Tag Archives: zen

What Do You Mean, Raindrops?

Posted on by

rain003

I like the cat. It’s barely there; just a single line dividing inside and outside. And then it’s bound by the bottom of the panel, so the something inside and the nothing outside seem equally arbitrary. The tail is a separate thing; it could be a raindrop sliding down the surface of the panel. The cat’s eyes and nose could be raindrops too. The lit lit lit is the sound of the cat tail raindrop hitting the panel, and the sound of the eye and nose raindrop hitting the cat. One lit for each, the sound of rain dripping.

The window in the corner could just as easily be a painting, or a drawing. In fact, it is a drawing. Is that the delusion? Or the bare substance? The raindrops in the window, or the picture, are not raindrops. But they aren’t empty either. Ideas, not clinging, but falling…at least in theory.

I think the comics almost makes more sense if you rearrange the panels, or drop some of the panels. The monk’s questions and answers don’t really seem to add anything; it’s less a socratic dialogue than a monologue with more or less distracting interjections. The fact that there’s a pretense of communication almost makes the thing more hermetic. If Ching-Ch’ing doesn’t have an interlocutor, then some of the contradictory statements seem less like things you have to parse, more like he’s vacillating inside his own head. Instead of setting his own conduct up in opposition to that of ordinary people, you could read him, without the monk, as saying that he, too, is an ordinary person, on the brink of falling into delusion about himself. In fact, treating the rain as a metaphor could be seen as a step into delusion. The rain is not people upside down falling into delusion about themselves. The rain is the rain. But the bare substance is hard to express. It turns into deluded people, or into the word “lit” (like “literature”?) or into the picture of a picture of rain. To express the bare substance, all you’ve got is representation.

The title design, with the little raindrops on either side, is pretty clearly twee. Maybe it’s the title Ching Ch’ing is referring to when he says that ordinary people pursue outside objects; the title is outside the comic, labeling it, and providing the one real drawing of rain (if you don’t count the cat’s tale as a raindrop, and count the window as a picture.) The unnecessary fillip of design, and of such an unassumingly finicky design. The little “lits”, the cat, the bald-headed monk tilting his head just so, and the world in which equal line weight and lack of shading means that bodies and backgrounds fail to become each other only through the delicacy of reader and creator’s mutual forbearance — all of these seem to try to find profundity through ostentatious smallness. You wonder if the bare truth of Zen is a tea cosy.

In the first panel, the sound outside is the sound outside might be seen, not as the sound outside the room (wherever that is) but rather as the sound outside the speech bubble itself. But the speech bubble has a sound inside itself too — or at least as much of one as the sound outside. If Ching Ch’ing is seen as a shape, then the sounds — his speech, the lit lit — are all outside him. Pursuing outside objects could be the words running outside the self, chasing those lit lits.

Or perhaps what’s outside is us, looking down, upside down over the page, falling into delusions, or on the brink of doing so, by trying to avoid falling into delusion by reading about avoiding falling into delusion.

In the little additional text at the bottom, Porecellino says you and I discuss how people cling to words and ideas when the Old Monk drops by. That makes the monk the rain, falling from outside to inside. But which monk is this? Is it Ching Ch’ing? Or is it the monk talking to Ching Ching? I think it’s probably supposed to be the first, but I kind of like the idea of the straight man monk showing up, maybe with the cat, and all of us standing around confused together. No rain.

Nothing Special

Posted on by

The monk Tao-hsin was walking in the forest with the sage Fa-yung, who lived alone in the temple on Mount Niu-t’ou, and was so holy that the birds used to bring him offerings of flowers. As the two men were walking, the roar of a wild animal sounded nearby, making Tao-hsin jump frightfully. Fa-yung said, “I see it is still with you!” (attachment to the Earthly illusion). Later on, the two were sitting on two stones next to the temple when Fa-yung went inside to fetch the tea. While he was gone, Tao-hsin wrote the Chinese character for Buddha on the rock where Fa-yung had been sitting. When Fa-yung returned to sit down again, he saw the sacred Name written there and hesitated to sit. “I see,” said Tao-hsin, “it is still with you!” And thus Fa-yung became fully awakened…and the birds brought flowers no more.

__________________

The thing I first noticed about John Porcellino’s short comic, “Christmas Eve” is the breathing.

Because of the simplicity of his style — unvaried line weights, the lack of shading — the bulbous breath hanging in the air is as solid as everything else around it. It could be a distended snow flake, or some sort of alien critter curiously contemplating the (no more or less weighty) human nose. In that third panel, it even has an oddly solid sound effect appended to it — the “klump” is probably supposed to be a car door closing, but it could just as easily be the sound of the tadpole-like-breath bumping up against the panel border. Snow, air, beard-stubble, panel gutter — flesh or vapor, diegetic or un, everything exists in the same flat, empty whiteness, teetering on that thin line between something and nothing.

“Christmas Eve” wanders or drifts back and forth across that line repeatedly. The shapeless blob of breath seems, in that bottom left panel, to actually become the human figure, or the human figure becomes it. Breath out, and breath is gone; breath in and breath is you, breath out and the breath is gone. The self is lost, and found, and lost…or possibly found and lost and found. Drawing is breathing is creation, as long as what’s created is almost indistinguishable from nothing being created, or from nothing being erased.

Domingos Isabelinho highlighted this drawing in an earlier post, and it’s still my favorite in the comic; I love the way the lampost just ends, as if Porcellino got tired of drawing it…and the way the snow looks like its embodied light, falling in grainy dots only a little smaller than the footprints below. I think the wavery lines in the middle are supposed to be drifts of snow…but they also read as the lamplight, so what you see and how you see it, perception and perceived, merge into one.

