Form is Emptiness

t's the fifteenth day of kangyo, winter austerities, a month-long period of daily begging rounds through the village lying at the foot of the hill on which our monastery perches. I want to shut out the piercing sound of the wakeup bell, accentuated by the reverberating footfalls of the monk on wakeup duty. No need to look at a clock-it has to be 3:55 AM. My hand reaches out for the switch of the lamp on my desk. If I hurry I can make it to the sink before most of the monks who sleep inside the meditation hall.

"Myoko," I address my German roommate, a woman of fifty, and the bane of my existence, "I'll fold up my bedding later." We don't usually fool around with niceties like "Good morning" and "How are you?" here in the monastery. After all, we're here to solve the problem of life and death.

Jumping out of my thick bed coverings laid directly on the straw- matted floor, I grab a regulation white thin terrycloth towel to replace the forbidden knit cap on my bald head. Myoko never wears a cap-in fact, even in the dead of winter her slightly bloated face and shaven head are often flushed with a mysterious fever, a result of her intense all-night meditation vigils and inferred mystical encounters. Her name, like all of ours, was conferred on her by our Zen master when she ordained here as a nun, and the two Japanese characters mean something like Mysterious Light. I always thought it was a bit tongue-in-cheek on our master's part, a comment on the Vaseline she always smears over her eyelids. (My name, Dainin, or Great Patience, also seems to have been conferred with some irony.)

Myoko is a slow riser, even though we only have fifteen minutes before our presence is required on our meditation cushions in the Great Hall. She's one of those people who absolutely refuses to be rushed in any situation, exhibiting a maddening other-worldly calm throughout any but her own personal emotional dramas. As I step over her prostrate form, she utters a groan and I catch the grimace of pain as she turns toward the light. I wonder if her arisings are as dramatic when she doesn't have an audience.

I whoosh the sliding paper door open then closed, and pad off, bare feet on the ancient shiny wooden floor, to my slippers, neatly arranged at the end of the corridor. A quick glance at the thermometer shows two degrees centigrade. After three years here in this Japanese monastery I'm only beginning to have a sense of centigrade, without converting the numbers into Fahrenheit. I always forget-is it nine-fifths or five-ninths plus thirty-two? Whatever, I don't need the thermometer to tell me it's COLD! A glance into the garden reveals patches of snow still clinging to the path and a few of the hydrangea bushes. I should be concentrating on my breathing or the Mu koan, the enigmatic puzzle my teacher has assigned me to bring me to realization, but instead I'm intent on beating the guys to the sink so I don't have to defer to them to brush my teeth. The unpleasant alternatives are to wait patiently till all the monks present have finished their ablutions, or to elbow myself between a couple of them and deal with the rise or fall of suppressed libido. "A nun of twenty years must defer to a monk of one day." It's been awhile since anyone's reminded me, "This is a men's monastery." Maybe they're getting used to us, the two brazen foreign women who have invaded their male bastion.

When I first came to one of the week-long meditation retreats held here for outsiders and residents alike, there had been at least a dozen women among the forty or so guests. I hadn't realized what an odd request it was, as an American woman, to ask to stay and practice at a Japanese men's monastery. I only knew I had finally met a master who embodied the enlightenment I had yearned for myself since reading books by Alan Watts on Zen as a college student, and I knew I had to stay and learn from him. At that time there had been one elderly Japanese nun living amidst twenty monks and laymen. Now after three years we two Western women have joined the older Japanese nun as disciples of the master and abbot of this temple. At the time of both our ordinations the master told us, "Do what you need to do here, then get on back to your own culture and practice the Way in everyday life."

The stench of the outhouse hits me (won't I ever get used to it?) as I lean over the cement sink to wet my washcloth with spring water running from a bamboo tube. I gasp as the cold water hits my face and feel the stubble on my head rise to the occasion. Man, it's gonna be FREEZING out there today. I figure we're all thinking the same thing, but of course no words are exchanged.

After an hour of meditation, an hour of morning sutra chanting, a quick round of energetic temple cleaning and a breakfast of rice gruel, salted plum and seaweed stewed in soysauce, it's time to put on the unisex outfit we all wear as Buddhist mendicants to hit the streets begging. Back in our room Myoko fixes herself a leisurely cup of coffee while I hike up the normally floorlength kimono and monk's robe to just below my knees, tie on the white leggings around my calves and the arm coverings around my wrists, then strategically use a safety pin to secure the small butane handwarmer at the back of my neck, a trick I've learned from the experienced Japanese nun. I am required to go on begging rounds today with twenty-five men-monks and a few laymen willing to shave their heads. Myoko can go when the spirit moves her, ostensibly because of her age.

