Waking Up in Kyoto

By JohnSkow

THE EMPTY MIRROR

by JANWILLEM VAN DE WETERING

145 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $5.95.

This small and admirable memoir records the experiences of a young Dutch student who spent a year and a half as a novice monk in a Japanese Zen Buddhist monastery. As might be expected, the author shows a deep respect for the teachings of Zen. What makes his account extraordinary, how ever, is that the book contains none of the convert's irritating certitude, and no suggestion that the reader rush to follow the author's example.

Janwillem van de Wetering sailed for Japan by freighter in the summer of 1958. He was 27, and a misfit in the bustling Dutch society. He had read a few books on Buddhism, and, he writes, he wanted to find a door he could knock on: "a real door, made of wood, with a live man behind it who would say some thing I could hear." Japan, he knew, had living masters who would accept disciples. So did India and Ceylon, but he had heard stories of young Westerners who wandered aimlessly about in these places, eventually dying of dysentery. In Japan, if he got sick, there would be a doctor. This practicality might seem to be in conflict with the rarefied plane of monastery existence, but in fact was not.

When he grew weak on the sparse and meatless monastery diet a month or so after his training began, he was told in a matter of fact way to go buy himself a restaurant meal now and then.

The monastery that Van de Wetering found was in the holy city of Kyoto. He appeared there without introduction and was accepted without surprise. In a brief interview, the resident Zen master said that he was to stay at least eight months, a shorter period would be worthless. The strain of monastery routine was much more severe than he was prepared for. The monks were allowed only four hours of sleep. There was rough physical work to be done, and six to eight hours of meditation each day. Meditation suggests tranquillity not torture, but sitting motionless for even a few minutes in an approximation of the lotus position left the author's stiff Western legs cramped and shaking. The younger Japanese monks did not have a much better time of it. The holiest and most arduous week of the year--Roha-tsu--came in December. The period of sleep was reduced to two hours, from midnight to 2 a.m. The monks meditated for 15 hours a day. Anyone who seemed inattentive was beaten with a long piece of board. Van de Wetering lasted out the ordeal, surprising himself and his superiors, but his account of it might be that of a survivor of some calamitous polar expedition.

The author visited the Zen master each day. During the first of these encounters he received his koan, or Zen riddle. A postulant's first koan usually is one of formidable difficulty, and solving it may take years. On each day of each of these years, the master asks in a sharp and businesslike manner for the answer. The learning monk may at tempt some reply or say nothing. When the master decides that no progress will be made on that day, he rings a small bell, and the interview is over.

These sessions proved humbling. "You are asleep," the Zen master would say, "you are snoring." Then later, "If ever you succeed in waking up a bit, be careful that it doesn't go to your head." The author does not reveal his koan -- to do so would be extremely bad form -- but it might have been one of those now familiar to Westerners: "Show me the face you had before your parents were born." He also does not say specifically that he solved his koan, although to have done so in a year and a half would have been remarkable.

A Question. His eventual decision to leave the monastery and return to Eu rope and a life in business came during a period of discouragement. He seemed to be getting nowhere. He went to say goodbye to his master, who accepted his departure as simply as he had accepted his arrival. The master raised his spirits, reassuring him that "by leaving here nothing is broken. Your training continues . . . You are now a little awake, so awake that you can never fall asleep again."

With those words this honest and absorbing account ends. Van de Wetering is now the head of a textile business in Holland, though he does not say so in the book. There is, in fact, not a word about his life from 1959 to the present in The Empty Mirror. It would have been interesting to learn whether he did in deed stay awake, but the silence seems right. A book about Zen should end with a question.

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