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

8. Like Snow in a Silver Vase

“OK — and by the way, why do you talk so much, you son of a bitch? I told you to shut up! I may get so tired I’ ll put a bullet through your balls!”

SILVER KANE, MADISON COLT

Ana Perla, as the head of the group of disciples, received the master at the airport. He was accompanied by a sweet nun named Michiko (who would later become his wife) and her ten-year-old adopted daughter, Tomiko, an orphan. Exhausted and irritable from lack of sleep on the long trip, Ejo cut short any talk with a brief bow and asked to be taken directly to the zendo to rest. Ana complied with this but decided that while the family was sleeping all the disciples must meditate until the master awakened. This lasted for about two hours, but then we all began to fall asleep. In the early hours of the morning, everyone was awakened by a piercing shout of “Kwatzu!”

The master was standing before us, indignantly pointing his finger at the cat. The disciples had decided to shave the top of its head to imitate a monk. They had also dressed it in a brown robe and had trimmed its ears and its tail. Ejo Takata stood frozen in the center of the zendo, which was now decorated in a kind of hippie-Aztec style. It was clear that he was barely able to control his rage. The disappointment of witnessing this grotesque perversion of his teaching was soon to be amplified by the humiliation that would be inflicted upon him by Fernando Molina.

I had been meditating with Ejo for about two years. Very late one night, someone rang my doorbell, which made me nervous. My cottage, though in a central part of the city, had no near neighbors. In front was a vacant lot where pitched battles between cats and huge rats took place. The buildings next to mine formed a solid, connected row of tottering, ruined houses that were barely held up by rotten beams. They were home to so many scorpions and spiders that even the most desperate alcoholics dared not sleep there.

Mastering my fear, I unlocked the chain and opened the door. Before me was a slender youth with tiny eyes that glittered like coals and teeth so large he looked like a horse. He held a bouquet of sunflowers. It was Fernando Molina, a standup comedian who worked in variety theaters, appearing between striptease acts with a stream of salacious jokes and stories. I invited him to enter.

After giving me the bouquet, he raised a fist in front of my face and, with an extreme disrespect indicating madness, said: “If you tell me, I’ll punch you in the mouth! And if you don’t tell me, I’ll punch you in the mouth!. . What?”

A multitude of thoughts raced through my mind at the speed of light. This guy was clearly a raving barbarian who learned vaguely something about koans and wanted to test me in a stupid and vulgar way. If I was to give him the correct response to this koan, which I happened to have learned from Ejo, he wouldn’t understand and he would try to punch me anyway, so I decided to apply the deeper lessons I had learned from the master. Conquering my fear, I relaxed my muscles and emptied my mind of all thoughts, looking deeply and steadily into his eyes, asking nothing, offering nothing, simply being there, like a stone or a bird.

With churlish contempt, Molina drew back his arm to hurl the punch. Without blinking an eye, I stood with perfect Christian mildness, ready to receive the blow.

And then the unthinkable happened. It was one of those incredibly precise synchronicities that arrive exactly when they are needed: the entire row of dilapidated neighboring houses collapsed! It resounded like an explosion, and a cloud of dust billowed in through the window, covering us. I took advantage of the shock, pushing Fernando away from me, and shouted:

“There is your answer to your ‘What?’”

The comedian was so agitated that his horselike teeth were chattering. He then burst out laughing, hesitated for a few seconds, and finally kneeled before me.

“Tomorrow, I was supposed to take a plane to Peru to see a master who lives there. But tonight, I dreamed about you. You were seated in meditation like an ancient sage. I prostrated before you, gave you a bouquet of sunflowers, and begged you: ‘Save me! Give me the teaching that I lack. Enlighten me!’ And you answered: ‘Wake up and come see me immediately.’ So I did. On the way, at Rio de Janeiro Plaza, I noticed a large bed of sunflowers planted around a copy of Michelangelo’s David. I stole eleven of them and brought them to you. Do you understand? Eleven sunflowers plus myself makes twelve disciples turning around the central sun. That sun is you, who are able to make a whole street collapse!”

“Hold on there, Fernando! Those houses have been in ruins and ready to collapse for a long time. It’s an accident that it happened now. Your dream was corrrect in telling you to come see me — but not because I am your master. Instead, it told you to come so that I can introduce you to a real master, which will make your trip to Peru unnecessary. His name is Ejo Takata. He’s an authentic Zen monk who can give you the teaching you desire. Now it’s two o’clock in the morning. In three hours, Ejo will begin his meditation. Let’s have some coffee, and then I’ll take you to the zendo.”

Sadly, the comedian pointed to his teeth. “I broke all of them in a motorcycle accident. They gave me these huge false teeth, which make me look like a horse. No master would take me seriously.”

“Don’t worry about it. Ejo sees your essential being.”

At the zendo, Ejo took Fernando by the chin affectionately, looked at his teeth, sighed deeply, and said, “One day, you will have very beautiful eyes.”

From that time on, Molina kept his mouth shut tightly, decided to remain mute for the rest of his life, and moved into the zendo, sleeping on the meditation platform. He kept the place impeccably swept and mopped, whitewashed the walls, and cooked rice. Later, he helped Michiko rid the plants of parasites; accompanied Tomiko to school; cleaned the cat box; was allowed to walk among the meditating disciples, brandishing the kyosaku and slapping the shoulder blades of the drowsy ones with slumping backs; made trips to the market to scavenge leftover fruits and vegetables; and did many other things.

Touched by such devotion, Ejo was full of hope, imagining a future in which the ancient cultures of Japan and Mexico would come together in a religious embrace. When Fernando’s head was shaved and he donned the robes of a monk, Ejo wrote a poem:

He who has no arms

will help with his arms

and he who has no legs

will help with his legs

in this great spiritual work

where many beings

will lose their hair.

Shortly afterward, Ejo decided to send his first Mexican monk to the same monastery where he had been trained. At this news, Molina let out a great neigh of pleasure, showing his teeth for the first time in a year. All of us contributed money to help purchase the airplane ticket, most of which had been paid for by a contribution from the Japanese embassy.

A month later, the master received a card from Mumon Yamanda congratulating him on having trained such an exemplary monk who outdid even his Japanese disciples in his devotion to daily tasks and meditation.

Later, Ejo returned again to Japan. When he arrived at the monastery, it was as if he was drenched with a huge bucket of cold water. The very day he went to visit his old master, the monks who had the job of supervising the letters and packages that novices received from their families had made an unpleasant discovery: concealed in the boxes of chocolates that Molina had been receiving from Mexico were several types of drugs, including opium paste, heroin, and LSD. Worse, they discovered that a part of the package contents had been set aside for the purpose of selling drugs to the other novices.

Thus the first Mexican monk was expelled in disgrace and forbidden to enter any Zen monastery or temple in Japan.

Judging from the terrible rage that Ejo manifested in the zendo upon his return, his shame and disappointment must have been immense. Molina had already returned from Japan, taking a plane that left only two hours before his. Acting as if nothing had happened, Fernando was still wearing his monk’s robes and sleeping soundly next to Ana Perla. Mingled with the fragrances of incense — sandalwood, patchouli, and myrrh — was a strong odor of marijuana.

