Graduating from Drinking Tea

This is a piece from about the middle of the Murata chapter, the turning point for him. Maybe one of the best ways to get at the core of this book. (One of.)


After more than a decade of this life, things began to change for him inside.

"At first, I thought I would just keep traveling, all the way 'till the end. But then," laughing at himself, "I got tired of it. I just got tired. It was fun of course, trekking in Himalaya, absolutely so. But the last two years I started to think, 'If I just continued doing this…what is there for me?' You know what I mean? Repeating the exact same thing, again and again. And I began to suspect," he adds with a contemplative tone, 'Maybe there wasn't anything.' And that's the point where it all changed for me."



At about the same time, he says, he started asking, "What is the most important thing?' And I came to the answer, 'It is eating.' " Then, as many of us do at some point, he started to read about all the chemicals used growing our food. "I thought, 'Shouldn't I grow it myself?' and 'Could I really do it?' and I decided that, yes, I could make it a reality in my life."

Also, he says, he had always dreamed of living in the mountains. "It's actually an ancient Japanese ideal. We all read about these famous people in school in the Chinese and Japanese classics: go off to the mountains and live by yourself in a hut like a hermit; spend your day singing and reading poems.

"This image entered into my head and I was really able to imagine that kind of life. But Japanese people all have this longing. It comes originally from Lao Tsu." Then he adds with his typical dramatic flair, "Hiding! Everyone yearns for this."

"So," I ask him, "You wanted to be a literati?"

"There's all kinds of forms: you can be a farmer, or do pottery, or be a woodcutter or a painter."

I picture Murata as a little boy, wearing his regulation uniform, sitting at his schoolboy desk in conservative, economically-aspiring, early 1960s Japan reading about such poet hermits in some digest-version textbook approved by the Ministry of Education, intended to give children a few basic facts about their nation's cultural history. But Murata stops on one particular sentence, written by someone in the thirteenth century, escaping "the dust of the world" and Murata looking up at the ceiling, dreaming. Perhaps many other children had that dream, but somehow it stuck for him, and …

The magic of words...coming off a page… from another century...to inspire an actual life right now.


Sometimes, during the years of writing this book, I've found myself on a crowded train in Tokyo or Osaka, on my way to meet one of the people who live in the mountains, and I'll look at the businessmen all around me, their suits and ties perfect, but exhaustion hanging over their faces, pallid and overdrawn like a bank account, and I wonder, if like Murata says, they also dream this dream. If so, do they lack the courage? Or have they made choices earlier on about family and house buying so that it's much less easy to move? Or is Murata right, that it's much more simple than that? They aren't doing it because they simply don't want it enough?

This ideal, I mention, might come from ancient India, where the texts talk about it as something one does as the fourth and last stage of life.

"Yes," Murata says "for after you finish your working life, in your fifties or sixties…"

"But you wanted to do it sooner?" I ask

Laughing he says, "Yes!" And then he adds, solemn as if he's quoting something, "Whatever you can do, it's best to do it soon."

And he's right: you could die tomorrow. In all our years of talking, this might be the message he wants me to understand the most.

And then he adds, "Living in 'the world' is a pain in the neck. You have to work a job. You have to do this, that and the other thing. So if you want to be free of that, it's best to head into the mountains."


"So you left India in 1988?"

" Yes, I graduated!"

I smile. While all of Japan is racking up credentials and certificates, Murata has graduated from drinking tea all day in India. Although you could see Murata's years in India as a complete waste of time, for him that kind of a life was, as he says, a foundation for how he lives now. And in the decades to come as our oil runs out, I think the skills he has will prove to be crucial.

So when he needs to spend hours out in the rice paddies in the blazing sun on a humid day, he's got that patience. When he collects firewood in the fall for the coming mountain winters, and has to cut a big log with a hand saw, and walk it all the way home, he's not cursing the time it takes, or wishing he had a chain saw to speed up the process. He's enjoying himself entirely. I am certain of it. For myself, I know it would be hard. I'm missing his background. How did he entertain himself in India? By walking, by talking, by not even "entertaining" himself, but just looking out at people. When he spends eight solid hours practicing the flute, he's able to do it. And whenever I happen to visit, Murata always has time to talk and talk and talk. (I sigh, thinking of some friendships in the US, us fitting in lunch together once every three months.) There's no rush inside of him, no conflict in his soul between talking all day and some other thing he might have to do.

