The Monk Who Could Not Stop Fighting

From the original

A place to hide

As evening approached, a disturbance broke out below the room where Lu Da was drinking with old Jin. Twenty or thirty men had gathered with white wooden staves. A gentleman on horseback shouted that the thief must not escape. Lu Da took up a stool, ready to strike his way downstairs. Old Jin hurried out, calling to everyone to hold their hands. He spoke a few words to the rider, who laughed and sent the men away.

The gentleman dismounted and came inside. When Lu Da was brought downstairs, the gentleman bowed low before him. Hearing a man’s name, he said, was less than meeting him. This was Squire Zhao, the gentleman who supported old Jin’s daughter. He had mistaken the guest drinking upstairs for a young rival. Once the misunderstanding was settled, they returned to the table, drank and talked about weapons until late that night.

Next morning Zhao took Lu Da to his manor in Seven Treasures Village. After five or seven days, old Jin arrived with alarming news. The uproar had made the neighbours suspicious. Three or four officers had been asking questions. Lu Da offered to go away, but Zhao had another plan. More than thirty li off stood Mount Wutai, with its monastery dedicated to Manjushri. Its abbot, Zhizhen, was close to Zhao. The squire had already bought an ordination certificate to fulfil a promise to sponsor a monk. Would Lu Da consent to shave his head? With nowhere else to turn, he agreed.

From the original

Deep Wisdom

At the monastery, Lu Da sat down opposite the abbot. Zhao whispered that a man seeking ordination ought not to sit there as the abbot’s equal. Lu Da said he had not understood, and rose. The squire presented him as his cousin, a soldier from the west who wished to leave the troubles of the world.

The monks objected. His appearance and fierce eyes promised danger for the monastery. Zhizhen told them to wait while he considered. He lit a stick of incense, sat cross-legged and entered meditation. When the incense had burned through, he told them to ordain the man. Lu Da answered to a heavenly star and possessed an upright heart. For all his present violence and troubled fate, his eventual attainment would surpass theirs.

On the appointed day, five or six hundred monks assembled in the Dharma hall. Lu Da’s hair was shaved. When the barber reached his beard, he asked to keep at least that much, and the monks could not suppress their laughter. The abbot pronounced his verse and ordered it all removed. He gave the new monk the name Zhishen, Deep Wisdom. Then he taught him the five prohibitions: killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, craving wine and false speech. Unfamiliar with the proper answer to the ceremony, Zhishen said that he would remember. The monks laughed again.

Before leaving, Zhao drew him beneath a pine and urged him to restrain himself. Life would no longer be as it had been. Zhishen said he would do everything asked. Back in the meditation hall he lay down to sleep. When the monks beside him tried to teach him to sit in meditation, he demanded what his sleeping had to do with them. At night his snoring sounded like thunder. The abbot told the complaining monks that he would change.

From the original

The wine buckets

Four or five months passed. One clear day in early winter, Zhishen strode down to the pavilion halfway up the mountain. He sat thinking of the good wine and meat he had once eaten every day. Now, as a monk, he felt dried up with hunger. While he was wishing for wine, a man came singing up the path, carrying two covered buckets on a pole.

The man set his load down at the pavilion. Zhishen asked what was inside. Good wine, the man answered. But when the monk asked the price of a bucket, the seller thought he must be joking. The wine was for the monastery’s workmen. The seller and his fellows used the monastery’s working capital and lived in its houses. The abbot had forbidden them to sell to monks. They would lose their livelihood if they broke his rule. The man declared that he would not sell even if Zhishen killed him. Zhishen replied that he only wanted to buy a drink.

As the seller shouldered his pole to leave, Zhishen caught it with both hands and kicked him in the groin. The man crouched helplessly on the ground. Zhishen carried both buckets into the pavilion, took up the ladle and drank the cold wine until one bucket was empty. He told the seller to come to the monastery next day for his money. Afraid of losing his livelihood if the abbot learned what had happened, the man did not dare ask for payment. He divided the remaining wine between his buckets and hurried down the mountain.

The wine rose in Zhishen as he lingered by the pavilion and the pine roots. He slipped his robe off his shoulders, tied its sleeves at his waist and exposed the flower tattoos on his back. He staggered uphill like a crane in the wind, swaying toward the monastery like a snake newly out of water.

From the original

One forgiveness

Two gatekeepers stopped him with bamboo rods. A monk who broke the wine prohibition was to receive forty strokes and be expelled. Gatekeepers who admitted him would themselves receive ten. They told him to go down the mountain and save himself some punishment. His old temper unchanged, Zhishen announced that if they meant to beat him, he would fight them.

One gatekeeper ran for help. Zhishen slapped the other, then struck him down with a fist. Twenty or thirty monastery workers came out with white wooden staves. His roar frightened them back into the scripture hall. He followed up the steps, broke its lattice with fist and foot, seized a staff and drove the men before him.