Standing motionless for a moment before this spectacle, Ejo suddenly burst into a flurry of raging action. Swinging his stick, he smashed all the flower vases, the pre-Columbian sculptures, the Shivas and the Shaktis,^*19 and the gilded Buddhas. He ripped from the walls all the kabbalistic and astrological posters and removed the cat’s robe and tossed it out the window. He also tossed out all the zafus, which, formerly black, had been covered with white cloths and embroidered with Huichol designs.

Then he proceeded to expel Ana Perla and the others who were in the zendo, threatening them with fists and feet. Terrified, they all fled in haste. Only Fernando Molina remained, sitting hunched in a ball, his head between his legs and his arms clasped tightly. Ejo rolled him out the door, into the middle of the street, but Molina refused to budge. He remained there in a ball, with cars swerving to avoid him, and there he stayed for hours, yet the master’s compassion seemed to have vanished. Finally, an ambulance arrived. They placed him on a stretcher, still rolled in a ball, and took him away.

We never saw him again. (Three years later, I learned that Molina had appeared in a “happening,” now endowed with normal teeth. His new act consisted of burning a monk’s robe and copulating with his wife upon its ashes before a large audience.)

Late that night, Ana Perla sneaked back to the zendo, accompanied by six of her acolytes, and painted this graffiti upon its facade in huge red letters: BUDDHA IS A WOMAN.

During this dismal period, I decided imprudently to read to the master the following essay, which I had just published in the cultural supplement of the conservative periodical Heraldo de Mexico.

Donald Duck and Zen Buddhism

There exists a Donald Duck comic that corresponds exactly to the message of koans 42 and 44 of the book of Mumonkan.^*20

The city fire chief invites Donald to join the volunteer firefighters. He tells his three nephews about it. They want to join too, but their uncle considers them incompetent and orders them to stay at home. Donald is provided with a complete uniform on condition that he rush immediately to the scene of the fire as soon as he hears the alarm. If he arrives in time, he will receive a bronze medal. Proudly, Donald empties a chest, saying he’ll need the space for all the medals he is bound to receive. That night, the alarm rings, but he sleeps through it. His nephews drag him out of his sleep. He hurries to the fire but forgets his helmet. He also forgets his hatchet and his pants. When he finally arrives with these items, it is too late. The house he was supposed to save is a mass of smoking ruins, and the other firefighters have left.

The next day, the chief demotes him, taking away his hatchet and replacing it with a small extinguisher. That night, the alarm rings again, and once more, his nephews have to drag him out of sleep. This time he dresses more carefully, but in his haste, he grabs a can of insecticide instead of the extinguisher. When he sprays it on the fire, it only makes the flames worse.

The chief demotes him again. From now on, he has only a sack to use against the fire. Wanting to help him, his nephews decide to set a small fire so that he will not be too depressed and will have work to do. Meanwhile, Donald discovers a package of fireworks, including rockets. Thinking they are dangerous, he stuffs them in his coat pockets.

“Uncle Donald, there’s a fire in the street! You must take your sack and save the town!”

Donald succeeds in putting out the flames, but his coat catches fire and he runs home. The rockets explode there and his living room catches on fire. The nephews put it out with a hose.

The chief arrives and is impressed by the nephews. He invites them to join the firefighters. The next night, when the alarm sounds, the nephews wake up, shouting: “We must go quickly! Nothing can stand in our way!” They rush off toward the fire in a modern, fully equipped fire truck. Meanwhile, poor Donald is left standing in the street with his pathetic sack, watching the truck speed away. “They have all the luck,” he mutters.

Several esoteric teachings point out the error that causes us to link all our ordinary states of consciousness, forgetting that they are separated by vast lakes of sleep. Zen is based upon a total awakening known as satori.

Satori is the alpha and omega of Zen Buddhism. It may be defined as intuitive insight into the nature of things, as opposed to logical or analytic understanding. In practice, it signifies the discovery of a new world heretofore unnoticed because of the confusion of a mind educated in dualism. When we experience satori, everything around us is seen with a kind of perception that has never before been known. .

(Essays on Zen Buddhism, D. T. SUZUKI)

In koan 44, known as Pa-tsiao’s stick, the master says to his monks: “If you have a stick, I will give you the stick. If you don’t have a stick, I will take it away from you.”. . Let us analyze this koan in the light of the Donald Duck story. He first receives a “mystical call” to put out a fire. Yet in receiving the call, Donald is blinded by his pride. He is already congratulating himself on the honors he will receive: a position of great responsibility and bronze medals to gratify his narcissistic self (though if they were of real value, they would be gold, not bronze). Furthermore, he intends to store them in a trunk, a symbol of his closed ego. His nephews, on the contrary, represent collective wisdom and the priority of social good over selfish good. They are both three and one. They pronounce one sentence, dividing it into three parts: 1) The alarm has rung, 2). . and our uncle must be, 3). . asleep. These are the nephews who diadain egoistic thought. They awaken when the alarm sounds and set about extinguishing the fire selflessly, expecting no reward and thinking only of the task at hand. Finally, it is they who try to help the Other. They have a stick, and this is why they are given the best fire truck. Uncle Donald does not have a stick, which is why even what he has is taken away from him little by little. .

In koan 42, a nun is deep in concentration beside the Buddha. The other disciples complain because she alone has the honor of sitting next to the master. The Buddha tells them to bring her out of her meditation, but they are unable to do so. The Buddha calls out: “Ignorance!” Then he approaches the woman, snaps his fingers, and she immediately wakes up.

The content is clear: Neither knowledge nor discussion nor study can give satori. Only mind which is not conscious of a separate self can trigger it.

. . Donald Duck, a modern Prometheus, receives the call to extinguish his petty mental fire, then he discovers some rockets and becomes submerged in the great Fire-Unconscious universe. It is clear that the abnormal excess of dualistic thought causes us to suffer. This is why the duck cries out when his house catches fire. He needs satori but is afraid of it. He loses his chance, and sadly, lugging his intellectual sack, he watches the new generation disappear in the distance. His pathetic consolation is to exclaim how lucky they are. He does not see that such luck is the result of constant inner work (the necessity of being responsive to all calls) and that it is because of their work that they have been given this blessing.

Poor Donald! Everything is taken away from him. His rigid concepts cause him to expect something without working to obtain it. And how to obtain it? For Donald, the path is shown in the story: He must clean his trunk, emptying it of all those bronze medals.

After I had finished reading the article to Ejo, my contented smile froze as he began to fan himself, muttering, “Like snow in a silver vase.” His tone left no doubt as to his meaning. In spite of their cleverness, my words were destined to vanish without a trace.

After a seemingly interminable silence, Ejo spoke in a very low voice: “The moment you open your mouth to speak ‘the truth,’ you betray yourself.” Blushing with shame, I understood. However accurate my Zen interpretation of the Donald Duck story might be, I rendered the teaching useless by such an attempt to explain it.

Ejo passed me the secret book. “Read the first koan of the third part. It is not for novices; it is only for those who aspire to become masters. When this and the forty-three other koans are received after three years of novitiate, the aspirant must confine himself to the monastery and practice for at least ten years. Only someone who has succeeded in becoming a Zen master has the right and the capacity to ask these koans of a new generation.

