The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo

1. “Intellectual, Learn to Die!”

“But what hells, what roasted vultures, what sizzled coyotes does this imply?”

SILVER KANE, CARA DURA CITY

The last time I saw Master Ejo Takata was in a modest house in one of the overpopulated suburbs of Mexico City. There was a room and a kitchen, no more. I had come there seeking consolation, my heart broken by the death of my son. My pain was so great that I did not even notice that half the room was filled with cardboard boxes. The monk was busy frying a couple of fish. I was expecting some sort of wise discourse on the nature of death: “We are not born, we do not die. . Life is an illusion. . The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord. . Do not think of his absence; be grateful for the twenty-four years when he filled your life with joy. . The divine droplet has returned to the original ocean. . His consciousness is dissolved into blessed eternity. . ” I had already been telling myself such things, but the consolation I sought in these phrases had given my heart no peace.

Ejo said only one word in Spanish: Duele, “it hurts.” Then, bowing, he served the fish. We ate in silence. I began to understand that life goes on, that I must accept the pain instead of struggling against it or searching for consolation. When you eat, you eat. When you sleep, you sleep. When it hurts, it hurts. Beyond all that, there is the unity of the impersonal life. Our ashes must merge with the ashes of the world.

Then it occurred to me to ask him what was in the boxes.

“My belongings,” he answered. “They’ve loaned me this house. They might ask me to move out any day. Here, I’m feeling good. So why shouldn’t I feel just as good somewhere else?”

“But Ejo, this space is so small. Where do you meditate?”

He shrugged indifferently and casually gestured toward a corner. He needed no special place to meditate. It was not the space that made meditation sacred; it was his meditation that made the space sacred. In any case, for this man who had cut through the mirage of opposites, the division between sacred and profane had no significance.

In the United States, in France, and in Japan I have had the good fortune of meeting a number of other roshis. I even met my master’s master, Mumon Yamada,^*2 a very small man with the energy of a lion and hands as delicate and groomed as those of a lady (the nails on his little finger were more than an inch long). Yet no one could ever take the place that Ejo had conquered in my heart.

I know little of his life. Born in Kobe in 1928, he began to practice Zen at the age of nine in the monastery of Horyuji, under the direction of Roshi Heikisoken, the head authority of the Rinzai school. Later, at Kamakura, he entered the Shofukuji Monastery founded in 1195 by Yosai,^†3 the first monk to bring Chinese Zen Buddhism to Japan. There, he became a disciple of Mumon Yamada of the Soto school. The life of these monks aspiring to enlightenment was very hard. Always living in groups, deprived of intimacy or privacy, they ate little and poorly, worked hard, and meditated constantly. Every act of daily life — from how they slept to how they defecated — adhered to a strict ritual: “A monk must sit with his back straight, keeping his legs covered by the corners of his robe, looking neither to the right nor to the left, never speaking with his neighbors, never scratching his intimate parts, making as little noise as possible when excreting and accomplishing the act quickly, because others are waiting their turn. . The monks of the Soto Monastery must sleep on their right side; no other position is permitted. The monks of the Rinzai school sleep on their back; no other position is permitted.”

After living in this way for thirty years, in 1967 Ejo Takata decided that the times were changing. It was useless to preserve a tradition by remaining closed up in a monastery. He decided to leave Shofukuji and encounter the world. His determination led him to embark for the United States, for he desired to know why so many hippies were interested in Zen. He was received with great honor in a modern monastery in California. A few days later, he fled this place with only his monk’s robes and twenty dollars in his pocket. He reached a major highway and began to hitchhike, communicating mostly with gestures, because he spoke little English. A truck carrying oranges picked him up. Ejo began to meditate on the odor of the fruit, with no idea where he was going. He fell asleep. When he woke up, he found himself in the immense city that is the capital of Mexico.

By a coincidence that I would qualify as a miracle, he was seen wandering in the streets of this city of more than twenty million people by a man who was a disciple of Eric Fromm, the famous psychiatrist who had recently collaborated with D. T. Suzuki to publish a book called Psychoanalysis and Zen Buddhism. This man was so astounded that he could not believe his eyes: a real Japanese monk, robes and all! He stopped his car, invited the monk to get in, and ferried him off as a treasure to be presented to his students in Mexico City.

Maintaining a jealous secrecy regarding Ejo’s presence, the group set him up in a small house in the suburbs, which was transformed into a temple. Some months later, Ejo learned that before meditating, these psychiatrists took pills to help them endure with a beatific smile the hours of rigorous immobility. He thereupon bid them farewell and never returned.