On the penultimate page of the six page story, Porcellino writes the first words of the story: “I don’t want to be alive anymore”. At first I took this as a melodramatic suicide wish, which was irritating…and also seemed to clash with the comics gentle, almost devotional quiet. Thinking about it, though, it seems like it’s less a wish for death than a statement about his relationship to life. Wanting floats off like breath — or maybe the self is the breath that leaves wanting behind. In either case, what goes is desire and what’s left is the self as a kind of gift, that returns after being let go.

Porcellino seems, with probable intent, to be teetering on the verge of Zen. His wavery outline figures even recall Zen calligraphy, like this drawing by Buddhist priest Jiun Onko.

I’m not sure the comparison necessarily redounds to Porcellino’s credit, unfortunately. Onko’s brush strokes provide a dramatic, intense sense of creation as process which Porcellino’s figures can’t approach, for one thing. And, perhaps more importantly, the single image, summoning something out of nothing, with that one calligraphic statement (which means “Not Know”) seems to resonate much more powerfully, and simultaneously more subtly, than Porcellino’s short but still somehow too long narrative. Really, everything Porcellino had to say is on that first page, or in that image with the lamp. When he gets to the end, and we’re seeing man-looking-at-clouds we start to verge on treacly transcendence and Hollywood clichés. The moment’s too big and too small at the same time, the impetus for narrative closure and meaning overwhelming the earlier pages’ careful not-knowing.

On the other hand, though…there is something very Zen about art that fails in being Zen. Onko’s drawing is almost too good. I think it’s arguably one of the greatest comics ever, actually, but the very greatness perhaps makes it less Zen-like — it’s so holy that the birds flock around it.

Porcellino, on the other hand, flirts with greatness, but ends instead with comfortable banality. It is just a typical story about taking a walk on Christmas Eve, after all. The breath is just breath, the light is just light. There’s nothing special, and the blank space at the bottom of the last page is just there because Porcellino didn’t have enough story to fill it.

______________
 
 

The Snow Man
Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 
 
 

Ancient Zen Battle

Posted on by

I wrote this when I was in college about 20 years ago. It’s probably a little earnest by my current standards, but what the hey; we were all young once.
________________________

In The Way of Zen,  Alan Watts points out that, in Japan, training in the arts “follows the same essential principles as training in Zen.” In this context, he specifically mentions Eugen Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery  as “the best account of this training thus far available in a Western language.” (195)  Herrigel’s narrative does, in fact, illustrate, in many ways, the Zen philosophies, or, perhaps more correctly, the Zen experience which Watts discusses.  At the same time, however, the ideas which Herrigel derives from his studies differ noticeably, at several crucial points, from those which Watts cites as most characteristic of Zen.  A comparison of the two accounts, then, can both provide insight into Zen Buddhism and illuminate the differing methodologies which Herrigel and Watts employ.

The most basic tenet of Zen, both Watts and Herrigel indicate, is that one should be unselfconscious; should have the ability to cease thinking.  Watts explains that “the mind cannot act without giving up the impossible attempt to control itself beyond a certain point.  It must let go of itself….” (139)  Thus, as Herrigel puts it, one must become “purposeless on purpose.” (33)  Herrigel’s training is, in large part, a technique for overcoming this basic contradiction.  When Herrigel is practicing drawing his bow, his master exhorts him to “Concentrate entirely on your breathing,” so as to perform each action effortlessly, without thought. (21-22)  As Watts points out, “breathing [is]…the process in which control and spontaneity…find their most obvious identity,” and so the concentration on breath is a means of destroying the illusion that it is necessary to think and plan in order to act.(197-8)

The purpose of Zen training, then, is to release the students own mental control over him or herself.  This is often done, Watts suggests, through intensifying the student’s efforts at self-regimentation until the ultimate futility of this rigidity becomes so manifest that it spontaneously drops away.  As the master demands that the student cease controlling himself, the student intensifies his efforts to cease intensifying his efforts, until, as Watts writes, he becomes “totally baffled by everything,” gives up utterly the effort to understand the world around him, and thus begins to act without thought.(166)  This is precisely the process which Herrigel describes.  “Weeks went by,” he writes, “without my advancing a step.  At the same time I discovered that this did not disturb me in the least….I lived from one day to the next….” (52)

For both Watts and Herrigel, the final results of the achievement of self-liberation are, at the least, profound, and, at most, decidedly mystical.  “When every last identification of the Self with some object or concept has ceased,” writes Watts, one enters “the state of consciousness which is called divine, the knowledge of Brahman….represented as the discovery that this world which seemed to be Many is in truth One….” (38)  Herrigel, too,  writes that when he finally shot without thinking, he discovered that “‘Bow, arrow, goal, and ego, all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them.  And even the need to separate has gone.'” (61)  Zen, therefore, is both a kind of psychological technique and a religion, both a means of promoting mental health and a way of discovering what Herrigel, especially, refers to as a deeper Truth.

Thus, Herrigel’s description of the experience of his training seems to follow and to demonstrate Watts’ outline of the essential precepts of Zen thought and teaching.  However, there are several difficulties in reconciling the two accounts, partially centering around the fact that, for Watts, Zen’s emphasis on spontaneity and its essentially anti-institutional character makes any effort to teach Zen problematic. (169)  The central point of Zen, Watts contends, “is that in fact we are already in nirvana  — so that to seek nirvana  is the folly of looking for what one has never lost.” (61)  This means, of course, that the attempt to “learn” Zen is, at base, misguided, and that, therefore, Herrigel’s quest is itself a refutation of the object that he seeks.