“That night, when Señor Molina came to your door and asked you that koan, not even knowing its correct form, and threatened to punch you violently in the mouth — the same place where he had done violence to himself, breaking all his teeth — he was giving a sign of inexcusable vanity, pride, stupidity, and unconsciousness. I should have seen this, but I was blinded by his childlike ambition and I ordained him as a monk. My real wish was for my own ‘fathers’ to congratulate me for helping the Dharma take root in Mexico. I deserve a hundred blows of the kyosaku. Please administer them to me.”

He gave me the stick and kneeled, bowing his head and back. I hesitated. He slapped the ground loudly with his palm. “One hundred!”

What else could I do? I knew it would be useless to try to persuade him to abandon this plan. It would make him only angrier — and if I refused, it would be a further insult and humiliation to him. I began to strike him with three rather soft blows.

“Harder!” he shouted.

So I continued striking him vigorously. After a while, a bitter sob of grief rose from my belly to my throat and finally emerged from my mouth, a long, serpentine wail of lamentation for both of us, for his childhood and mine, two children who had never been allowed to play with abandon, imprisoned inside ourselves by the adults around us, two islands who had lost hope of ever meeting another pair of kind and understanding eyes that would accept us just as we were, as innocent souls, with no strings of religious or social duty attached.

After the hundredth blow, I kneeled down beside him. I attempted to embrace him, but he would not allow it. Arising with great dignity, he handed me the book.

“Read aloud!”

“Zen master Kyogen^*21 said: ‘Suppose a man climbs a tree and holds onto a branch with his teeth. He hangs there without his feet touching the ground. From below, a monk questions him on why Bodhidharma, founder of Zen, came from the west. If the man does not answer, he will be shamed for eluding the question. But if he opens his mouth, he will fall and die. What should he do?’

“A monk named Koto replied: ‘Once the man is up high, hanging from the branch, he cannot reply to any question. If the monk had something to ask him, he should have done it before the man climbed the tree.’ Hearing this, Kyogen burst out laughing. Later, Master Setcho commented: ‘It is easy to answer while hanging from a tree. It is more difficult to answer while standing under the tree. Therefore, I must hang from a branch. Come, ask me a question.’”

“First, the classic responses,” Ejo said. “There is one for when the man is hanging from a tree and another for when he is on the ground. In the tree: The disciple places a finger between his teeth, imitating a branch, wriggles his body, and grunts ‘Ooh, ooh,’ imitating someone trying to answer without being able to. Under the tree: The disciple imitates falling from the branch and lands on his bottom. ‘Ouch, that hurts!’ he says. Now answer me without opening your mouth!” Ejo said.

I offered the classic response: “Whether or not I can reply, you try first!” And I covered his mouth with my hand.

He pushed it away. “You see? Whether or not you speak, your brain is stuffed with words. Can you climb the tree and hang by your teeth from a branch? The monk Koto saw the smoke but not the fire. Human beings give more importance to knowing in advance how to answer a question with grand words that reveal the truth of the teaching than they do to the ferocious effort between life and death that they must make to realize their true nature of emptiness. Master Setcho understood this, demonstrating clearly the difference between thinking and experiencing. Under the tree, man seeks the Buddha’s meaning without understanding that this Buddha he talks about is not an external being, but a level of consciousness that must be found beyond concepts. Being suspended from the tree means putting an end to intellectual discourse, to the search for ideals and goals. It means entering into a vital process, an agonizing struggle like that of a larva twisting itself to become a butterfly.”

Listening to this — with my mind organizing Ejo’s fragmentary phrases, because of his modest command of Spanish — I felt I had understood the two responses. In the tree: if I speak, I intellectualize and lose myself. Under the tree: if I answer by trying to translate the truth into words, I destroy it and I wind up with sentences that, however elegant, are no more than snow in a silver vase.

“Ejo, I want to hang from the tree!”

“Can you take it? Zen is not a game. It is not a mystical pastime for privileged hippies. Awakening cannot be bought or sold. It is earned by losing everything, sometimes even your reason and your life.”

“Teach me, I beg you!”

“I can teach you only how to teach yourself.” Now Ejo Takata seemed to undergo a change. It was as if he had rid himself of a coat of lead. He stood more erect, vibrant with energy, a huge smile lighting up his face. “We shall do a rohatsu. We will meditate for seven days.”

“What is a rohatsu?”

“A Zen technique equivalent to hanging from a branch by your teeth. You are allowed only one bowl of rice a day, forty minutes of sleep, and fifteen minutes to go to the toilet. The rest of the time, you must sit without moving.”

“But Ejo, this is the rainy season. The mosquitoes will devour us. .”

“And they will enjoy a fine feast! Enough discussion. If you agree to do it, remove your shoes, and we’ll start immediately. If you don’t have the courage to do it, then go and burn your secret book. Koans are not poetic games. Resolving them means surrendering to a mutation. That woman you spoke of in your essay: meditating next to the Buddha, she realized ignorance ignores itself and she discovered that she is the Buddha. Do you want to awaken? Yes or no?”

“Yes!”

I removed my shoes, kneeled, took the only remaining cushion, and put it between my legs, bringing my feet together behind my back with my knees planted upon the wooden platform as if they were anchors fastening me to the center of the earth. I straightened my spine as much as possible, imagining that I was being pulled upward by my hair. Suspended between heaven and earth, I was like a strung bow ready to shoot an arrow. I placed my hands so that they were lying flat on my lap, right upon left, letting my two thumbs touch with very slight pressure, neither too much nor too little, “neither mountain nor valley.” I did not close my eyes, but instead let them focus upon the floor about three feet in front of me, the corners of my mouth in a faint smile. Ejo Takata took up the very same position. Nevertheless, compared to him, I was like a pile of jelly next to a block of granite.

He lit a stick of green incense, struck a metal bowl with a wooden mallet to produce a peaceful ring, and with no further ado, my course of torture began.

We were in semidarkness. The closed window barely muffled the noise of the traffic — cars, trucks, cries from the street. From the kitchen on the ground floor we could hear the delicate movements of the master’s companion. We could also hear the faint sounds of Japanese-style rock music that Tomiko had brought with her, but at a very low and discreet volume. All these noises were as nothing compared to the buzzing of a mosquito that appeared next to my ear.

Valiantly, with an almost delirious enthusiasm, I intensified my meditation, deciding to become a statue. After an hour, I began to flinch. The pain in my legs was growing worse every minute. When I could no longer take it, I tried to change my position. Ejo let out a lion’s roar, which paralyzed me. To flee my body, I tried to take refuge in my mind. I imagined landscapes, interstellar voyages, multiformed clouds, zzzzz. . I was awakened by another terrifying roar. Ejo got up and gave me three blows of the kyosaku on each shoulder blade. This had a refreshing effect, and I was once again filled with enthusiasm and felt rested. I meditated. An hour. . another hour. . another. . another. I was thirsty and hungry and my entire body was in pain. I had gas in my stomach. Ejo leaned to the right, lifted a buttock lightly, and let out a string of the loudest farts I’ve ever heard. Then he returned to his granite posture of meditation. With deep shame, I also let myself fart aloud. As I was in the midst of this odoriferous occupation, Michiko entered, dressed in a sober kimono. Before each of us she placed a bowl of steaming rice with bits of carrots, chopsticks, and a glass of green tea.

