Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (36 page)

Maruko’s eyes brightened. He grabbed a book off the shelf, and his taut, thin fingers whipped through the pages. The book appeared to be a dictionary of Buddhist terms. “Hmm. Hmm,” he said. Then, “Aha. Here it is. Here it is. Yes. It came into Japan via Buddhism.
Gamman
is not a good thing.” He shook his head. “Not a good thing at all.” He neatly slid the book back on the shelf.

Did I know the story of the historical Buddha? In his early years, Siddharta Gautama subjected his body to extreme hardship until
he discovered that such methods were not at all a path to enlightenment. In choosing the middle way—the Buddha’s way—people should not abuse their bodies. When Japanese people did
gamman
and tried to endure that which cannot be endured, they were harming themselves. “It is better,” Maruko said, “to speak up and to express oneself. We must learn to do this in Japan.”

He went on to say that Japan was undergoing tremendous hardship now. In recent decades, Japan had also experienced great wealth. But it was nature’s course for great wealth to be followed by days of relative poverty; neither extreme could be maintained forever. He also expressed strong opinions about nuclear power, in keeping with Eiheiji’s stance as an organization. The United Kingdom had about five earthquakes a year, and the United States two hundred. Japan, on the other hand, endured around four thousand earthquakes each year. It was irresponsible for such a country to have nuclear power, and it ought to be eradicated.

Then he paused and gathered his thoughts. “You have to think of time differently. Time is not just
your
time,” he said. “Time doesn’t just belong to humans.”

O
N THE BUS
out of Eiheiji, I sat with some of the other people who had stayed overnight with me. This was the first chance any of us had to talk to each other, aside from the one encounter in the bath. It turned out that everyone else had been just as tense as I had been. No one had slept well. No one was sure they would ever repeat a visit, let alone stay for three nights. Everyone was hungry and regretted not bringing snacks.

We all spoke of the man who had eaten dinner and breakfast so quickly.

“Do you think he ever noticed that he finished eating early?” I asked.

“Not that kind,” one of the women shrugged. “They never learn.”

“No wonder he is divorced!” another woman exclaimed. Everyone laughed.

T
HE VISIT TO
Eiheiji continues to affect me. Early on, it provided me with a way to talk to Buddhist priests with a greater understanding of what they do. On a visit to my family in Iwaki, for example, I told Daisuke about the man who had not been able to finish eating his meal at the same time as everyone else.

“Yes,” Daisuke laughed. “Now, imagine what it would be like to eat that way every day for a year.”

“Did you change?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, seriously. “You have to. You change in all kinds of ways that you aren’t even aware of.”

Nearly everyone I met who had trained at Eiheiji knew who Maruko was, and brightened when I recounted the conversation I had had with him. One young man who had just “come down” from Eiheiji told me that while he had endured a very difficult year, he had been extremely lucky to have had Maruko as his main teacher. Other boys had not been so fortunate. When I asked him to elaborate, he merely shook his head. Another priest told me that when tourists and guests were not looking, the monks who failed to perfectly carry out their instructions were dragged down the long wooden stairways by the hem of their cloaks and berated for failure. The teachers at Eiheiji, this priest told me, were much stricter than the ones at S
jiji.

Kaneta, himself Eiheiji-trained, laughed when I repeated these stories. The hardships made the young men stronger, and men needed hardship. It was something I, as a woman, could not understand. There was a reason why Japanese corporations and the Japan Self-Defense Forces emulated Eiheiji’s training. A big part of me
agreed with Kaneta’s assessment; I didn’t understand and didn’t want to. There is an aspect to Zen that is very male and very martial, and it is at odds with my essentially peaceful nature.

But I also found that when I considered meditation, I longed to be either at S
jiji or at Eiheiji. I wanted to be able to sit with other people, buoyed by their strength and perhaps lending a hand back. I also did not want meditating to be too easy or relaxing. Difficult experiences make us grow, and I had come to like the feeling of growth.

One evening, many months later, I had a conversation with Nagaoka Shunjo, the heir to Daianji temple located to the extreme north of T
hoku. Growing up in this remote part of Japan, Nagaoka had sworn he would never become a priest. He’d escaped provinciality by entering prestigious Waseda University in T
ky
. Then he’d worked for a corporation and used his vacation time to travel internationally. At age twenty-seven, Nagaoka had the sudden realization that he could not live in a city the rest of his life. Even though he was married and had a small child, he entered Eiheiji and stayed for a year. He spent the next years going back and forth between T
ky
, where his wife and child still lived, and T
hoku, to help his father care for Daianji. The 2011 disaster crystallized his commitment to Buddhism and to continuing his father’s work.

A thoroughly modern man, Nagaoka was alert, athletic, and learned. Sometimes when I talk to older priests, I feel the tug of generations, a shade of my grandfather, for example, who could not understand why I could not sit correctly on the floor. This was not so with Nagaoka, who was in all ways my generational peer. He wore a neat, fashionably minimal pair of black-wire-rim glasses. He drove a Toyota hybrid. He grasped irony and sarcasm.

The training at Eiheiji had been difficult, Nagaoka said, but it had made him feel that he could do anything. When the tsunami struck on March 11, he did not hesitate to get in his truck and drive
to the coast to see what he could do to help. It didn’t matter that people were afraid of priests or thought that priests only showed up for funerals—things I had often heard from other priests when they explained to me why they did not immediately go to T
hoku to volunteer. Nagaoka was able to focus on his desire to help, and help he did. Even now, once a month, he drove to Kamaishi to read to children in the elementary school. On other occasions, he assisted Kaneta with Café de Monk. Nagaoka credited his training at Eiheiji for giving him this resolve. The temple training meant he could respond to the world now not just with his mind but also with his body. With action. And this, he said, was the great gift of Buddhism and, specifically, of Zen. He wanted to use this training to see through the restoration of T
hoku, and he was grateful he was born in a position that gave him the chance to be helpful to others.