"Dorin says he has some rice that needs to be checked for bugs today. I'll ask him if I can finish the sewing project I started on yesterday." Everyone else in the monastery quietly accepts the work assignments given to them. Myoko has a way of wheedling the job she's inclined to do out of the person in charge of work.

"Man, it's gonna be a bugger today. Hear that wind?" I try to remind her that some of us actually take on unpleasant tasks for the sake of the community.

"Ooh, I love this kind of weather! Crisp and invigorating," she says, with her hands wrapped around a steaming coffee cup, seated on the straw floor mat leaning against the ceramic brazier.

"Yeah, right," I mutter, as I rub the itch of a new chilblain making its appearance on my left thumb. A few days ago we were trudging through six inches of snow.

I head to the wooden pegs outside the kitchen on which all of our sandals are neatly hung, some made of traditional straw but most fashioned out of nylon rope, a craft we all learn as monks of this monastery. It looks dry today so I'll wear cotton tabi, big-toed socks, under my sandals. On wet or snowy days the soggy socks only make my feet colder. I carefully wrap the thin cotton teatowel around my bald head to avoid chafing from the round wicker hat which shades most of my face. I hang the tattered cotton bag over my neck in which we collect alms and occasional raw rice, and snap the black cape over my shoulders, which affords meager protection from rain and snow except when there is an accompanying wind, nearly every day.

I am ready just in time for the four characteristic hits-medium, medium, soft, LOUD- on the umpan, or cloud-board, a metal sounding board which summons us to begin another day of alms gathering. We are all lined up in our appropriate places in the entrance hall of the temple except for a few inevitable stragglers, and we begin to chant the Heart Sutra, twenty-six voices in union intoning "Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form...no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind...no ignorance and no end to ignorance, no old age and death and no end to old age and death."

Dorin, the lone monk who will stay behind and prepare our noon meal, lights a stick of incense and bows to us as a group, and just as the sutra ends, shouts in the loudest voice possible, "GOKUROU-SAMA DESU!" ("It's a great undertaking") and we all yell back, "GOKUROUSAMA!" (something like, "You don't say!") as we step over the lintel and march out with heads bowed and hats in our hands. We line up in the parking lot at the front of the temple in two groups, tie our hats in place and set out on another day of alms gathering, ringing our handbells in our right hands, our left hands held vertically in front of our faces in a gesture of reverence, and shouting a sustained, "H-O-O-O-O-O-O!!" from the pits of our bellies. The two lines of monks head out for different sections of town, the leaders following a prescribed path of twists and turns through alleys and down main roads, occasionally intersecting the other group.

It's usually about the same people along our route who contribute daily. As the long solemn line of monks drone past their doors, the townsfolk give us a wave or somehow signal they have an offering, then wait for a monk to approach them with an outstretched flap of the offering bag. The donor drops a few coins on the cloth flap, the monk raises the flap with a flourish, causing the coins to drop into the bag, and both donor and receiver bow, with varying degrees of reverence or impatience. After receiving an offering, the monk raises a hand in the air to signal a donation, so the person at the end of the line can officially thank the person by forcefully tapping a six-foot long pole onto the pavement, causing the six metal rings on top (representing the six realms of existence) to clatter and jangle. I raise my hand after an offering from a middle-aged aproned and slippered housewife, and hear the jangling of the rings a split second later.

Everyday it's basically the same route-on warm days, past wooden houses with neat pots of sweet-smelling daphne, bright red geraniums or budding salmon-colored azaleas set out to enjoy the sun; on snowy days it's all I can do to doggedly follow the footsteps in front of me, pouring my guts into the shout of "HO-O-O-O-O" to keep some sense of warmth within my body. On the best of days weatherwise I love this part of our monastic practice; on the worst of days I contemplate absconding with the donations and grabbing a plane back to the U.S. Today is somewhere in between-dry but still bitterly cold with the wind in our faces. I try not to think of how much longer it is until break time at the boathouse on the harbor, but concentrate on my posture, the sound of HO-O-O-O-O pouring out of my belly, the raised hand of a five-year-old girl eager to drop a coin into one of our bags. I know she has her eye on the incredibly tall thin monk just behind me so I pass her by with a slight smile and nod. She acts startled to realize there's a person underneath the large mushroom cap of a hat.

On we plod, past the little white-haired lady holding her yapping miniature collie, past the blind man who holds up his cane to signal an offering, past vending machines with four brands and seven sizes of beer and a selection of fruit-flavored white alcohol and sake or thirty brands of cigarettes with names like Peace and Lucky Seven, past the straw-mat maker sewing tatami mats on a huge frame and the paper umbrella maker oiling a newly created crimson bamboo-framed umbrella, past the tea shops and lacquerware shops and cake shops and shoeshops, past a grocery store named Mama and a carparts store named House of House.

