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

2. The Secret of Koans

“If there are any tracks, I’ ll find them — even at the bottom of a well.”

SILVER KANE, EL GUARDAESPALDAS

(THE BODYGUARD)

When Ejo Takata first visited my house in order to choose the right space for his teaching, I showed him my large library proudly. I had been surrounded by books since childhood, and I loved them as much as I loved my cats. I had a sizeable collection of books on Zen — in English, Italian, French, and Spanish — but the monk glanced at them only briefly. Opening his fan, he moved it rapidly to cool himself. Then he left the room without a word. My face darkened with embarrassment. With this gesture, he was showing me that my erudition was nothing but a disguise for my lack of true knowledge. Words may show the way to truth, but they are not the truth. “When you’ve caught the fish, you don’t need the net anymore.”

In spite of this lesson, however, I could not resist sneaking out at nightfall to the garbage can where Ejo had consigned the mysterious book he had taken from the American. Digging among the trash there, I found it and pulled it out. I felt like a thief, but not like a traitor. Covering it in black paper, I placed it inconspicuously among the many volumes of my library without opening it.

Time passed. Thanks to the support of the Japanese embassy, Ejo was able to set up a small zendo in the university quarter of Mexico City. For five years, I arose each morning at six o’clock to drive for at least an hour through heavy traffic in order to arrive at the zendo for two meditation sessions of forty minutes each. Yet it became clear to me that my path in life was not that of a monk.

My ambitions were becoming centered on the theater. Nevertheless, Ejo Takata’s teachings — to be instead of to seem, to live simply, to practice the teaching instead of merely reciting it, and knowing that the words we use to describe the world are not the world — had profoundly changed my vision of what theater should be. In my upcoming production, a theatrical version of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, I had stripped the stage of its usual décor, including even curtains and ropes, and had the walls painted white. Defying censorship, the actors and actresses undressed completely on stage after reciting lines from the Gospel of Thomas: “The disciples asked him: ‘When will you be revealed, and when will we be able to see you?’ And Jesus said: ‘When you shed your clothing without shame, and when you take your jewels and cast them under your feet and trample them like little children, then will you be able to contemplate the Son of the Living One and have no more fear.’”^*7

The production was a success, with full houses from Tuesday through Sunday. I then proposed to Ejo (without much hope) that he meditate before the public during the performance. To my astonishment, the master accepted. He arrived punctually, took his seat on the side of the stage, and meditated without moving for two hours. The contrast between the actors speaking their lines and the silent monk dressed in his ritual robes had a staggering effect. Zarathustra continued to run for a full year and a half. After the last performance, Ejo said to me: “By having me participate in your work, you have introduced many thousands of Mexicans to Zen meditation. How can I thank you?”

I bowed to him to hide my shame, then I confessed: “I took that American guy’s Zen book and hid it. I’ve never opened it, but I’m dying of curiosity to see what is in it. If I read it, will I be betraying you?”

He burst out laughing. “We’ll read it together and write commentaries about it!” Then he told me the story of this mysterious book.

“This text is Gendai Sojizen Hyoron and actually amounts to a critique of pseudo-Zen. Appearing in 1916 and written by a mysterious provocateur, it set off a huge scandal among Zen monks. In the Rinzai school, koans and their answers had been transmitted secretly for generations, supposedly in a notebook written by Hakuin himself, the founder of the technique. A number of masters were furious at having these secrets published. They went to great lengths to confiscate and destroy all copies of it. But someone managed to keep one. It passed from hand to hand, and finally, in the 1960s, photocopies of it began to circulate with an English translation and commentary by the learned scholar Yoel Hoffmann.

“When I first visited that monastery in California, I realized that a number of monks were repeating phrases from it like parrots and imitating actions from it like monkeys. That is why I fled that place. Knowing the answer to a question is not the same as mastering it.”

Thus began a new phase of my life. Ejo proposed that we meet once a week at midnight — he chose this dark hour because it is symbolically the beginning of the new day’s conception. We engaged in conversations that literally began in the darkness and ended with the light of dawn. Every one of the koans was an immense challenge for me. I had to solve not only the riddles the masters offered but also the incomprehensible replies of their disciples. My reason was made to endure agony. I had to concentrate all my energy only to open a door in the wall of an absurd blind alley. To act or not to act? To follow reason or to follow intuition? Choose this one or that one? Trust others or myself?

