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1
One evening when I was
still living at Grand
Street and Monroe,
Isamu Noguchi
came to visit me.
There was nothing in
the room (no
furniture, no
paintings).
The
floor was covered,
wall to wall,
with cocoa
matting.
The
windows had no curtains,
no drapes.
Isamu Noguchi
said, “An old
shoe would look
beautiful in this room.”
103
The question of leading tones came
up in the class in experimental
composition that I give at the New
School.
I said,
“You surely aren’t
talking about ascending half-steps in
diatonic music. Is
it not true that anything leads
to whatever follows?”
But the
situation is more complex,
for things also lead backwards
in time.
This also does not give a picture
that corresponds with reality.
For, it is said,
the Buddha’s enlightenment
penetrated in every direction to
every point in space and time.
106
David Tudor gives the impression
of not being overly fond of
mushrooms.
But one night he had
two helpings of morels and then
finished the dish completely,
including the juice.
The next
afternoon while he was shaving
I read out loud the following
quotation from Leonardo da Vinci:
“Lo!
Some there are who can call
themselves nothing more than a passage
for food, producers of
dung, fillers up of
privies, for of them
nothing else appears in the world
nor is there any virtue in
their work, for
nothing of them remains but
full privies.”
David Tudor said,
“Perhaps they were good Buddhists.”
111
Lois Long, Esther Dam, Ralph Ferrara,
and I were in the Haverstraw cemetery gathering
Tricholoma personatum. An elderly lady with
a hat on, standing by while a man she was with was
tending a grave, happened to notice us.
She called out, asking what we were doing
there. We said we were looking for mushrooms.
Her voice rose slightly as she asked whether
Lois Long’s Volkswagen which was parked nearby
belonged to one of us. The next thing she
asked, her voice sharp-edged, was whether
we had loved ones buried there. Hearing no one
of us did, she spoke firmly and loudly.
“Well, I don’t like it; and I don’t think
any one else would like it. If the
mushrooms grow here, let them!” Meanwhile
the gentleman with her paid no attention.
He just went on doing what he was doing.
And we, walking dutifully toward the
little car, passed by quantities of our
favorite mushrooms, making not the slightest
attempt to pick them. As we drove off
the woman was yelling. “Get out!” she
screamed, “get out and never come back!”
116
There was an international
conference of philosophers in
Hawaii on the
subject of Reality.
For
three days Daisetz Teitaro
Suzuki said nothing.
Finally the chairman turned
to him and asked,
“Dr. Suzuki,
would
you say this table
around which we are
sitting is real?”
Suzuki raised his
head and said Yes.
The chairman asked in
what sense Suzuki thought
the table was real.
Suzuki said,
“In every sense.”
12
When I told David Tudor
that this talk on music
was nothing but a
series of stories,
he said,
“Don’t fail
to put in some benedictions.”
I said,
“What in heaven’s
name do you mean by
benedictions?” “Blessings,”
he said.
“What blessings?”
I said,
“God bless you everyone?”
“Yes,” he said,
“like
they say in the sutras:
‘This
is not idle talk,
but the
highest of truths’.”
134
Ramakrishna spent an afternoon
explaining that everything is
God.
Afterward,
one of his disciples
entered the evening traffic
in a euphoric state and
barely escaped being crushed to
death by an elephant.
He ran back to
his teacher and asked,
“Why do you say
everything’s God when just
now I was nearly killed by
an elephant?” Ramakrishna
said, “Tell me
what happened.” When the
disciple got to the point where
he heard the voice of the
elephant’s driver warning him
several times to get out of
the way,
Ramakrishna interrupted,
“That voice was God’s voice.”
141
After a long and arduous journey
a young Japanese man arrived deep
in a forest where the teacher
of his choice was living in a small
house he had made.
When the student arrived,
the teacher was sweeping up fallen
leaves. Greeting his
master, the young man
received no greeting in return.
And to all his questions,
there were no replies.
Realizing there was
nothing he could do to get the
teacher’s attention, the
student went to another part of the
same forest and built himself a
house. Years later,
when he was sweeping up
fallen leaves, he was
enlightened. He then
dropped everything, ran through
the forest to his teacher,
and said, “Thank you.”
15
Two monks came to a stream.
One was Hindu,
the other Zen.
The Indian
began to cross the stream
by walking
on the surface of
the water.
