Night Boat. Alan Spence

study, grappling and struggling with these insoluble problems, unanswerable questions, battering against their impenetrable barriers till something gave and broke. There were two great koan collections, the Blue cliff Record and the Mumonkan, the Gateless Gate.

      The head priest told us that to awaken to the meaning of a koan required intense concentration, and great doubt. He quoted master Mumon.

      It’s like swallowing a red-hot iron ball. You try to spew it up, but you can’t.

      I felt myself choke, felt that solid iron blocking my throat, and once again I was the child Iwajiro, terrified of the burning hells. Swallowing a red-hot iron ball. I felt the panic begin to rise.

      The priest recited the first case from the Mumonkan.

       A monk asked Joshu, Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

      I had heard the question before. Yes or No? To answer Yes was wrong. To answer No was just as wrong. What then?

      Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

      Joshu answered, Mu. Nothing.

      The nothing that opens up when you realise, fully realise, the impossibility of answering Yes or No. And yet.

      Meditate on this, said the priest, till you sweat white pearls.

      And then what?

      Meditate and find out.

      Mu.

      Concentrate on Mu with your whole being, wrote Mumon, without ceasing. Then your inner light will be a candle flame illuminating the whole universe.

      I meditated on Mu day and night. In zazen I chanted it to myself, a silent mantra. I took my brush and copied out the symbol, again and again. Mu.

      I lived with the koan, thought about it, struggled with it.

      You cannot get it by thinking, the priest said, quoting Mumon. You cannot get it by not thinking. You cannot get it by grasping. You cannot get it by not grasping.

      I am sure this is helpful. I said. Nevertheless.

      The question has to be answered, he said. According to Mumon it is the most serious question of all. Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

      He also says if you answer Yes or No, you lose your own Buddha-nature.

      Dog! said the priest. Now you’re swilling Mumon’s words around in your filthy mouth and spitting them back at me.

      If I’m a dog, I said, do I have the Buddha-nature?

      Cur! he said. Jackal! You’re rolling around in your own muck.

      I lived with the koan. It was with me in the meditation hall and walking the streets of Hara with my begging bowl. It was with me when I ate and when I lay down on my pallet to take rest.

      Mu.

      I’m eating, breathing, sleeping it, I said.

      Try pissing and shitting it, said the priest.

      That too.

      Well then.

      I continued, determined to break through.

      At times I felt I was so close, a single step away. It could be as close as my own heartbeat, my own breath. Then I would lose it, feel overwhelmed, beaten down by the sheer weight of it. I choked and gagged on that red-hot iron ball, unable to swallow it, unable to spit it out. It was stuck there, lodged in my throat, burning.

      And if you do break through, said the priest, you will be like a dumb man who has had a dream. You will know but be unable to tell. Meditate on that.

      Again the feeling of panic took hold. To be mute, unable to speak. To know it and have no words. Mu.

      One morning, early, I came out of the temple gate and walked through the village, head full of the koan. A thin drizzling rain fell, and I listened to the sound it made pattering on my kasa. It was too early to beg from door to door, or at any of the wayside stalls or teashops, so I kept walking, head down, thinking of Mu, concentrating on nothing else.

      Nothing. Else.

      Before I knew it I had reached the end of the village and I turned to head back. A scrawny old dog wandered out from an alley, and it stopped and raised its head when it saw me. We stood and looked at each other, acknowledged each other’s existence. He too had been soaked by the rain, his fur damp and bedraggled.

      Well, I said. Here we are.

      He sniffed the air, turned his head away.

      So tell me, I said. Do you have the Buddha-nature?

      Without hesitation he barked, at me, at the rain, at the day, at everything, and I threw back my head and laughed, then bowed to him three times.

      Later I wrote it as a haiku.

       Does this dog

       have the Buddha-nature?

       Hear him bark!

      I recited the haiku to the priest.

      So you’re showing your teeth now, he said. What next? Cocking your leg against the temple gate?

      But then he laughed. Hear him bark!

      The next time I came to him for koan instruction, before I could sit down he asked if I had eaten.

      Yes, I said, wondering why he was asking.

      Very well, he said. You had better wash your bowl.

      Now I recognised his question as another koan, another case from the Mumonkan, another story about Joshu. A monk comes to Joshu for instruction, and Joshu asks if he’s eaten his rice-gruel. The monk says Yes. Joshu tells him to wash his bowl.

      Was the priest assigning me this new koan? Was it because I had made progress with Mu, or because I was making no headway at all.

      Well? he asked.

      Do you want me to meditate on this now?

      Not at all, he said. I just wanted to know if you had eaten. That was all.

      Not only have I eaten, I said, I have also washed my bowl.

      Excellent, he said. Such diligence. Such discipline. Now, does a dog have the Buddha-nature?

      Mu, I said.

      I returned to painting the symbol Mu. I filled the whole page with it written large, in thick broad strokes. Mu. With the tip of a finer brush I wrote it again and again, covered the page in it like tiny bird-tracks. Mu. I made patterns with it, the words arranged round a central emptiness, a void.

      MU MU MU MU MU

      MU MU MU MU

      MU MU MU MU MU

      NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

      NOTHING NOTHING

      NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING

      Does a dog have the Buddha-nature? I drew the old dog I’d seen in the rain, barking out Mu. I remembered the dog that had barked at me the first time I’d gone to Yotsugi-san’s home and taken tea with Hana.

      I drew the dog, barking, barking, Mu emerging from his open jaws. I laughed and drew a cow, bellowing Mu.

      Does