Later— “Is it just—is it just?” I said to myself, “that one instant’s
madness should doom a man for ever?”—forgetting the long temptation I
had played with, the slow delicious yielding, the triumph and delight
with which I had slowly built up my torture chamber. Not only from the
time I landed in Japan, but before,—I had been busy at the building all
my life. How could I complain when the trap snapped on me?
At last I broke from the numbness into memory. The man who had passed me
on his way to his garden. His words returned like black birds flying
heavily round my head.
“You are not in the right way. Places are states of mind. In this way
you will have much need of self-defence.”
And Arima’s words also. “There is no guide. There is only power.”
Power. That brought the Abbot to my mind—the Rules. Could it be that
they could rescue me from this horrible country where evil hid like a
snake behind every stone. O, to be out of it—free—forgetting! I
remember I fell on my knees as if in prayer and with dreadful
earnestness began to repeat the Rules, passionately desiring the garden
of peace.
“I have no parents. I make the heaven and the earth my parents. I have
no weapons—I make submission my strength.” Light broke in my brain.
Submission? Then should I dictate—should I trust myself to my own
choice of where I would be? Arima had warned me against return.
“If you had used what we call ‘extension’ and had gone on you would have
been on the other side of the mountain.” If there were to be refuge for
such as I it could only lie along the way of courage. I knew it—I knew
it.
I changed my thought instantly. “Set me where I should be if it is in
the gateway of hell.” And again. “Only free me of myself. Let me go
forward. There is no sin like cowardice. Better lust and murder and the
fight to the death with them than cowardice.”
Then, with an intensity that shook me like a leaf in storm I uttered the
words of power, hiding my face in a very passion of belief.
Quiet. I lifted my face and looked about me for the terrible way I had
accepted. I was lying on the broken steps ascending to the monastery and
the House Built upon Clouds at Naniwa. And it was dawn.
The wonder of peace! The sun had not yet out-soared the eastern trees
and every bough dropped dew to the glittering grass. A bird, its little
clenching feet on a blossomed twig beside me, sang like all the bliss of
heaven. In a pool at my feet the lotus, child of the clear cold stream,
raised rosy chalices to the sky and from it ran a stream divinely clear
and bright. The sun might have been the first that ever shone upon a
perfected world untroubled by man, so clear and clean the water-gold of
the morning.
I stood up and looked about me drawing deep breaths of purity. Above me
beneath a great tree, lost in contemplation, sat the Abbot Gyōsen.
I stumbled towards him. I remember I said: “I have come,” and that he
motioned with his hand to a place beside him. Together we watched the
slow crescendo of the mighty music of the dawn.
The sun was above the trees when he spoke, turning the serenity of his
face upon me.
“You have learnt your lesson. Has it brought content?” I summoned my
thoughts to reply clearly.
“I have learnt much but the truth I do not know. Does the corpse still
lie on the moor and the woman weep in the deserted house. Am I guilty?”
“In your soul, yes. Therefore in truth, yes. When you yielded to lust in
your heart and willed murder both were accomplished. Your own Scriptures
teach this and that thought is the only true reality. This have all the
Buddhas known. In what men ignorantly call fact you are not guilty. But,
being guilty, learn this. Every instant terminates a life and the next
is a new birth. While each minute exists the past is dead and the future
unmade. I speak here according to the knowledge of this world, but the
truth is that there is _no_ time, and that you are now what the Divine
sees you—a ray of his splendour. This truth being as yet too high for
you to remember that even on this world’s showing you are free to be
what you will. The choice lies before you. With a thought you may be in
the horror of the Desolate Country, with another in the Shining Land.
For every man makes his own universe until he can see it as it is in the
Thought of the Divine.”
Blinded with truth I asked a question simply as a child.
“Then what must I do?”
“Resolve and go forward,—what else? knowing that in yourself is all
power.”
“But the training? Free me from myself! If we can realize these powers
the means of using so terrible a weapon rightly should be open to all.”
“It is open. But men will not believe. They will not will. They do not
think, and events take them like sea-weed on a wave. You know your own
weakness but it is strength compared with that of the majority. You, at
least, have seen and heard. Study the teachings of the perfect One, the
Buddha, if you would be a man. Realize your union with Power, knowing
that it is a harp of many strings of which you are one, and tune
yourself in harmony with the music of the spheres. At present you are a
man without a sword.”
That phrase! It kindled a world of recollection. I looked into his face
with another entreaty.
“Arima sama told me that I might hear the end of the story of the Man
without a Sword from your honourable self. Tell it to me, I beseech
you.”
He rose and invited me to follow him into the House Built upon Clouds
promising that he would rejoin me when he had transacted some necessary
business. I sat in the window looking out and down into the glorious
depth of waving woods bathing in sunshine like water, experiencing
myself such tranquil joy as the trees themselves must know, fulfilling
their perfect Law in the smile of the Divine.
It was long before the Abbot returned, but to me it seemed a moment. We
have no true means of measuring time for the truth is that it has no
existence, and when the soul is liberated this truth is evident. At once
he began the story of the Man without a Sword.
“In Japan very terrible was the position of the man who had lost his
sword. Better a thousand deaths of lingering torture. There was no man
so low as to give him companionship—and he a noble! Therefore he
changed his name to that of Kazuma, and casting aside what money was
left he abandoned his wife who was dying of grief and shame, and coming
to Yedo took up the study of jujutsu hoping some day to become a teacher
of this in the great city. More lonely a man could not be than Kazuma.
His wife died. His son was taken by his brother and he saw him no more.
His own name was blotted out and forgotten. His brother believed and
hoped him dead, and but for the command of his foe he would have killed
himself.
