The statue has an unmistakable spiritual presence, a remarkable combination of power and gentleness, strength and compassion. Like Fuji it sits unmoved and unmoving – it looks on tempests (and earthquakes) and is never shaken.

  I like to walk round it, clockwise, chanting the Nembutsu as I go. Namu Amida Butsu. I bow to the Buddha of the Pure Land.

  What is your religion Mr Blyth?

  I would have to declare myself an atheist.

  But are you a Christian atheist or a Buddhist atheist?

  Thy will be done.

  Namu Amida Butsu

  There is a little door at the side of the Buddha, towards the rear, down a few steps and right inside the statue, which is, of course, hollow. I like it in there, especially when it is quiet and I can have it to myself. It is a cool and quiet space, the light dim. A rickety flight of wooden steps leads up to a little platform which is actually inside the Buddha’s head. I can climb up there and look out through his eyes at the temple grounds, the green surrounding hills, the world beyond.

  I am in the Buddha’s head.

  I look out through his eyes.

  Namu Amida Butsu.

  These days, especially in the summer season, it is much visited by tourists and pilgrims. (Tourist-pilgrims? Pilgrim-tourists?) They are invariably respectful, genuinely awed by the statue, immense and benign, looming over them. They light incense, waft the smoke over themselves, clap their hands and bow. More and more often a camera is produced and snapshots are taken, individuals and family groups posing, the moment recorded. They were here.

  I imagine one of those film sequences in time-lapse, hundreds and thousands of little figures, there a moment and gone, the Buddha behind them, continuing.

  I once went with Suzuki into the temple itself where he had been invited by the abbot as a special guest. A few of us sat round a low table, eating a simple meal, making spiritual smalltalk, a sharing that was civilised and timeless.

  As a result of the conversation, I found myself being asked to translate a tanka poem by the redoubtable female poet Akiko Yasano. In her lifetime she scandalised the establishment, speaking out for women’s rights, condemning, at least for a time, the traditional values of bushido and the cult of war-mongering, and, most heinous of all, writing poems that were unashamedly erotic in content.

  The verse I translated was less contentious, a simple homage to the Daibutsu.

  Here in Kamakura

  Sits Sakyamuni

  The Holy Buddha

  A handsome figure

  Among the Summer Trees

  Although the poem is serious, you can sense the poet’s personality, her playfulness, in that one unexpected word, binan, beautiful man, which I translated as handsome figure.

  Aesthetically the statue is perfect in its scale, its proportions. From whatever angle you choose to look up, it is pleasing to the eye, harmonious, and that harmony communicates a sense of wholeness, completeness.

  On one particular day I stood in front of the statue and looked up at that great head, the face in turn looking down at me, calm and serene, all-knowing but non-judgemental, the full lips curved in a faint but unmistakable half smile. And for a moment I felt the selfsame expression on my own face, my eyes half closed, my own smile coming from within. Everything else faded away and I was looking at the reflection of my own inner being, which was looking back at me with infinite kindness and love.

  The moment passed and I bowed once more.

  Namu Amida Butsu.

  The poet’s name was Akiko, a name that would come to mean a great deal to me.

  Akiko.

  As I read this I realise I am writing it in the past tense. A time gone. A life ending.

  So.

  That tiny little word, so expressive, so ubiquitous, in English as in Japanese.

  So.

  Suzuki once said to me, If he believed in reincarnation, he would say I was an old Japanese soul who had lived here for many lifetimes.

  If he believed in reincarnation.

  It would make sense of a great deal, more so than the idea that life is once-round-the-block then over.

  I suppose I had always thought of reincarnation as a useful metaphor, explaining some aspect of the way the universe works, as the theory of evolution is another metaphor, or the law of karma, or original sin, the structure and function of DNA. These all offer a glimpse, tell a part of the story, but not the truth the whole truth and nothing but. Expedient means.

  There are times when I have been overwhelmed by a feeling of recognition, a sense of knowing a place, a person – deja vu, easily dismissed as some random chemical reaction in the brain.

  But.

  Those few days in India. Not this, not this….

  The fact that when I first heard Spanish, and German, I felt I understood both languages at some deep intuitive level, and in fact I learned both without difficulty.

  The years I have lived here in Japan, utterly alien but utterly at home.

  An old Japanese soul.

  If I believed in reincarnation.

  There is an anonymous tanka poem I translated, touching on an aspect of it.

  To have lived

  so many lives –

  how many loves

  I know but

  do not know.

  Then there is a Tagore poem I can almost remember.

  In the dusky path of a dream I went to seek the love who was mine in a former life…

  She raised her large eyes to my face and silently asked, Are you well, my friend?

  I tried to answer, but our language had been lost and forgotten….

  I thought and thought; our names would not come to my mind.

  If I believed.

  It would explain (if not justify) the reality of my own current situation. Perhaps for that very reason I should reject it.

  Let me leave it there.

