悟浄出世 English

At the onset of autumn, when cold cicadas cry among withered willows and the great fire of summer drifts westward, Sanzang, filled with longing, was hastened along through perilous passes by his two disciples, when all at once a great river appeared before them.

Great waves surged and roiled, and the breadth of the river seemed to know no limit.

When they climbed the bank and looked about, there stood a stone stele nearby.

On it were carved in seal script the three characters Ryusaga, and on the face were four lines of small regular script.

Eight hundred leagues of the Flowing Sands extend;

Three thousand fathoms deep run the weak waters.

Even a goose feather drifts but does not float;

Rush flowers settle and sink to the very bottom.

— Journey to the West —

I

In those days, among the approximately thirteen thousand monsters dwelling at the bottom of the Ryusaga River, none had a weaker heart than he.

According to him, he bore the punishment for having devoured nine monks, and the skulls of those nine clung to his neck and would not leave — but none of the other monsters could see any such skulls.

"I see nothing. It is a delusion of yours,"

they would say, and he would look back at everyone with eyes that could not believe it, then sink into an expression of sorrow, as if wondering why he alone was so different from the rest.

The other monsters murmured among themselves.

"That fellow has probably never eaten even a single human being, let alone a monk — since no one has ever witnessed it. We have seen him catching and eating crucian carp and small fish, but nothing more."

So they said.

They also gave him a nickname: Dokugon Gozo, the Soliloquizing Gozo.

This was because he always felt anxious about himself, was tormented by a self-laceration that cut through him like a blade, and the sad self-reproach that churned within him would inevitably leak out as soliloquy.

Even when, seen from a distance, it appeared as no more than small bubbles rising from his mouth, he was in truth murmuring in a faint voice.

"I am a fool,"

or, "Why am I like this?"

or, "It is hopeless. As for me."

or sometimes, "I am a fallen angel."

And so on.

In those days, it was believed — not only among monsters but among all living things — that every creature was some form of reincarnation.

There was not a soul at the river bottom who did not know that Gozo had once served in the celestial realm as the Great Curtain-Rolling General of the Ryoshoden.

And so even Gozo himself, who was extremely skeptical, was obliged in the end to pretend to believe it.

But to tell the truth, he alone among all the monsters secretly harbored doubts about the doctrine of reincarnation.

Suppose the one who was the Curtain-Rolling General five hundred years ago in the celestial realm became what I am today — can one truly say that the former Curtain-Rolling General and the present me are the same thing?

In the first place, I have no memory whatsoever of the old celestial realm.

In what way are the Curtain-Rolling General who existed before that memory and I the same?

Is it the body that is the same?

Or is it the soul, perhaps?

And in any case — what is the soul?

Whenever he let slip such doubts, the other monsters would say, "Here we go again"

and laugh.

Some would mock him; others would say with a look of pity, "It is an illness. It is the fault of a wicked illness."

So they said.

And indeed, he was ill.

When this illness had begun, and what had caused it — Gozo knew neither.

He only knew that when he came to himself, this loathsome thing had already settled heavily around him on all sides.

He lost all desire to do anything; everything he saw and heard weighed his spirits down; in all matters he found himself loathsome, and he could no longer trust himself.

For days and days he shut himself in a cave, taking no food, with only his eyes gleaming in the dark, and sank deep into brooding thought.

He would abruptly rise and pace about the cave, muttering something under his breath, then suddenly sit down again.

He was not even conscious of his own actions, one by one.

What would need to become clear in order for his unease to pass?

Even that, he did not know.

He only knew that everything he had accepted as a matter of course now appeared to him as something incomprehensible and suspicious.

What had seemed a single coherent thing came apart and presented itself in fragments, and as he thought about each fragment in turn, he lost hold of the meaning of the whole — that was his condition.

An aged fish-spirit who served as physician, astrologer, and prayer-man alike once looked at Gozo and spoke thus:

"Ah, what a wretched thing. To have contracted so cursed a disease! Once afflicted with this illness, ninety-nine out of a hundred will live out their days in misery. Originally it was a disease unknown among our kind, but ever since we began to eat humans, it has appeared, ever so rarely, among us too. Those who are stricken with it cannot take anything in the world at face value. Whatever they see, whatever they encounter, they immediately think 'Why?' They try to think about the 'Why?' that only the ultimate, the genuine, the God alone knows. No living thing can go on living while thinking such thoughts. Is it not the unspoken agreement among all creatures of this world that such things are not to be thought about? What is particularly troublesome is when the sick one begins to doubt the thing called 'self.' Why do I think of me as me? Would it not be perfectly acceptable to think of someone else as me? What, in the end, is I? — When they begin to think in this way, that is the worst symptom of this disease. Well? Did I not strike the mark? I am sorry for you, but for this illness there is neither medicine nor physician. One can only cure oneself. Unless you are blessed with some truly extraordinary opportunity, it is unlikely your face will ever brighten again."

II

Writing had long since been transmitted from the human world and was known among them as well, but in general there was a custom among them of scorning the written word.

There was no way that living wisdom could be recorded in such a dead thing as writing.

(In pictures it might, at least, still be captured.)

