The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (22 page)

When I returned to the temple, nothing had changed. The dark, musty eternity of the temple life was so well established that there could be no possible discrepancy between one day and the next.

Lectures on the Zen canon were held twice a month and this happened to be one of the days. Everyone in the temple congregated in the Superior's quarters to hear him deliver his lecture. It occurred to me that he might well use his talk on the
Mutnonkan
scriptures as a pretext to censurc me in front of all the others. I had a special reason for believing this. From the fact of my sitting directly opposite the Superior at his lecture that evening, I felt that I was inspired by an exceedingly incongruous type of manly courage. It seemed to me that the Superior would respond to this by himself displaying a manly virtue: he would break through all hyprocrisy and confess his deed before everyone in the temple and, having done this, would censure me for my own shabby action.

The inmates of the temple all foregathered under the dim electric light with copies of the
Mumonkan
text in their hands. It was a cold night, but the only form of heating was a small brazier placed next to the Superior. I could hear people sniffing. They sat there, young and old, with the shadows making gradations of light on their bent-down faces; and there was something ineffably powerless about their expressions. The new apprentice, who worked as a primary-school teacher during the daytime, was a near-sighted young man and his spectacles kept on slipping down the bridge of his meager nose.

I alone was conscious of power in my body. At least that is what I imagined. The Superior opened his text and looked round at us all. I followed his gaze. I wanted him to see that I was most certainly not casting down my eyes. But when his eyes, surrounded by their fleshy wrinkles, came to me, they showed not the slightest interest and moved on to the next person.

The lecture started. I was only waiting for the moment when suddenly it would be turned to my problem. I listened intently. The Superior's high-pitched voice droned on. Not a sound came from his inner feeling.

I could not sleep that night. As I lay awake, I was filled with scorn for the Superior and with a desire to make fun of him for his hypocrisy. Gradually, however, a sense of regret awoke within me and began to modify my arrogant feelings. My scorn for the Superior's hypocrisy became connected in a strange way with the gradual weakening of my spirit, and finally I came to the point of thinking that, inasmuch as I now realized what a nonentity the Superior really was, my asking his forgiveness would in no way represent a defeat. My heart, having climbed to the top of a steep slope, was now swiftly running downhill.

I decided that I would go and make my apologies on the following morning. When the morning came, I decided that I would apologize some time during the course of the day. I noticed that the Superior's expression had not changed in the slightest.

It was a windy day. On my return from the university, I happened to open my drawer. I saw something wrapped in white paper. It was the photograph. Not a word was written on the paper. Evidently the Superior had intended to make an end of the matter by this method. He did not mean to overlook my action entirely, but to let me realize its futility. The curious way in which he had returned the photograph, however, brought a host of images flocking into my mind.

“So the Superior has been suffering also!” I thought. "He must have gone through the most extraordinary anguish before hitting on this method. Now he must surely hate me. It is probably not because of the photograph itself that he hates me, but because I have made him behave in such an ignoble way. As a result of this single photograph, he has been made to feel that he must behave surreptitiously in his own temple. He had to walk stealthily along the corridor while no one else was about, then he had to enter the room of one of his apprentices where he had never set foot before and had to open the drawer exactly as if he were committing some crime. Yes, now he has ample reason to hate me."

At these thoughts an indescribable joy flooded through me. Then I set myself to a pleasant task. I took a pair of scissors and cut the photograph into little pieces. Then I wrapped it securely in a strong sheet of paper from my notebook and, grasping it firmly in my hand, walked to a place next to the Golden Temple. The temple, filled with its usual gloomy equilibrium, towered into the windy, moonlit sky. The slender pillars stood close together; as the moon shone down on them, they looked like harpstrings and the temple itself looked like some huge, peculiar musical instrument. This particular impression depended on the height of the moon. Tonight there was no mistaking it. Yet the wind blew vainly through the spaces between those soundless harp-strings.

I picked up a stone, wrapped it in the paper and pressed the package tightly together. Then the tiny fragments of the girl's face, weighed down by the stone, sank into the center of the Kyoko Pond. The ripples spread out freely and soon reached the edge of the water where I was standing.

My sudden flight from the temple in November of that year came as an accumulation of all these things. When I thought about it later, I realized that this flight of mine, which seemed so sudden, had in fact been preceded by considerable reflection and hesitation. I preferred, however, to believe that I had been driven by some abrupt impulse. Since I was essentially lacking in anything impulsive, I was addicted to a form of spurious impulsiveness. In the case of a man who, for example, has been planning to visit his father's grave on the following day, but who, when the day comes and he finds himself in front of the station, suddenly changes his mind and decides to go and visit a drinking-companion of his, can one say that this shows any genuine impulsiveness
？
Is not his sudden change of mind a sort of revenge that he taxes on his own will? Is it not, in fact, something more
conscious
than his long-standing preparations to visit the grave?

The immediate motive for my flight lay in what the Superior had clearly revealed to me on the previous day: “There was a time when I planned to make you my successor here. But I can now tell you quite plainly that I have no such intention.”

This was the first time that I had heard anything of the sort from him, but I should really have been expecting and preparing for the announcement. I cannot pretend that it came to me as a bolt from the blue or that I was dumbfounded and panic-stricken. Even so, I like to believe that my flight was detonated by the Superior's words and caused by a sudden impulse.