As I listen to him, espousing the gospel of taking it easy, the absolute belief in doing only what he loves, and doing it slow, I all of a sudden notice the muscles in his forearms! No rush, no push, yet he is full of life and energy. Fifty five years old and as strong as a twenty year old. Stronger, perhaps.

Flute Pilgrim

Here's a section from a new chapter, on Kogan Murata, a rice farmer, and follower of the Zen tradition of shakuhachi flute pilgrimage. From the middle of the chapter.





Legend has it that in China, in the eighth century, there lived a Ch'an (Zen) monk whose bell would ring a sound so pure that those hearing it would be led on the path to enlightenment. One of his disciples decided that he would try to make a flute that would imitate the sound of this bell. Soon after the teacher would ring the bell, the monk would blow one note on the flute, as if echoing the sound of the metal ringing, you could call it a "ringing" in the wood.


The link between Buddhist meditation and the bamboo flute continued as the culture crossed over from China to Japan. And in this so called "blowing Zen" two of the most important aspects of Buddhist practice—the chanting of sutras and awareness of breathing--were brought together in the tradition of flute playing as a form of meditation. This form of self training was then joined to two even older traditions of spiritual practice, the walking pilgrimage and the practice of alms begging, both of which have been fundaments of Eastern spiritual practice for centuries before the birth of the Buddha. [From earliest times, both walking and alms begging have been fundaments of Eastern spiritual practice.] All of these came together in the tradition of the komuso, or itinerant begging monk.

Though the figure of the man wearing a woven straw basket-like hat covering his face and head and a wooden box around his neck with the words "Without existence, Without extinction" has almost completely disappeared from the Japanese landscape, there are still those among the very aged who recognize him as a komuso. Most people however, have no idea what he is doing.

When I asked him if he explains to younger people what a komuso is, Murata replied. "I don't explain. When I'm playing, I don't talk to people at all. I only play. "  

Whether the people there welcome him, shoo him away or slam the door in his face, his reaction is the same. "I play one sutra, and I finish it. If they give money, I receive it. If they do not, I simply finish and move on."

According to Murata, "The reason to play the flute is to advance your ability to better perceive emptiness. You are playing for yourself, not to entertain another person, or to have them pity you. You certainly don't do it with the object of making money. That's why it doesn't matter at all how people react. As my sensei says, 'To play is good. That's all.' "



For many years Murata put himself in the position of relying on it as his sole source of income.

When Murata does go out, he cuts a striking figure. The kimono is grey, silken looking and spotless. I smile at the transformation from the usual plaid work shirts and jeans he often has on. He wears a wooden box around his neck with the characters "Without Birth, Without Extinction" elegantly brushstroked upon it. Over his head he wears a rattan hat which obscures his face entirely. Murata explains that this head covering was, in the period when many komuso acted as spies for the Shogun, a way to maintain secrecy--to see and not be seen. Perhaps it is also part of the anonymity that helps a monk with his own tendency toward ego identification. And with it's heavy club end, the flute was, at times, even used as a weapon.

He stands in front of a house or a shop, and blows one sutra on the bamboo. He stops. He dramatically pulls out a pure white fan, his movements as precise as a Noh dancer, simultaneously graceful and stark. If you choose to place a coin or bill on the fan, this is the time that you do that, and then he places the fan inside of the box, bows, and moves on, leaving you in the swirling wake of the fragrant incense sutra he has played in your presence.




Murata spent six years with his Nishimura. Near the end of this period he received a license from his him, which I have seen. Its elegantly calligraphy, with the teacher's red seal on it, admonishes him to comport himself properly, and to observe his manners with strict adherence. He carries this license always with him, along with a folding, hand-bound book of "sheet music" which is more like a vertically written list of syllables, a sort of mix of musical notation and sutras to be 'sung.' He was also given a new first name, "Kogan" which means to inspect deeply, to comprehend illusion and emptiness. The practice of granting of new names is common in many traditional disciplines. It functions, I believe, as a talisman and a reminder, and the granting of this name indicates a rite of passage, a connection between teacher and disciple. The name, the license, the folding book of sutras, along with the rattan hat, the kimono, the box, the fan, and of course the flute are what indicate to the outside world that he is a komusou. But deeper than these things, being a komusou is an inner way of holding oneself, a particular kind of presence in the world. Nonetheless these items, I speculate, promote a certain kind of way of being for a person on a pilgrimage through the practice.

I know that Murata would think such kinds of theoretical discussions pointless, so I allow myself to just hold them in my mind, and enjoy their presence there, which, when I think about it, is perhaps part of his point.