It was generally believed to be a folly akin to trying to grasp smoke in one's hand without losing its shape.

Accordingly, the ability to read was dismissed as a sign of declining vitality.

Among the monsters, it was commonly held that Gozo's habitual melancholy was, in the end, surely due to his being literate.

The written word was not esteemed, but that did not mean that thought itself was held in low regard.

Among the thirteen thousand monsters, philosophers were not few.

Only, their vocabulary was exceedingly poor, and so the most difficult great problems were pondered in the most innocent of words.

Each of them pitched what one might call a shop of thinking at the bottom of the Ryusaga River, and indeed a certain undercurrent of philosophical melancholy hung drifting about that riverbed.

A wise old fish had purchased a beautiful garden, and beneath a bright window meditated on eternal and regretless happiness.

A noble fish-clan, in the shade of beautiful striped bright-green seaweed, strummed the harp and sang the praises of the musical harmony of the universe.

Gozo — ugly, dull, bluntly honest, yet making no effort to conceal his foolish suffering — became a fine object of ridicule among these intellectually-minded monsters.

One seemingly clever monster turned to Gozo with a grave expression and said:

"What is truth?"

And without even waiting for his reply, walked off in great strides with a sneer on his lips.

Also, one monster — he was the spirit of a puffer fish — upon hearing of Gozo's illness, came expressly to visit him.

Having surmised that the root of Gozo's illness lay in "a fear of death,"

he had come to mock him for it.

"While we live, there is no death. When death arrives, the self is already gone. What then is there to fear?"

Such was this fellow's line of argument.

Gozo straightforwardly acknowledged the correctness of this argument.

For he himself was by no means afraid of death, and the root of his illness lay nowhere in that.

The puffer-fish spirit, having come intending to mock, went home disappointed.

In the world of monsters, the body and the mind were not as clearly separated as in the human world, and so his mental illness immediately took the form of fierce physical suffering and tormented Gozo.

When it became unbearable, he finally made up his mind.

"In that case, no matter how great the hardship, no matter how I may be mocked and laughed at wherever I go, I will seek out every sage, every physician, every astrologer dwelling at the bottom of this river and visit them personally, and beg their teachings until I am fully satisfied."

So he resolved.

He wrapped himself in a plain robe and set out.

Why is a monster a monster, and not a human?

Because they are cripples who have developed one of their attributes to an extreme degree, out of all proportion to the others, to the point of ugliness, to the point of the inhuman.

Some were gluttonous to an extreme, and accordingly their mouths and stomachs were inordinately large; some were lecherous to an extreme, and accordingly the organs used for it were remarkably developed; some were purely chaste to an extreme, and accordingly every part save the head had completely atrophied.

Each of them clung absolutely to their own disposition and worldview, and knew nothing of arriving at higher conclusions through debate with others.

This was because their own distinguishing traits had grown too far out of proportion for them to follow another's train of thought.

And so at the bottom of the Ryusaga River, hundreds of worldviews and metaphysical systems drifted and swayed, never fusing with any other, some with the ecstasy of tranquil despair, some with bottomless brightness, some with sighs that held wishes but no hope, like the numberless swaying waterweeds.

III

The first person Gozo visited was Kokuran Dojin, who was at that time the most celebrated master of illusion arts.

In not-so-deep waters, great rocks had been piled up to form a cave, and at the entrance hung a plaque reading Shagetsusansei Cave.

The master of the hermitage was said to have a human body with a fish's face, to perform illusion arts with great skill, to appear and vanish at will, to call forth thunder in winter and to produce ice in summer, to make flying creatures run and running creatures fly.

Gozo served this Taoist master for three months.

He had no interest in the illusion arts themselves, but he reasoned that one skilled enough in such arts must be a true sage, and a true sage would have mastered the great Way of the universe and would also know the wisdom to cure his illness.

However, Gozo could not but be disappointed.

Kokuran Dojin, seated on the back of a great tortoise deep within the cave, and the dozens of disciples gathered around him — all they ever spoke of were the arts of divine and marvelous magic.

Or practical talk: how to use such arts to deceive an enemy, or how to obtain treasures here and there.

There was no one who would engage with the useless sort of inquiry Gozo was seeking.

In the end, having been ridiculed and laughed at, Gozo was driven out of the Three-Star Cave.

The next place Gozo went was to Shako Inshi.

This was the spirit of an aged shrimp, whose back was already bent like a bow and who lived half buried in the sand at the river bottom.

Gozo was again able, over three months of attending this elderly recluse and looking after his daily needs, to come into contact with his profound philosophy.

The aged shrimp spirit, having Gozo rub his bent back, spoke with a grave expression as follows:

"The world is all empty. Is there even one good thing in this world? If there is, it can only be that the end of this world will someday come. There is no need to think of difficult reasoning. Look about us. Ceaseless change, unease, anguish, fear, disillusionment, strife, tedium. Truly, all is dark and confused, turbid and whirling, knowing not where to return. We live only upon the moment of the present. Yet that present underfoot vanishes at once and becomes the past. The next moment, and the moment after that, are the same. Just as the footing of a traveler on a crumbling sandy slope collapses with every step. Where are we to find rest? Since stopping would mean falling, we are driven to keep running downward — that is our life. Happiness? Such a thing exists only as an imagined concept and can never refer to any real state of affairs. It is merely what a fleeting hope has been given a name."

