XI
That night I gave myself up to renewing my acquaintance with the priest, Daitetsu, by calling on him at Kaikanji temple, at the top of the stone steps. The old priest received me, not effusively but with a most cordial welcome.
“I am glad you have come. You must find life very tedious in these parts?”
“The beautiful moon lured me out for a walk, and my feet brought me here, to be plain, Osho-san.”
“Yes, the moon is beautiful tonight.”
The priest said this as he slid open the front shoji of his chamber. The garden outside had nothing in it but two stepping stones and a single pine tree; but beyond extended a stretch of sea, dimly visible in the moonlight, with fishermen’s lights innumerably dotting the watery surface as far as the horizon, where they seemed to change into stars.
“What a beautiful view, Osho-san. Isn’t it a pity that you should keep it shut out?”
“True; but don’t you see, it is not new to me, it being there before me every night?”
“I should never be tired of looking over a view like this. I should give up my sleep to be looking at it the whole night.”
“Ha, ha, ha, you are an artist and different from an old priest like me.”
“But Osho-san, you are not the less an artist, as long as you see the beautiful and enjoy it.”
“That is so, though my artistic skill does not rise above drawing an apology of Bodhidharma. Speaking of Bodhidharma, you see a picture of the holy man in the niche there; it is from the brush of my predecessor, here. Pretty good, isn’t it?”
True enough, there was a hanging picture of Bodhidharma which had absolutely no claim to any artistic value, except that it was a very innocent production, which gave no evidence of trying to hide the artist’s want of skill.
“Why, it is artlessly good.”
“There need be no more about pictures that our kind make. We are well satisfied as long as they represent our spirit.”
“They are far better than pictures that bespeak skill but breathe base vulgarity.”
“Ha, ha, ha, you know how to praise things. By the by is there the degree of Doctor for painters, these days?”
“No, Osho-san, there is no Doctor of Painting.”
“You see I am so far away from civilization and know nothing of the latest novelties. I haven’t been in Tokyo not even once in the last twenty years.”
“You have missed nothing, Osho-san. It is all noise and nothing else in Tokyo.”
The priest treated me to a good cup of tea, and then went on to ask:
“You seem to go about a great deal. Do you do so all for the purpose of painting?”
“Well, I carry about with me my painting outfit; but I am not at all particular about the actual painting itself.”
“So? Can it be, then, that you are travelling and sojourning for the pleasure of doing so?”
“Well, you might say so. But the fact is I can’t stand the life in Tokyo. They begin to sniff about you, when you have lived there any length of time.”
“That is strange. Can it be for sanitary purposes?”
“No, Osho-san, it is the detective that does it.”
“Detectives? The police then? The police stations and policemen, must there be such things?”
“They are useless, at least, to artists.”
“Nor are they of any good to me. I have never had any occasion to be taken care of by them.”
“I do not doubt you.”
“For that matter I don’t see why you should take their sniffing so much to heart. If I were you I would let them do all the sniffing they want. Even the police won’t bother you as long as you keep straight. My predecessor used to tell me that a man must be able to make a clean breast of everything within him in broad daylight at Nihonbashi, the centre of Tokyo, and to find nothing to be ashamed of in it. Till then, he cannot be said to have finished his culture. You, my young friend, should strive to reach that stage of culture. Then you shall have no need of fleeing from Tokyo.”
“You can rise to that height as soon as you shall have become a true artist.”
“You had become one, then.”
“But the police sniffing is more than I can bear.”
“There, there, you are at it again. Look at that Nami-san of the hot spring hotel. She was tormented by all kinds of worrying thoughts on coming home to her father after being divorced from her husband, until she at last came to me, asking me, to free her from her mental anguish. I have been training her in the holy teaching, and she is now mastering herself wonderfully. You have seen yourself what a highly rational young woman she is.”
“Yes, yes, I have thought she is a woman of no ordinary culture, Osho-san.”
“Indeed, she is not. A few years ago I had under me a young disciple named Taian. She saved him from walking off the narrow path, and he is now on a fair way to attain high priesthood.”