Tricycle | Awake in the World

I would like to tell you a story which has moved me very deeply. It is the story of a woman, Miss Okamoto, who stayed by my teacher’s side for forty years, up until his death.

Miss Okamoto was a very talented woman who graduated in the Taisho Era from Ochanomizu Girls’ College. She was active in the field of young women’s education in both Tokyo and Kyushu until, at the age of forty, she entered the temple as a disciple of Master Zuigan. She trained as a layperson, never shaving her head and taking the vows of a nun, but also never wearing makeup as an ordinary laywoman. She carried out all her affairs tidily attired in baggy work pants.

It was not her intention to become a great monk, so rather than focus on the training itself, she worked hard to make life smooth for the master whom she so respected. By washing clothes, cooking, and raising fresh vegetables Miss Okamoto ensured that he would always be available to teach the dharma to others. Anyone who looked at Miss Okamoto would see a thoroughly self-sacrificing person.

Master Zuigan died at the age of eighty-seven, when Miss Okamoto was sixty years old. When the final ceremony of the forty-nine-day bereavement period was concluded, she packed up her belongings and, declaring that she did not wish to be a burden to me, left the temple. She moved into the rented cottage of a different temple, where she continued the live out her years of retirement, under no one’s supervision, just as she had lived when Master Zuigan was alive.

Miss Okamoto rose every morning at 4:15 and, although she had made no formal commitment to do so, cleaned the temple gardens surrounding her rented room. She cultivated vacant land and planted vegetables which she would pickle to offer the novice monks in training under me, to share with visitors, and to offer at the Buddha altar.

When she was already into her seventies, feeling that she wanted to improve herself in whatever way she could, Miss Okamoto began to come inside after a day of sweeping, pulling weeds, and gardening. At other times, remembering the lectures she had heard Roshi give on various Zen works, she would open koan collections like the Blue Cliff Record and The Gateless Gate. Such was the life Miss Okamoto led.

She was a little old lady, short, with a round boyish face, but her exceptionally strict, upright lifestyle had given rise to something forbidding in Miss Okamoto, and the young novice monks were never pleased when they were sent to her place on an errand.

I visited Miss Okamoto monthly, and she always seemed eager for these visits. But one day, she sent a message to the effect that she wanted me to call on her right away as she had something urgent to talk to me about.

“Here for the past half year, I’ve been suffering intense physical weariness,” she began when I visited her. “Thinking that I had reached the age when I was growing dull, I tried to whip myself along, to keep going, but I just wasn’t getting any better.

“Finally,” she explained, “there seemed to be nothing to do but ask someone to take me to see a doctor. Although the doctor didn’t say it in so many words, it seems that I have cancer. Since I found this out, I have been afraid of dying.”

Her words were an echo of those of my old schoolteacher. But not only was Miss Okamoto afraid of dying, she was also ashamed of that fear. She felt it disgraceful to fear death after having been allowed to train for so long under her teacher. She felt tremendous gratitude toward the Zen sect and toward the Roshi, and it was unbearable for her to think that those around her might feel Zen practice is useless since it apparently does not even help one to overcome apprehension in the face of death.

“What in the world is the problem with the way I have practiced up until now - that death could be this frightening? Please tell me how I have been wrong in my practice,” she beseeched, opening up to me as if I were her own son.

Although Miss Okamoto was twenty-four years my elder, her earnest confession prompted me, despite her years, to bluntly call to her attention something in her manner which had already been weighing on my mind.

This woman had led a flawless, commendable life, but she had always stoically gritted her teeth in an effort “to do good, to avoid doing evil.” Sharply distinguishing between “good” and “bad,” forever sizing up and passing judgment on the situation, she went about her endeavors to “do better,” but always with her teeth clenched fast. But let me be very clear about this: The kind of effort in which one bisects good and bad, and then chooses one over the other with the intent to stack up causes for positive results does not in itself produce peace of mind.