DONALD RICHIE

WE ENTER a very large room, deep in the recesses of an enormous temple complex. Here on the shelves, numbered, catalogued, are the sutras, every one of them, shelves from floor to ceiling filled. One had not known there were so many.

In the middle of one wall, a large door, opening into a long corridor. Here, on either side, more packed shelves—the lives of the patriarchs. Again one is surprised at the number, the sheer mass.

The corridor leads to a vast rotunda. We are surrounded by shelves climbing to the distant ceiling. These are the commentaries, all of them—commentaries on the sutras, on the lives of the patriarchs, and on everything else.

Off the rotunda, a short passage leading to a series of different rooms. In one, a smallish square enclosure, are all the koans, all the commentaries on the koans, and the answers to the koans. Beyond it is a long vaulted room: famous Zen calligraphy, scroll upon scroll, each wound within its own box, labeled, catalogued. Ikkyu, one notices in passing, has a whole series of shelves; Hakuin has an entire section.

Beyond this, a very large loftlike room, filled with shelves, each crammed with boxed scrolls: Zen art—pictures of the saints, of priests, of acolytes at play; pictures of birds and fruit; pictures of landscapes. Whole stalls of screens—iris, chrysanthemum, distant mountains. Piles of paper, fugitive sketches, each pressed, catalogued.

And beyond this more corridors, more rooms, stretching away —more shelves, more treasures, more beauty—the Zen Library, a collection unbelievably vast within a complex of temples almost unimaginably huge.

As one wanders from room to room, picking up this, taking down that, one is slowly aware that it is cold, very cold, in these rooms. Though summer outside, it is winter itself within the library. One then notices something further—the scent.

It is, at first, pleasant. Something familiar, something the nose but not the mind remembers. Spicy, sharp, pungent. One thinks at first of herbs, then of cinnamon and nutmeg. An appealing, stimulating odour, at first.

It becomes more penetrating, sharper. Beneath the spicy fragrance is something stronger, more biting. The odour of fruit perhaps, but of fruit decayed. Milk, but curdled. Shortly, the smell turns biting, caustic. It is no longer vegetable. Underneath it is something of the animal, something feral and at the same time oppressive, cloying, sweet, sickly—and familiar, too.

The smell has become penetrating, overpowering. It is a stench. the smell of meat spoiled, of the bodies of small animals left rotting. It has now become intolerable, this stink—familiar, yet the breath of the grave, decomposition, the rot of the mind itself, the very brain festering.

It is now not to be tolerated, this enormous and overpowering stench, this stink that defeats all hope. This all too human, and hence familiar, smell of despair.

One must do something. To flee is not enough. One could not in time retrace one’s steps through all the rooms, all the corridors. One could never reach the summer air outside. And one knows now the origin of the stink.

It is the Zen Library itself. Each book, each scroll is permeated with it. Each exudes this fetid smell, and collectively they create this enervating, sickening stench. Now nearly overpowered, one realizes: the entire Zen Library stinks of death.

While there is strength left one must do something. At random one sweeps clear a shelf, scrolls falling to the floor, boxes breaking, treasures exposed. Rip pages from the commentaries, from the sutras themselves, crumple them. Then light a match and watch the top page flare as the fire eats its way through the dry paper.

Add the rest of the commentaries, ransack the shelves, and pour manuscripts into the flames. Watch the celebrated calligraphy leap and turn to smoke. The sutras crackle and blacken. Armsful of scrolls are added. Fruit bubbles, birds take flight.

But wait, what is this? A wonderfully brushed island, a few strokes creating its form half hidden in the mist. It is a Sesshu. The hand hesitates, but then Sesshu too is added to the growing flames.

The fire is now large. Of itself it reaches and consumes. Burned and blackened shelves crash into the spreading flames. Smoke engulfs the koans, flames follow, and the entire room is consumed at once. The fire races through the corridors, destroying everything. Seeking and finding its fuel, the fire grows meanwhile the larger, until the entire Zen Library, the accumulated work of centuries, is aflame.

The great rotunda cracks. The flames leap into the open air, a lambent summer afternoon, smoke pouring into the bluest sky. These cold rooms are now fire hot, and still they burn until with a crash, a roar, the walls collapse, the ceilings fall, and the Zen Library is no more.

With it also goes the stench. Standing in the open air on the still cinders one tries to remember that hateful stink. It is no more, and yet its familiarity remains. Death, yes, the smell of death, but now one asks, what kind of death? What sort of dissolution, what variety of nothingness?

Standing in the afternoon sun, one watches the smoke rise and clear. And one knows. It was the stink of failure, the stench of perfection unachieved. If satori had been achieved, there would have been no Zen Library. This wonderful collection was a pyramid dedicated to failure—satori achieved needs no sutras, no lives, no commentaries, no art. We burned a wonderful monument to failure.

It begins to rain, the sun is hidden, and clouds have gathered. The ashes turn to puddles; the blackened walls are washed clean. Standing in this shower one remembers the odour. There was something more to it, something else. The rain reminded one.

Then one thinks of tears—and something else.

Then comes the realization: sweat. That fragrance, it was the simple odour of human endeavour.

And now it and all of its works are gone.

This story was first published in Zen Inklings: Some Stories, Fables, Parables and Sermons. Published by Weatherhill, Inc., New York, 1982.