By a series of coincidences (which I have described in La Danse de la Réalité), I had the chance to meet this master. Seeing that he was homeless, I offered him my house, inviting him to transform it into a zendo. There, the monk found his first honest students: actors, painters, university students, martial arts practitioners, poets, and so forth. They were all convinced that through meditation they would find enlightenment: the secret of eternal life that transcends that of the ephemeral flesh.

It was not long before we realized that Zen meditation was no game. To sit very still for hours, striving to empty our mind, enduring pains in our legs and back, and overwhelmed by boredom was a heroic undertaking.

One day, when we had all but lost hope in ever attaining mythic enlightenment, we heard the rumbling of a powerful motorcycle, which came to a screeching halt in front of the house. Then we heard the vigorous steps of someone walking up to our little meditation room. There entered a large young man with broad shoulders, muscular arms, and blond hair. He was dressed in red leather, and stopped in front of the master and addressed him insolently, with a thick American accent:

“You deserted our monastery because you think you’re so superior, with your slanted eyes! You think that truth needs a Japanese passport? Yet I, a ‘despicable Westerner,’ have solved all the koans, and I’m here to prove it. Question me!”

We disciples were frozen in place, as if we were in a cowboy film in which one gunslinger challenges another to see who has the fastest draw.

Ejo, however, was unperturbed: “I accept!” he said.

And then a scene began to unfold that had us gaping in wonder. For me, as for the others, koans were unsolvable mysteries. Whenever we read them in books, we understood absolutely nothing. We knew that in Japan, monks sometimes meditated on these riddles for years or decades — questions such as “What is Buddha nature?” and answers such as “the cypress tree in the garden” had led us to despair ever understanding them. Zen does not seek philosophical explanations, but rather demands immediate understanding beyond words. “The cypress tree in the garden” left us disconcerted, revealing that we understood nothing, because we were not enlightened.

On one occasion, when I confessed my perplexity to Ejo, he replied brusquely: “Intellectual, learn to die!” This is why it was such a deep shock to see this aggressive, disrespectful, arrogant young man reply rapidly, with no hesitation, to the master’s questions.

Ejo clapped his hands. “That is the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

The young man sat down with crossed legs, straightened his back, and raised his right arm wordlessly with his palm open.

“Good,” Ejo said. “Now, if you can hear the sound of one hand, prove it.”

Still silent, the youth repeated the gesture.

“Good,” Ejo said again.

My heart was pounding like a drum. I realized that I was witnessing something extraordinary. Only once before had I felt this peculiar kind of intensity: when I saw the great bullfighter El Cordobés decide to provoke the bull by freezing like a statue. The animal charged several times, his horns passing within a fraction of an inch of the man’s body, yet he was never gored. A strange vortex of energy seemed to envelop both man and beast, plunging them into an enchanted space-time, a “place” where error was impossible.

Confidently and with perfect style, this invader responded to every challenge presented by my master. There was such an intensity between the two men that we disciples began to dissolve little by little into the shadows.

Ejo asked him: “When you have turned into ashes, how will you hear yourself?” Again, the youth stretched out his hand.

Then Ejo said: “Is it possible that this one hand could be cut off by the sword of Suimo, which is the sharpest of all swords?”

With a smug expression, the visitor answered: “If it is possible, show me that you can do it.”

Ejo insisted: “Why can’t the Suimo sword cut off this hand?”

The youth smiled: “Because this hand reaches through the whole universe.”

Ejo arose, came close to the visitor’s face, and said loudly: “What is this one hand?”

The man answered, shouting even louder: “It is the sky, the earth, man, woman, you, me, the grass, the trees, motorcycles, and roast chickens! All things are this one hand!”

Ejo now murmured very softly: “If you hear the sound of one hand, make me hear it too.”

The young man arose, slapped Ejo in the face, and sat down.

The sound this made was like a rifle shot to us. We were on the verge of jumping this insolent youth and giving him a sound thrashing, but the master restrained us with a smile.

He asked the young man: “Now that you have heard the sound of one hand clapping, what are you going to do?”

The visitor answered: “Ride my motorcycle, smoke a joint, take a piss.”

In an urgent voice, the master commanded him: “Imitate this sublime sound of one hand clapping!”

The youth imitated the sound of a truck that happened to be passing in the street at that moment: “Vroooom. .”

The monk let out a deep sigh. Then he asked him: “This one hand — how far can it travel?”

The youth leaned over and pressed his hand on the floor. “It can go no farther than this.”

