the western gate to the eastern gate, from the northern gate to the Sanmon, and then one day he is suddenly filled with tranquility, for he senses that he has accepted, somehow, in the course of things he has reconciled to this: that they are what they are and not any better, he has given in: that put together like this, from the rōshi to the battan, the shikaryo to the kakuryoosha, from the jushoku to the ensuryo, they are altogether capable of this much, and this perception for once does not fill him with sadness, or more nervousness and dissatisfaction, but rather with tranquility, it’s the intention, he says to himself in the evening before retiring, if the intention is correct, then there is nothing else to wish for, so that the next day, summoning the monastic leadership for a discussion, the exact date and time of the delivery, and also that of the kaigen shiki, is determined, the letter has already been dispatched to Kyōto, and the responses are already coming back from the invited expressing how wonderful it is, the date — mid-March — is perfect, they will be here, everything is proceeding impeccably, and the time has already come for the monks to proceed to the samu, that is they begin to clean and tidy in a manner that has never been seen before, far out-stripping the usual tidying up, they set to work on cleaning the buildings from within, they set to cleaning the monastery from without, a broom and a floor mop make their appearance in every corner, outside, in the courtyard and the back courtyard and the rear-most courtyard, not a single square meter remains where a rake and a broom have not made their presence felt, the fever is general, it has infected everyone by now, the great day is coming, they take out and survey yet again their attire to ensure that between the koromos and the obis, the kesas and the kimonos, everything is in order, that they are clean enough, ironed, undamaged, that they are suitable for the great ceremony of the kaigen shiki; and everyone finds, that somehow . . . everything is ready, it’s strange, but along with the shared and gratifying excitement, there will also be, growing ever stronger amidst the entire monastic community, an inner certitude that during the forthcoming ceremony everything will be fine, everything will proceed with decorum, as the great day approaches, ever fewer disquieted countenances are seen, a deshi, a battan, or a jisha running about here and there, and on every face there is joyful anticipation, so that when the news arrives, late in the morning one day, almost around the same time as the day’s first meal in the monastery, that a special delivery van with their Buddha has set off, the monks signal with joyful eyes that they have understood, it has begun, although according to general agreement the kaigen shiki is actually not supposed to begin here in the hondō as they file in, but when the special delivery van from far-off Kyōto turns out of the gates of the Bijutsu-in, traversing the still sleeping city, reaching the Takeda Kaido, cutting southward up to the Takeda intersection, and there turning ninety-degrees to the left onto the Meishin Expressway, making the one hundred and seventy kilometers from Ōtsu past Hikone and Maibara to Sekigahara without stopping, as is happening right now, and after a half-hour the competent driver turns off at the designated exit from the Meishin Expressway and even if he is moving now a little more slowly than on the freeway, he still, despite all the twists and turns and tiny little villages, reaches Ikinomiya in good time, and without hesitation finds the road to Inazawa, and in the Zengen-ji, as if they sensed exactly where he is, the western gate, just when he appears at the end of the street leading up to it, is opened by chance, and no one bothers himself about the fact that even before the driver’s arrival they kept opening up the gates again and again, peeking outside to see if he was here already, we opened the gates just by chance exactly at the moment when he appeared at the end of the street, the deshis waiting at the western gate later recount, so we just left it open, really, as they then relate further, it just so happened that the shikaryo gave us the order right then to open up all of the gates, and we opened them, as actually did occur, because in reality, according to the original plan devised by the abbot and the others during the final planning sessions, they are the ones who were meant to open the monastery gates, not at the usual hour, but rather at the time of the arrival of the van, that is of the Amida Buddha, they opened the western, the eastern, and the northern gates, and even the Sanmon, and it is actually with this, the opening of the Sanmon, that the monks of the Zengen-ji inform the residents of Inazawa that they are joyfully welcome upon this illustrious day as, within the context of a rare ceremony, their most sacred of sacredness, now restored, shall be returned to its rightful place, and to the same extent that the citizens of Inazawa, one year earlier, had been unmoved by the news of the secret farewell ceremony, now with the Festival of the Return of the Buddha, moved by the possibility of seeing today a colorful, unique, and rare event, they go to the Zengen-ji, the word spreads everywhere, this time it really is worthwhile, and so the city sets off from the textile mills and the rows of machine works, already at around seven in the morning several hundred have gathered in the temple courtyard across from the Hall of Buddha; there are at least three hundred of them, one of the young monks, his eyes glittering, but fearful of exaggeration, whispers with cautious appraisal into the ear of the jushoku; three hundred, repeats the abbot dumbfounded; yes, at the very least, repeats the boy a little uncertainly, not knowing if this is a little or a lot, and huddling up, he does not move from the abbot’s side, as if to say that perhaps he is wrong, but how could he tell for sure how many there are, that is, he couldn’t take any responsibility for his words; three hundred, the abbot murmurs to himself once again, ill-temperedly, and signals to the boy that there is no problem, it is not the boy’s words that he doubts, and it is not because of them that he is in a bad mood, but rather, how are we going to be able to move around in here, he says aloud, so the boy hears it, and the boy’s anxiety subsides — so many won’t be able to fit into the hondō; he spreads his arms apart to the boy, who, of course, grows concerned as well, for the abbot himself is speaking of such fateful questions with him, but at the same time sad ones too, for the news that he has brought has made the abbot sad, well, no matter, he waves his hand, he smiles at the deshi, and sends him somewhere on a task and already he has come out of his quarters to look for the two illustrious guests, the two abbots from Kyōto, with whom he will lead the ceremony of the kaigen shiki — as all the same it is most auspicious, the answer to his query having arrived from Kyōto months earlier, it is the most auspicious to conduct the ceremony is in the presence of three abbots — and the abbots have slept well, they say, and you can see from their plump cheerful faces as they enter — he steps toward them, greeting them with three deep bows — that they slept well indeed, sweetly, like the sleep of children, they repeat; following the prescribed ritual, they receive the greeting of the host, then together they proceed out of the building, the crowd opening before them, in front walks the abbot of Nanzen-ji with two monks accompanying him, and in his wake the abbot of Tōfuku-ji with two accompanying monks as well, and at the end walks the host-abbot among his own jishas, they proceed thus across the middle of the wide courtyard, where by now there may be even a thousand, and they step, in the same order, into the hondō, where on the right side, in the prescribed order, are the elder monks, on the left side the younger unsuis, the deshis, the battans, and so on, all facing each other, and to the back, next to the main entrance are the jikijitsu and the musicians, so that they can be observed by the lay public, the merely curious and the tourists, then in the silence the high clangorous peal of the shokei resounds, and the congregation with the three abbots facing the altar of the Buddha in front kneels down, then another musician beats the hokku, the large drum, at which point the abbots stand up; all of this is performed three times in a row: the ringing sound of the shokei, the kneeling, the thumping of the hokku; getting up, shokei, kneeling down, the great drum; getting up — and then the same thing for the last time, and then the jikijitsu is already striking the large drum, the mokugyo sounds forth as well, and the gathering place their hands in the gesture of gasho-in — as does the abbot, who now turning to the left takes two and a half steps, then turning to the right steps over to the incense stand, then kneels and gets up, so as to bow to the altar where the Buddha is to be placed, then he kneels down, gets up, again steps before the incense stand, takes with his right hand a stick of incense from his assistant, holding it horizontally with both hands between his thumbs and index fingers, and raises it up to his eyebrows, then he kneels down with it and gets up; with his left hand he plants it into a vase filled with ashes, and then he does the same with another stick of incense on the right-hand side of the vase, and then with a third stick of incense; it seems that the essence of the matter is that he always takes it with his