“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 onlythisorthat, 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 arequest,” 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?”
“Because when we ask the gods to do things for us, they require something in return. And sometimes…sometimes, they sayyes.”
Jobo’s exuberance had melted away.
“The cost is just too great,” he said. “It is no secret, even children know.”
As he walked off, he clasped his hands around his staff, and softly quoted another of his teacher’s sayings:
“Two monks were arguing over leaves in the wind. One said,‘The leaves move.’The other said,‘The wind moves.’They argued back and forth but could not agree. The teacher said:‘Gentlemen! It is not the leaves that move. It is not the wind that moves.’
“‘What is it?’they asked.‘What moves?’
