The Zen Experience Part 36

wake or sleep?" In this early poem we catch a glimpse of the sensualist Ikkyu would one day become.

At age eighteen he became a novice to a reclusive monk of the Myoshin- ji branch of Zen in Kyoto; but when his mentor died two years later he wandered for a time disconsolate and suicide-p.r.o.ne. Then at twenty-two he decided to try for an interview with Kaso Soton (1352-1428), the Daitoku-ji-trained master known to be the sternest teacher in j.a.pan. As was traditional, the master at first shut him out and refused an audience. Ikkyu resolved to wait outside until death, "taking the dew for his roof and the gra.s.ses for his bed." He slept at night under an empty boat and stood all day in front of Kaso's retreat. After Kaso repeatedly failed to discourage him, even once dousing him with water, the master relented and invited Ikkyu in for an interview. They were made for each other and for many years thereafter Ikkyu and Kaso "pursued deep matters tirelessly."

Ikkyu came to revere Kaso, probably one of the few authentic masters of the age, and he stayed to serve this teacher for almost a decade, even though life with Kaso was arduous. Since they lived near a major lake, Ikkyu would each night meditate in a borrowed fisherman's boat until dawn. When his purse "went flat," he would journey to the capital and sell incense or cheap clothing to poor housewives--afterwards returning to the monastery in the same straw sandals, hat, and cloak.15 After three years Kaso gave him the Zen name Ikkyu, a recognition of his progress.

Ikkyu's enlightenment occurred in his twenty-sixth year when, while meditating in the boat, he was startled by the cry of a crow. He rushed back at dawn and reported this to his master.

Kaso responded, "You have reached the stage of an _arhat _[one who has overcome ego], but not that of a Master, novice."

Ikkyu replied, "Then I'm perfectly happy as an _arhat _and don't need to be a Master."

Kaso responded, "Well, then, you really are a Master after all."16

Although it was customary for monks to receive a certificate from their master attesting to their enlightenment, the matter of Ikkyu's certificate is problematical. He himself refused to give out certificates, and he is depicted in Bokusai's chronicle as periodically taking out his own and requesting it be destroyed by his disciples-- after which it seemed to miraculously appear again several years later.

The quant.i.ty of invention and accretion attached to Ikkyu's disappearing certificate has fostered speculation that he never, in fact, actually received a seal.

In any case, he probably would have destroyed his own seal of enlightenment in later years. His life grew progressively more unconventional with time, just the opposite of most. Beginning as a cla.s.sicist in the finest Kyoto tradition, he had gone on to become a spiritual recluse in the mountains under a harsh meditation master.

After all this training he then took the road, becoming a wandering monk in the traditional T'ang mode.

Well, almost in the traditional mode. He seemed to wander into brothels and wine shops almost as often as into Zen temples. He consorted with high and low, merchant and commoner, male and female. Our record of these explorations, both geographic and social, is in his writings, particularly his poetry. He also harbored a vendetta against the complacency and corruption of j.a.panese Zen and its masters, particularly the new abbot of Daitoku-ji, an older man named Yoso who had once been a fellow disciple of his beloved Kaso.

When Ikkyu was forty-six he was invited by Yoso to head a subtemple in the Daitoku-ji compound. He accepted, much to the delight of his admirers, who began bringing the temple donations in grat.i.tude.

However, after only ten days Ikkyu concluded that Daitoku-ji too had become more concerned with ceremony than with the preservation of Zen, and he wrote a famous protest poem as a parting gesture--claiming he could find more of Zen in the meat, drink, and s.e.x traditionally forbidden Buddhists.

_For ten days in this temple my mind's been in turmoil,

My feet are entangled in endless red tape.

If some day you get around to looking for me,

Try the fish-shop, the wine parlor, or the brothel.17

_

Ikkyu's attack on the commercialization of Zen was not without cause.

The scholar Jan Covell observes that in Ikkyu's time, "Rinzai Zen had sunk to a low point and enlightenment was 'sold,' particularly by those temples a.s.sociated with the Shogunate. Zen temples also made money in sake-brewing and through usury. In the mid-fifteenth century one Zen temple, Shokoku-ji, furnished all the advisers to the Shogunate's government and received most of the bribes. The imperial-sanctioned temple of Daitoku-ji was only on the fringe of this corruption, but Ikkyu felt he could not criticize it enough."18

Ironically, Ikkyu also attacked the writing of "Zen" poetry--in his poems. He was really attacking the literary _gozan _movement, the preoccupation of monks who forsook Zen to concentrate on producing forgettable verse in formal Chinese. They put their poetry before, indeed in place of, Zen practice. Ikkyu used his poetry (later collected as the "Crazy Cloud Poems" or _Kyoun-shu_) as a means of expressing his enlightenment, as well as his criticism of the establishment. It also, as often as not, celebrated sensual over spiritual pleasures.

Whereas the T'ang masters created illogic and struggled with intuitive transmission, Ikkyu cheerfully gave in to the existential life of the senses. In the introduction to one poem he told a parable explaining his priorities.

_

Once upon a time there was an old woman who supported a retired hermit for some twenty years. For a long time, she sent a young girl to serve his food. One day she told the girl to throw her arms around the monk and ask him how he felt. When the girl did so, the monk told her, "I am like a withered tree propped up against a cold boulder after three winters without warmth." The girl went back to the old woman and made her report. "Twenty years wasted feeding a phony layman!" exclaimed the woman. Then she ran him off and burnt his hut to the ground.

The grandmotherly old woman tried to give that rascal a ladder.

To provide the pure monk with a nice bride.

If tonight I were to be made such a proposition,

The withered willow would put forth new spring growth.19_

A particularly lyrical exploration of sensuality is found in a poem ent.i.tled "A Woman's [Body] has the Fragrance of Narcissus," which celebrates the essence of s.e.xuality.

_One should gaze long at [the fairy] hill then ascend it.

Midnight on the Jade bed amid [Autumn] dreams

A flower opening beneath the thrust of the plum branch.

Rocking gently between the fairy's thighs.20_

Ikkyu's amours seem to have produced a number of natural progeny. In fact, there is the legend that one of Ikkyu's most devoted followers, a monk named Jotei, was in fact his illegitimate son. According to the Tokugawa Tales, there was a once-rich fan

maker in Sakai whose business had declined to the point that he had to sell his shop and stand on the streetcorner hawking fans. Then one day Ikkyu came by carrying some fans decorated with his own famous calligraphy and asked the man to take them on commission. Naturally they all sold immediately and, by subsequent merchandising of Ikkyu's works, the man's business eventually was restored. In grat.i.tude he granted Ikkyu his daughter, from which union sprang Ikkyu's natural son, Jotei.

This story is questionable but it does ill.u.s.trate the reputation Ikkyu enjoyed, both as artist and lover. Furthermore, he wrote touching and suspiciously fatherly poems to a little girl named Shoko.

_Watching this four-year-old girl sing and dance,

I feel the pull of ties that are hard to dismiss,

Forgetting my duties I slip into freedom.

Master Abbot, whose Zen is this_?21_

_

When Ikkyu was in his seventies, during the disastrous civil conflict known as the Onin war, he had a love affair with a forty-year-old temple attendant named Mori. On languid afternoons she would play the j.a.panese _koto _or harp and he the wistful-sounding _shakuhachi_, a long bamboo flute sometimes carried by monks as a weapon. This late- life love affair occasioned a number of erotic poems, including one that claims her restoration of his virility (called by the Chinese euphemism "jade stalk") cheered his disciples.

_How is my hand like Mori's hand?

Self confidence is the va.s.sal, Freedom the master.