Seeing Gozo's uneasy expression, the recluse added, as if to comfort him:

"But, young one, you need not fear so. One who is swept away by the waves drowns, but one who rides the waves can cross over them. It is not impossible to pass through this impermanence of all things and reach a state of indestructible stillness. The sages of old were able to transcend right and wrong, to transcend good and evil, to forget the self, to forget things, and to arrive at a realm beyond death and beyond birth. Yet, as has been said since ancient times, to think that such a state must be pleasant would be a great mistake. While there is no suffering, neither is there the pleasure that ordinary living creatures possess. Flavorless, colorless. Truly tasteless as wax, as sand."

Gozo interjected modestly.

What he wished to know was not personal happiness or the establishment of an unshakeable mind, but rather the ultimate meaning of the self and of the world, he said.

The recluse blinked his crusty, rheum-filled eyes and answered:

"The self, you say? The world? Do you think there exists an objective world apart from the self? The world is an illusion that the self projects across time and space. When the self dies, the world ceases. To think that the world remains after the self has died — that is the most vulgar and egregious error. Even if the world were to vanish, this strange thing called the self, whose true nature cannot be grasped, would surely continue as before."

On the morning of the exactly ninetieth day after Gozo had entered his service, after several days of violent abdominal pain and diarrhea, this elderly recluse at last collapsed.

He died pleased, it seemed, that he could annihilate by his own death the objective world that had inflicted upon him such ugly diarrhea and such painful cramps.

Gozo paid his respects to the departed with all due ceremony, and with tears in his eyes set off once again on a new journey.

According to rumor, the Master Zabou remained continuously seated in Zen meditation, sleeping on without end, and woke but once every fifty days.

And he believed the dream world of his sleep to be reality, while on the rare occasions he was awake, he regarded it as a dream.

When Gozo came from afar to seek out this master, the master was, as expected, asleep.

Since it was at the very deepest valley of the Ryusaga River, where barely any light from above could reach, Gozo had difficulty making anything out until his eyes adjusted, but at length, from the dim floor, there gradually emerged before him the blurry form of a robed figure sitting in full lotus posture, asleep.

With no sound from outside and fish rarely passing through, Gozo had nothing for it but to sit down before Master Zabou and close his own eyes, and he felt something like a ringing, distant numbness in his ears.

On the fourth day after Gozo arrived, the master opened his eyes.

Gozo hurriedly rose to his feet right before him and prostrated himself, which the master observed and yet did not observe, blinking two or three times.

After sitting in silence facing each other for a while, Gozo spoke up with trepidation.

"Master. I am sorry to be so abrupt and forward, but I have one question. What, precisely, is the 'self'?"

"Ha! Shinjil's wheel-cart drill!"

With these fierce words, Gozo's head immediately received a blow from a staff.

He staggered, but righted himself and resumed his seat, and after some time repeated his earlier question, this time with full wariness.

This time the staff did not come down.

Parting his thick lips, his face and body perfectly still in every part, Master Zabou answered in words that seemed to come from within a dream.

"That which feels hunger when long without food — that is you. That which feels cold when winter comes — that is you."

With that, he closed his thick lips and gazed at Gozo for a while, then at length shut his eyes.

And he did not open them again for fifty days.

Gozo waited with patience.

When Master Zabou awoke again on the fiftieth day, he saw Gozo seated before him and said:

"You are still here?"

Gozo humbly replied that he had waited fifty days.

"Fifty days?"

The master fixed on Gozo that usual dreamy, heavy-lidded gaze, and was silent in that very posture for a good while.

At length his heavy lips parted.

"One who does not know that the only measure of the length of time is the actual feeling of the one who experiences it is a fool. In the human world, I have heard that a device for measuring the length of time has been made; it will, I think, sow the seeds of great misunderstanding hereafter. The great age of the giant cedar and the brief life of the morning mushroom are no different in length. Time is a device within our own heads."

When he finished speaking, the master closed his eyes once more.

Knowing that they would not be opened again for another fifty days, Gozo bowed respectfully before the sleeping master and took his leave.

"Fear. Tremble. And believe in God."

So cried a young man standing at the busiest crossroads of the Ryusaga River.

"Think upon the fact that our brief lives are swallowed within the infinite great eternity that stretches before and after us. Think upon the fact that the narrow space we inhabit is cast into the infinite great vastness that knows us not and that we know not. Who among us can refrain from trembling at the minuteness of our own form? We are all condemned prisoners bound in iron chains. With every passing moment, some among us are killed before our eyes. We wait our turn with not a shred of hope. Time presses. Will you pass that brief interval in self-deception and stupor? Cursed cowards! Will you spend it puffed with pride, relying on your pitiful little reason? Arrogant fools who do not know your place! A single sneeze — and your wretched reason and will cannot govern even that."

The pale-skinned youth flushed crimson in the cheeks and thundered in a hoarse voice.

Where in that womanly noble figure did such fierce passion lie hidden?