“Eat quickly; don’t waste time,” Ejo commanded. “The important thing is the meditation.”

Like him, I had to wolf down the rice, to the great displeasure of my tongue. In order not to waste a single grain (waste is forbidden to monks), I poured a bit of tea into the bowl and shook it, then drank the burning mixture containing the last grains.

When Michiko removed the bowls, Ejo lit another stick of incense and we continued as before, mute and motionless. Now, though, we were allowed to interrupt the sitting once an hour, walking in a circle for five minutes to free our legs of swelling. Mine felt as if an army of ants had invaded them.

At midnight, Ejo said: “We will now sleep for forty minutes, no more.” Suddenly, without changing his position, he began to snore. A mood of desperation overcame me as I noticed my shoes. Their openings seemed like two generous mouths inviting me to place my feet inside them and escape for good, abandoning this monstrous folly. Yet it was my pride that held me back — a monstrous pride that, until then, I had not even known existed in me. The only movement I made was to lie down on the floor. I felt like a dog. I was used to soft mattresses and had difficulty finding a comfortable position on the hard floor. I had trouble falling asleep. Suddenly, a terrifying noise brought me out of deep sleep. Ejo was pounding on a flexible metal plate with a steel bar, which produced sounds like thunder. I had trouble rising, and he gave me several kicks to wake me up.

“The forty minutes have passed! Quickly, quickly, don’t waste any more time! Sit up and meditate.” I felt like killing him.

The first two days passed. Not even a glimpse of wisdom had come to calm my mind. These days were simply hours of struggle — with my body and its swelling, cramps and pains right to the bones, mosquito bites, hunger, sleepiness, burning in my stomach, feelings of suffocation, claustrophobia, and rage against this accursed Japanese who endured such torture impassively. There were brief moments when the physical suffering miraculously disappeared, but then a profound boredom appeared, plunging me into unbearable anguish.

On the third day, my knees were swollen, my eyes were burning, my skin was covered with a rash, my vertebrae felt like fists, and my bowels were full, because the pressure to rush to the toilet and defecate in only minutes had constipated me. Feeling as if every nerve in my body had become an electric needle, I suddenly allowed myself to collapse on my back. In a plaintive voice imitating agony, I whined: “I have a sharp pain in my chest. I’m having a heart attack. Call an ambulance.”

With ferocity and contempt, Ejo snapped back at me: “Then die!” Without deigning to help me, he maintained his posture, more granitelike than ever. I rolled on the floor, stamping my feet, crying. I grabbed a shoe and threw it at his head. But Ejo merely ducked slightly, just enough to avoid the projectile, and returned to his meditation.

Suddenly, my rage became like a kind of nourishment. Possessed by a new kind of energy, I sternly told my body to go to hell and resumed my meditation position, straightening my spinal column, forcing the corners of my mouth into a slight smile, fixing my eyes upon the floor in front of me; I was transformed into a statue. I felt very distant from this abominable, animal suffering. I had the impression of floating in a diaphanous sky. After an hour of deep calm during which I felt I was the Buddha, a profusion of images invaded my brain: sexual fantasies, lust for great wealth and fame. . and then a parade of delicious food, meats, desserts, drinks, yet also succulent morsels of human flesh. Then I imagined all sorts of tortures inflicted upon men, women, and children with naked, bloody, mutilated bodies — and me floating safe and sound above this hell. I spent hours trying to vanquish this diabolical dimension of my being, but as soon as I thought I had succeeded, there arrived painful memories of the mother who never caressed me, the infantile and competitive father who used terror as a means of education, the selfish elder sister who did everything to expel me from the family so that she could be the center of attention, the cruel and intolerant classmates, the neurotic schoolteachers, and the loneliness and humiliations. It came like a tornado, causing streams of tears and mucus to run down my cheeks. Yet my enforced immobility prevented me from drying them or hiding them. To escape this morbid cemetery of the imagination, I began to compose poems, which then became stories, theater pieces, films, novels. Stories arrived, opened themselves like flowers, and then dissolved into the void. I took a long voyage into my brain, discovering a delirious universe that constantly produced images of all sorts — shapeless forms, beings, mandalas, complex geometrical designs, explosions, vast shiftings, beams of light, changing whirlwinds of madness.

When I returned to myself, I discovered illness, old age, and death.

In spite of the revelations that doña Magdalena had worked in my human organism, partly through the contact of her holy hands and fingers, I now realized that I was still identified with my mind, seeing my body, frankly, as a coffin — a beautiful coffin, certainly, full of so many riches. Nevertheless, it was not my being. It had its own life, its own mystery, its own union with the cosmos. I vegetated inside this cage, and however marvelous it might be, I was condemned to age and rot there, under constant attack from millions of microbes, viruses, inflammations, cancers. . Sleeping only forty minutes a day, eating only one bowl of rice, shut up in this dark room where the odor of incense mingled with the stench of thousands of farts and burps, my mental defenses were in ruins. I saw myself as covered with wounds, hacked, peeled, suffocated, burned, devoured, bleeding through my mouth and my anus. I imagined a thousand and one ways of dying: fires, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, atomic bombs, leaping out of the window of a high building, filling my pockets with stones and jumping into a lake, taking a cocktail of poisons, swallowing a pound of nails, piercing my skull with a dentist’s drill, vaulting into the murderous embrace of a wild bear, being crushed by a frozen cow that falls from a freight plane, being devoured at the summit of a mountain by starving alpinists. . Finally, I came up with such complex forms of suicide that I could not help shaking with suppressed laughter. Ejo, still the block of granite, made no sign.

When I stopped laughing, time and space descended upon me. I felt the immensity of the microcosm and the macrocosm and saw myself between them like a speck of dust between two suns — so small, so small, so small, so ridiculously little, floating in this immeasurable past and this interminable future. Infinity and eternity, like two spears, were thrust through my breast; oceans of universes in expansion, imploding only to start all over again; immense galaxies that, like me, were doomed to disperse into the void. It was terrifying. In front of me and within me I saw death. What I was, what I felt, what I thought I possessed, my memory, my individuality — all went down the black hole in a few seconds. I was obsessed with three words I had read in the notes left behind by Frida Kahlo: “Everything for nothing.” In sum, no being possessed anything whatsoever. Everything was on loan to us for a few years — but in the end, all goes down the black hole. I felt caught up in a universal delirium. . In an attempt to calm myself, I focused on my shoes, those modest and useful friends with their open mouths, just waiting for my feet. An impotent rage possessed me once again: “What the devil am I doing here with this mad monk, torturing myself in this way? I’m not a samurai or a Buddha. I’m a free man. No one can oblige me to stay here any longer. That’s enough!”

