Chapter Sixteen Sen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sen
Late summer
“Be like the birds,” crow monk Taro cried. “Let your body do the work! Fly! Go forward! More! More!”
It was early morning. Wooden swords sang in the humid air as they practiced in the shadow of the trees.
Sen bore down for a vertical attack, but the stocky crow monk shifted too fast for him to counter and parried his next three strikes.
Taro was the youngest of the monks, vigorous and quick as a river.
Sen cursed under his breath. The crow monks were great masters at swordplay – they did not use bows, and instead perfected the art of the small-sword, shorter than those the kijin used.
They taught him speed, how to read his opponent’s mind, to feel the presence of a coming strike before they could make a move. Sen had gotten stronger in the last few months, he knew; quicker, more agile.
“Attack strongly and unhesitatingly,” Jobo called.
He often stood and lectured while the crow monks came at Sen, sometimes singly, sometimes all at once.
His voice became the backdrop as they sparred.
“Even when there are many opponents, let your awareness take over.
Face them directly, advance your feet and set your eyes so that you can see all of them at once: you should strike before they have the chance to overwhelm you.
“We use the middle stance because it has balance. Offensive, defensive. From here you can take the center and create opportunities to strike. Remember, swinging your sword too much will never help you; always take the initiative. Never think.”
The Kannagara woods had become the place of his rebirth, Sen often thought, rebirth as a warrior. I will do this, he told himself. He stepped back, chest heaving.
“Fly like birds,” Taro repeated. “Don’t try to strike and win; win, and then strike!”
The middle monk, Zenki, stood lean as a scarecrow and just as tall. “Real movement is when you don’t think or plan what to do, but your body instinctively responds. Speed, elegance, and decisiveness are the most important things.”
“What of strength?”
Sen tried to push forward, but the response from Taro hit him like a physical wave. He buckled, and in that instant Taro struck, bringing the wooden sword to a perfect halt a hair’s-breadth from Sen’s face.
“Strength is an illusion. It exists only in relation to oneself. Are you strong enough to do it? If not, get stronger. Get faster. Understand technique. It doesn’t matter how strong someone else is. Only you.”
Jobo’s words floated like riddles in his ears: “What is human but not human? A bird but not a bird? The bird we see is just the form, the truth lies underneath. That is what we search for. That is how you train.”
“Release yourself from the walls of your own mind,” he would say.
“Don’t think; for everything is fleeting and nothing is real.
It is our minds that bring us suffering, and put it out into the world.
It is the world that brings us suffering, and our minds take it into ourselves. Get out of your mind. Find the truth.”
Sen had spent hours practicing his forms and could feel the frustration rising in him now.
He took the upper stance, with the long-sword in a raised position, and attacked at Taro’s neck again.
Taro turned and cut at Sen’s hand from below, forcing him to pull back with his sword spinning out of center, uncontrolled.
Then, before he could return, Taro stepped downwards and cut at his neck, once again stopping less than a hair’s-breadth away. Sen fell back from him, staggering.
“The upper-position is more aggressive,” Jobo lectured, “but it leaves you open to attack. So, it can be dangerous. You must be careful with it.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Sen wheezed.
“Keep your eyes as if looking to the distant mountains,” Jobo said, “never any one specific part. See the whole, never let your awareness slip. They will try to pressure you; to meet them is the only way. Step forward, find an opening with your feet. Pressure them so they feel they have no choice but to strike or be cut down. Then, you have the advantage. If you do this, you have defeated them before a single cut is made.”
The crow monks surrounded him. “When spirit is alive,” Taro said, “the opponent’s composure starts to break. They experience astonishment, hesitation, fear. They wonder, are you coming? What will you do? At that moment, they have broken – and you have won. The right mind is very important.”
“How am I supposed to fight you all at once?” Sen asked, gasping.
“In battle, there will be fighting all around you,” Zenki taunted. “Who will stop them from ganging up on you, all at once?”
“Always watch the eyes,” called Jobo. “That is where the mind is. That is where they show their spirit. Don’t look where you’re going to strike.
Don’t turn your head. If you look without attachment, you’ll find you can see all parts of the body at once.
