No sex in Japan

Finding a path in the jungle of samadhi, part 3

During 1998 and 99 I had been in contact with Gudo Wafu Nishijima, Soto Zen teacher and founder of the Dogen Sangha. He was a very accessible teacher, easy to talk to. He ran this center somewhere in Tokyo, not a temple — and I liked that.

I arrived early in the morning after a 14 hour trip but nobody was waiting for me. The residents had gone to work so I had to wait until somebody came. The first person I met was Nishijima’s assistant; she didn’t know I was coming so she called the teacher. After a short conversation in Japanese she gave me the phone. I said: “Hello, this is David, from Spain. Do you remember me?”.

There was a long silence; I was afraid the guy would send me out. I waited.

“No sex!” — he said, finally.

That was it. I was warned. I had traveled for almost 20 hours to sit like a rock, experience the “real thing”, live a Zen life but I wasn’t allowed to have sex with Nishijima’s assistant, who was afraid of me and of my barbaric manners (completely ignorant of Zen etiquette); I wasn’t allowed to have sex with the half-crazy woman I found in the center the next day while everyone else was at work; I wasn’t allowed to have sex with Hidako, young and beautiful and very interested in Spanish language and culture: she knew that in Spain you kiss twice in the cheeks when saying hi and goodbye.

And so she did when I left one week later.

I didn’t leave because I couldn’t have sex. It was more that I was scared of having to cook for 12 people when I couldn’t cook for myself; I was in shock watching the endless cables hanging in the streets of Tokyo; the noise; the hurry; the being a foreigner.

Nishijima’s teachings didn’t suit me either. It all depended on the sitting posture. So much so that if you can’t sit in the lotus posture you better say bye to meditation. For him realization was the act of properly sitting.

I moved on: Hosen-ji, a small temple in Kameoka, open for foreigners, gaijin, and for young Japanese in need of discipline (!).

It was a nice place: daily routine, waking up early, sitting, exercising, working, more sitting, reading, talking to the other residents…

There was this German monk. He suggested I became ordained so “I could travel throughout Asia for free”.

There was a Japanese monk: he couldn’t cope with lay life, got ordained but then couldn’t keep the streesful way of life of the Rinzai school and ended up here, the “easy” temple. There was this sadness around him.

At night he would go to the village to sing karaoke.

There was another monk who asked me to help him with the rice. We worked together, in silence, for about 10 minutes. Later I found out that he was the head of the temple and also the Abbot of a monastery. His name was Noritake Kotoku.

That was the best Zen teacher-student meeting I’ve ever had.

There was also this farmer, dead centuries ago, who one afternoon took me to his empty field and planted a seed in my throat. I read him in one take, closing the book was like returning from a very long journey and there was no ground under my feet. His name was Hongzhi Zhengjue but I forgot about him when I left Japan.

So I flew back home knowing that I was not going to follow the traditional Zen way. I had experienced culture shock, I had felt like a real foreigner, I had eaten meat without knowing it for the first time in 10 years, I had lived in a tradition that was closer to the culture of the “Catholic old Spain” than to the culture of liberation and, on top of that, I hadn’t had sex.

But working with rice and the hidden teacher had given me a tip as to how to face my practice back at home: working, sitting, keeping silence.
And Hongzhi’s pearl was forgotten, waiting in silence.