It was two o’clock in the morning. I stood up, picked up my shoes, walked into the street, took a taxi, and went to Globos, a cabaret on Insurgentes Avenue where many people — actors and actresses, painters, writers, singers, politicians, drug dealers, prostitutes, and so forth — went after hours to eat and dance. A Puerto Rican band was playing. The moment I entered the place, my sense of freedom vanished into thin air. I felt like an extraterrestrial who, after a long interstellar voyage, arrives in a prison. The dancers seemed like galley slaves, going through their motions; smoking their tobacco and marijuana; ingesting their alcohol, cocaine, and pills; aware of only this tiny sliver of time and space. They seemed like walking corpses that wore masks of immortality and were chained to a deafening rhythm, accepting the world that was offered to them and swallowing it whole, imitating each other, devouring each other, carrying a burden of limitations that were transformed into solid identities. This ceiling, with its cement stalactites, blocked any possible vision of the dance of the myriad stars above. The consciousness of these people was opaque, and, in reality, each of them was tragically alone in the midst of this false festivity, sporting their sunglasses, their phallic pistols. . I saw nothing but swollen mouths and breasts, a herd of animals driven by thirst for money, power, fame.

I found a waiter, tipped him, and asked him to loan me a pair of scissors. I locked myself in the bathroom and cut off all my hair. I returned to the zendo with shaven head, but Ejo Takata had not moved. As I entered, he slowly murmured, without lifting his eyes from the ground: “Master Ummon said: ‘The world is so vast. Why, at the mere sound of a bell, do you don the clothes of a monk?’”

I removed my shoes, pants, coat, and shirt and put on a black robe that was hanging on a hook. Taking my place on the meditation cushion, I recited the response I had learned by heart. “When the king calls for us, we go immediately, without waiting for a coach. When our father calls our name, we answer without hesitation.”

As I pronounced these words, I experienced a strange acceleration of thought and this insight: to be free in a world so vast does not mean taking advantage of its many options; my freedom means to be who I am. And at that moment, I was a monk. Having responded without hesitation to my inner bell, I had no reason, sitting in this cramped room, to feel like I was a slave of this master before me.

Ejo murmured with satisfaction: “The branches of all trees hold the same moon.” At that instant, it began to rain in torrents. On the roof the drops rebounded with a deafening noise. Raising his voice in order to be heard over the din, Ejo gave me another koan: “Master Kyosho^*22 asked a monk: ‘What is that noise outside?’ The monk answered, ‘The sound of rain.’ Kyosho commented: ‘People live in immense disorder; they blind themselves by pursuing material pleasures.’ The monk asked him: ‘And you, Sensei?’ Kyosho replied: ‘I can understand myself almost perfectly.’ The monk asked him: ‘What does it mean, to understand yourself perfectly?’ Kyosho declared: ‘To awaken is easy. To explain it with words is difficult.’ According to the secret book, the disciple resolves this koan by hissing to imitate the sound of the rain. Will that also be your response?”

I did not reply. Instead, I arose, went outside, and allowed myself to be drenched by the rain. I returned to my meditation dripping wet, as if nothing had happened. Ejo gave a sigh of pleasure. Clearly, he had accepted my return to complete the remaining seventy-two hours of the rohatsu.

Due to lack of sleep and fatigue, my brain was functioning as if under the influence of a strong drug. The rapidity of my thoughts had a delirious energy. As soon as the master had given me that koan, I understood it in the same way that an explorer, borne aloft by a condor, understands the valley below, where he has previously walked. I was at once Kyosho, the obtuse master, and also the disciple who understands the koan by imitating the sound of rain. When the master asks about the sound outside, he sets a trap for the monk, who falls into it by answering intellectually. For Kyosho, there is no “outside” or “inside.” Because he is awake — that is, living in reality — he knows that the monastery where they are meditating is not separate from the universe, which is one. The monk feels that he is meditating in the limits of a protected, sacred space. For him, the ten thousand things of the world are separate, outside, like the sound of the rain. For the master, the noise of the rain arriving is that of the whole world, inseparable from the eternal and infinite cosmos. He tries to indicate this to the monk by speaking of the millions who live in forgetfulness of the spiritual quest. The two of them are meditating amid all of this. This is why he omits any mention of the rain itself in his seemingly absurd commentary.

How could I have understood all this without verifying it by my visit to Globos? I believed I had escaped the frivolous absurdity of such cabarets, freeing myself from trivial material pursuits by plunging myself in meditation in the zendo with Ejo. Yet Kyosho showed me that no one escapes anything. We live in a world that includes an ocean of minds that are asleep. To be conscious is to become the eyes of this blind world. When the monk asks, “And you, Sensei?” he shows that he still does not understand. He still separates the world of materialism from the world of the master, who is free of desire. With great patience, Kyosho explains: “I can understand myself almost perfectly.” Who is this self? A limited individual? Not at all. This self is all of humanity, the entire cosmos and that which gives it life. The “almost” refers to the limitation of the human point of view, which is necessarily subjective and imperfect. Perfection can be only divine. Humanity, including all matter, permanently impermanent, can only approach perfection.

But the monk stubbornly persists, trying to grasp everything with intellect and words instead of direct perception. “What does it mean, to understand yourself?” It means precisely to see beyond words, allowing yourself to fall into the abyss of the unthinkable. Kyosho administers the coup de grace by pointing out that awakening is easy, but putting it into words is difficult. The disciple imitates the rain, leaving behind the prison of intellect to plunge into the natural phenomenon so that it reaches all the way to the heart.

We continued the rohatsu. After two hours, my body temperature began to rise. My robe dried little by little, emitting a slight cloud of vapor. With tenacious will, I strove to prevent words from distracting my mind, but each time I seemed about to succeed, the absurd words “I’m about to succeed” spoiled it. So I chose a word at random: guarisapo, meaning “tadpole.” I repeated it endlessly in my mind for a time that seemed an eternity. Even during the forty minutes of sleep, I hung on to guarisapo as if it were a lifebuoy. When Ejo woke me, I did not wait for him to shake me, but resumed my sitting position quickly, straightening my spine, lifting the corners of my lips slightly, and disintegrating the word guarisapo with a mind that was finally empty.

It was a moment of absolute peace, though it was quite brief, unfortunately. As soon as I ceased to produce thoughts, my heart filled the vacuum with loud beating, like a drum resounding in my chest. A slow, pulsing flood began to beat in my temples, the tips of my fingers, my genitals, my calves, my gums, my tongue, my feet. Everything was flooded with this reverberating rhythm. Ultimately, there was not a single part of my body where it could not be felt. Then I felt the constant ebb and flow of my blood circulating. To this was added the song of air moving back and forth from my sinuses to my lungs. Finally, there came the incessant gurgling of my digestive tract. Perhaps it was an auditory hallucination, but I then began to sense that even beyond what was happening in my body, everything that was around me emitted a sound. The floor, the roof, the walls were vibrating as were the zafus, clothes, everything — different tones and rhythms joined together in a chorus that sounded like the sound of a beehive. This sensation extended to include the noise of the city outside and then the earth, the air, the sky. It was such a colossal impression that I began to tremble and felt as if I would faint.

At this point, Ejo shouted: “Don’t fall! Recite the four vows along with me. Though sentient beings are numberless. .”