“Jujutsu, my son, is, as you know from Arima sama, an art that every
noble person should learn. It is said to have come from China, and it
was taught that the very Gods had used it in chastising the barbarians.
The name roughly signifies ‘the strength of weakness,’ and thus it
arose. It was noted that the boughs of a willow were not broken by a
heavy fall of snow when strong trees cracked beneath the weight. And
why? Being pliant they bowed their weakness and the snow slipped off. My
son, recall the Rule. ‘I have no strength. I make submission my
strength.’ As with the soul so it is with the body. How shall I sum up
this art of attack and self-defence? It is the perfect control of the
mind resisting defeat. It is to use weakness in such a way that it
masters brute strength. I have seen a slight woman who possessed this
knowledge fling a heavy man over her shoulder and stun him. There are
locks and blows which may easily kill the opponent and for this reason
the higher secrets are withheld from all but those who are fit for
initiation. The pupils are trained to endure heat and cold and all
hardships. It is a high and noble discipline, for no greatness can be
attained without abstinence from the three vices of lust, drink, and the
love of money with their attendant diseases of the spirit.
“This art Kazuma studied, and as he did so much became clear to him and
he approached the secret of life. And when he had reached a certain
skill his master taught him that there is in jujutsu a higher branch of
mysterious power. And he, beginning dimly to apprehend the meaning of
the command laid on him by the husband of the woman he had slain, for so
indeed he had, desired with eagerness to advance.
“Now, my son, at the gate of this higher initiation stands a ceremony to
be endured. The initiate must submit to strangulation and to be revived
by _kwappo_—the art which recalls men to life. And should this fail,
revival is made by means of a power named _kiai_. To Kazuma, knowing
nothing of _kiai_, but very weary of life, this command came like the
friendly voice of death, and with joy he presented himself to the master
of the art who was chosen to be his executioner.
“He lay down, offering his throat, and in a few seconds was what is
called dead.
“Now, being thus enfranchised, instantly he found himself in the place
of his humiliation by the rushing river, with cold desolation about him.
And by the river knelt his conqueror washing the blood from his hands as
though their fight was but just ended. He rose and faced Kazuma.
“‘You have obeyed my command.’
“‘I have obeyed.’
“‘What have you learnt?’
“‘That there is no death. It is more life, but life as we have made it.
As a man has sown he reaps in life after life.’
“‘Until what time?’
“‘Until the time when he sows good grain.’
“‘Do you repent your past?’
“‘I do not look back. I go forward. It is forgotten. The man who did the
deed died with it. Now I would be a teacher of jujutsu.’
“‘Well said! You have learnt to defend yourself from yourself and you
would teach others. I will give you fresh orders.’ Kazuma stood like a
soldier before his general.
“‘Teach what you have learnt. Then come back, and in this place of
desolation where you fought and conquered more than you knew make a
garden and build a bridge. Go now,—in power!’
“He bowed low, Kazuma also. ‘My friend!’— As the words met his ear they
melted in a confused murmur of human voices and he struggled back to
consciousness in the school of jujutsu in Yedo. Men knelt and stooped
about him fearful lest he had gone so far on the way of death that even
the powerful shout of _kiai_ could not reach him. But he rose and
gravely thanking his executioner went and stood before his master.
“My son, Kazuma became the greatest teacher of jujutsu in Japan. He
could disarm and bring to his feet a two-sworded man shrieking for
mercy. With his shout he could do to death any evil-doer within hearing
and restore the fool when he had mastered his lesson. Power was mighty
in his step, his gesture, his glance. What money he made, and it was
much, was for those who had need, he himself living in an untouchable
content.
“Thus time went by.
“One day, having saved the life of the only son of a noble house, the
father coming to him said:
“‘My lord, what shall I give you? In mercy accept a gift lest I and my
house break under the weight of gratitude. Have pity and take!’
“So, after much musing, Kazuma replied.
“‘You have bought great lands by the river Koga. I grow old. Give me, my
lord, if you will, a corner by the river, very small, where I may make a
garden and build a wooden bridge for those who must cross the rapids.
Very dangerous is the current.’
“So it was done and he made his garden and built with his own hands a
bridge of wood, and there was no day but the people blessed his name and
learnt from him that power lies about them for the taking and that its
best use at the present time is to make gardens and be a builder of
bridges. Other uses later. My son, Kazuma still walks in his garden and
he sits beneath his willow and his sword hangs at his side. The bridge
leads where you know, for you have crossed it.”
There was a moment’s silence and it spoke as never yet words. He
resumed.
“My son, make your own garden. And there is room for many bridges.”
When my mind dwells on beauty the face of the Abbot full of unworded
meanings floats on clear air before me. It ended and completed the story
so that all he left unsaid was written in fire between the spoken words.
And I understood and like himself cannot express more than the alphabet.
I returned from Naniwa by the hidden way. Flowers blossomed along the
moors. I never saw more lovely, and where the corpse had lain children
were dancing in a ring. Where the broken house had crouched among trees,
was a shrine to the Thousand-Handed Spirit of Mercy beloved in Japan. A
child lay in her bosom and her hidden eyes were bent upon it in a
moonlight rapture. May I live in that country for the eternities!
I crossed the bridge and walked beside the river to the garden of Arima.
He sat by the water plaiting a basket of willow, and rose, bowing, to
meet me.
“I have come,” I said, “to learn jujutsu.”
He smiled.
I have learnt it and with it the secret of power. I go in and out of
Kazuma’s garden. And beyond.
And the Abbot, who was once Kazuma, and will be more, sits there, girded
with his sword.