Supposedly, therefore, when Herrigel “awakens” he should recognize the futility of his search — and this recognition should be apparent throughout his book, since he wrote it, after all, following the completion of his training.  This is not, however, the case.  Instead, Herrigel repeatedly refers to his studies as purposeful, progressing clearly through stages.  “…the breathing,” he writes, “had not of course been practiced for its own sake,”  while the Master himself remarks after his class has successfully drawn their bows that “‘All that you have learned hitherto…was only a preparation for loosing the shot.'” (20-27)  Towards the end of the training the Master even explicitly suggests that his students are headed for a specific destination, commenting that “‘He who has a hundred miles to walk should reckon ninety as half the journey…'” (54)  Watts, on the other hand, insists that “Zen…is a traveling without point….To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead….”(197)

Related to Watts’ emphasis on the futility of searching for Zen is his insistence on the manner in which Taoism, and later Zen, “made Buddhism a possible way of life for human  beings….” (29)  Watts points out that since everyone is already in a state of awakening, Zen has “no need to…drag in religion or spirituality as something over and above life itself.” (152)  To separate the Zen experience from normal everyday life, to create a special “spiritual” realm, is, in fact, diametrically opposed to the very basis of Zen, which recognizes that “‘all duality is falsely imagined.'” (38)  Thus, just as to search for Zen is to conceal that for which one searches, to confine Zen to one portion of one’s life, to suggest that Zen inhabits a realm to the side of the world in which one eats and sleeps, is to eliminate that which one attempts to confine.  This is why when the holy man Fa-yung achieved awakening, the birds no longer brought him flowers, for upon being awakened, he cast off his holiness, and became simply human. (Watts 89-90)

For Herrigel, however, the art of archery, and Zen itself, is a mystical experience, distinctly separate from, and distinctly beautiful in comparison to, the incidents of “normal” life.  Before he began his undertaking of archery, he writes, he “had realized…that there is and can be no other way to mysticism than the way of personal experience and suffering.” (14)  Each of the Zen arts, he insists, “presuppose a spiritual attitude…an attitude which, in its most exalted form, is characteristic of Buddhism and determines the nature of the priestly type of man.” (6)  The study of archery, in fact, separates Herrigel from the rest of the world, for his Master informs him that “when you meet your friends and acquaintances again in your own country:things will no longer harmonize as before.  You will…measure with other measures.” (65) [1]  Similarly, when the Master “gave a few shots with [Herrigel’s] bow, it was as if the bow let itself be drawn…more willingly.” (59-60)

For Herrigel, then, Zen is, seemingly, primarily a religious experience, while Watts is more interested in understanding the philosophical and psychological implications of Zen thought.  Where Herrigel, for instance,  discusses the deep feeling of gratitude which the pupil feels for his teacher, Watts investigates the manner in which Zen uses the master as authority figure in order to create a “formidable archetype” from which the student must free himself. (Herrigel 46, Watts 163)  Thus Herrigel is more concerned with the emotive quality of the relationship, while Watts concentrates on the purpose of the master-pupil contact, and on its effectiveness in provoking “awakening”.

Watts, in other words, is far more objective, and in many ways, therefore, a good deal more convincing in his description of Zen than is Herrigel.  It is difficult to take Herrigel too seriously when he makes such statements as “[The student] must dare to leap into the Origin, so as to live by the Truth and in the Truth….” if only because any mention of “Truth” immediately provokes a large swell of skepticism, at least in the Western student. (81)  Watts, on the other hand, takes care to set forth his own limitations, and to point out the difficulties of discussing a subject which is so vividly linked to experience. (xii)  As a result, one almost automatically begins to judge Herrigel’s work by the standards which Watts constructs.

Yet Zen is, as Watts himself points out, a philosophy which is vehemently opposed to the use of the “critical perspective.” (xiii)  If the central tenet of Zen is an opposition to overthinking, then evaluating that tradition itself is, obviously, self-contradictory.  Watts’ argument that “basic reality, remains spontaneous and ungrasped whether one tries to grasp it or not” is intellectually satisfying, and in itself, powerfully liberating.  But it is difficult, on the basis of such largely theoretical statements, to deny the validity of Herrigel’s first-hand experience, especially given Zen’s emphasis on action over thought.  Ultimately, perhaps, Watts says all that can be said about the Zen tradition, while Herrigel tries, in a manner which may be misguided (though that too, is somewhat difficult to judge) to illuminate portions of that experience which might better be left undiscussed, since verbalizing them seems, at least for Herrigel, to lead to a kind of generalized and unconvincing mysticism.  Nonetheless, to refute the role of Zen in archery because of the limitations of Herrigel’s narrative would be a disservice to Herrigel, to Zen itself, and to Watts, whose brilliant discussion of Zen nonetheless takes pains to remind his readers of the limitations of words in describing and explaining a system which is, at heart, more an experience than a philosophy.


[1]Besides contradicting Watts, this statement is also particularly confusing, since, after all, it seems relatively obvious that, with or without Zen, after spending five or six years in Japan, Herrigel would virtually have to expect that his relationships with his friends and acquaintances would be somewhat changed.

Old Wine in New Wineskins: Hisashi Sakaguchi’s Ikkyu

Posted on by

Appropriated from text scans of The Comics Journal #241 (April 2002). As such typos and grammatical mistakes will be numerous.