Zhizhen came with his attendants and called on him to stop. Drunk as he was, Zhishen recognised the abbot. He threw down the staff and bowed, claiming that he had drunk only two bowls and had bothered nobody. The abbot asked him, for his sake, to sleep and leave the matter until morning. To the angry monks, he granted the offender one more forgiveness.

Next day the abbot reminded Zhishen of his vows. He had drunk, struck the gatekeepers and smashed the red lattice. Kneeling, Zhishen promised not to do it again. Zhizhen warned that another offence would mean expulsion. He nevertheless fed him, spoke kindly to him, and sent him back with a fine cloth robe and new shoes.

From the original

The smith’s price

For three or four months Zhishen did not dare leave the monastery. Then a warm day came in the second month. A ringing sound rose from below. He fetched silver and followed it down to a market town. At the smithy, three men were working iron. The smith, already half afraid of the newcomer, asked what he wanted.

Zhishen ordered a monk’s staff and a monk’s blade. The staff was to weigh a hundred catties. The smith laughed. He could make it, but how would the monk wield it? Even Lord Guan’s blade weighed only eighty-one. Zhishen asked whether he was inferior to Lord Guan, who had also been a man. The smith suggested forty or fifty. Zhishen demanded eighty-one instead. That would be too thick and awkward, the smith said. He offered a smoothly polished staff of sixty-two catties, warning the monk not to blame him if he could not wield it. The price of the two weapons was five taels of silver. Zhishen agreed and paid.

The wine shops would not serve him. One after another explained the abbot’s prohibition. At the far end of town, among apricot blossoms, he found a small tavern marked by a straw broom. There he claimed to be a wandering monk, merely passing through. The keeper served him wine. After about ten bowls, he smelled meat and found a dog cooking in a clay pot. He bought half of it, ate it with crushed garlic, drank about ten more bowls and then a whole bucket. Before leaving, he tucked a dog’s leg inside his robe.

From the original

The barred gate

At the halfway pavilion, Zhishen decided to loosen himself with some fighting exercises. His shoulder struck a pillar and broke it, bringing down half the pavilion. The gatekeepers saw him staggering up and barred the monastery gate. He beat on it with his fists as though it were a drum, but they dared not open.

Turning to the guardian on the left, he demanded why it would not knock for him, and why it threatened him with a raised fist. He jumped onto its platform, pulled a rail from the fence as easily as an onion from the ground and struck the clay leg until paint and earth fell away. Then he accused the right-hand guardian of laughing at him. Two blows to its foot brought it crashing from the platform.

When the monks reported the destruction, the abbot counselled them to leave him alone. Even the emperor avoided a drunken man. Zhao could pay for new guardians and repair the pavilion. Zhishen now threatened to fetch fire unless the gate was opened. The gatekeepers slipped back the bar and fled. He hurled himself against the gate and fell flat inside.

In the meditation hall he took out the dog’s leg and began to eat. He tried to force a piece into the mouth of a monk who refused it. When four or five others came to intervene, he struck their shaved heads. The hall broke into uproar. Monks collected their robes and bowls and fled. A hundred or two hundred men returned with staves and forks. Zhishen overturned the offering table, snapped off two legs and fought his way outside. He pointed east and struck west, pointed south and struck north.

The abbot ordered both sides to stop. The crowd withdrew. Zhishen dropped the table legs and asked him to stand up for him. Now nearly sober, he heard Zhizhen’s answer. The earlier drunken uproar could be forgiven. The broken pavilion and guardians could be repaired. But driving the monks from their hall and injuring them was grave. Mount Wutai was Manjushri’s holy ground, a place of quiet incense for hundreds and thousands of years. It could no longer keep him.

From the original

Four lines for the road

The abbot wrote to Zhao. The squire promised to pay for the repairs and left Zhishen’s departure to the abbot. Zhizhen gave his troublesome disciple a robe, shoes and ten taels of silver. He also gave him a letter to his brother monk Zhiqing, abbot of the Great Xiangguo Monastery in the Eastern Capital, where Zhishen could seek a position.

The abbot had four lines for him to remember throughout his life. Zhishen knelt to hear them. Meet the forest, and rise. Meet the mountain, and grow rich. Meet the water, and flourish. Meet the river, and stop. He bowed nine times, packed the letter with his belongings and left Mount Wutai. Not one of the monks was sorry to see him go. Within a few days Zhao came with money and materials, the guardians were remade and the pavilion repaired.

Zhishen stayed at the inn beside the smithy until the weapons were finished. He sheathed the blade, rewarded the smith with a little more silver, took his staff and set out. Passers-by looked at the rough monk. In its sheath his blade hid three feet of spring ice. On his shoulder the staff lay like an iron python. His face was made for eating meat and fish, not reading scripture and reciting prayers.