Huaihai
The pair of red foxes gamboling in the meadow below me had put a thin smile on the old man’s face. Sitting before the large ovoid stone, aged with lichen and smoothed with centuries of rain, wind, and snow, the man nodded gently, then resumed tracing the etched characters that ramboled across the face and flats of the rock. He was missing the index and middle finger of his left hand, stumps badly scarred, and so used his ring and little finger to stroke the inscribed lines.
“Each stroke relies on the others,” Huli muttered softly. “Animate, they are.” He placed his gnarled right hand flat on the rock. “Not twigs arranged in this shape or that. Before the eyes are the grove of trees that arrange and rearrange as through the wood we walk.”
A sharp bark returned my eyes to the meadow, but the foxes quite quickly had gone.
The old man laughed, then slapped my head. “You stink of that old thief Matsu.”
He had caught me out. As soon as the thought that ‘the foxes had gone’ came into my head, the famous koan of Mazu followed:
Baizhang Chan Temple 2024
One day, Baizhang Huaihai on a walk with Matsu saw a group of wild geese flying by. Matsu said, "There,” pointing, “what might they be up to?" Baizhang said, "They are wild geese.” Matsu asked, "And where are they going?" Baizhang shrugged and said, "They have flown away."
Matsu then grabbed Baizhang's nose and twisted it. The young monk yelped in pain, backing awkwardly away. Matsu said, "Humpf. Do you still say that they flew away?"
Baizhang, bent over, holding hands to his face, groaned, and shook his head in puzzlement.
“When have they ever flown away?” Matsu asked. Turning away from the young man, the Master squared his shoulders and left him.
The shadow of a realization creased Huaihai’s brow. The next morning, Baizhang went to hear Matsu's lecture. Before Matsu started talking, Baizhang went forward and rolled up Matsu's bowing mat. Matsu, amused, simply gazed at this impetuous fellow. Then the Master rose from his cushion and, without a word, returned to his room.
Later he asked Baizhang, "When I went up to the seat, why did you roll up my bowing mat before I spoke?"
Baizhang said, "My nose was hurt when you grabbed it yesterday."
Matsuu said, "And where in your mind do you keep yesterday's aches and pains?"
Baizhang answered, "My nose does not hurt today."
Matsu nodded and smiled. "You understand today's matter very well."
Baizhang made his bow and left.
“Look,” Huli said, circling his two fingers just over the inscription. “The center part of the character is compact, but, here and here, the four directions are expansive. Restraint inward; expansive outward. Calm dignity. Composed tension. The center of each character tends to be just the least bit higher, yes, so stability arrives to the eye through the balance between long vertical strokes and short horizontal strokes.”
The paragraph I write on paper does nothing to capture the short, clipped phrases of Huli’s Chinese. So much is missing.
“Liu Gongquan remains,” he said.
The calligrapher died in 865, ten years previous; but like the geese, he has not flown away. I said nothing for fear that Huli would pull my nose.
I had met the man on the wide cart path of a village deep in the mountains called Baizhang (百丈). My cloud flying, still a clumsy business for me, had set me down in the right mountains, but 60 years too late for the eminent Chan master Huaihai.
A wooden sign hanging from the eaves of a nearby shop pictured a carved fox and the characters for stone (石) and wood (木). An old man sat before a neatly squared stone slab, a tombstone in the making perhaps, and worked his foot treadle spinning the abrasive end of his tool as he polished the edges of the characters etched in the slab.
I had appeared suddenly in the street, unsure of both my time and place. He had not bothered to look up from his work, hand steady, foot tapping up and down, up and down. Experience had taught me that direct questions brought suspicion and wary terse answers.
Beating around the bush brought out curiosity.
“Excuse me, sir. Is there a tea shop nearby?” I asked.
His silence lasted for a minute or so as he finished the last of the horizontal strokes. With a finger to his nose, leaning out, he blew snot to the dust at his right foot. Then turned to me now standing nearby on his left.
“Tea?” he said.
“Yes, please.”
“Poor village, this one. The rocks of Baizhang make water. Make do.”
I was taken aback. Was this a play on words? Did ‘make water’ in Chinese have the same connotation as ‘make water’ in English?
He pinched his nose between his little finger and thumb. A woman and two small children came down the street. A cart pulled by a young man rattled up behind me.
“But the temple,” I said, “might I get a bit of rice and a cup of tea at the temple?”
The man with the cart stopped beside me. Hauling round river rock, it seemed. He said, “Huli, telling lies again?” Then to me, “He’ll spin tales and weave lies like truth, this old fart.”
The woman stopped. She held the two children tightly by their arms.
“What’s he want?” she asked the young man.
“He doesn’t know.”
They spoke quickly, in dialect, and I managed to understand that they were wary and perhaps contemptuous. Obviously, I was not from there.
Without looking up from his work, Huli said, “You two be on your way. My friend and I have business.”
Exchanging smiles, the young man and the woman just shook their heads. The children, sullen looks painted on their faces, said nothing.
Watching them go, turning up the street and down, Huli said to my back, “Temple rundown since Pochang went to dust. Fifty years or more. Drinking nettles and dirt there now. Eating millet. Chanting like dessicated frogs.”
‘Pochang’ I knew was but one of Huaihai’s names. An older pronunciation of ‘Baizhang.’ The famous Chan master had died in 814, and I, of course, had overshot the mark.
“Did you know him?” I asked. Breaking my rule of circling to an answer, I had blurted the question. And continued in the same vein. “Were you here when he was at the temple? Before his …. Before he passed away?”
“Stoned?” Huli grinned, shook his head. “Passed,” he said. His pronunciation of the two words was similar, but obviously different.
I had used the Chinese term ‘shìshì’ (逝世) for ‘passed away.’ He was having a bit of fun at my expense. “‘Stone’ and ‘passed away’ were almost homophones. But he expected an answer.
“Died,” I said. Using the Chinese ‘sǐ le’ (死了), blunt but to the point.
Huli slapped his knee, and said, “Ah, thank you,” another homophone (xie xie 谢谢) to mock my clumsy Chinese.
“Stoned,” he muttered, chuckling. He rose from his stool and went inside his shop. “Come,” he said.
I went in to find Huli squatting beneath a work bench, rummaging through a box of scrolls. He found what he was looking for, stood, and rolled it out across the bench.
“The Regulations of Baizhang Huaihai,” he said.
A tattered, ink stained sheet of once transparent paper lay before me. The calligraphy, balanced, thin, elegant yet quite robust, filled the page.”
“Carved it on the rock’ Huli said. “My job. Liu Gongquan quite a fellow, he was. Dashed this off in no time.” Huli punched my arm. “We’ll have a cup of tea,” he said. “Then we go visit Pochang.”
No comments:
Post a Comment