  Over the years I had maintained intermittent contact with Bob Aitken (and he with me). It was with the usual anticipation that I saw among my letters an airmail communication from him, postmarked Honolulu, Hawaii. I tore it open (carefully) and saw it was the latest issue of his Diamond Sangha, a single page broadsheet, typewritten and mimeographed. Across the top Bob had written, I am sure you have been amused at the earlier reviews, all of them either scornful or strident in their condemnation!

  Underneath was a review, anonymous though clearly by Bob, of my Zen and Zen Classics, Volume 7.

  I settled at my desk, read with mounting gratitude.

  Mr Blyth writes with authority of something he has understood for twenty-five years. It is the very liveliness of his mind that seems to create so much resentment; the Buddhists are upset to find an artist in their midst.

  I remembered Bob as I had first seen him at the camp in Kobe, thin and gaunt, an eager acolyte.

  When Blyth rushes pell-mell at Sacred Institutions, slaughtering and ravishing, he is like the storms mentioned in the sutras – the trees with shallow roots are blown over.

  Yes.

  It is a healthy thing to understand that a large measure of Zen, as it appears in organisations, books and individuals in both East and West, is downright fake.

  Beautifully put.

  It is a healthy thing to understand that men and women are different, and if Blyth’s protests against the curse of chivalry becomes too shrill, we need only to look about to sympathise.

  Ha!

  The point is, that after the beneficent nuclear explosion of Blyth’s writings has cleared away, we are left with poetry and the attitude of poetry, which, as he has been telling us since Zen in English Literature, is Zen itself.

  I felt exhilaration rising, a great bubble expanding in my chest.

  Mr Blyth is an extraordinarily interesting human being. We need him at every step of our training to puncture our self-importance and to teach us really to laugh.

  I banged the desk and threw back my head and laughed myself, a great all-consuming roar that brought tears to my eyes.

  I never tired of browsing in book shops, and finding books for the young Crown Prince was an added stimulus. Books Kinokuniya in Shinjuku – a dealer dating back to Hakuin’s time – had a decent stock of books in English and I was always happy to check their new titles, losing myself there of an afternoon. The Crown Prince was fascinated by the natural world and I had bought him field guides to British wildlife. So for his birthday one year I bought him a copy of Born Free, the story of Elsa the Lioness, and he was quite delighted to receive it, reading it eagerly through and through again.

  More recently I picked up a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I had followed the sensational stories in the press, the public outrage, the publisher tried for obscenity, and inevitably the massive increase in sales of the book. My beloved Lawrence was once more causing a stir!

  I picked up a copy in Kinokuniya, refused the offer of a paper bag and carried it instead, unashamedly, under my arm, made a point of reading it on the train.

  What did I teach the Crown Prince? Life.

  Among my papers is a letter from Harumi, sent last year from her home in Utah. She had enclosed a photograph, clipped from a magazine, of President Kennedy with his elegantly beautiful wife Jackie and their two small children. What comes from the picture is a sense of relaxed ease. There is none of the stiffness and over-formality of our own politicians (or for that matter, of any world leaders whose images I have seen in the press). Harumi said looking at the picture filled her with hope. I wrote back to her, saying simply, Brave new world that has such people in it.

  A few months later, on a bright November day, Gakushuin still rich with those autumn colours, always the same always new, the red and gold of maple and ginko, I heard the announcement on radio that President Kennedy had been shot dead.

  I am not given to rhetoric, but when I stood in front of my class the next day, I felt moved to give a short speech, urging the students to take care in their own lives lest they murder not men, but principles.

  In the staffroom I sat down and wrote a short note to Harumi, enclosing two haiku by Issa, in the original Japanese and with my own translations.

  We walk

  On the roof of hell,

  Looking at the flowers.

  This world of dew

  Is a world of dew,

  And yet…

  I walked across the campus grounds to post the letter, pushing my bicycle through the fallen leaves, hearing the shouts of young boys playing baseball.

  The roof of hell.

  And yet…

  Another letter from Harumi sent the good news that she was with child. A few months later came a telegram announcing the birth of her son, Taro. Mother and Son Both Well. Later still came a photograph, a colour snapshot. Taro, the grandson I have never met.

  One of the last lectures I gave before taking my leave was on a Saturday afternoon at Gakushuin. The lecture was not part of any course, and attendance was not compulsory, but there were perhaps eighty students packed into the classroom. It seems they were still eager to hear this old gaijin speak.

  I was aware I would be causing a stir as I wrote the title, in white chalk, on the blackboard.

  WHY I HATE BUDDHISM.

  There was indeed a little ripple round the room, an apprehensive intake of breath, some nervous uncertain laughter.

  So…. I began.

  Of course I was not criticising the Buddha, or his teachings. (Not today, at any rate…) What I hated was that it had become an -ism, a system, a philosophy. In fact I hated all -isms without exception – communism, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism… A pox on all their houses. God save us from religion.

  Worst of all was when the great spiritual truths became ossified and codified into dogma and ritual, in other words when they degenerated into a religion – Hinduism, Judaism, and yes, Buddhism (which was why I could truly, if paradoxically, say I hated it).

