Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [587]
“Umm. I hear talk like that at the temple.”
“I hope the day soon comes when I turn you over to the master. I want to ask him for guidance too. I need to know more about the Way.”
“When do you suppose he’ll come back?”
“It’s hard to say. Zen masters sometimes float around the country like a cloud for two or three years at a time. Now that you’re here, you should resolve to wait four or five years for him, if it comes to that.”
“You, too?”
“Yes. Living in that back alley, among poor and honest people, is good training—part of my education. It’s not time wasted.”
After leaving Edo, Musashi had passed through Atsugi. Then, driven by doubts about his future, he had disappeared into the Tanzawa Mountains, to emerge two months later more worried and haggard than ever. Solving one problem only led him to another. At times he was so tortured his sword seemed like a weapon turned against him.
Among the possibilities he had considered was choosing the easy way. If he could bring himself to live in a comfortable, ordinary way with Otsū, life would be simple. Almost any fief would be willing to pay him enough to live on, perhaps five hundred to a thousand bushels. But when he put it to himself in the form of a question, the answer was always no. An easy existence imposed restrictions; he could not submit to them.
At other times he felt as lost in base, craven illusions as the hungry demons in hell; then, for a time, his mind would clear, and he would bask in the pleasure of his proud isolation. In his heart there was a continual struggle between light and dark. Night and day, he wavered between exuberance and melancholy. He’d think of his swordsmanship and be dissatisfied. Thinking of how long the Way was, how far he was from maturity, a sickness came over his heart. Other days, the mountain life cheered him and his thoughts strayed to Otsū.
Coming down from the mountains, he’d gone to the Yugyōji in Fujisawa for a few days, then on to Kamakura. It was here that he’d met Matahachi. Determined not to return to a life of indolence, Matahachi was in Kamakura because of the many Zen temples there, but he was suffering from an even deeper sense of malaise than Musashi.
Musashi reassured him, “It’s not too late. If you learn self-discipline, you can make a fresh start. It’s fatal to tell yourself that it’s all over, that you’re no good.”
He felt constrained to add, “To tell the truth, I myself have run up against a wall. There are times when I wonder if I have any future. I feel completely empty. It’s like being confined in a shell. I hate myself. I tell myself I’m no good. But by chastising myself and forcing myself to go on, I manage to kick through the shell. Then a new path opens up before me.
“Believe me, it’s a real struggle this time. I’m floundering around inside the shell, unable to do a thing. I came down from the mountains because I remembered a person who I think can help me.”
The person was the priest Gudō.
Matahachi said, “He’s the one who helped you when you were first seeking the Way, isn’t he? Couldn’t you introduce me and ask him to accept me as his disciple?”
At first, Musashi was skeptical about Matahachi’s sincerity, but after hearing of the trouble he’d been in in Edo, he decided that he really meant it. The two of them made inquiries about Gudō at a number of Zen temples, but learned little. Musashi knew the priest was no longer at the Myōshinji in Kyoto. He had left several years earlier and traveled for some time in the east and northeast. He also knew he was a most erratic man, who might be in Kyoto giving lectures on Zen to the Emperor one day and out wandering the countryside the next. Gudō had been known to stop several times at the Hachijōji in Okazaki, and one priest suggested that might be the best place to wait for him.
Musashi and Matahachi sat in the little shed where Matahachi slept. Musashi often visited him here and they talked late into the night. Matahachi wasn’t allowed to sleep