CONVERSATIONS 7

 SUN-FACED BUDDHA, MOON-FACED BUDDHA

日面佛, 月面佛

(Mazu Daoyi 馬祖道 708 - 788)

We walked through the main gate, Matsu slightly ahead, his limp still noticeable, but his swagger intact. He walked like Captain Cook pacing the quarterdeck of HMS Resolution as that stout ship plunged through Pacific swells. An imposing figure, his worn black robe wrapped casually around his slightly portly, broad shouldered torso. His sandals slapped down and raised dust as we walked the broad trail that meandered into the countryside. He ran a hand over his bristly skull, spat, and strode on.

We were off to see how the harvest was coming. Lotus root, watermelons, early rice, and piquant red peppers were all being gathered. Many monks wore straw conical hats to keep the sun off their heads and faces, and most were barefoot. Here and there were women, working the melon patch cutting the veins from the fruit ahead of the men.

“A busy time,” Master Mo said.

“I’m surprised to see the women.”

“Hmm, more of them than you’d think,” Matsu said. “Last I heard there were 20 or 30 nunneries in Chang’an.”

“Chan? Or of all denominations?"

The master considered the word ‘denominations.’ Not a common designation apparently.

He said, “Not many from our lineage.” His tongue swiped his lips. “Hard business, those nuns.”

And said no more.

Voices called from behind us. As we turned, a messenger was brought to him, a man  from Szechuan;  and, as he came up, Matsu immediately switched dialects to speak with the fellow. Then, with the same facility, he switched back to Middle Chinese, the lingua franca of Tang Dynasty China, to give what I took to be directions to the monk from the temple.

This business of language had piqued my interest. In modern China, the current count gives about 150 dialects most of which are not mutually intelligible. Only half of these regional languages have dictionaries. All literate Chinese, whatever variety of the language they speak, can read and write the Chinese logograms. They can often be seen writing characters in the air, informing their speech with visual clues.

“Were you speaking a different dialect to that messenger,” I asked.

He stopped and turned to look at me. “Him?” looking at the departing man. “He’s a Bashu. From Chengdu. Doesn’t speak Gan.”

“But you speak both?”

Master Ma ran a finger under his nose. Sniffed. “A man travels a bit, picks up some words and such. That’s all there is to that.”

“Aren’t they both Chinese?”

“Lotta Chinese. Some more than others.” A shake of the head, and he turned and walked on, leaving me to ponder his cryptic words.

Another hot morning had us both sweating though it was not yet ten o’clock. The Chinese, of course, had their own way of telling the time, dividing the day into two hour slots each represented by an animal from their zodiac. It was now the hour of the snake and appropriately warm for an ectothermic critter.

The back of Matsu’s faded black robe was darkening with sweat. Apparently, our conversation was over. He walked on, called out to men pulling a cart towards us, a cart filled with watermelons. The other men, all older monks, laughed as Master Ma began measuring the stripes on the melons with one of his thick fingers. They seemed to be chastising him, shaking their heads, waving him away with a hand.

Speaking Gan quickly, as they did, they were hard to understand; but I picked out a few words. There would be no melons for the master until this evening. I think they called him a ‘naughty boy.’ They had used the word ‘táoqì, pronounced like ‘how chee.’ That was a Middle Chinese expression still common in Mandarin that meant ‘naughty.’ That was my guess anyway.

The few words that I recognized all had tonal structures similar to my Beijing Mandarin. Most of their words, however, did not. The Bashu messenger spoke with many high-pitched sounds, more nasal than I was used to, but more easily understood than the Gan dialect which seemed to have a vocabulary and grammar all its own. Probably should be considered a separate language rather than a dialect.

Monks, walking meditation

I had turned to look as the muted sound of chanting men came from the temple. A half dozen monks, three older, more venerable fellows and three young novitiates, were just leaving the gate and heading down towards the bridge. Barefoot, eyes lowered, their steady pace kept time with their chants.

“The old show the way; the young stand on their shoulders.” Master Ma had stopped and given the nod to the solemn procession.

“What are they carrying? Drums? Are they carrying some type of drum?”

A laugh from Master Ma. “Just robes. They got their begging bowl, a bag for water, and maybe a sutra or two. All wrapped up in the patch-work robe. Set for a day on the road. Carrying all their earthly possessions.”

I thought immediately of Mahatma Gandhi. At the time of his death, assassinated in New Delhi in 1948, his material possessions amounted to fewer than ten items. There was a small desk, perhaps a hand loom, sandals, a bowl, his trademark round, metal framed glasses, and a few other items.

Do we own our goods and chattels, or do they own us?

Echoing my thoughts, Matsu said, “Less the better.” He seemed to reflect for a moment, then said, “Peppers. It's the peppers we’re after.”

And on we walked.

Though early in the day, I had begun thinking of lunch; but there would be no lunch as such. A meager breakfast by western standards, and then, sometime between 11 AM and 1 PM, leftover rice and vegetables were served. A rule for most monasteries prohibited eating after midday, the hour of the horse.

My experience, at least for Matsu’s temple, was that fasting through the afternoon and evening was given lip service but little else. Informal ‘medicinal meals’ were taken between 4 PM and 6 PM. Ostensibly for the sick or aged, most Chan monks helped themselves.

We had gotten ourselves some peppers to sustain us on our return, their reds not as fiery as jalapenos, but with more of a bite than our little sweet peppers. I would be leaving the following day, and asked Matsu if I might return the following summer. He lapped his nose with his tongue, then put a hand on my shoulder.

“You always return. Not a problem. Me? I’ll be dead and gone.”

That stopped me in my tracks. I had forgotten.

Blyth had written a brief account of Matsu’s death in his two volume  Zen and Zen Classics. It is all anecdotal, of course, but not without interest. He tells of the Master doing his walking meditation through the woods, hands crossed on chest. He stops and points to an open grassy lea, and tells the friend with him that ‘ … next month, my carcass must be buried just there. Put it in the ground. Get on with your day.’

Not long after, he became ill. He called for the abbot, an old friend. The man came, commiserated, and asked how he was feeling. Matsu replied with his famous, paradoxical phrase: ‘Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha’ (日面佛, 月面佛). Soon after, failing, he was bathed, sat crossed legged on his cushion, and died.

We would both move on; neither of us would return.

NOTE:

A sun-faced Buddha lived to a great age; a moon-faced Buddha lived only for a short time. No distinction is to be made between the two.

Blyth interpreted this as the ultimate ‘haiku moment,’ the acceptance of "what is" without any mental anguish or concerns about  ‘passing away.’ For Blyth, it represented the ‘Great Death’ in Chan (Zen) Buddhism, the apotheosis of enlightenment when the ego is no more.