Images read from right to left. English translations of Ikkyu’s poetry taken from Stephen Berg’s Crow with No Mouth, Jon Carter Covell’s Zen’s Core: Ikkyu‘s Freedom and John Stevens’ Zen Masters.

 

One pause between each crow’s

Reckless shriek Ikkyu Ikkyu Ikkyu

As a child, and already showing traces of his life-long distaste for all things hypocritical, Ikkyu Sojun was noted for his precocious intelligence and worldly wisdom. As a monk, wandering the cities and countryside of medieval Japan, he was known both as an ascetic and a libertine, a paradox which has dearly fed his reputation during modern times. He was a poet capable of the profundity of a work such as Skeletons (Gaikotsu; his most famous work concerning a philosophical discussion about Zen and life with a group of skeletons) and the uninhibited passions displayed in his more earthly verse (“A beautiful woman’s hot vagina’s full of love; I’ve given up trying to put out the fire of my body”).

He was a monk who deprived himself of various amenities and honors throughout his life, and yet drank to excess and felt no shame in having a tumble in bed with a comely woman. At the age of 77, he met and fell in love with the Lady Shin, a blind 25-year old minstrel; elevating her by his words and poetry to hitherto unknown heights in the history of Zen. He is considered by many to be Japan’s greatest Zen master.

The name, Ikkyu (which literally means “one pause”), indicates the space between conception and death and thus “this lifetime.” In his 1000-page graphic novel, Hisashi Sakaguchi melds history, legend and spectacle with more subtle matters: religious devotion and the moral and spiritual dilemmas in the creation of art. This amalgamation of fact and fiction is important since the life of Japan’s most famous Zen master has been clouded by tradition and time.

Some of the most famous stories concerning Ikkyu have arisen from various anecdotes about his childhood in Ankoku-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple. For brevity’s sake, these have been combined into single tales by Sakaguchi. One notable episode occurs in the courts of the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who asks the young Ikkyu to bind a tiger depicted in a screen painting. In response to this, Ikkyu asks for some rope and when given these implements promptly requests that the shogun drive the tiger from the painting for his feat to be accomplished.

This oft-related tale is united with another story (not usually involving Yoshimitsu) in which Ikkyu is presented with a dish of fish and vegetables which he readily begins to devour. When rebuked for consuming the fish, Ikkyu responds that his mouth is like the Kamakura Highway upon which all beasts travel freely. Angered by his comment, the shogun draws his sword and, pointing it at Ikkyu, inquires how its blade would go down. Ikkyu replies that the sword is not permitted passage down his mouth since he cannot allow dangerous items to pass through his mouth (this being the very orifice by which he asks Buddha for peace and safety).

This fabled meeting is of some importance, as tradition has it that Ikkyu was the first-born son of the emperor Go Komatsu and his favorite concubine (said to be a daughter of the southern senior imperial lineage). By the time of Ikkyu’s birth, the Ashikaga shoguns had manipulated the situation such that the Northern junior imperial line was in the ascendant and a child with blood from the defeated Southern line was no longer politically acceptable. As such, Ikkyu’s mother was removed from the imperial palace and gave birth to Ikkyu in the confines of a private residence. Ikkyu’s bitterness concerning this abandonment is a theme that recurs throughout his poetry even in later life.

*          *          *

The first part of Sakaguchi’s tale is played out against the backdrop of the Muromachi period, an era characterized by the reopening of trade with China, a flourishing of the arts, and the erection of various architectural masterpieces, including the famous Kinaku-ji (Golden Pavilion). Sakaguchi takes care to ground his work in the rich historical framework of the times, creating a web of connections between Ikkyu and some of Noh’s pre eminent practitioners. Zen permeates the characters’ lives; their personalities reflecting the author’s thoughts concerning the preservation of a certain honor and truth, as characters become mired in disputes over artistic and religious integrity.

The interweaving of Zen with the cultural and the political lives of the Japanese elite is not an invention on Sakaguchi’s part. The organization of the main Zen monastic complexes into the Five Mountains (gozan) administrative system towards the beginning of the Muromachi period allowed a significant extension of Zen’s cultural influence. Two other eminent Five Mountains monks, Zekkai Chushin and Gido Shushin, were also important political advisors and tutors to the shoguns of their time (including Yoshimitsu).

With specific relevance to the manga, the Muromachi period has been noted for a flowering of Noh theatre. Zeami Motokiyo (1363-1443), classical Noh’s finest playwright, lived during this period and his triumphs and misfortunes are intertwined with those of Ikkyu in Sakaguchi’s series.

In the manga, Zeami and his son Motomasa are always depicted wearing their Noh masks, whether onstage or in conversation with their peers or patrons — their lives becoming a stage upon which art and politics are discussed. Zeami is usually seen wearing the mask depicting an old man. The main exception to this occurs when he is reminiscing upon the past and his first performances in front of Yoshimitsu where he is seen wearing the mask of a young man.

This narrative device goes beyond a utilitarian depiction of advancing age. Thomas Blenman Hare (writing in Zeami’s Style) states that in Zeami’s list of six typical plays in the Aged Mode, “in all but one of these, the old man is actually a god in disguise; only one of Zeami’s ‘old men’ is actually a man.” Hare, quoting an old Zeami manuscript, indicates that the Aged Mode “produces an air of divinity and utter tranquility,” words which perfectly describe Zeami’s final state in the closing volume of Ikkyu.