Just around the next corner will be my favorite old lady, slightly hunched with age, always clad in a kimono of some hand-woven material in muted mauve or navy. She runs a little noodle shop with her living space just behind a tiny dining room, a common arrangement in this town. I've heard that she never married, after a disastrous love affair with a monk from our very same monastery some sixty years ago. She appears to be an odd mix of dignity and humility at the same time, in the way she slowly shuffles to the street and reverently deposit her coins in one of our bags. I always hope I'll be the one to collect her offering-I want to smile at her and look into her ancient eyes.

A blast of wind catches my cape as we round the corner and I lower my head to forge onward. Remembering the old woman, I raise my eyes to look in her direction, but she's not in her usual place. I'm toward the back of the line today, but usually even on cold days she stands with her palms together and head slightly bowed until all of us have passed, only going back into her tiny shop after the last monk has gone by. I try to remember the last time I saw her but as soon as my concentration wanders, I step into a small pile of leftover muddy snow. Great-now I have wet socks to deal with for the rest of today's trek.

I deepen my shout and pick up my pace a bit, as though I might be able to make it to the boathouse where we take our break sooner. Of course I still have to follow along in line but the illusion the sudden burst of energy gives me helps warm my wet feet and burning hands, stinging from the cold. We pass the most elegant shop in town, its windows filled with spectacular kimonos and a dummy posed in a white Western-style wedding dress. One more turn and we'll be headed down the alley leading to the boathouse. I ring my bell a bit harder and stomp my feet with each step to keep the circulation going.

I step back outside from the boathouse, steaming with the heat of a raging wood fire within. When I'm this cold, the intense heat is too much to take, and I know it will be that much harder to get readjusted to the cold for the second half of our ordeal. My chilblains are itching intensely; I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin. I wander around to the back of the boathouse to look out across the water and the few dilapidated fishing boats anchored nearby. A couple of old-timer Japanese monks are hunkered down sheltering cigarettes from the wind and they glance up at me guiltily then laugh. I smile and say, "Mighty cold today, isn't it?"

"Yeah, cold," they answer in the standard non-committal Japanese way. They hold out a cigarette to me and laugh again as I wrinkle my nose in distaste. Encouraged by their friendliness, I step closer to them, hoping to be able to engage in conversation with my halting Japanese.

"Myoko didn't come today, eh?" says the elder of the two. He must be about Myoko's age, in his late forties or early fifties. I know he's one of the more sympathetic toward her so I hide my animosity.

"She hurts-her back," I try to explain with my meager vocabulary, and bend over slightly with my hand on my lower back, gesturing.

Taking his cigarette from his lips the younger handsome one says, "You look like the noodle shop owner!" and we laugh somewhat haltingly. Conversation between men and women isn't really encouraged within the monastery but we all feel a bit free from constraints here in the brisk wind of the harbor. Anyway, the rest of the group is still enjoying rice cakes by the wood fire inside.

"Where is the noodle-shop owner today?" I ask, suddenly remembering that I missed her along our route. Both of the monks point to the hill on the east side of the harbor. I see huge plumes of white smoke forming clouds then dissolving in the intense blue sky. At first I think they're joking with me, giving me some kind of Zen riddle, but then I realize that the crematorium stands on that hill.

"Dead, is she?" I fumble for the words, knowing there's a more appropriate polite way to say this but forgetting the word.

"Dead, she is," says the older monk, jokingly using my same poor Japanese.

"Poor thing," I say, at a loss for anything else to say.

"Not a poor thing. Liberated," replies the monk, using a simple Zen term he knows I'll understand, as he sweeps the air before us, gesturing toward the smoke and taking in the whole sky.

"Mmmm, yes," I reply noncommittally, walking back toward the boathouse, stunned by the news and the thought that even now the smoke of her body drifts off over the water.

Back in our room after four hours of alms-gathering, I'm hurrying to wipe my begging bowl and change into my formal robes in time for lunch. Myoko is kneeling at her desk, Japanese style, dressed in casual work clothes, apparently writing a letter.

"How was it?" she asks, without looking up from her writing.

"You know the noodle-shop owner, the one who brings flowers every Saturday to the graveyard?"

"The one who used to be in love with the monk?" Myoko sets down her fountain pen and turns toward me. We've talked about this woman at some length and I know Myoko too feels a special fondness for her.

"Yeah. She died the other day shoveling snow."

Myoko looks at me with the eyes of a hurt child, uncomprehending. I nod. She buries her face in her hands as she bursts into tears.

The clappers calling us to the noon meal sound. I pick up my eating bowls and slide the paper door open, turning to see if Myoko follows. I leave her leaning against the brazier collapsed in sobs and close the door gently.