Gozo stared in astonishment into those burning, beautiful eyes.

He felt as though fiery, pure arrows were being shot from the youth's words directly into his own soul.

"All we can do is love God and despise ourselves. A part must not flatter itself that it is an independent entity. Make the will of the whole your own will, and live your self only for the whole. One who is united with God becomes a single spirit."

Surely this is the voice of a holy and excellent soul, Gozo thought, and yet, nevertheless, he could not help but feel that what he now hungered for was not a voice of God such as this.

He thought, too, that teachings are like medicine — it is no use recommending a salve for swellings to one who suffers from malaria.

Not far from that crossroads, by the side of the road, Gozo saw an ugly beggar.

A dreadful hunchback: the spine jutting up high had hoisted all five organs upward, the crown of the head had sunk far below the shoulders, and the chin barely concealed the navel.

Moreover, across the shoulders and back, a face of festering red sores covered the skin — at the sight of which Gozo stopped in his tracks involuntarily and let out a sigh.

Thereupon the beggar, who was crouching there, unable to freely turn his neck, rolled his bloodshot eyes upward and grinned, showing his one long front tooth.

Then, dangling his arm that was wrenched up high, he staggered toward Gozo's feet, looked up at him and said:

"How presumptuous of you to pity me, young sir. Do you think I am to be pitied? If anything, you seem to me the far more pitiable one. Do you suppose I resent the Creator for making me like this? Far from it. I actually praise the Creator for giving me so rare a form. I look forward to wondering what interesting shape I shall take next. If my left elbow becomes a rooster, I'll have it crow the hour; if my right elbow becomes a crossbow, I'll use it to catch an owl and make roasted meat; if my rear end becomes a wheel and my spirit becomes a horse, why, that would be the finest conveyance imaginable — most useful indeed! How about that? Are you surprised? My name is Shiyo. I have three bosom friends: Shishi, Shirei, and Shirai. All of us are disciples of Lady Jou; having transcended the form of things and entered the realm of the unborn and undying, we are untouched by water, unscorched by fire, dreamless in sleep, and free from sorrow when awake. Just recently, the four of us laughed and talked together. We have, we said, made Nothingness our head, Life our back, and Death our rear. Ha ha ha ha..."

Though startled by the unsettling laughter, Gozo thought: perhaps this beggar is what is called a true sage.

If this man's words are the real thing, they are remarkable.

However, something boastful could be felt somewhere in this man's words and manner, which made Gozo suspect that he was speaking in bravado while enduring pain; and in addition, the man's ugliness and the stench of his pus gave Gozo a visceral repulsion.

Though greatly drawn to him, he stopped himself from taking service with the beggar there and then.

He did wish to seek instruction about the Lady Jou mentioned in the story just told, so he let that be known.

"Ah, my master. My master — she dwells about two thousand eight hundred ri to the north of here, where this Ryusaga meets the Sekisui and the Bokusui. If your resolve is firm, she will teach you well. By all means, pursue your training. Do give her my regards as well."

So said the wretched hunchback, with his pointed shoulders thrust back as far as they would go, in an imperious tone.

IV

Heading toward the confluence of the Ryusaga, the Bokusui, and the Sekisui, Gozo traveled northward.

At night he took brief rest in dreams among the reeds, and when morning came, he walked on again northward across the boundless sandy plain of the river bottom.

Watching the schools of fish that gaily flashed their silver scales, he walked each day wondering miserably why his own heart alone could take no joy.

Along the way, he made a practice of knocking at the door of every notable Taoist master and ascetic he came upon.

When he visited Kyuzen Nenshi, who was known for his gluttony and great strength, that catfish monster — his skin as black as could be and of powerful build — stroked his long beard and taught: "One who thinks only of distant matters will surely have troubles close at hand. The man of attainment does not take the broad view."

So he taught.

"Take this fish, for example."

And with that, Nenshi snatched up a carp that happened to be swimming past, and while chomping it down, went on to expound:

"Now, this carp — it is indeed fitting behavior for a sage to ponder deeply why this carp was passing before my eyes, and the fate that made it destined to become my food; but if one were to brood over such things at length before catching the carp, the prey would simply get away. First catch the carp swiftly, sink your teeth into it, and only then think about it — it is not too late. You are, I suspect, the sort of fellow who always misses the carp because he gets caught up in such high-minded nonsense as the metaphysical consideration of why a carp is a carp, the differences between a carp and a crucian. That languid light in your eyes tells me so plainly. Am I right?"

That is certainly the case, Gozo said, bowing his head.

The monster had already finished off the carp by then, and was still casting a hungry-looking gaze upon Gozo's bowed neck, when all at once his eyes lit up and his throat gave a gulping sound.

Gozo happened to look up, and in an instant sensed danger and pulled back.

The monster's razor-sharp claws grazed Gozo's throat with terrifying speed.

The monster's enraged, gluttonous face, having missed the first strike, loomed in close.

Gozo kicked hard against the water, raising a cloud of mud, and fled from the cave in frantic haste.

He had learned, Gozo reflected as he trembled, the harsh spirit of realism from that ferocious monster — firsthand.