On’ami (Zeami’s nephew and Motomasa’s nemesis in the manga) on the other hand is invariably seen wearing the mask of a demon (oni). It has been suggested that he preferred such plays and excelled at them where Zeami slowly began to renounce such roles. Hare writes that Zeami had “come to reject entirely the role of the true demon-hearted demon” in later life, and with regards demon Noh, he quotes the famous playwright and actor as writing, “This is unknown in our school of Noh.”

Noh presents itself as a perfect mirror for the unspoken mysteries upon which Ikkyu’s life turns. The two cornerstones of Noh are monomane (“an imitation of things”) and yugen (meaning “mystery and depth”), aspects which reflect the very real political intrigues of the manga and the half-hidden wonders in which Ikkyu periodically partakes. There is even reason to believe that Sakaguchi’s work as a whole is partially constructed on the principles of Noh, with the story of the main character (the shite, in this case the Ashikaga shogun and, at other times, Zeami) being clarified and deepened by the philosophical and personal interrogations of the waki (the secondary character, in many instances a traveling priest which fits the description of Ikkyu).

The parallels Sakaguchi suggests are not extravagant. Critics point to the Zen influence in Zeami’s Kakyo, which the author describs as “a summary in six chapters and twelve articles of what I myself have learned about the art.” He is also said to have had encounters with a number of prominent Zen priests during his lifetime. Better documented is Ikkyu’s relationship (recounted in the manga) with the Noh actor Komparu Zenchiku, Zeami’s son-in-law and one of Noh’s great aestheticians. Ikkyu wrote at least two poems in praise of Zenchiku during his lifetime and there is correspondence demonstrating a close relationship between Zeami and his son-in-law. In this way, the separate paths traveled by Ikkyu and Zeami — delineated with exquisite care by Sakaguchi in his manga — are brought to a partial resolution in the person of Zenchiku when he encounters and debates an arrogant yet visibly confused On’ami in the closing volume of the manga.

 

Filled with shame I can barely hold my tongue.

Zen words are overwhelmed and demonic forces emerge victorious.

These monks are supposed to lecture on Zen,

But all theye do is boast of family history.

Ikkyu left Ankoku-ji (following a short period at Mibu temple) in 1410. Disgusted by the political machinations of the masters of the Gozan monasteries of Kyoto, he left behind the verses above depicting his frustrations with the corruption and unctuousness of his fellow monks; feelings which he would carry with him throughout his life, for Ikkyu is known for his disdain of Five Mountains Zen.

Soon after leaving Ankoku-ji, he begins to train under a new master, Ken’o, who he meets after meditating on his life while staring at a lotus flower. This occurs a few pages after Zeami is seen doing the same while contemplating his own treatise on Noh [1]. Ikkyu first chances upon Ken’o as he is distributing food offerings to the children of a shanty town. He later finds him at a ramshackle hut (defiantly called a temple) outside Kyoto. Life under Ken’o proves to be one of ceaseless toil compared to the comforts of Ankoku-ji. Apart from the spartan lifestyle, he is mysteriously chided for getting up in the middle of the night to meditate. When seeking solitude for the same in the countryside, Ikkyu is disturbed by some mischievous children, which he takes as a distant rebuke by his master for committing the same “error.”

Upon returning from this period of solitude, he is roundly beaten by his master who, noticing the mud on his robe, realizes that his pupil has been disobeying his orders. It is only at Ken’o’s deathbed that Ikkyu discovers the reasons for his frequent beatings. Ken’o explains that he has been disciplining his intemperate state of mind. Together with his master’s passing, this revelation causes Ikkyu to sink into a deep depression. Wandering aimlessly through the countryside, he soon resolves to put an end to his life by drowning himself in Lake Biwa. He decides against this on remembering his mother and the sorrow this would cause her.

The second volume of Ikkyu follows upon this aborted suicide and contains a detailed look at the young monk’s life under a new master, Kaso Sodon, who belonged to the harsh Daito tradition of Zen. Ikkyu endures a week-long wait at the gate of Kaso’s austere Lake Biwa retreat in order to prove his determination to become his disciple. The longest and most lyrical passages in this section of the manga are devoted to two significant moments of realization and enlightenment.

In the first instance, Ikkyu pierces a zen koan from the 15th case of the Gateless Gate (Mumonkan) involving an exchange between the monk Dongshan Shouchu and the Chinese Zen Master Yun-men Wenyan. Ikkyu penetrates the zoan upon hearing a blind minstrel singing a song from the Heike Monogatari, namely the tale of Lady Giyo and the general, Taira no Kiyomori — a tale of betrayal and unfaithful affections which exposes and expunges his long-held recriminations against his father, the emperor, for abandoning his mother amidst similar court intrigues. Upon presenting his solution to the koan to Kaso, Ikkyu is finally presented with the name by which he is known to this day (he was previously known as Shuken).

Ten dumb years I wanted things to be different furious proud I still feel it one summer midnight in my little boat on Lake Biwa caaaawweeeee father when I was a boy you left now I forgive you

The other key moment in Ikkyu’s life under Kaso is found while he is meditating in a boat by Lake Biwa. In contrast to his first satori — which is depicted as a sublime moment of tranquility and self-awareness — this second important spiritual juncture is depicted as a cry heard through dense dark night, single and distinct and stretched across two pages.

Sakaguchi’s interpretation of this moment unfolds through a conversation with his master and reflects the feelings he expressed in a poem written in response to this moment of enlightenment:

For ten years I was in turmoil,

Seething and angry, but now my time has come!