“. . Though sentient beings are numberless. .”

“. . I vow to save them all. All passions, even the inextinguishable ones, I vow to extinguish them. All Dharmas. .”

“What are Dharmas, Ejo?”

“Even if you don’t understand, be quiet and repeat after me! All Dharmas, though infinite in number, I vow to fulfill. All truth, though immeasurable, I vow to attain. .”

I repeated everything after him. He recited them again and again, louder and louder. Though I followed suit, he shouted constantly, “Say it louder!”

Finally, I was shouting as loud as I could — but he urged me on: “Louder still!”

I felt that my vocal cords would burst. My shouting felt like vomiting, but he was still not satisfied and I began to despair. Seized by a fit of rage and screaming like a madman, I threw my zafu at him. It bounced against his chest, but he did not flinch, continuing to repeat the vows and demanding that I repeat them louder. Seeing red, I leaped at him, intending to throw him to the ground. I don’t know whether it was hallucination or the effect of extreme fatigue, but I could not budge him so much as an inch, though I was shoving him with all my strength. It was as if I was pushing against a stone statue planted in the ground. I even drew back and rushed at him several times, but he was imperturbable. I let out a final yell so loud that a piece of plaster fell from the wall in pieces. Then I collapsed, empty.

At first, Ejo did not cease his recital, but soon he stopped, took a stick, and struck a small bell.

“Now at last you have succeeded in shouting with both halves of your brain and with all your guts! Before, you were doing it with only one hemisphere. That is how koans are resolved! And now it is midnight. The rohatsu is over. Sleep until tomorrow.”

I fell like a feather into an abyss. When I awoke, sunbeams were filtering through the window. Michiko entered, bringing me a cup of coffee and some sweetbreads. Smiling, she spoke in her rudimentary Spanish: “Sleep fourteen hours. You come down, take breakfast. Ejo wait you. You go Oaxaca. .”

It was the first time I had seen Ejo without his monk’s robes. Impressed by the way he looked in ordinary clothes, I would never have been able to guess his age. He seemed like a being out of time — but now, seeing him dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes, wearing a large backpack and smoking a cigarette, I could not resist the temptation:

“Master, how old are you?”

“I was born on March 24, 1928,” he replied without hesitation. This surprised me. This spiritual guide I had chosen was only a year older than I. He was a young man, not an old one, as I had imagined. Dressed like this, he seemed more like a traveling companion, a friend, a peer. Some inner devil made me change my attitude as a result, and I began to speak to him with less respect. Ejo did not seem to notice. When I complained about the weight of my backpack, he pointed to his: “Twenty-two pounds.” Then he pointed to mine: “Eleven pounds.”

“Pounds of what, Ejo?”

“Soybeans.”

“What are they for?”

“We are going to teach the Indians how to grow them.”

“It’s a waste of time. Only corn interests them.”

“That’s what the industries say. They want to keep the Indians in misery, growing only corn so that they can buy it from them at a low price.”

“Ejo, you don’t know Mexico. It’s a country of very ancient customs.”

“If you want to recover the wholeness of your spirit, you must decondition yourself. You see my face? You hear my voice?”

“Yes.”

“Are you conscious of your eyes? Are you conscious of your ears?”

“Yes.”

“If you are conscious of your eyes and your ears, then maybe you are sick. Are you coming with me or not? Sickness is curable. Destiny is incurable.”

I was flustered. Was he trying to tell me that I should not form a self-concept in my consciousness? I did not know what to answer, so I followed him in silence.

A taxi took us to the train station. We traveled to Puebla in a third-class car stuffed with packages, baskets, chickens, children, and dogs. Ejo smiled as if it were paradise, and I tried to get some sleep. I was not used to such intimate contact with the poor classes. After my head had nodded several times, I was startled awake when a duet began: two blind men sang and pounded at their small guitars. Ejo elbowed me, pointing to himself, and whispered: “When a blind man guides another blind man, they both fall in the water.” Then he laughed like a child, but I was in a bad mood and stuck my fingers in my ears.

At Puebla, we took a battered old bus that was even more full than the train and headed toward the mountains. The trip lasted several hours. It was impossible to sleep with all the noise of people chattering, chickens clucking, dogs barking, children crying, and the engine roaring and the flies, the dust, the stifling heat. I made a titanic effort to calm my nerves and said to Ejo:

“Why don’t we take advantage of this time to study another koan?”

“Time is not a thing. Ten thousand rivers flow to the sea, but the sea is never full. Ten thousand koans fill your mind, but you are never satisfied. Adapt your mind to the circumstances in which you find yourself. Look around you, look at yourself, and take advantage of that.”

Yet seeing how tenacious my boredom was, he shrugged his shoulders, as if dealing with a hopeless case. Without enthusiasm, he recited: “When the Buddha was being born, he pointed with one hand to the sky and with the other to the earth. He took six steps in a circle and looked in the four directions, saying: ‘I am the only honored one in the sky and under the sky.’ Master Ummon commented: ‘If I had been there, I would have beaten him to death with a stick and thrown his body to the dogs. It is important for the world to be at peace.’ Commenting upon that, Master Ryosaku said: ‘Ummon believes that we must offer our body and soul to the world. This is called repaying the favor of the Buddha.’ And you — what do you say?”

I reflected on my response, but before I could say a word, the bus was shaken by a violent jolt, probably because of a pothole. A package fell on a child, making his forehead bleed. The boy began to scream, his face covered with blood. Ejo got up calmly, took a tube of powdered green clay from his sack, and rubbed it on the boy’s wound. A scab formed immediately and the blood stopped flowing. The child stopped crying. Through the open windows, the silence of the Cordillera entered. Ejo came back and took his seat next to me as if nothing had happened. I felt the clouds in my mind disperse, allowing a ray of light to enter. With deep respect, I murmured: “It is important for the world to be at peace.”

Ejo smiled, closed his eyes, and began to snore. I was ashamed. I saw myself as a seeker of gurus, gods, worlds beyond, and other sorts of metaphysical aspirin, all for the lack of a kind father. Through the words attributed to Ummon, the koan gave very clear advice to uproot all those legends, fairy tales, infantile venerations, and grandiose hopes that are inspired by fear of death. I was not a safe little bird waiting calmly in its nest for my mother to drop a tasty worm into my mouth. To follow after the Buddha slavishly was no better than rolling in dog shit. As long as I seek the light outside myself, the world will never be at peace. I observed my body invaded by nervousness, I saw my insatiable appetite for knowledge, my desire to plunder the secrets of all the masters instead of realizing myself, instead of repairing the self-esteem that my father, like a competitive child, had destroyed with his sarcasm.