Seeing how uncertain I was, Ejo quoted these words from Hakuin: “If you constantly explore a koan with total concentration, your self-image will be destroyed. An abyss will open beneath you, with no place to gain a foothold. You will confront death. You will feel a great fire burning in your chest. Then, suddenly, far away from body or mind, you and the koan will be one. You will go far and enter unmistakably into your own nature.” Ejo paused, and fanned himself for a while. Then, with a huge grin, he added: “Master Rinzai^*8 said: ‘All the sacred scriptures are nothing but toilet paper.’ Words won’t solve a koan.”

Yet as a person who has spent much of his life reading, finding an indescribable joy in books, I protested: “Wait just a moment, Ejo. You say that you can’t solve koans with words, but I’m sure that there are words that can dissolve them. Just as cobra venom can serve as an antidote to the poison of a bite, I believe that the poetic mind is capable of providing a kind of cleaning service: One luminous, poetic phrase could nullify the question that has no possible answer.”

Ejo laughed. “If you believe that, then you must think you can do it. You confuse poetry with reality, but I accept the challenge. Now give me a poetic response to the koan in the book that comes after the ‘sound of one hand’ and ‘Mu’: ‘What was your original face before your birth?’”

I concentrated intently and was about to say: “The same as my face after my death,” but I felt this would be falling into the trap of accepting the concept of birth and death by asserting that there is some face or individual form that we possess beyond this reality. So instead I exclaimed: “I don’t know! I didn’t have a mirror then!”

Ejo laughed again. “Quite ingenious. It is true that you have nullified the question with this exclamation — but what is the use of that? You remain a prisoner of having or not having. You accept that there is an original self, but you do not see it. Despite the fact that you managed to escape the duality of seer — seen, your words are still based on what you believe rather than on what you experience. In the traditional response given in the book, the disciple stands up and wordlessly places his two hands upon his chest. What do you think of that?”

“It seems to me that with this gesture he is saying: ‘There is no before, no after; I am here and now, that’s all I know. The question you ask has no answer.’”

“You are not going deeply enough. The disciple is not saying anything. He has withdrawn into himself, free from his hopes and illusions; his intellect is silenced. He feels this ‘here’ reach out to the whole universe; this ‘now’ include the totality of time, becoming eternal; and this individual ‘me’ dissolve into the cosmos. He has ceased to define, to believe himself master of his body, to judge, or to identify himself with his concepts as if they were real. He no longer allows himself to be carried away by the whirl of emotions and desires, for he understands that reality is not what he thinks or expects.

“As a response, the disciple stands up. In this way, he shows that he has accepted his own emptiness so that meditation is no longer necessary. Meditation is not the end, but the means. It is a mistake to confuse zazen (meditation) and awakening.”

I stood up, placed my hands upon my chest, and bowed. Ejo smiled and went into the kitchen, returning with two cups of green tea.

Now smiling myself, I said: “Ejo, this is not a Mexican drink. Enough of this Japanese culture!”

He answered immediately: “I have coffee too!” And he hurried to the kitchen again, returning quickly with two cups of steaming coffee. As we drank it in the light of dawn, whose rosy hue was staining the dying blue of the night, Ejo lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke with sensual delight. Noticing my disapproving air, he quoted a text from the Advaita Vedanta tradition, attributed to the poet Dattatraya: “Do not worry about the master’s defects. If you are wise, you will know how to make use of the good in him. When you cross a river, it may be in a boat painted in ugly colors, but you are thankful to it for helping you cross to the other side.”

For two or three days after that, I was in a state of euphoria. I walked the streets of the city and saw it all with new eyes. Everything seemed luminous to me. With every step I took, I rose up on my toes. I must confess, I felt I was enlightened. “Why do I need to keep seeing Ejo? When you resolve one koan, you resolve them all. Koans are not different truths; they are only different roads that lead us to the one and only light.” But then two humiliating events occurred in rapid succession and cut me down to size.

