Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (31 page)

E
ATING
T
OGETHER

L
ONG AGO, WHEN
I was a teenager, Semp
had suggested that I go to Eiheiji to better grasp the meaning of Zen. He had offered to sponsor me for the visit; you have to have an affiliation with a S
t
Zen temple to be allowed to stay overnight at Eiheiji. Instead, I chose to go to college and read lots of books on religion, convinced that classwork was the best way for me to learn anything. After having spent time at S
jiji, however, I understood that learning from books was not at all the same as actual practice. Now I was here at Eiheiji to try to better understand what had shaped priests like Kaneta and Semp
.

Today Eiheiji trains as many as two hundred monks at any one time. Most of these young men are like my cousins, children of priests who are expected to take over their family temple. Occasionally someone comes along who is drawn to Buddhism solely out of a sincere interest, someone who wants to study at Eiheiji for the experience alone. Such a candidate must still have a
r
shi
, a “master” who runs his own temple and who can vouch for his pupil’s aptitude. For these people, Eiheiji is the only place to study; this is where their idol, D
gen, lived and taught. In its remoteness, its history, and its age, Eiheiji has a mystique and, for many, an authenticity that S
jiji
can never match. Everyone I had met at S
jiji told me that if I really wanted to get at the heart of what D
gen had taught, I needed to go to Eiheiji.

T
WICE A YEAR,
in April and November, young monks who wish to train at Eiheiji arrive early in the morning, stand outside the main gate, and ring a bell. This is how they ask for admission. Two stone tablets inside the gate bear the following inscription: “Only those concerned with the problem of life and death should enter here. Those not completely concerned with this problem have no reason to pass this gate.”

If it is April, it is still very cold outside, and there will likely be snow on the ground at Eiheiji. These young monks dress simply and traditionally in black tunics, which are belted and flare into a short skirt. They also wear white leggings, straw hats, and straw shoes and carry a simple bag on their backs. They are made to wait, often for hours, before a senior monk opens the door and yells at them. They wait some more until they are allowed inside. Then they are made to wait some more. Finally, a senior monk quizzes them: Did they read the tablets? What do the tablets mean? How can they expect to become priests if they did not even notice the tablets? Everything—even waiting outside in the cold—is part of their training, and they will be expected to subject themselves fully to their education.

Eiheiji, whose name means “Temple of Eternal Peace,” is in a remote part of Fukui Prefecture, which is located about two hundred miles northwest of T
ky
and faces the Japan Sea. The Eiheiji compound is composed of more than seventy buildings that climb up the side of a mountain and are connected by a series of covered staircases and walkways. In between the fortress-like buildings, centuries-old cedar trees shoot skyward, some as tall as one hundred
feet, while brooks run alongside the wooden staircases. There is a deep feeling of permanence, as though the temple has always been a part of the mountain. The day I visited, pausing by the old gate, I watched a young monk dressed in black run from left to right across an elevated wooden walkway balanced partway up the mountain. He looked like a raven in flight. Before flying out of view, the monk paused to bow toward some altar so far up the hillside that I could not yet see it. I felt like I was about to enter some other realm populated by mysterious beings who swooped from branch to branch on trees that supported a wood and stone fortress.