When he attended a lecture given by Mucho Koshi, who was famous as a preacher of love for one's neighbor, Gozo was astonished to witness the saint suddenly seized midway through his sermon by hunger and proceed to devour two or three of his own children then and there (though he was a crab spirit and so hatched countless offspring from eggs at once).

A holy man who preached compassion and forbearance had just now, before the eyes of all assembled, caught and eaten his own children.

And when he was done eating, he resumed preaching of compassion as if he had quite forgotten what had just occurred.

No doubt it was not that he had forgotten, but that the act of sating his hunger just a moment ago had never registered in his consciousness at all.

Perhaps this is where I have something to learn, Gozo thought, arriving at this odd reasoning.

Where in my life is there a moment of instinctive, selfless absorption such as that?

He knelt down in reverence, thinking he had received a precious teaching.

No — the very fact that I must attach a conceptual interpretation to each thing before I am satisfied: there lies my weakness, he reconsidered.

To take the lesson raw, without canning it — yes, yes, thought Gozo, and bowed once more, then took his leave with reverence.

The hermitage of Hoi Shi was an unusual place of instruction.

There were only four or five disciples, but each had followed the master's path and was engaged in exploring the secret keys of nature.

Seekers, one might say — or better yet, revelers.

Their practice consisted only in observing nature and soaking gently through into its beautiful harmony.

"First of all, feel. Refine your senses to the most beautiful and wisest degree. Thinking that has departed from the direct reception of natural beauty — that is a gray dream."

So said one of the disciples.

"Look at nature with the mind deeply submerged. Clouds, sky, wind, snow, pale blue ice, the swaying of crimson seaweed, the finely glittering light of diatoms in the nocturnal water, the spiral of the nautilus shell, the crystal of amethyst, the red of garnet, the blue of fluorite. How beautifully they seem to speak of nature's secrets."

What he said was like the words of a poet.

"And yet, just when we are one step away from deciphering nature's cryptic writing, the happy premonition suddenly vanishes, and once more we must face the beautiful but cold profile of nature."

So continued another disciple.

"That is because our senses are still not sufficiently trained, and because the mind has not submerged deeply enough. We must strive on still further. In time we will be able to experience those moments of which our master speaks, where 'to see is to love, and to love is to create.'"

All the while, the master Hoi Shi said not a word, but holding a single piece of vivid green malachite in his palm, gazed steadily at it with calm eyes full of deep joy.

Gozo stayed at this hermitage for about a month.

During that time, he too became a nature poet along with them, singing the harmony of the universe and wishing to be absorbed into its innermost life.

Though he felt out of place, he had been drawn in by their quiet happiness.

Among the disciples there was one extraordinarily beautiful boy.

His skin was translucent as a white fish, his dark eyes were wide open as if dreaming, and the curls upon his brow were soft as the breast feathers of a dove.

When he held a little sorrow in his heart, a faint shadow no heavier than a thin cloud passing before the moon fell across his beautiful face; when there was joy, the depths of his tranquil, clear eyes shone like jewels in the night.

The master and his fellow disciples all loved this boy.

Honest and pure, this boy's heart knew no suspicion.

Only, he was so beautiful, so slender, that he seemed made of some precious gas, and this caused an unease in everyone.

Whenever the boy had a free moment, he would draw morning-glory flowers on a white stone with pale amber honey.

Four or five days before Gozo was to leave this hermitage, the boy went out one morning and never returned.

A disciple who had gone out with him brought back a strange report.

While he had let his attention slip, the boy had simply dissolved into the water — he had seen it with his own eyes, he said.

The other disciples laughed it off as absurd, but the master Hoi Shi acknowledged it with gravity.

Perhaps so — with a child like that, such a thing might happen — he was too pure, said the master.

Comparing the robustness of the catfish monster who had tried to eat him with the beauty of the boy who had dissolved into the water, Gozo took his leave of Hoi Shi.

After Hoi Shi, Gozo went to Hani Ketsubaba.

Though already more than five hundred years old, this female monster's skin retained the suppleness of a maiden's, and her graceful form was said to melt even hearts of iron.

This old female monster, whose sole creed in life was to exhaust every pleasure of the flesh, maintained scores of chambers in her rear garden, filled them with good-looking young men, and when given to her pleasures would exclude intimates, sever all social ties, retire to the rear garden, make day run into night and night into day, and show her face outside no more than once every three months.

Gozo happened to visit at precisely one of these once-in-three-months occasions, and was fortunate enough to see the old female monster.

Hearing that here was one who sought the Way, Ketsuba expounded her teachings to Gozo.

There was a shadow of languid weariness somewhere in her gracefully lovely form as she spoke.

"This is the way. This is the way. The teachings of the sages, the training of the philosophers — in the end, their purpose lies in sustaining these moments of supreme bliss. Think about it. To be born into life in this world is, in truth, something marvelously rare even within a time of a hundred thousand million trillion infinite kalpas. And yet on the other hand, death assails us with astounding swiftness. For us, who await with this rare life the easy-arriving death, what else is there to think about besides this way? Ah, that numbing rapture! That ever-renewed intoxication!"

So the female monster cried, narrowing her bewitchingly sensual eyes as if drunk.