A young man named Julio Castillo came to see me. “Master, I want you to teach me about light,” he said.

My mind was flooded with an uncontrollable vanity, which I dissimulated by adopting a saintly expression. So this intelligent-looking youth was somehow able to perceive the degree of my spiritual attainment! I gave my best explanation of the nature of empty mind, detachment from desire and ego, and unity with the cosmos, the here and now. I read quotes to him from Hui-Neng^*9 and showed him photos of monks in meditation. Then I sat down in the zazen position and invited him to do likewise — but Julio Castillo only stood with a pained and embarrassed expression.

“Excuse me, master, but I fear there is a misunderstanding,” he murmured. “I am a theater student. I have come to ask you not to save my soul, but to teach me about light — how you place your projectors to get your effects on stage.”

I felt so ridiculous that I started coughing to hide my embarrassment.

The evening of that same day, I went to a party given by a surrealist painter, Leonora Carrington. Her dazzling personality contrasted sharply with that of her husband, a man with a grave expression who rarely said anything and, when he did, uttered only a few syllables. In spite of the heat, he was wrapped in a thick, black overcoat, and a beret was pulled down to his ears. Like an observer from another planet, from a corner he watched the noisy party, where drink flowed copiously.

“Please don’t think he is some sort of ogre,” Leonora said to me. “Go talk with Chiki (as she called her husband) — you’ll see that he knows many interesting things. He reads five books a day. Right now he is studying Tibetan religion.”

It so happened that I had learned a very complicated Tibetan mudra (sacred hand gesture), which I had copied from a manuscript I had seen. With each thumb, I pulled the ring finger of the opposite hand toward my chest, and pressing the ring fingers against each palm, I brought together the two ring fingers like a symbolic mountain. I then used each of my index fingers to grasp the ring finger of the opposite hand and bring it down parallel to the little finger.

Approaching Chiki, I performed this complex operation and proudly displayed the mudra to him, asking him at the same time (with the hope of impressing him and starting an interesting conversation): “What is this?”

He shrugged. “Ten fingers.”

With this one stroke, like a violent wind sweeping away all garbage, he banished all metaphor from my mind. No matter how much I entangled my fingers, I would never arrive at truth, only at a symbol that was as useless as the mutterings of an idiot. Ten fingers are still ten fingers. Awkwardly, I excused myself and hurried away to drown my humiliation in a glass of tequila. There and then, I decided to continue my meditations with Ejo.

“How can you walk in a straight line through the forty-nine hairpin turns of a mountain path?”

I reflected for a minute, which seemed like an eternity. An answer came to my lips: “A labyrinth is only the illusory complication of a straight line,” I said.

Ejo clapped his hands loudly, though I didn’t know whether it meant applause or, on the contrary, that I was asleep and must wake up.

“Explain, poet!” he commanded.

“I mean that the very act of asking us how to attain a goal makes us see a straight path as full of curves,” I answered.

Ejo smiled. “Let’s see what our secret book has to say about it.” He read aloud: “The disciple, leaning and turning to the side, twisted around the room as if he was climbing a narrow mountain path.” Then he told me, “Without a word, imitate the disciple. Then tell me what you have understood.”

After I had done so, I said: “Ejo, the monk is showing us how illusion — symbolized by the twisting and turning — complicates our lives. If we free ourselves from illusion, we see that the path that seemed complicated is actually straight and simple.”

“Well, your poetic answers certainly have power, but the only thing they can accomplish is to do away with the question without reaching its essence. When you use words to conquer words, you find yourself ultimately on a battlefield full of corpses. By giving an intellectual explanation to a mute gesture offered by Hakuin’s teaching, you become lost in the labyrinth. The disciple is not trying to demonstrate anything. Silently, he stands up, leans over, moves in curving paths, climbs an imaginary mountain. But he does not change; he remains empty. He is who he is, without wondering who he is. He abides in the unity at the center of the ten thousand things. If you understand that, you will have no difficulty answering the next koan: How do you take a stone from the bottom of the ocean without wetting your sleeves?”

Using the skills I had learned as a mime, I plunged into an imaginary ocean, swam to the bottom, lifted a large stone in my arms, came to the surface, and emerged from the water. Confident of the rightness of this gesture, I placed the stone before Ejo and awaited his enthusiastic response. But instead, he asked me abruptly: “What is this stone called?”