Ejo Takata burst into laughter, and in an astounding gesture that left no room for ambiguity, he offered his place to the visitor. The latter, assuming the air of a proud winner, sat down in the master’s place.

“You have done very well in resolving this koan. It was first posed by Hakuin Ekaku.”^*4

Here the youth interrupted the master, demonstrating his erudition, “Yes, Hakuin, the great Japanese Zen monk, born in 1686 and died in 1769.”

Ejo bowed respectfully. Then he continued. “Now that you have demonstrated the perfection of your enlightenment, I request that you explain the significance of your gestures and words to my disciples, who are most intrigued by them. Can you do this?”

“Of course I can,” Master Peter (for this was how he now wished us to address him) replied proudly.

“When this monk asked me to prove that I had heard the sound of one hand clapping, I swept away any rationalization with a gesture meaning, ‘It is what it is.’ When he asked me if I was going to be a Buddha — to become enlightened — I did not fall into the dualistic trap of enlightenment — nonenlightenment. What nonsense! My outstretched hand says, ‘Unity, here and now!’ As for when I have become ashes, I did not fall into the trap of existence — nonexistence. If I am, I am here and now — that’s all! The concept of ‘after death’ exists only when we are alive. As for the Suimo sword that cuts everything, I replied that there is nothing to be cut. Why can this one hand not be cut? Because it fills the universe, eliminating all distinction. When he asked that I make him hear the sound of one hand clapping, I slapped him to show that he should not underestimate his own understanding of the koan. And I knew he was setting a trap for me when he asked me to imitate the ‘sublime’ sound of one hand clapping. Expecting some extraordinary experience is an obstacle on the path to enlightenment. By imitating an ordinary sound that occurred at the moment, I was showing him that there is no difference between ordinary and extraordinary. As for the question of what I am going to do now that I am enlightened, I simply gave some details of my everyday actions. There is no need for future plans regarding enlightenment! We must understand that we have always been enlightened without realizing it. He also tried to trip me up with the question, ‘How far can this hand go?’ Enlightenment, however, is not located in space.”

Well-satisfied with his own words, Master Peter now tapped his own belly, exclaiming with a proud, authoritative tone: “Here! Only here, and nowhere else but here!”

Faced with such obvious arrogance and vanity, we were hoping that Ejo would now expel this American from his place. We were appalled at the prospect of having to accept this character as a teacher. But Ejo did nothing. He simply sat there as if he had now become a disciple.

Smiling, he said to Master Peter: “In Hakuin’s teaching there are two koans that are more important than all the others. You have resolved the first of these with perfection. Now I would like to see if you can resolve the second. .”

“Of course!” the American interrupted with a smug expression. “You mean the question about the nature of a dog.”

“Yes. The question to which Joshu gave the answer. .”

Again, Peter interrupted, reciting with speed and precision: “Joshu, the central figure of Chinese Zen, born in 778 CE. While still very young, he began to study with Master Nansen.^*5 When Nansen died, Joshu was fifty-seven years old. He remained in the monastery for three more years, honoring the memory of his master. Then he left in a quest for truth. He traveled for twenty years. At the age of eighty, he settled in his native village in the province of Jo. There he taught until his death at the age of one hundred.”

“What amazing erudition!” Ejo exclaimed.

Then, looking in our direction, he ordered us: “Applaud!” I joined my companions, but I was applauding with a feeling of jealousy. Master Peter stood up and bowed to us in return with several ostentatious flourishes.

“Now let us see,” Ejo continued. “A monk asked Master Joshu: ‘Does a dog have Buddha nature?’ Joshu answered: ‘Mu.’ What do you say?”

Peter began to stand up, muttering, “Mu in Chinese means ‘no’; it means nonexistence, emptiness — it might as well be a tree, a barking dog, whatever. .” Now standing and facing Ejo Takata, he yelled so loudly that the windows shook: “MU!”

Then began another round of the duel of questions and answers.

“Give me the proof of this Mu.”

“MU!”

“If that is so, then how will you awaken?”

“MU!”

“Very well. Now when you have been cremated, what will become of this Mu?”

“MU!”

The gringo’s yells were growing louder. Yet Takata, by contrast, was questioning him in a tone that was more and more gentle and respectful. Little by little, he seemed to abase himself utterly before this exalted being who always found the right answer instantly. I was afraid that the dialogue might continue on this way for hours, but now a subtle change took place. The responses were becoming longer.

“On another occasion, when Joshu was asked if a dog had Buddha nature, he answered yes. What do you think of that?”