Ryosaku affirmed that everything we have attained must be given in return—“Nothing for myself that is not also for others.” To find yourself is to give yourself to the world, body and soul. To be an integral part of the world, let things happen naturally, without useless effort, surrendering confidently to the present. In accepting Ejo Takata as my teacher, I had moved from me to you. Yet because I still saw others as them, I had rejected the we. In wearing the label “artist,” I had tried to make Ejo into an ideal refuge. There, like a blind and deaf mole, I had distanced and alienated myself from the world. Nevertheless, however alienated I was from this world, I was still more than ready to steal food from it in the form of applause, love affairs, rewards, diplomas, and fame. I was neither more nor less than a thieving parasite. I was always taking, and in return, I offered only autographs, literary portraits of my navel, photographs through an artist’s mask, and distractions to capture the attention of the whales of social admiration. Meanwhile, the world was proliferating more and more war, misery, sickness, child abuse, murderous industries, inhuman bankers, toxic disinformation, political corruption. . And I, in the safe island of my mind, created an art that amounted to buffoonery, a brilliant veneer to hide the darkness of other thieves like myself — thieves who pillaged the earth, robbing others of their health, transforming their time into a hard personal shell, dividing others’ space into dog kennels in which these citizens, befuddled by the walls, accepted the obligatory blindness.

I saw that nothing was really mine; everything was on loan to me, and anything that I do not give back amounts to thievery. Now I am carrying a sack of grain. Thus is my mind. If I am really an artist, I must sow it. And if I am to be a master, I must teach others to sow, to make it grow, to harvest it. If I remove my selfishness from the world, the world will find peace. Things will then cease to be as I thought they were and will become the truth that they already are.

We hitchhiked from Oaxaca, crossing endless plantations of corn and finally arrived at Santa Maria Mixi. It was a small hamlet of houses with roofs made of grass and palm leaves and with cobbled walls covered with a light coat of plaster and with only one door and several windows.

A group of Indians came to welcome us. There were men, women, and children. Probably all mixed-race, these people had abandoned their ancestral tribal customs to become “peasants” grouped into families. Our visit had caused a sensation — it had been a long time since anyone had bothered to visit these sad lands. With a friendly smile, Ejo made a respectful bow, and I did likewise. The Indians removed their straw hats in return. Ejo looked around for a clear space between the rows of corn and sat on the ground with his legs crossed. He rubbed the earth with care, ridding a large space of its small stones, and then let the soybeans pour out from his sack into a heap. The little yellow spheres seemed like magical jewels lying upon the reddish ground. This did not fail to arouse the curiosity of all the people. In his rudimentary Spanish, the master began to speak. What he said was so interesting to the peasants that several of them ran into the fields to fetch the others who were working there. Ultimately, a circle of about fifty people had formed around us. Because Ejo’s pronunciation mixed up rs and ls, I improvised a kind of translation.

“This is a powerful variety of soy that comes from Japan. Its roots go down three feet. It resists freezing and drought. It is very rich in protein and in oil. It can be harvested several times a year and grown in any season. It does not need rich soil and will grow even in infertile soil.”

For about three hours, Ejo explained how to plant soybeans, how to grow them, protect them from parasites, harvest them, and use them. He gave a description of almost two hundred products that could be derived from them: oil, milk, cheese, flour, yogurt, animal fodder, and lecithin, and they may be simply grilled like peanuts.

Then, drawing on the ground with a stick, he showed how to orient houses in relation to the sun, opening the windows and moving the stoves outside, because their presence inside was the cause of pulmonary diseases. He showed them how to build the stoves outside. He also showed them how to weave sandals using only plant materials. He taught them techniques for making butane gas with their excrement.

Then he told them: “These lands belong to you, not to the corn. You grow corn and sell it for a low price to industries that are growing rich behind your back. If these buyers ever stop coming here, you will die of hunger. This is the danger of letting an economy grow without limits. Become independent of these industries. Instead of planting to sell, plant first to feed yourselves and meet your own needs. Soybeans are much more useful than corn.”

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. When Ejo had finished his lesson, the sun was going down behind the mountains. The peasants were very grateful. They brought us two bottles of beer and some tortillas stuffed with refried beans. An old newspaper served as a picnic cloth.

As Ejo ate, the peasants all kneeled before him. It was clear that they recognized him as a holy man. This reverent silence was interrupted brutally by the noise of an army truck arriving. Ten soldiers, ordered by a civilian, leaped out of it. About forty years old with a potbelly, the civilian was dressed in a coat with enormous epaulets, a black shirt, a green tie, a large sombrero, dark sunglasses, and a holster with a revolver on his belt. He introduced himself in a loud, barking voice: Salvador Cepeda, official of the Mexican government.

The soldiers began shoving and striking the terrified peasants with the butts of their rifles, herding them all into their houses and shutting the doors. Then they all aimed their rifles in our direction as the potbellied man shook a finger with a large brass ring at us and shouted.

“Filthy communists! Guerillas of the great whore! Go fuck yourselves! We’re going to smash your skulls to teach you a lesson about stirring up rebellion among our workers! What we grow here is corn, not this soybean shit! I’m the man in charge here, and I can kill anyone I decide to kill. Show me your papers! I have a notion to have you both shot to set a good example for all those assholes who might want to imitate you.”

Revealing not the slightest fear and without even uncrossing his legs, Ejo calmly searched in his sack and brought out a few papers. I remembered that he had told me that when he was a child during the American bombardments of Japan, he was ordered to continue meditating without flinching, even amid the noise of the bombs falling. One child monk could not take it and fled from the meditation hall. He was killed by an explosion. After telling me this story, he had added: “Fear is useless.”

The fat man was having some difficulty reading the documents. “Monk. . What? Zen?. . Minister of Education, embassy of Japan. . bishop of Cuernavaca. . Well, it seems you have some very good recommendations, don Baldhead! I can see you’re not a guerilla, at least, but your friend looks suspicious to me. Get moving, hombre, show me your papers!”

Though I knew my pockets were empty, I pretended to search them, trembling. I had nothing on me to prove my identity.

“Aha! So you’re traveling incognito, you asshole, trying to get these stinking Indians to revolt! Show me an ID or a passport pronto or I’ll have you shot by this firing squad!”

I realized that the fat guy was serious, convinced that I was some kind of communist. No doubt he considered communists more dangerous than scorpions.

“Señor Governor,” I addressed him humbly, trying to quell the tremors I felt in my body from head to foot, “I am a very well-known artist. My death would create a huge scandal. Please do not make this terrible mistake.”

“You shitty little worm, how dare you tell me I’m making a mistake? You communists have no respect! A well-known artist? You? Skinny, filthy, and with that ridiculous chopped-off hair? You’re a liar and a coward as well. You don’t deserve to live!”

He pulled out his revolver and pointed it right in front of my nose.

“Be thankful that my gun isn’t loaded, otherwise I’d just shoot you right now, like a coyote. Instead, you’ll have the dignity of being executed properly by a firing squad, though you don’t deserve it.”

The soldiers formed a line and aimed their rifles at me. Ejo stood up and stepped between us.

“Señor Governor, this young man is my student. I assure you, he is a very famous theater director.”

“Shut up, don Chinaman! You’re a monk — of course you want to save the skin of this dangerous person. Sit back down and cross your legs! If you try to interfere again, I’ll consider you his accomplice and have you shot too!”

Ejo sighed. Then, with a beatific smile, he told me: “Death is an illusion. Life is an illusion. You will cross through the lake of the mirror. You will come to rest on the ground of emptiness.”

“Is that all you have to say to me? These guys aren’t joking! They’re really going to shoot me! I’m an intellectual, I still haven’t learned to die! You, who know no fear — teach me how to do it.”