After I had made sure of the Superior's anger by means of my trick with the photograph, I started to neglect my studies at the university. This was quite obvious. In my preparatory year's course, I had the best results in Chinese and History, scored eighty-four marks in those two courses and a total of seven hundred and forty-eight marks, thus ranking twenty-fourth in a class of eighty-four students. Out of four hundred and sixty-four hours I was absent for only fourteen. In my second year I made a total of only six hundred and ninety-three marks and sank to the rank of thirty-fitth out of seventy-seven students. It was in my third year, however, that I really began to neglect my studies—not because I had any money to waste my time with, but simply from the joy of being idle. And it so happened that the first term of the third year started just after the photograph incident.

When the first term finished, the university sent a report to the temple and I was reprimanded by the Superior. The reason for this reprimand was that my marks were poor and that I had been absent for so many hours, but what particularly irked the Superior was that I had missed the special classes in Zen practice, which were only held for three days during the term. These classes in Zen practice were held for three days before the beginning of the summer, winter, and spring holidays—nine days in all during the year—and were conducted in the same form as those given in the various specialized seminaries.

On the occasion of this scolding the Superior summoned me to his private room, which in itself was a rare event. I stood there silently with my head bowed. In my heart I was waiting for his words to move onto a certain subject; but he made not the slightest reference to the incident of the photograph, nor did he go back and mention the prostitute and her blackmail.

It was from this time that the Superior's attitude toward me become noticeably cold. This was, so to say, the very upshot that I had desired, the very evidence that I had longed to see; and it represented a sort of victory for me. Yet the only thing that had been necessary to achievc it had been idleness on my part. In the first term of my third year I had been absent for sixty hours-about five times as much as my total absences for the entire first year. During all those hours I did not read any book, nor did I have money to spend on amusements. Sometimes I would talk to Kashiwagi, but most of the time I stayed by myself doing nothing. Yes, l stayed silently by myself doing nothing, and my memories of Otani University are intimately mixed with memories or inactivity. This sort or inactivity was perhaps my own special form of Zen practice and, while I was engaged in it, I was never for a single moment conscious of any boredom.

Once I sat for hours on the grass watching a colony of ants engaged in transporting minute particles of red earth. It wasn't a matter of the ants having aroused my interest. On another occasion I stood for ages outside the university, staring like a dolt at the thin wisp of smoke that rose from a factory chimney at the back. It wasn't that the smoke had caught my fancy. At such times I felt as though I was drenched up to my neck in the existence that was
myself.
The world outside me had cooled down in parts and had then been reheated. How shall I put it? I felt that the outside world was spotted and again that it was striped. My inner being and the outer world slowly and irregularly changed places. The meaningless scene that surrounded me shone before my eyes; as it shone, it forced its way into me and only those parts of the scene that had not entered continued to glitter vividly in a place beyond. Those glittering parts could be either the flag on a factory, or an insignificant spot on the wall, or an old, discarded clog that lay on the grass. Moment by moment they sprang to life within me—these and every other sort of thing—and then they died away. Or should I say, every other sort of shapeless thought, Important things joined hands with the most trivial things, and the political development in Europe about which I had read in the morning paper became inextricably connected with the old clog that lay at my feet.

I spent a long time thinking about the acute angle formed by the tip of a certain blade of grass. Perhaps the word “thinking” is not quite appropriate. That strange, trifling conception of mine was no continuing process, but reappeared persistently, like some refrain. Why did that acute angle have to be so acute, If instead it were obtuse, would the classification “grass” be lost and would nature inevitably be destroyed from that one corner of its totality?
When a single tiny cog is removed from nature, is not nature itself being entirely overthrown? Then my mind would aimlessly examine the problem from one point of view after another.

The Superior's reprimand soon became known among the people in the temple and their attitude towards me became visibly more hostile. My fellow apprentice who had been so envious of my having been recommended for the university course now gave a triumphant chuckle whenever he saw me.

I continued my life in the temple during the summer and the autumn, and hardly spoke to anyone. On the morning of the day before my flight the Superior had the deacon summon me to his room. It was the ninth of November. Since I was about to leave for the university, I was wearing my student uniform.

The Superior's plump face was normally cheerful, but in the anticipation of having to tell me something unpleasant, it had become strangely congealed. So far as I was concerned, however, it was quite agreeable to see the Superior looking at me as though he were observing a leper. This was precisely the expression that I had wanted to see in him-a look of human feeling.

The Superior turned away from me. As he spoke, he rubbed his hands together over the brazier. The soft flesh of his palms made only a slight sound, yet it was jarring to my ears and seemed to destroy the clarity of the winter-morning air. The contact of the priest's flesh against his flesh produced an unnecessarily intimate feeling.

"How sad your late father would be to know about this!" he said. "Look at this letter! They've written again from the university in the strongest terms. You'd better start thinking about what will happen if things go on like this.” And then he passed directly to those other words of his: "There was a time when I planned to make you my successor here. But I can now tell you quite plainly that I have no such intention.”

I remained quiet for a long time. Then I said: "So you aren't going to back me up any longer?"

"Did you really expect that I'd go on backing you up after this?" asked the Superior after a pause.

I did not answer his question, but presently I heard myself stuttering out something on quite a different subject: “You know me down to the last detail, Father. I think I know about you, too.”

"And what if you do know?” said the Superior, a gloomy look coming into his eyes. "It amounts to nothing. It's all quite useless."

Never before had I seen a human being's face that had so utterly deserted the present world. Never had I seen a man who, though he sullied his hands with money and women and every other detail of material life, so thoroughly despise the present world. I was filled with hatred, as if I were in the presence of a corpse that was still warm and of healthy complexion.