"You are, I regret to say, quite an ugly person, so I have no thought of asking you to stay with me — therefore I will tell you the truth. In my rear chambers, a hundred young men die each year of exhaustion. But let me make this clear: every one of them dies happy, satisfied with his life. Not one has died resenting having remained with me. There have been those who, dying now, lamented that they could no longer continue this pleasure any longer. But none who regretted having come here."

Gazing at Gozo with eyes that seemed to pity his ugliness, Ketsuba added finally:

"Virtue is the capacity to enjoy."

Grateful that his ugliness had spared him from joining the hundred who died there each year, Gozo continued his journey.

The teachings of the sages varied so greatly that he had no idea what to believe.

"What is the self?"

To this question of his, one sage replied:

"First try roaring. If you go oink, you are a pig. If you go squawk, you are a goose."

So he said.

Another sage taught thus:

"If you simply refrain from forcing yourself to express what the self is, it is not comparatively difficult to know the self."

So he said.

And another said: "The eye sees all things but cannot see itself. The self is ultimately that which the self cannot know."

So he said.

Yet another sage expounded: "The self is always the self. Through the infinite time before the present consciousness of the self arose, there was something called self. (No one now remembers it.) That is what has become the present self. Through the infinite time after the present consciousness of the self has perished, something called self will again exist. No one can foresee it now, and when that time comes, the present consciousness of the self will surely be entirely forgotten."

So he said.

There was also one who said this:

"What is a continuous, singular self? It is nothing but a heap of shadows of memory."

So he said.

This man also taught Gozo the following:

"The loss of memory — that is all that we do every day. Because we have forgotten that we have forgotten, various things seem fresh to us; but in truth, that is because we forget everything completely and utterly. Not just yesterday's events — even the thing of a single instant ago, that is, the perception of that instant, the emotion of that instant, all of it is forgotten in the very next moment. Only a faint, blurred copy of a very small part of it remains. Therefore, Gozo, is the present moment not something quite extraordinary?"

So he said.

Now, after nearly five years of wandering — repeatedly committing the folly of going back and forth between many physicians who prescribed different remedies for the same complaint — Gozo found in the end that he had not become the least bit wiser.

Far from becoming wiser, he had a feeling that he had somehow been made into something vague and incomprehensible, something that no longer seemed like himself.

His former self, though foolish, had felt — at least more than now — solid: it was almost a physical feeling; somehow he had seemed to have his own weight.

Now, he had become something weightless, something that would blow away in the wind.

He had had all manner of patterns painted on him from outside, but there was nothing inside.

This won't do, Gozo thought.

He also had a premonition that there might be a more direct answer than the search for meaning through thought alone.

The foolishness of having sought in such matters an answer like the solution to an arithmetic problem.

Just as he was beginning to realize these things, the water ahead grew murky and reddish-dark, and he arrived at the dwelling of Lady Jou, his destination.

Lady Jou appeared at first glance to be a perfectly ordinary immortal, who seemed rather slow-witted, if anything.

When Gozo arrived, she neither put him to work nor taught him anything.

Since the rigid and unyielding belong to the company of death, while the supple and yielding belong to the company of life, she seemed to dislike a stiff attitude of "I will learn! I will learn!"

Such a rigid attitude, it seemed, was what she found distasteful.

Only, very occasionally, she would murmur something, addressed to no one in particular.

At such times Gozo would quickly strain his ears, but the voice was low and he usually could not make it out.

Over three months, he was in the end unable to hear any teaching at all.

"Because a fool knows more about himself than a sage knows about others, one must cure one's own illness oneself"

— that was the only word he managed to obtain from Lady Jou.

At the end of the third month, Gozo at last gave up and went to bid farewell to the master.

At that moment, unusually, Lady Jou spoke at length and instructed Gozo.

On the foolishness of grieving over not having three eyes.

On the misfortune of those who cannot be at ease unless they try to govern by will even the growth of their nails and hair.

On the fact that a drunk who falls from a cart is not injured.

On the fact that one cannot, broadly speaking, say that thinking is bad — the happiness of one who does not think is like that of a pig who does not know seasickness — yet the one thing to be avoided is thinking about thinking.

Lady Jou spoke of a demon she had once known who possessed divine wisdom.

This demon knew everything from the movements of the stars above to the lives and deaths of microorganisms below, and by means of calculations of profound and subtle depth could know every event of the past by tracing backward, while also foreseeing any event that would occur in the future.

And yet this demon was tremendously unhappy.

The reason was that one day the demon suddenly wondered: "Why must all the events of the world, which I can entirely foresee, occur as they do — not in the processual sense of how, but in the fundamental sense of why?"

And it discovered that the ultimate reason for this could not be found even by means of its deep and subtle great calculations.

Why are sunflowers yellow?

Why is grass green?

Why does everything exist as it does?

This question tormented and troubled this vastly powerful demon, and in the end led it to a wretched death.

Lady Jou also spoke of another fairy.

This was a very small and wretched little demon, who always said that it had been born to search for something small and sharply glinting.

No one knew what this glinting thing was like, but regardless, the little fairy sought it earnestly, lived for it, and died for it.