The crow laughs, an Arhat emerges from the filth,

And in the sunlight of Chao-yang, a jade beauty sings

The crow’s cry chases away all memories his bitterness over his mother’s (the jade beauty) expulsion from the royal court, leaving him free to feel at one with his surroundings.

Life is like a dream and goes with the speed of lightning.

It is like a dew-drop in the morning;

it soon falls and is broken …

 

“Here are shown the struggles and the sins of mortals, and the audience, even while they sit for pleasure, will begin to think about Buddha and the coming world on Oni-No or the Noh of Spirits” – from the Kadensho or Secret Book of Noh.

The third volume of Sakaguchi’s manga segues into the rivalry between Motomasa and On’ami (presented to us in the mask of a demon and who the audience of the time sees as Zeami’s heir). This drama carries implications beyond mere questions of succession.

On’ami’s fortunes began to rise (as Zeami and Motomasa’s declined) during the reign of the shogun Yoshinori (one of Yoshimitsu’s sons). By 1429, both father and son were excluded from further appearances at the Sento Imperial Palace, and in 1430 the musical directorship at Kiyotaki shrine was taken from Motomasa and given to On’ami.

In the manga, this dispute mirrors Ikkyu’s exclusion from the mainstream of Zen thinking and provides a secular reflection of Ikkyu’s own conflict with Kaso’s chief disciple, Yoso, over their master’s legacy. Their conflict encompassed corruption, ambition, women, sexuality, and other contentious ideas concerning Zen. Discussions of carnal and romantic love would seem out of place in a story concerning a monk but they are central to any understanding of Ikkyu and his interpretation of Zen.

Each of Ikkyu’s encounters with women in the manga contains stepping stones to further enlightenment, each meeting offering both temptation and sustenance. There is a moving episode involving a young prostitute whom he befriends while she is quietly offering herself in the window of a brothel, selling her body to feed her family. In another instance, he meets and is sexually tempted by a girl who helps him after he has been beaten up in an encounter with a spiritually corrupt monk. Another encounter with a dying prostitute prompts a moment of deep introspection.

All this is played out in the light of Yoso’s somewhat abusive and pecuniary attitude towards women. Over the course of his rise to prominence as chief abbot of Daitoku-ji temple, Yoso is seen propounding on the unclean nature of women and their inability to achieve enlightenment.

Ikkyu was of the opposite opinion. Sakaguchi illustrates this by recounting his encounter with some nude women bathing in a pond. On chancing upon the stunned women, Ikkyu bows reverently towards their genitalia and proceeds along his way. When pressed for the reasons for his actions, he gently chides the popular views earlier recited by Yoso and further suggest that women represent a great and unparalleled treasure, as all humans — however great or lowly — proceed from them.

In his short biography of Ikkyu, John Stevens relates the story that furnishes the source material for this scene, providing a more direct response by Ikkyu with regards this eccentric view of women:

Woman are the source from which every being has come.

including the Buddha and Bodhidharma.

Jon Carter Covell (Zen’s Core: Ikkyus’ Freedom) in explaining Ikkyu’s relation to the “red thread” of passion puts it thus:

“If, from childbirth, man is already entangled with the feminine, his violent denial of it later shows a lack of enlightenment.”

Sakaguchi further elaborates upon this important element in Ikkyus’ beliefs in his poetic verbal duel with a famous courtesan. Their relationship is consummated in an abandoned house a stone’s throw from where his fellow monks are accumulating earthly offerings as a form of veneration and worship. Juxtaposed against the chanting of the monks from the temple, their sounds of sexual ecstasy resound across a Zen garden.

Covell suggests that “sex had almost become a religious ‘rite’ to him”. With respect to his experiences with prostitutes, Ikkyu once opined:

When as a rakan I “rose above the dust,”

I was still not in the (real) Buddha Land;

But once I entered a brothel, tremendous wisdom occurred.

Of all the women Ikkyu encounters, Sakaguchi devotes the greatest space to Lady Shin, the object of his passion in the final years of his life. When Shin is first seen by Ikkyu in the manga, she is seen kneeling while playing a small hand-drum in homage to a famous double portrait commissioned by Ikkyu himself (now found in the Masaki Museum in Osaka).

It was a love both romantic and carnal. In “Watching the Beauty Shin in the Midst of Her Siesta”, he writes:

The most elegant beauty of her generation.

Her love songs for a banquet are the newest.

She sings so naively, it pierces my heart; a dimple appears in her cheek.

Shin is like a begonia in the “Heavenly Treasure” period.

In “If My Hands Were Like Shin’s,” he writes with unabashed frankness, “When my ‘jeweled stalk’ is weak, she makes it sprout.” In the manga, the moment in which Shin finally expresses her love for Ikkyu is presented almost as a moment of enlightenment, the pacing of this sequence adopting a tone similar to that of his second satori.

The couple are seen in the midst of a bamboo grove with the wind rustling through the branches as if in physical and pictorial demonstration of the concept of furyu (meaning “wind flow”), an aesthetic ideal which permeates Ikkyu’s art and a term which he used to praise those persons with whom he was most intimate.

Ikkyu’s non-conformist ways extended beyond his unapologetic enjoyment of sex, meat, and wine. Sakaguchi joyfully depicts a host of his exasperating ways, from urinating on a roadside stone Buddha to burning a revered wooden Buddha figurine in order to keep the Buddha in his heart” warm. 