Master Shinmen said, ‘If you don’t have the true spirit, you’re no better than a drunk.
’ Take the initiative, see into your opponent’s mind and it will reflect inside the mirror of your heart; they’ll give you signs of how they’ll strike.
You must attack without erring even but a little – as Shinmen said, ‘Nothing in the whole earth could evade such a strike.’
“In the end, the right mind does not remain in any single place. It moves to all places, through body and spirit. The confused mind is danger; it looks for answers, it thinks in terms of only this or that, and so gets stuck in one place. It is never free. When Master Enno went to build a monastery on Takano,” Jobo said, “thinking to enter deep in the mountains, he ended up in a shadow place. This he called the inmost cave. He taught us this: ‘If you seek to go in deeper, you will find that the nearby town looks closer again.’ You think you have gone forward, but you have just gone back.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Enno said, ‘The depths are not deep. The path does not begin at the beginning.’”
“Accept everything just the way it is,” ancient Jiko told him later, when he handed Sen a bowl of millet-and-rice in the sunset; his kind eyes seemed to know what Sen was thinking.
“I can’t do that,” said Sen. “There’s too much suffering, too much pain out there. How can I accept that?”
“If you can’t accept the world for what it is,” the old man said, “how can you ever hope to master yourself?”
One day, high on the mountain, Jobo gave him another lecture on the way of gods.
“They live anywhere, and everywhere, and all the corners of our world exist within their domain.
If you wish to disrupt this by clearing a path, or cutting down a tree, or plowing a field, you must ask permission, pay your respects.
It is only right. Without a shrine, a place is unfit for human habitation because a proper relationship with the gods has not been made.
The world of the gods is fundamentally enmeshed with ours; this is why we listen for them; they respond to human invitations to manifest.
“Call it a request,” he said. “They may show themselves if they wish. Otherwise they remain incorporeal, invisible, formless-and-yet-whole.”
Sen wanted to know the rules of how his magic worked.
“Rules.” Jobo scowled. “Who says there must be rules?”
“Everything has rules,” Sen said. “There are ways things work.”
“Of course there are. But just because you don’t know them doesn’t mean they aren’t real.
To a chipmunk, human fire must seem like magic.
Do you know the rules of fire? Of what is it made?
Why? Do you really know? But still you use it, all the same.
Eat your rice, drink your tea, don’t worry over magic. ”
“For a monk, you don’t seem to enjoy enlightening people very much.”
“That’s not how it works.” Jobo shifted.
“Fine. You want to know the rules? I will teach you: the master found his student puzzling over the nature of a sugi tree in the middle of a rainstorm. ‘What’re you doing?’ the master asked.
‘Praying to the god of this tree,’ the student said.
The master laughed at him. Later, the student asked, ‘Why did you laugh at me?’ The master said, ‘It’s not often I find my students talking to trees in the woods. No wonder people think we’re crazy!’”
Sen scowled. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Human minds,” Jobo told him, “are too small to comprehend the meaning of the gods. You want to know the rules? I’m telling you, the rules are simple: Humans cannot do magic.
No matter what people say. We have no special powers.
We’re not gods. We can’t do what they can do.
You can’t make yourself invincible, or cure illness.
You can’t bring people back to life. No one can. ”
He turned, humor gone. “Only some gods can breathe life into death. And even then…”
“Even then, what?”
“What do you think a fish sees above the waters and the waves? What can it comprehend of the realms beyond its own?”
Sen sighed. “I don’t know. It can’t.”
“So, you’re learning. The world of the spirits is too different from ours.
There’s much in it that we think is magical.
To them, it is the air they breathe. Some have seen into that world.
Some can communicate with it. My teacher, Enno, was one.
If you’re looking for me to shoot flames from my hands or something, you’re in the wrong place.
Come back after I’ve eaten Taro’s fire-pepper soup, maybe you’ll see me shoot flames out my ass. Would that make you happy? Ah!”
“That can’t be true,” Sen said. “Or else, how did the ancients banish demons from the land?”
“You believe those stories?” He frowned. “Humans cannot do magic, but there are some who try to make bargains with the gods. I would not recommend this path.”
“Why not?”