And though the small sharply glinting thing was never found, Lady Jou said that the little fairy's life was thought to have been a very happy one.

While telling these things, there was, however, no explanation whatsoever of the meaning that these stories held.

Only at the very end did the master say the following:

"Blessed is one who knows holy madness. For such a one saves himself by slaying himself. Cursed is one who does not know holy madness. For such a one perishes gradually, by neither slaying himself nor preserving himself. Know that to love is a more noble way of understanding; to act is a more lucid way of thinking. Poor Gozo, who cannot help but steep every matter in the poison-juice of consciousness. The great changes that determine our destiny are all carried out without our consciousness accompanying them. Think about it: when you were born, were you conscious of it?"

Gozo humbly replied to the master.

The master's teaching is now felt in his very bones, he said.

The truth was that over his long years of wandering he had come to feel that thought alone only drove him deeper into the mire, yet he was suffering because he could not break through his present self and be reborn, he said.

Hearing this, Lady Jou said:

"When a mountain stream flows along and approaches the edge of a cliff, it first forms a whirlpool, and then falls as a waterfall. Gozo, you are now hesitating one step before that whirlpool. Once swept into the whirl, it is a single breath to the abyss; there is no room along the way for thought, reflection, or lingering. Timid Gozo. You are gazing at those who swirl and fall with both fear and pity, wondering whether to leap in yourself. Though you know full well that sooner or later you must fall to the valley below. Though you know too that not being swept into the whirlpool means no happiness either. And still you cannot tear yourself away from the position of the onlooker? Do you not know, foolish Gozo, that those who gasp and struggle within the fearsome whirlpool of life are, surprisingly, not as wretched as they appear from the outside — they are at least many times happier than the skeptical bystander?"

Though the master's teaching penetrated to the very marrow of his bones, Gozo still left the master with something unresolved remaining.

He would seek the Way from no one else, he resolved.

"No matter how impressive they look, none of them actually understands a single thing,"

Gozo muttered to himself as he started on his way home.

"It seems that everyone lives under a sort of agreement: 'Let us all pretend to understand. For we all perfectly well understand that we don't understand.' If such an agreement already exists, then I, who now make a fuss about not understanding and not understanding, am what an inconvenient and witless creature I am. Truly."

V

Because Gozo was the slow, bumbling sort, he could not manage the splendid feat of a sudden great enlightenment or an instantaneous awakening, but a gradual, invisible change appeared to be working upon him.

At first, it was a feeling of making a wager.

When one is given a choice, if one path leads to eternal mire and the other is steep yet might perhaps offer salvation, anyone would certainly choose the latter.

Why, then, had he been hesitating?

There he first noticed a base, utilitarian thing that had been present within his own way of thinking.

The feeling that if he chose the steep path, suffered through it to the end, and then found he was not saved after all, it would be an irreparable loss — this had been working on his indecision without his realizing it.

To avoid a thankless effort, to remain on a path that, though it spares the bones the trouble, leads only to definitive ruin — that was the feeling of my lazy, foolish, contemptible self.

While staying with Lady Jou, however, his feelings had gradually been driven in one direction.

What had at first been something driven into a corner was beginning to transform into something that moved forward of its own accord.

He had thought he had been seeking not his own happiness but the meaning of the world — but Gozo was beginning to understand that this was a terrible mistake, and that in truth he had been, under that peculiar guise, seeking his own happiness with the utmost tenacity.

He began to feel — not with a sense of self-deprecation but with a calm satisfaction — that he was not important enough a creature to speak of such things as the meaning of the world.

And before making such presumptuous claims, the courage arose to try out and unfold the self he surely still did not fully know.

Try before hesitating.

Without thinking of success or failure, try with every last effort, simply for the sake of trying.

Even if it ends in total failure, that is all right.

He who had always abandoned effort out of fear of failure had been elevated to the point where he no longer shrank from a thankless effort.

VI

Gozo's body was by now utterly exhausted.

One day, he collapsed by the side of a road and fell into a deep sleep on the spot.

It was a stupor in which he forgot everything entirely.

He slept on in that comatose state for several days.

He forgot hunger, and dreamed no dreams.

When he suddenly opened his eyes, he noticed that everything around him was lit with a pale brightness.

It was night.

A bright moonlit night.

A great round spring full moon was shining in from above the water, filling the shallow riverbed with a gentle white radiance.

Gozo rose, feeling refreshed after his deep sleep.

Immediately he became aware of his hunger.

He caught five or six fish that were swimming nearby with his bare hands, stuffed them into his mouth one after another, and then tipped back the gourd of wine that hung at his waist and drank straight from it.

It was delicious.

He drank with loud, gulping sounds.

When he had drunk the gourd to the bottom, he felt good and began to walk.

It was bright enough that every single grain of sand on the riverbed could be clearly distinguished.

Along the waterweeds, streams of tiny bubbles rose continuously, shining and swaying like beads of mercury.

Now and then small fish, startled by his figure, darted away, their white bellies flashing before vanishing into the shadow of the green algae.

Gozo grew gradually intoxicated.

Uncharacteristically, he felt the urge to sing and came close to raising his voice.

At that moment, from somewhere far away, there reached his ears a voice that seemed to be someone singing.