  Did they know the story about tying the cat to the bed?

  No? Then I would tell it to them.

  There was once a spiritual master who lived in a small community with just a few close followers. Once a week they visited him in his hermitage and sat with him in meditation.

  Now it happened that this master had a cat. He was very fond of the cat, but sometimes it would cause problems during the master’s meetings with his disciples. The cat would run around the room, or come to the master purring and seeking affection. This was very distracting, so the master came up with a solution. When the disciples arrived, he would tie the cat to the bed in his room. The cat learned to accept this, and the routine was established. They met once a week, the master tied the cat to the bed, he meditated with his disciples and afterwards they all went home and the master untied the cat.

  This went on for a number of years. Then the master passed away, and the disciples continued meeting in his room once a week. As before, they tied the cat to the bed, meditated, then released the cat and went away.

  In the fullness of time, however, without the master’s presence, they lost intensity and in the end they simply met once a week to tie-the-cat-to-the-bed and then go home.

  And that, says the punch-line, is religion.

  Another story.

  Always a story.

  Of course, I said, I could just as easily have called my talk this…

  I rubbed out BUDDHISM from the blackboard, replaced it with CHRISTIANITY.

  And yes, I said, I hate Christianity just as much. An -anity is every bit as bad as an -ism.

  Think of the rhymes, I said. Inanity. Insanity. Profanity. (I said I could have added Humanity, but that would have spoiled my argument!)

  I may have no truck with Christianity, I told them. But Christ is a different matter entirely. He was, without doubt, one of the greatest poets the world has ever known, and it is the poetry in his life and words that is eternally true.

  Consider the lilies of the field how they grow. They toil not neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

  I read these words as a boy, as a young man. They moved me to tears in a way I could not understand (as I could not understand the words themselves). But then the point was not to understand the lily, but to consider how it grows.

  Perhaps I could edit Christ’s words into more of a haiku.

  Consider

  The lilies of the field

  How they grow.

  So, yes, I said, Christ, like Buddha, was a very great poet, and that is why both still speak to us today, because poetry is the most important thing in life.

  I paused.

  And what is life? I heard myself say. Life gives us the the opportunity to be in Heaven here and now. Until our being dissolves in death we have a chance to live an eternal life as often and as long as we have the will and the power.

  Finally I looked round the room, said, What are you all doing? Why are you sitting here listening to me on a beautiful day like this? You should be out on the playing fields. Or walking with your sweethearts!

  Motes of chalk-dust hung in the air, caught in the shafts of sunlight filtering through the windows.

  Go! I said, sending them off with my benediction, a last wave of the hand.

  My goodbye.

  Chalk-dust in the air.

  My head ached.

  I still have at home an old bible that belonged to Ma and Pa, leather-covered, the pages of thin onionskin paper, edged in gold. It has survived two world wars and sits on my desk beside my collected Shakespeare, the Mumonkan, the Gita. I dip into it from time to time, and always read from it on Christmas Day when I get up early and light the big pot-bellied stove, filling the place with smoke.

  I begin the day by playing a record on the gramophone, Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus, its ending loud and triumphant. I know I have said before that Handel has no Zen and his music is mere shouting. Very well. But sometimes Zen is not what is required, and a great swell of emotion fits the bill very nicely. (And if not on Christmas morning, then when?)

  Sing unto God…

  Harumi said Handel and woodsmoke were the sound and smell of Christmas.

  My old friend Shinki often visits us on the day. One year when the girls were young, he pinned a blank sheet of paper to the wall and, to their utter delight, did a watercolour painting of the Three Wise Men.

  I had tuned up the piano, the old joanna, and banged out We three kings of orient are… followed by a few other carols, and ending with a rousing hymn from those far-off days in Leytonstone.

  Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning.

  Give me oil in my lamp, I pray. (Halleluja!)

  Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning.

  Keep me burning till the break of day.

  Keep me burning.

  Looking back, looking back. What of all the poetry and music I loved? What of art, truth and beauty? Was it merely ornamental, like flowers on the coffin of this life? What did it have to do with eating or breathing, being generous or lustful, angry or weary?

  Of all the stories of Buddha, the tales and parables, the story of his flower-sermon is one of my favourites.. It tells of how the Buddha came to give a lecture, a dharma discourse, in a particular town. Word had spread and a large crowd gathered to hear him speak. The Buddha appeared and everyone sat, attentive and expectant, eager to receive his wisdom. But instead of speaking, the Buddha simply sat, in silence. Time passed and still he did not speak. Then he picked up a single flower and held it up in front of him. Most of the crowd were confused, but one of the Buddha’s followers, Maha Kashapa, understood what the Buddha was saying-by-not-saying. It was not to be communicated in words but in profound silence. Maha Kashapa showed his understanding by smiling, and in that smile the Buddha said his disciple had received everything he had to offer, his entire teaching. It was all there, nothing held back, nothing up his sleeve.