Ikkyu is seen taking food offerings from gravesites (a pointless gesture in his view) and, in instructing a deeply religious samurai who is stumped by a few words from some Buddhist scripture, suggests using the name of his favorite food in place of the words he cannot read. It is this freedom and irreverence that has endeared him to late twentieth century readers.

*          *          *

 Born in 1946, Hisashi Sakaguchi was a one time assistant to Osamu Tezuka and was known for his work on animation projects such as Astro Boy and The Jungle Emperor. He died soon after completing Ikkyu, his masterwork. His other manga include a science fiction story called Version (available in English) and the much-praised but slightly melodramatic Flowers of Stone (sometimes called Partisan), which concerns the partisan action in Yugoslavia during World War II. The latter book is of particular interest being an early example of Sakaguchi’s attention to historical detail both in dress and architecture.

In Ikkyu, Sakaguchi navigates a meandering path through childhood tales of wisdom, initiations into homosexuality, political and cultural intrigues, and sexual and romantic love. The work presents itself as pure narrative, but is also held together by a number of unifying threads.

One motif that repeats itself throughout the novel can be seen in its early pages, where a drunk and irreverent Ikkyu is juxtaposed with wartime massacres. An ambiguous integration is forged between these horrors and the songs and chants of wandering monks.

 

One of Ikkyu’s responses to the seemingly endless cycle of famines and natural disasters during his lifetime was to write one of Japan’s most famous books on the subject of death, Skeletons. It was written in the vernacular (as opposed to his usual classical Chinese poetry) in order to appeal to the common man, the better to instruct him on mortality and Zen. Ikkyu is seen drawing Skeletons in the fourth volume of the manga and is later seen in a dramatization of a famous print in which he is seen carrying a pole with a human skull at its tip. 

The landscape of corpses and skeletons which populate Sakaguchi’s novel are both a reflection of the seeds of Ikkyu’s famous work and a dramatic depiction of the very real situation of uncleared and unburied bodies which lined the streets of Kyoto.

There are also dear parallels drawn between Noh and the narrative of the manga. By signposting significant periods in Ikkyu’s life with short “performances” of Noh, Sakaguchi allows us to seek parallels between the demarcations in the manga and the prescribed arrangement of plays in a day of Noh performances.

Such a performance begins with a Shugen, or congratulatory piece, followed by the Shura (battle-piece), the Kazura or Onna-mono (“wig-pieces or pieces for females”), an Oni-No, a fifth piece “which has some bearing upon the moral duties of man,” and ends with another Shugen, “to congratulate and call down blessings on the lords present, the actors themselves, and the place.”

Another way of understanding the thrust of Sakaguchi’s presentation can be found in Covell’s book, which illuminates Ikkyu’s life in relation to “The Ox-Herding Series” (the ox representing the “Buddha-mind … for which the ego searches”). The series follows an ox-herd on a metaphorical journey from the initial sighting of the “ox” (painting one in the series) to satori (painting eight in the series, represented as white space within an empty circle) in which the seeker understands the “oneness of all phenomena.”

Painting nine concerns “life after satori,” where the enlightened man begins to fully appreciate all the beauty that surrounds him, which “means not only the beauty of flowers but also the beauty of women.” The tenth and final stage is called “Returning to the Marketplace” or Entering the city with Bliss-bestowing Hands” and shows a child encountering Hotei, the rotund god of good luck, who “by his transforming presence brings to all the awakening of their own Buddha-natures.”

Covell quotes Kuo-an’s commentary on the tenth picture stating,

“He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers; he and they are all converted into Buddhas.”

Sakaguchi’s understanding of Ikkyu’s life preserves this core of truth; the essence of Ikkyu’s teachings. In the manga, Sakaguchi deemphasizes Ikkyu’s elevation (at the age of 80) to the position of chief abbot of Daitoku-ji by the emperor Go Tsuchimikado, and the massive undertaking of the reconstruction of the temple that had burned down over the course of the Onin War. Instead, it is the very human aspects of the crazy Zen man which are of most interest to the artist.

The manga is faithful to his relationships with the common man and his distinct influence on Japanese culture. In his lifetime, Ikkyu encountered warriors, generals, artists, prostitutes, inn keepers, merchants, thieves, and kings, altering each in his own unmistakable fashion. Ikkyu’s student and Japan’s first tea master, Murata Shuko, would develop — some say in direct collaboration with his master — a new approach to the tea ceremony, one which incorporated a heightened understanding and awareness of Zen. Shuko would also design Zen gardens on which “the love letters which sing of wind and rain, snow and moon,” could be observed; gardens which revel in the wabi aesthetic propounded by Ikkyu. Two other pupils, the renga poets Sogi and Socho, would later develop haiku poetry. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that Sakaguchi must have counted himself a slightly removed student of the master. Dense with historical fact and passionate artistry, Sakaguchi’s forthright and yet mystical work is possessed by the essence of the man and is a testament to his intelligence, spirituality, and artistic vision.

*          *          *

[1] In the first volume of Ikkyu, Zeami is depicted working on the seventh and final chapter of his seminal and most famous work on the theatre, Fushikaden; a book that has been described as partly a meditation on the teachings of his illustrious father, Kannami. In the chapter in question, Zeami dwells on the aesthetic ideals of Noh, which Hare explains “depends on its existence on the creation of what Zeami terms ‘the flower,’ an effect which is achieved through technical skill and intellectual understanding.”

 

 

Tom Gill on Tsuge and Evaporation

Posted on by

In comments to his post on Tsuge, Tom Gill has a lengthy discussion of Tsuge’s relationship to the zen concept of evaporation. I thought I’d reprint it below.