“Even if Joshu said that a dog has Buddha nature, I would simply yell ‘MU!’ with all my strength.”

“Very good. Now tell me: How does your enlightenment act with Mu?”

Peter stood up and walked a few paces, saying: “When I walk, I walk.” Then, sitting down again, he said: “When I sit, I sit.”

“Excellent! Now explain the difference between the state of Mu and the state of ignorance.”

“I got on my motorcycle and rode to Reforma Boulevard. Then I walked to the government palace. Then I walked back to Reforma, got on my motorcycle, and rode it here.”

This response baffled us all. The gringo looked at us with a disdainful air. “Your Japanese monk has just asked me to explain the difference between enlightenment and nonenlightenment. In my description of a walk that began in one place and returned to that same place, I was refuting the distinction between the sacred and the profane.” Grudgingly, we felt compelled to admire the cleverness of this response.

“Very good indeed!” Ejo said, beaming, with a smile that seemed full of admiration. “Now what is the origin of Mu?”

“There is neither sky nor earth nor mountains nor rivers nor trees nor plants nor apples nor pears! There is nothing, neither myself nor anyone else. Even these words are nothing. MU!”

This last Mu was so loud that some dogs in the neighborhood began barking. From this moment on, the pace of the dialogue began to accelerate.

“So — give me your Mu!”

“Take it!” Peter said, handing Takata a marijuana cigarette.

“How tall is your Mu?”

“I am five feet nine inches tall.”

“Tell me your Mu in way that is so simple that a baby could understand it and put it into practice.”

“Mmm, mmm, mmm. . ” Peter hummed, as if lulling an infant to sleep.

“What is the difference between Mu and all?”

“If you are all, I am Mu. If you are Mu, I am all.”

“Show me different Mus.”

“Intellectual, Learn to Die!”

“When I eat, when I drink, when I smoke, when I have sex, when I sleep, when I dance, when I’m cold, when I’m warm, when I shit, when a bird sings, when a dog barks, MU! MU! MU! MU! MU! MU!”

His shouts went on and on, becoming deafening. Now he had lost control and was really causing a scene! He seemed like a man possessed, as if he would go on with this mad yelling indefinitely.

With a single bound, Ejo leaped up, seized his flat Zen stick (kyosaku), and hurling an impressive cry of “Kwatzu!” he began to strike Peter. Outraged at this, Peter attacked Ejo. Resorting deftly to some judo technique (an attainment he had never mentioned to us), the master immediately caught Peter in a hold and flipped him expertly to the floor. When Peter was gasping on his back with his four limbs flailing in the air, Ejo Takata placed a foot on his neck, immobilizing him.

“Now let us see if your enlightenment is stronger than fire!”

Dragging the bewildered gringo outside forcefully, he snatched a kerosene lamp on the way. There were two of these lamps always handy, as well as a number of candles, because we often had electrical failures in that neighborhood.

Outside, before the eyes of the terrified visitor lying on the ground, Ejo emptied the lamp kerosene all over his motorcycle. Then he held up a lighter with the flame burning. The gringo cried out, “Oh no, no no!” But when he tried to get up, Ejo knocked him down with an expert kick to the chest, landing him on his back.

“Calm yourself! Here is a koan especially for you: ‘Enlightenment or motorcycle?’ If you reply ‘Enlightenment,’ I’ll set the motorcycle on fire. If you reply ‘motorcycle,’ I’ll allow you to leave on it — but before you do, you must give me that book, which I know you have memorized.”

Master Peter seemed but a crumpled heap now. He whined softly: “Motorcycle.” Then he arose slowly and opened the storage compartment at the back of his machine. He pulled out a book with a red cover and handed it over silently to the man who had reassumed his role as our true master.

Ejo read the title aloud: “The Sound of One Hand Clapping: 281 Koans and Their Solutions.”^*6 Then he sternly admonished the defeated one: “You trickster! Learn to be what you are!”

The visitor’s face was now the same color as the book and his leather clothes. He kneeled before the monk, prostrated himself with his hands outstretched upon the ground, and implored him humbly: “I beg you, Master. .”

With his flat stick, Master Ejo struck him three times on the left shoulder blade and three times on the right. The six slaps on the leather were as loud as gunshots. Then Ejo stretched out an open hand in a gesture.

The American stood up. He seemed to have learned an essential lesson. He sighed: “Thank you, Sensei.”

Then he cranked up his powerful motorcycle and rode away forever, the sound vanishing in the distance.