I was silent for a moment. “It. . is called ‘stone,’” I stammered. “It is called ‘awakening’. . it is called ‘Buddha’. . it is called ‘truth.’” I could have gone on like this, but Ejo silenced me with a blow of his flat kyosaku.

“Intellectual, learn to die!”

I was offended. This was the first time he had said this to me. Then he struck me again.

“Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae,’ there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains. . Now come on, let’s play a game!” he said. “You be me, and I’ll be you. Ask me a question.”

Imitating his Japanese accent, I said: “What is the name of this stone?”

Imitating my Chilean accent, he said: “Alejandro.”

Now I understood: This stone was me, identified by my name, my imagined limits, my language, my memory. To remove the stone from the bottom of the ocean — the world as it is, an inexplicable dream — meant removing my identity in order to realize that it is illusory, seeing that there is no difference between master and disciple, for one is the other and all apparent multiplicity is eternal unity.

I took his stick and gave him a blow on each shoulder. He bowed to me as if he were my disciple. Then he went to the kitchen and returned with a large bottle of sake.

“Now, master, we are going to celebrate this!” he exclaimed, pouring me a glass of the delicious beverage. We finished our glasses and continued drinking. Ejo was frolicsome but very conscious. I also felt that my mind had been set free. Only my body, with all its muscles relaxed, seemed still to be living its own life, far from me.

“Alejandro, poetry — at least the way you use it — is a game that I do not know. It amuses me to see how you use it to nullify koans. It is also a sacrilege, but that is good: Without sacrilege, a disciple cannot realize himself. ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, cut off his head.’ Now let us see how you will nullify the two major koans of the Rinzai school!”

“Oh, Ejo,” I protested, “I have had too much to drink to be able to do that.”

Ignoring this, he clapped his hands. “That is the sound of two hands clapping.” He then raised his right hand. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

I lifted my hand and placed it directly opposite his hand. “The sound of my one hand is the same as the sound of your one hand.”

The monk laughed uproariously and continued: “Does a dog have Buddha nature?”

“The Buddha has dog nature.”

Staggering as a man staggers on a boat in choppy water, he went to the kitchen and returned with another bottle. Filling our glasses, he said: “Let’s continue. This is an excellent game.”

We drank until the dark sky began to fill with light. He challenged me with a great many koans. I do not remember all my responses, but what I cannot forget is the immense joy I felt in being one with the master. By the end of our session, I no longer knew who was asking the questions and who was answering them. In the zendo, there were no longer two people, only one — or none.

“It never begins and it never ends. What is it?”

“I am what I am!”

“How does the intellectual learn to die?”

“He changes all his words into a black dog that follows him around!”

“Do the shadows of the pines depend on the moonlight?”

“Pine roots have no shadow!”

“Is the Buddha old?”

“As old as I am!”

“What do you do when it cannot be done?”

“I let it be done!”

“Where will you go after death?”

“The stones of the road neither come nor go!”

“If a woman advances on the path, is she your older or younger sister?”

“She is a woman walking!”

“When the path is covered with snow, is it white?”

“When it is white, it is white. When it is not white, it is not white!”

“How do you escape when you are imprisoned in a block of granite?”

“I leap and dance!”

“Who can remove the collar from the ferocious tiger?”

“I will take it off myself!”

“Can you say that without opening your mouth?”

“Whatever I say or do not say, keep your mouth closed!”

“How many hairs are on the back of your head?”

“Show me the back of yours, and I’ll count them!”

“All the Buddhas of the past, the present, and the future: What do they foretell right now?”

“Now I yawn, because I’m drunk!”

Holding each other steady in order not to stumble against the walls, we walked out into the street. We mimicked pissing against a post. Ejo lifted a leg, imitating a dog. “The Buddha has dog nature!” I imitated him. Then we were both seized by a long fit of joyous laughter. When we calmed down finally, he bowed good-bye to me. Then he said: “Art is your path. Accept my friend Leonora Carrington as your teacher. She doesn’t know any koans, but she has resolved them all.”