Kyoto, Zen and the Missing Bicycle
Kyoto, Japan
‘Time flies like and arrow, so do not waste energy on trivial matters. Be attentive. Be attentive!’ Zen Master Daito, 1337
I am from Canada but I now live in Japan. They are radically different places in every aspect. Sydney, my home in Canada, is massive with a low population and an abundance of nature and wildlife. Tokyo, my home in Japan, was recently ranked number one in the world by the United States Census Bureau as most populated and most expensive city to live in. On other unofficial lists, Tokyo rated number one for most neon, concrete, and sweating, stressed, gray-suited salarymen. In a megalopolis of such gargantuan proportion time, like Master Daito said, really does fly by without recognition. Monday morning, a crammed subway on my way to work, then somehow it’s Friday night and I am in an izakaya (Japanese pub), drinking sake trying to recall where the week went. This is why when I read Zen Master Daito’s pertinent words I was inspired to make a move.
I had been reading a lot lately about Japanese Zen and Japan’s old capitol Kyoto. The city has long been the cultural and religious capitol of Japanese Zen culture, and today it still retains an extraordinary cache of ancient temples, shrines and gardens. For these reasons it was an easy call. I would make a pilgrimage to Kyoto and get away from the mayhem and mind cluttering pace of Tokyo.
During my recent readings I had come across the term ‘unsui.’ An unsui is “a monk who drifts with the clouds and flows with the water, in search of the way.” I decided to dedicate my entire mind and spirit into becoming a temporary unsui. To make my pilgrimage to Kyoto even more interesting and beneficial I figured a five day fast couldn’t hurt ‘…do not waste energy on trivial matters. Be attentive, be attentive!’ After taking the next week off work, I bought a bus ticket and was on my way.
Kyoto Temple ViewLeaving the temple I approached the spot where I had left my bike, only to find an empty bit of fence. I looked up and down the sidewalk, but it was bare. I stood frustrated. A moment later, realizing that my face had squashed into an angry grimace and my muscles were tense, I laughed aloud and relaxed. I remembered the philosophy of the Zen Buddhist ‘koan.’ A koan is a riddle devised by the Chinese Zen masters to stop budding Buddhist minds from wandering. They had their students meditate on a koan and channel their thoughts and feelings into a single purpose. Sometimes koans made no sense, focusing on a state of mind rather than words. They were a valuable exercise in helping students work towards enlightenment. Standing there I recited my first koan, the riddle I would meditate on during my day’s wandering: ‘Feet or wheel what makes a better discipline. Was the bike actually real in the first place or are my feet just a figment of my imagination.’ Without a bike and with no hopes of getting my deposit back I mentally detached myself from the lost piece of metal and went on my way unconcerned. Like the sutras say, ‘When you meet with adversity don’t be upset, because it makes no sense. Both anger and happiness are empty phenomenons.’ I had passed my first test.
My second test came later that afternoon at Ryoan ji, and it snuck up on me as quietly as the first. Ryoan ji is legendary for its Zen rock garden, the most famous of its kind in the world. Created in the fifteenth century, the garden is simplicity itself � fifteen rocks arranged sporadically in a rectangle of raked white gravel. The designer is anonymous and the message of the garden is unknown. Some scholars believe the rocks are the peaks of mountain poking out above a bed of clouds, others say the rocks are islands floating in the sea, while other believe their layout forms the Japanese kanji for ‘life.’ I sat on the viewing platform with the other visitors staring at the rock garden. People came and went. I sat. I stared. I focused on the stones as everything else around me faded. Sitting there lost in my own mind, I suddenly gained my second minor enlightenment. Nothing! The rocks and the garden meant nothing. There was no meaning. Just as Buddhist philosophy preaches that everything comes from nothing and returns to nothing, and that life is all an illusion, there was no rock garden, there was no Ryoan ji, there wasn’t even an ‘I’. It was just another koan, a physical koan written in stones and pebbles not words. I had passed my second test of the pilgrimage.
Japan is notorious for crowds and just about everywhere you go in Japan you are surrounded. Kyoto in autumn is especially synonymous with them. They followed me everywhere I went that week. Within that nuisance however, on day three I passed the third test of my pilgrimage. The great Zen monk Hakuin’s master once told him: ‘If you can maintain your presence of mind in a city street teeming with violent activity, in a cremation ground amid death and destruction, and in a theatre surrounded by noise and destruction, then, and only then, are you a true practitioner of Zen.’ Wandering through the crowded temple grounds of Kikanku ji, home of one of Japan’s most famous sights, the stunning Golden temple, I suddenly noticed I that had stopped dead in my tracks. I was standing still in the middle of the path staring blankly ahead. Unknowingly, I had come to a complete stop and had become totally absorbed in my own concentration and focus on nothing. Noticing the crowds having to step around me I began walking again, joining the thick stream of visitors heading towards the temple. At that point I was finally aware of the ancient practice that I had so often read about, ‘Zen in action.’ Monks continually speak of it, that total absorption they experience when doing basic tasks such as raking leaves, polishing floors, chopping wood, or simply walking. I realized what master Hakuin Ekaku (1768) meant when he said, ‘Meditation in the midst of action is a billion times superior to meditation in stillness.’
The week was not easy. My struggle to fight off the tempting smells wafting from soba noodle shops and the sight of fresh, red sushi calling to me from shop widows made my mind wander to grand dinners and plates piled high with delicious food. My slow exhausted plod up the smallest of inclines required me to lean against buildings or rest against trees to catch my breath, and the painful hour in the middle of night four when I awoke with a stinging pain in my stomach from hunger was as unpleasant of an evening as I can remember. ‘Hard training is the essence of the Buddha’s and the Patriarchs.’ Sojun Ikkyu once said. I knew my sacrifices were all only little, but they were tests, and I was passing. Sojun Ikkyu also once said, ‘Buddhas are made, not born.’ It’s not that I wanted to become a Buddha, but more that I wanted to shake off that materialistic, false cloak of unconstructive priorities we have sown for ourselves in this modern age. Old Zen Masters like Ikkyu, Indian sages like Rama Krishna, and old poets like Keats and writers like Emerson had insights into the real essence of existence. They recognized the beauty and timelessness of nature, understood the value of simplicity, and practiced the sentiments of kindness, patience and honesty. I did not venture to Kyoto to become a Buddha, a patriarch or even a monk, but ‘The wisdom attained by practicing Zen in the midst of the world of desire is unshakable.’ A little strength, a little benevolence, a little hint of wisdom, that’s what I was hoping to attain. And I had. I had tasted them without even eating.
Boarding the night bus to return to Tokyo, Japan’s oppressively crowded, teeming capitol of flickering neon, Louis Vutton hand-bags and fancy hair-dos, I somehow felt more alive then ever before. I was ready to return to the world’s largest megalopolis and the stressful social reality of the urban work-a-day world that I knew was waiting for me. I vowed to myself however, that it would not overshadow what I had learned in Kyoto and what I knew was most important in life. Sitting in my seat as Kyoto disappeared from view I remembered a death poem written by Ikkyu Sojun that summed up my five days in Kyoto and the culmination of my pilgrimage:
I won’t die,
I won’t go anywhere,
But I won’t be here.
So don’t ask me anything –
For I won’t answer!