The Japanese became
excited and called
to him to come
back.
“What’s the matter,”
the Indian said.
The
Zen monk said,
“That’s not the
way to cross the stream.
Follow me.” He led
him to a place where
the water was shallow
and they waded across.
16
Another monk was walking
along when he came to
a lady
who was sitting by the
path weeping.
“What’s the
matter?”
he said.
She said,
sobbing,
“I have lost
my only
child.”
He hit
her over the head and
said, “There,
that’ll give you
something to cry about.”
17
Anyway, he was
explaining one day the
meaning of a Chinese character
— Yu,
I believe it was
—
spending the whole time
explaining it and yet
its meaning
as close as he could
get to it in English
was
“unexplainable.”
Finally he
laughed and then said,
“Isn’t it strange that
having
come all the way from Japan
I
spend my time
explaining to you
that
which is not to be explained?”
19
People are always saying that the
East is the East and the West
is the West and you have to
keep from mixing them up.
When I first began to study
Oriental philosophy, I also
worried about whether it was mine to
study. I don’t
worry any more about that.
At Darmstadt I was
talking about the reason back of
pulverization and fragmentation:
for instance,
using syllables instead of words in
a vocal text, letters
instead of syllables.
I said, “We take things
apart in order that they may
become the Buddha.
And if that seems too Oriental
an idea for you,” I said,
“Remember the early Christian
Gnostic statement, ‘Split
the stick and there is Jesus!’ ”
2
You probably know the one about the
two monks, but I’ll tell
it anyway. They were
walking along one day when they came
to a stream where a young lady was
waiting, hoping that
someone would help her across.
Without hesitating,
one of the monks picked her up
and carried her across,
putting her down safely on the
other side.
The two monks continued
walking along, and after
some time, the second
one, unable to restrain
himself, said to the
first, “You know we’re
not allowed to touch women.
Why did you carry that
woman across the stream?”
The first monk replied,
“Put her down.
I did two hours ago.”
21
Kwang-tse
points out
that a beautiful
woman
who gives
pleasure
to men
serves
only to
frighten
the fish
when she
jumps
in the water.
24
A Chinaman
(Kwang-tse
tells)
went to
sleep
and dreamt
he was
a butterfly.
Later, when he
awoke,
he asked
himself,
“Am I a
butterfly
dreaming
that I am
a man?”
27
The Four Mists of Chaos,
the North, the East,
the West,
and the South,
went to visit
Chaos himself.
He treated them all very
kindly and when they were
thinking of leaving,
they consulted among
themselves how they might repay
his hospitality.
Since they had noticed
that he had no holes
in his body,
as they each had (eyes,
nose, mouth, ears, etc.),
they decided
each day to provide
him with an opening.
At the
end of seven days,
Kwang-tse tells us,
Chaos died.
28
Now and then I come across an article on that rock
garden in Japan where there’s just a space of sand
and a few rocks in it. The author, no
matter who he is, sets out either to suggest that
the position of the rocks in the space follows some
geometrical plan productive of the beauty one
observes, or not satisfied with mere
suggestion, he makes diagrams and detailed
analyses. So when I met Ashihara, the
Japanese music and dance critic (his first name is
Eryo), I told him that I thought those stones
could have been anywhere in that space, that I
doubted whether their relationship was a planned one,
that the emptiness of the sand was such that
it could support stones at any points in it.
Ashihara had already given me a present
(some table mats), but then he asked me to
wait a moment while he went into his hotel.
He came out and gave me the tie I am
now wearing. ¶
After he heard this lecture which I first gave
in Brussels in the French Pavilion,
Karlheinz Stockhausen said, “You should have
said, ‘the tie I was wearing yesterday’.”
34
Before studying Zen,
men are men and
mountains are mountains.
While studying Zen,
things become confused.
After studying Zen,
men are men
and mountains are mountains.
After telling
this, Dr. Suzuki
was asked,
“What is
the difference between before and
after?”
He
said,
“No difference,
only the feet are a
little bit off the ground.”
46
In the poetry contest in China by
which the Sixth Patriarch of Zen
Buddhism was chosen, there
were two poems. One
said: “The mind is
like a mirror. It
collects dust. The
problem is to remove the dust.”
The other and
winning poem was actually a reply
to the first. It
said, “Where is the mirror
and where is the dust?” ¶
Some centuries later in
a Japanese monastery,
there was a monk who was always
taking baths.
