Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (52 page)

All too soon it was over. Ry
shin told me to exhale hard three times, with my hands above my head, and then lean over onto the floor. My fingertips tingled.

“Today,” he said, “was just the beginning. Over time, everything else will just happen as I described. You just have to train your body.”

He told me that Shingon was the only branch of the Buddhist faith in which it is acceptable to ask for material things and to receive them. “But what,” he asked, “is that thing for? Is it just for you? Or is it for other people? If it’s for other people, then that’s okay.”

He reiterated something I had heard at the purification ceremony that day. K
kai had insisted that there was no point in not having desires or in trying to stop desires. It was important to desire something for the good of others.

I did not want the evening to come to an end. I had that same feeling as a young adult when I played the violin in the pit orchestra for community-theater shows in the summer. How I loved those evenings with show people, and how I mourned the end of summer, the end of the shows, the start of school. Then, as now, I didn’t want to leave this magical space. Even now, months later, I can describe my time at Sh
j
shinin, but there is a certain ineffable quality that escapes language, as there always is with things that shake us deeply.

I
WOKE EARLY
for morning prayers, led this time by Ry
shin. The door to the special
hond
—the real
hond
—remained closed, as did the doors to the side rooms containing the treasures. There would be no special viewing today. At breakfast, Furuie stopped by my table and told me he knew that I was leaving, and that he and the staff were most sad. I promised him that I would return, and that the next time I would bring my son.

I was reluctant to let go of my little room, with its view of the
garden. One day, I thought, I would like to return here to this very room; I made a note of its number. As I was packing, there was a knock at my door. I opened it to find Ry
shin sitting on the wooden floor just outside. I sat down too, on the tatami in my room. I felt like a character in a Japanese novel, or in a film, for in the world of historical dramas this was the only way that men and women could converse—with a wall between them. Ry
shin had brought me a book he wanted me to read. It was written by his friend, the man who had gone to Tibet to become a priest. Ry
shin promised to keep in touch with me, and vowed to continue fighting the bureaucracy on K
yasan.

I asked Ry
shin if he thought Shingon could have a practical application for the modern world. I asked him if he or any of the monks he knew had gone to T
hoku to volunteer after the disaster.