Dear Domingos,

You ask: Do you think that the fish going away is a symbol of what Tsuge calls “evaporation”?

The short answer to your question is “yes indeed.” Evaporation, or jôhatsu in Japanese, is an important cultural trope in Japan. Certainly it relates to the Zen Buddhist idealization of “nothingness” (mu), which is discussed at some length in the interview you cite (originally in Japanese, translated into French). To disappear, to become nothing: that is the dream of Zen thinkers. In Tsuge’s works, (1) death, (2) escape, (3) enlightenment, (4) laziness/irresponsibility, are intertwined concepts. To evaporate is to die, to escape from responsibility, to disappear to a perhaps more enlightened elsewhere. As well as the philosophical/religious aspect of this metaphor there is also a political/sociological one. Tsuge’s semi-autobiographical heroes reject the materialism of mainstream society, or simply cannot relate to it. To be lazy, to refuse/fail to conform to the socially sanctioned image of the “salaryman” is a kind of statement, aligning one with a romantic, escapist, world-renouncing strand in Japanese culture. I discuss it as a masculine fantasy in a paper I published a few years ago: When Pillars Evaporate: Structuring Masculinity on the Japanese Margins.

Here I oppose the concept of evaporation/jôhatsu to that of the great pillar, or daikoku-bashira, which means both the central pillar supporting a house and a man who is the economic supporter of the household. I stumbled upon this theme while studying Japanese day labourers, the topic of my 2001 book from SUNY Press, Men of Uncertainty. This is why I am interested in Tsuge: he is a kind of hero of the jôhatsu side of Japanese culture. His comics, and also his essays, would no doubt appeal to the more thoughtful day labourer. It may be a translator’s little joke, but the prize-winning memoir of a day labourer, San’ya Gakeppuchi Nikki (A Diary of Life on the Brink in San’ya [a slum district of Tokyo]) was rendered into English as A Man with No Talents – essentially the same title as Tsuge’s book-length manga Munô na Hito, translated into French as L’Homme sans talent. The author of that book is totally anonymous, using the pseudonym Ôyama Shiro, and shuns publicity as Tsuge does.

What I am trying to say is that though Tsuge Yoshiharu is a unique artist/autor, he did not spring out of thin air. He is rooted in a strong tradition of world-renouncing, foot-loose, romantic losers. Like Tsuge and his fictionalized protagonists, day labourers traditionally drift from town to town, stay in the cheapest possible inns, and have no clear idea of their future. The Tsuge protagonist is described as a tramp or vagabond (clochard) in the interview you cite, probably a translation of “furôsha” – day labourers are frequently described similarly. Here is a short extract from my paper, which may be relevant to this discussion. In it I discuss what happens when older day labourers give up the struggle to make a living out of manual labour and apply for welfare.

getting welfare does inevitably affect one’s personal identity. Solitary day laborers have already abandoned or rejected the image of the daikoku-bashira as a man supporting a household; once they apply for welfare, they effectively admit that they cannot even support themselves.… Thus themes of strength and weakness, independence and dependence, mobility and immobility, twine themselves around the day laborer’s career and changing identity.

Protean Passivity at the Margins
These ambiguities are expressed in some of the language associated with day laboring. They often describe themselves as having “drifted” (nagareru) into the doya-gai (skid-row district), a term that elegantly combines the concepts of mobility and passivity. The imagery surrounding these drifting day laborers is often liquid and piscine. They are called ‘angler-fish’ (ankô) as they wait on the seabed of society for a job to come along. They may be caught in abusive labor camps called ‘octopus traps’ (tako-beya). When a man is mugged while sleeping in the street they call the incident a ‘tuna’ (maguro), likening the victim to a tuna helpless on a sushi chef’s chopping board. Day laborers who fail to get a job say they have ‘overflowed’ from the market (abureru); if depressed they may ‘drown themselves’ (oboreru) in vice; and when troubles appear insurmountable, they may disappear overnight, or as they put it, ‘evaporate’ (jôhatsu suru).

So Tsuge’s little fish comes from a strong cultural tradition in which fish and their environment are metaphors for the human condition. Consider also Tsuge’s salamander, and the floating fetus, in my previous contribution to the Hooded Utilitarian.

In the interview you cite, Tsuge describes a particularly literal and personal case of “evaporation” – when he decided to leave Tokyo, abandon his entire life, taking a train to Kyushu where he hopes to marry and settle down with a female fan of his work whom he has never met. (It is interesting to note that where male escape fantasies often include leaving one’s wife and family, for Tsuge married life is part of his post-evaporation scenario. Loneliness and desire are always in the mix for Tsuge.) He goes through numerous distractions, and actively considers marrying a couple of other women he meets on the way, but in the end he gives up and returns to Tokyo. The adventure is described in one of his essays, “Diary of an Evaporation Journey” (“Jôhatsu Tabi Nikki”), written in 1969, published in Yakô (Night Journey) magazine in 1981, and republished in his 1991 collection, Records of a Poor Man’s Travels (Hinkon Ryokôki)

He discusses it in the interview you cite, alluding to the final line, in which he states that he is now married with a kid, but feels that maybe this is his evaporated self. The implication seems to be that we cannot necessarily distinguish between the life we think we are actually living and those that we think we are merely imagining.

Anyway… yes, there is a desire expressed in the Nishibeta story to be like that little fish in the final frame, to swim away, down the river, destination unknown. Have you ever felt like doing that?

You can read all HU posts on Tsuge here.