He stopped and listened carefully.

The voice seemed to come from outside the water and yet also from somewhere far below in the riverbed.

Straining to hear the song that reached him in a low yet clear voice, thin and faint,

"The spring breeze of the river country does not arise and blow;"

"The partridge cries, hidden deep within the flowers."

"When the three-tiered wave rises high, the fish transforms into a dragon;"

"The fool still scoops the night water of the pond."

So the lyrics appeared to go.

Gozo sat down on the spot and listened on, rapt.

In the transparent world of water tinted by pale moonlight, the monotonous song went on and on, thin and lingering as a hunting horn call fading on the wind.

He was neither asleep nor quite awake.

With a sweet aching feeling in his soul, Gozo sat there in a daze for a long time.

In time, he drifted into a strange world that was neither dream nor hallucination.

The waterweeds and the shadows of fish vanished suddenly from his field of vision, and all at once an indescribable fragrance of orchid and musk began to drift through the air.

Then he saw two unfamiliar figures advancing toward him.

The one in front was a formidable-looking man with a distinctive air, leaning on a monk's staff.

The one behind, wearing jeweled ornaments upon the head, a crown of flesh at the top, of marvelous and dignified appearance, faintly bearing a halo — it was plain that this was no ordinary person.

Then the one in front came near and spoke.

"I am Mokusha Egan, second son of the Heavenly King Takuto. And the one here before you is my master, the Great Bodhisattva Kanzeon of the South Sea. My master, who bestows equal compassion upon all, from heavenly dragons, yakshas, and gandharvas to asuras, garudas, kinnaras, mahoragas, humans, and non-humans alike — my master has this time beheld your suffering, Gozo, and has descended especially here to bring you salvation. Receive this with gratitude."

As Gozo instinctively bowed his head, there resounded in his ears a beautiful, feminine voice — one that might be called wondrous sound, or Brahma sound, or the sound of the ocean tide —

"Gozo, listen clearly to my words and contemplate them well. Gozo, you who do not know your place. Even to say one has attained what one has not yet attained, or to say one has realized what one has not yet realized — even this the World-Honored One has condemned as arrogance. How much more so, then, your seeking to realize what cannot be realized: what is that, if not the utmost arrogance? What you seek is something that even arhats and pratyekabuddhas have never sought, nor wished to seek. Wretched Gozo. How has your soul strayed into such a degraded labyrinth? If you were to attain right insight, your pure karma would be fulfilled at once; yet, your heart being weak and feeble, you have fallen into wrong insight and are now suffering these boundless torments. I deem that you cannot be saved through contemplation; from now on, cast aside all thought and strive to save yourself through the working of your body alone. Time is the working of people. The world, when surveyed as a whole, may seem without meaning, but when one works directly on its particulars, it holds infinite meaning. Gozo. First place yourself in a fitting position and devote yourself to fitting work. The 'why' that does not know its place — cast it all away henceforth. There is no salvation for you apart from this. Now, this coming autumn, three monks will cross this Ryusaga from east to west. It is the reincarnation of the Western Golden Cicada Elder, the Dharma Master Xuanzang, and his two disciples. Bearing the imperial mandate of Emperor Taizong of Tang, they journey to the Great Thunder Sound Temple of India to fetch the true scriptures of the Mahayana Tripitaka. Gozo, you too are to follow Xuanzang westward. That is your fitting place and your fitting duty. The path will be hard, but strive without doubt. Among Xuanzang's disciples there is one called Goku. He is without knowledge or learning, yet believes without a single doubt. You in particular will have much to learn from this one."

When Gozo raised his head again, there was nothing to be seen.

He stood dazed in the moonlit water at the river bottom.

A strange feeling.

In the corner of his hazy mind, he was thinking disconnected thoughts such as these:

"...Things of a certain kind happen to those who are apt for things of that kind, and at times when things of that kind are apt to happen. Half a year ago I would never have had such a strange dream as this. ...And if you think about it, the words of the Bodhisattva in just now's dream are no different at all from the words of Lady Jou or Kyuzen Nenshi — yet it seems strange that tonight they strike so deep. Not that I think a dream could be my salvation. But for some reason, I can't help feeling that perhaps the Tang monk foretold in the dream might really come through here. For when things of that kind are apt to happen, things of that kind happen..."

He thought so, and smiled for the first time in a long while.

VII

That autumn, Gozo did indeed meet the venerable Dharma Master Xuanzang of Great Tang, and through his power was able to leave the water and be transformed into a human being.

And so, together with the courageous and innocent Great Sage Equal to Heaven Sun Wukong, and the lazy, carefree Marshal of the Heavenly Canopy Zhu Wuneng, he set out on a new journey.

Even along that road, Gozo — who had not yet completely shed his old illness — still could not stop the habit of talking to himself.

He murmured:

"Something seems strange. Something doesn't quite sit right. Is ceasing to try to ask by force what one does not understand the same, in the end, as having understood? How vague! It is hardly a splendid shedding of the skin! Hmm, hmm — somehow it doesn't quite convince me. At any rate, I am grateful that it no longer troubles me as much as before..."

— "My Journey to the West"

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