A wealthy Japanese merchant of the 15^th century once invited a number of Zen Buddhist abbots and famous priests to a feast of vegetarian dishes. One of the famous priests arrived dressed in a shabby robe and tattered straw hat. This priest was taken for a common beggar and was sent around to the back of the merchant’s palatial home, given a coin and ordered to leave immediately. The priest left.
Sometime later the same merchant put on another lavish feast for the same invitation list. This time the priest who had been turned away because of his shabby clothes showed up dressed in fancy vestments. When the meal was served the priest removed the vestments, carefully folded them and set them before the tray of food.
“What are you doing?” the host asked.
“This food belongs to the robes, not to me,” the priest replied as he was leaving.
This anecdote is well known in Japan, a characteristic tale of Zen literature. It is filled with practical wisdom, as was the priest. More than 500 years later, both are worthy of study and contemplation. The life of this man is interesting, instructive and inspirational.
The priest’s name was Ikkyu Sojun. He lived from 1394 until 1481. He was a Zen master, an artist and poet of the highest order, an eccentric, radical, uncompromising, unconventional and combative man who saw through, mocked and fought sham and hypocrisy wherever he found it. Indeed, Ikkyu was born to hypocrisy and sham, and his life was marked by the machinations that inevitably prop them up. His mother was the favorite lady-in-waiting at the court of the emperor of Japan, Go-Komatsu, who was his father. The jealous empress forced Ikkyu and his mother out of the palace and at birth the son of the emperor of Japan was registered as a commoner. His early life was humble.
At the age of five, he was sent to a Zen temple in Kyoto. This was a practical, not a religious, decision. There he would receive a solid and first rate education. More important, he would be assured of protection from the jealous empress, scheming court officials and suspicious generals. In medieval Japan, even the bastard son of the emperor—with the right circumstances and supporters—could claim the throne. To those ambitious for power, even a child is threatening.At the temple Ikkyu’s brilliance, precociousness, and wit were immediately recognized by both teachers and fellow students. And he was mischievous.
Another anecdote has it that one of the other acolytes accidentally broke the favorite tea bowl of the temple’s abbot while cleaning his quarters. He was terrified of the abbot’s fury and pleaded with the resourceful Ikkyu to get him out of the jam. “Leave it to me,” Ikkyu reassured him. When the abbot returned to the temple he was met by Ikkyu.
“Master,” Ikkyu said softly, “you have taught us that everything that is born must die, that whatever possesses material form will eventually perish.”
“Yes,” the abbot replied. “Those are the inescapable realities of life.”
“Master, I have bad news for you,” Ikkyu said sadly. “It was time for your favorite tea bowl to die.”
Though he grew up to become a Zen master, his behavior was always unconventional and erratic and he shunned the traditional role of the monk. He never settled down, spending his life roaming the Kyoto area, writing verse, creating brilliant calligraphy and paintings, practicing monastic Zen in the mountains by day and carousing Zen in the city by night. A self-descriptive verse reads:
“A crazy cloud, out in the open,
Blown about madly, as wild as they come!
Who knows where this cloud will gather, where
the wind will settle?”
Ikkyu concealed nothing of himself, thus allowing him to fully live his life without pretense, sham or hypocrisy. Even his sex life he celebrated openly, both in practice and verse, making him unique among stone-faced Zen priests who were masters of masked emotions:
“A sex-loving monk, you object!
Hot-blooded and passionate, totally aroused.
But then lust can exhaust all passion,
Turning base metal into pure gold.”
Late in life Ikkyu fell in love with a young woman, the blind minstrel Lady Mori. Their romance is one of the most celebrated in Japanese history, and Ikkyu composed this poem for their daughter:
“Even among beauties she is a precious pearl,
A little princess in this sorry world.
She is the inevitable result of true love,
And a Zen master is no match for her!”
Ikkyu, who knew the difference between a man and the robes a man wears, was thus eulogized by his first biographer, Bokusai:
“Ikkyu did not distinguish between high and low in society, and he enjoyed mingling with artisans, merchants, and children. Youngsters followed him about, and birds came to eat out of his hands. Whatever possessions he received he passed on to others. He was strict and demanding but treated all without favoritism. Ikkyu laughed heartily when he was happy and shouted mightily when angry.”
May we all live so heartily and mightily!