Ejo sat once again in his meditation position and with absolute calm, recited: “Truth can never be attained by us, for we carry it forever within us.”

It was incredible. I was in the midst of a nightmare and I had to wake up! At this moment, an intense, immeasurable, unconditional love of life descended upon me. Everything was vibrating: the red of the earth, the yellow of the corn, the blue of the sky, the white of the clouds, the majesty of the mountains, the warmth of my body, the transparence of my consciousness, the song of the birds, the odors dancing in the air, the uniforms of the soldiers repeated ten times like a musical motif, the sugary glint of their rifles, and above all, this love for myself. I understood why Ejo had spoken of a mirror as vast as a lake. . I was this immense mirror, and my soul was rooted in the ground of emptiness.

Suddenly, a great gust of wind covered us in a thick cloud of dust, interrupting the fat man’s orders to fire. The wind scattered the old newspapers we had been using as a tablecloth and one of them landed next to me. As my eye fell upon a large photo that covered half a page, I shouted: “Wait! Right here is the proof of my identity!”

I grabbed the paper, and feverishly showed the fat man the picture of myself and the Tigress. A banner headline announced our future marriage.

Taking it, he removed his hat, scratched his head, and finally let out a long, noisy breath. Then, breaking into loud laughter, he patted me on the back. “Well, well! So you were the one who fucked the ex-mistress of the president? You must have a golden dick, you rascal! Why didn’t you tell me before? Well, no matter. That’s enough joking for now. Of course, I already recognized you — I just wanted to give you a little scare, that’s all. Just a little joke of mine — a pretty funny one, right?”

I emitted a phony laugh. “You have quite a sense of humor, don Salvador. Now can we be on our way?”

“Of course, my boy, of course! But don’t ever come this way again, you hear? I don’t want you stirring up trouble in the henhouse. In these lands, we plant corn, and that’s how its been for centuries. I’m willing to admit your ignorance of that. One mistake is forgivable — but not two. If you come back here, you’ll hear the sound of a different rooster — and his crowing will sound like rifle fire.”

The soldiers doused the soybeans with gasoline and set them on fire. Then they got back in the truck and started the engine.

Cepeda called to us: “You can ride with us — we’ll drop you off near Oaxaca.”

The Indians came out to say farewell, giving us a half dozen oranges and waving their red bandanas as we drove out of view. Inside the truck, the soldiers, with insolent grins, stole the oranges from us. I felt humiliated.

Later, as we rode the bus toward the train station at Puebla, I said not a single word, though Ejo’s silent calm exasperated me. When we sat in the crowded third-class, I found nothing intelligent to say, but I wanted to speak. “After such a painful experience, no commentary comes to us. Where is the error?”

Pointing out the window, Ejo contented himself with a grunt: “The mountain!”

I was furious and fed up with this Japanese style. For every emotion, for every doubt the masters reply, “Mount Sumeru,” implying that this silent monolith is never submerged by mere feelings, that it never wonders about life and death, that it imperturbably allows the seasons to pass, never forcing nature, never prey to the dualism of actor — spectator. In sum, it is a panacea — just cross your legs and sit as still as a corpse.

I was so upset I squeezed my lips shut tightly, slammed my fist into my other hand, turned red, and breathed heavily through flaring nostrils, like a bull about to charge. Seeing this, Ejo pulled a white fan from his sack and, fanning himself with an air of disdain, gave me a koan: “Remedies heal sickness. The entire earth is a remedy. What remedy is your true being?”

These words fell like rain on the lips of a thirsty wanderer. In a sudden clarity of consciousness, I realized that I was alive for a duration of time that was infinitesimal within the eternity of the cosmos, and what a privilege, a gift, and a miracle this life was. This instant of my existence was the same instant in which the stars were dancing, in which the finite and the infinite were united, in which were united the here and the beyond, the perfume of the air and the memory within all matter, the gods of imagination and unimaginable energy, lights and abysses, colors and blindness, the humble sensitivity of my skin and the ferocity of my fists — but also the miserable peasants, the soldiers, the imbecilic fat man, the passengers in the train chattering like monkeys, the cloud of dust following the bus: all of this was a remedy if I accepted it as such so that it was transformed by my vision. The world is what it is: a remedy instead of the poison I had believed it to be.

Yet I saw that I was repeating constantly the same mistake: setting up a mental border between “inside” (my conception of myself) and “outside” (the world that is not myself). I was living as a subject confronted by an object. Even in saying that the entire earth is a remedy, I was still subtly trying to use an external object to heal my individual self, not realizing that this very separation of myself from the world is its sickness. “The world is my life and essential being. Inasmuch as I do not dissolve this border, I am dead.”

When we got off the train in Mexico City, Ejo made a little bow to me and said: “Yosai, the founder of the Shofukuji Monastery where I spent my youth, was a simple man. He said: ‘I do not have the virtues of an ancient Boddhisattva, but miracles and wonders are useless for teaching Zen.’ One day, a poor peasant begged him: ‘My wife, my children, and I are dying of hunger. Have pity; please help us.’ In those days, there was no spare food, clothing, or valuable objects in the Yosai monastery. Nevertheless, the monk found a piece of copper that had served to make the rays of the halo of a statue of the Buddha. Yosai gave it to the peasant, telling him to trade it for food enough to feed his family. The disciples complained, saying that it was a sin to make personal use of sacred material consecrated to the Buddha. Yosai replied: ‘The Buddha offered his own flesh and limbs to starving beings. Even if I had given the entire statue to this peasant dying of hunger, it would not have been a violation of his teaching, and even if such acts cause me to suffer a dire fate, I will continue to help starving beings.’

“Do you understand now? It isn’t Zen for intellectuals that Mexico needs. I’m going to put away my kyosaku for good. The zendo is finished.”

With a sense of a huge abyss between us, I watched him walk away with long, energetic strides. Remembering this scene, I thought of a phrase from Silver Kane’s novel 953 in the collection Bravo Oeste: “Mounted upon a black horse which seemed to embody the mourning of his master, he lost himself in the shadows.”

For reasons of security, I had to leave Mexico for France. Very little news of my master arrived there. I learned that he had stopped dressing as a monk and had moved. On Insurgentes Avenue he had opened a consultation office called IMARAC, and in 1975 the director of research at the Ryodoraku center in Tokyo officially named him professor of electro-acupuncture in Mexico. He treated sick people, gave courses in acupuncture, and used a Japanese device known as the Tormenter: instead of having traditional needles planted in acupuncture points in the skin, the patient was connected to battery-powered electrodes. For this treatment, a few seconds sufficed instead of the twenty minutes required for the needles.

Many patients came to the clinic to be treated, and a sizeable group of students formed as well. Dressed in a white nurse’s shirt, Ejo offered his teachings at no charge. The institute thrived until certain Mexican professors of medicine learned that epileptics had been cured in a few sessions. They had Ejo charged with the illegal practice of medicine, and he was forced to cease all therapeutic activity. Following this, he filled his small truck with bags of soybeans and left the city to live with the Indians in the Sierra Tarahumara. For many years, I lost all trace of him.