A younger monk came up
to him and said, “Why,
if there is no dust,
are you always taking
baths?” The
older monk replied, “Just
a dip. No why.”
75
In Zen they say:
If something is boring after
two minutes,
try
it for four.
If still boring,
try it for eight,
sixteen,
thirty-two,
and so on.
Eventually one discovers that it’s not
boring at all
but very interesting.
83
During recent years Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki has done
a great deal of lecturing at Columbia University.
First he was in the Department of Religion, then
somewhere else. Finally he settled down on the
seventh floor of Philosophy Hall. The room had
windows on two sides, a large table in the middle
with ash trays. There were chairs around the
table and next to the walls. These were always
filled with people listening, and there were
generally a few people standing near the door.
The two or three people who took the class for credit
sat in chairs around the table. The time was four
to seven. During this period most people now
and then took a little nap. Suzuki never spoke
loudly. When the weather was good the windows
were open, and the airplanes leaving La Guardia
flew directly overhead, drowning out from time to
time whatever he had to say. He never repeated
what had been said during the passage of the airplane.
Three lectures I remember in particular.
While he was giving them I couldn’t for the life of me
figure out what he was saying. It was a week or
so later, while I was walking in the woods looking
for mushrooms, that it all dawned on me.
84
There was a lady
in
Suzuki’s class
who said
once,
“I have great
difficulty
reading the sermons
of
Meister Eckhart,
because
of all the Christian imagery.”
Dr. Suzuki said,
“That difficulty will disappear.”
88
“Cultivate in yourself a grand similarity
with the chaos of the surrounding ether.
Unloose your mind and set your
spirit free. Be still as if
you had no soul.” These words come
towards the end of one of Kwang-tse’s stories
which, if I were asked,
I would say is my favorite. The
Mists of Chaos had spent much trouble
trying to come in contact with Chaos himself.
When he finally succeeded,
he found Chaos hopping about like a
bird and slapping his buttocks.
He phrased his question, which
concerned the nature of ultimate reality.
Chaos simply went on hopping and
slapping his buttocks and said, “I
don’t know. I don’t know.” On a second
occasion, the Mists of Chaos had at
first just as little satisfaction,
but on pressing Chaos, received the
advice I quoted. In gratitude,
he bowed ceremoniously, spoke
respectfully, and took his leave.
89
One of Suzuki’s books
ends
with the poetic
text of a Japanese monk
describing his attainment of
enlightenment.
The final poem says,
“Now that I’m
enlightened,
I’m just as miserable as ever.”
90
Dorothy Norman invited me to dinner in New York.
There was a lady there from Philadelphia who was
an authority on Buddhist art. When she found out
I was interested in mushrooms, she said, “Have
you an explanation of the symbolism involved in the
death of the Buddha by his eating a mushroom?” I
explained that I’d never been interested in
symbolism; that I preferred just taking things as
themselves, not as standing for other things.
But then a few days later while rambling in the
woods I got to thinking. I recalled the Indian
concept of the relation of life and the seasons.
Spring is Creation. Summer is Preservation.
Fall is Destruction. Winter is
Quiescence. Mushrooms grow most vigorously in
the fall, the period of destruction, and the
function of many of them is to bring about the final
decay of rotting material. In fact, as I
read somewhere, the world would be an impassible
heap of old rubbish were it not for mushrooms and
their capacity to get rid of it. So I wrote to
the lady in Philadelphia. I said, “The
function of mushrooms is to rid the world of old
rubbish. The Buddha died a natural death.”
98
A young man in Japan arranged his circumstances
so that he was able to travel to a distant
island to study Zen with a certain Master
for a three-year period. At the end of
the three years, feeling no sense of
accomplishment, he presented himself to the
Master and announced his departure. The
Master said, “You’ve been here three years.
Why don’t you stay three months more?” The
student agreed, but at the end of the three
months he still felt that he had made no
advance. When he told the Master again
that he was leaving, the Master said,
“Look now, you’ve been here three years and
three months. Stay three weeks longer.”
The student did, but with no success.
When he told the Master that absolutely
nothing had happened, the Master said,
“You’ve been here three years, three months,
and three weeks. Stay three more days,
and if, at the end of that time,
you have not attained enlightenment,
commit suicide.” Towards the end of
the second day, the student was enlightened.