6. Redemption Omitted
Standing amid the natural beauty of Tiantai Mountain[106] is the Guoqing Si monastery,[107] founded during the Sui dynasty; it takes its name from the mountain and belongs to the Tiantai school as well. The Tiantai school was established by an extraordinary individual, a monk by the name of Zhiyi,[108] who — with the help of a particular doctrine, according to which everything in the world is of equal significance, and this equal significance is comprised of minuscule elements all containing the Buddha — recommended an unusual solution to the problem of Chinese Buddhism, already in profound crisis at the time of the early Sui dynasty: how to trace the confusing multiplicity of the remaining texts, often diametrically opposed in meaning, back to the Buddha’s actual words. Zhiyi regarded the sacred writings of the Hinayana[109] and Mahayana[110] as connected to various epochs of the Buddha’s life and expressing various stages of his teachings. Hence he put all the sacred writings translated into Chinese at that point into chronological order and, connecting them to concrete points in the life of the Buddha, ultimately laid particular stress on one, the Lotus Sutra, as the sutra most deeply expressive of the Buddha’s thoughts. So it was Zhiyi who was the first to attempt to standardize the scattered variations of Buddhism; in the meantime, he tried to make peace among the different contending schools of thought, as if the question weighed heavily upon him as to whether there could ever be a way to have some presentiment of what the Buddha might have said and thought — in reality. For very many, this remains an insoluble problem: the Buddha’s words were put into writing only several centuries after they were heard. Coming close to that place, where Zhiyi lived, and aware that the founder of the distant fraternal sect, Saicho,[111] who established the Tendai[112] school in Japan, lived here in the ninth century so as to study the spirit and the teachings of Zhiyi, László Stein and his interpreter arrive at this mountain in the hope that chance will lead them to a monk in the monastery with whom they can clear up the question.
So stepping into the inner courtyard of the Guoqing Si, they do not hesitate for long. They address the first young monk they see, and without hesitation ask him if he would have the time and the disposition to talk to them. He gestures for them to wait and then goes off somewhere. Not long afterward he returns, motioning for them to follow. Fate has not made it possible for him to be able to converse with them. Fate has led them to one of the directors of the monastery, Abbot Pinghui. They end up in an office crammed with people coming and going, where Stein is seated in an easy chair and the interpreter in a plain wooden one next to him, slightly to the back. A cell phone is constantly ringing; someone picks it up, perhaps a secretary, says something quickly, then puts it down. But it rings again. And it rings almost constantly as they sit there in the armchair and the wooden chair, it rings eternally while they hope that Stein will be able to get a sympathetic response from the person who is slowly lowering himself into an armchair, padded with heavy blankets, across him.
A middle-aged, serious, severe and, as it quickly emerges, busy person sits across him wearing the orange robes of a monk and enormous metal-framed glasses. His glance is penetrating. During the introductions, which the interpreter transmits in a rather moved state, he does not cease gazing at Stein. Nor does Stein cease gazing at him.
Stein begins by saying that the reason he has made this long journey to Guoqing Si is not because of some kind of poetic task, as one could think due to his occupation. He does not wish to write any kind of poetry here: it is not poetry at all that he is engaged with but altogether another question, a question which is for so many the most troubling or the most tormenting, and to which he hopes to obtain an answer from the abbot.
Once again the din strikes up in the room, the telephone rings, someone runs out, someone else runs in. Stein stops speaking, the interpreter looks at him, confused, what should he translate, but Stein cannot continue, because as he looks into this pair of eyes in the midst of this chaos, he suddenly understands that he has either come at the wrong time or that he will always come at the wrong time, so he must put an end to it now, even before he begins, because these two eyes, the gaze of the abbot of Guoqing Si, in spite of all the implacability of this being, is, in reality, impatient. Stein wants to stand up, wishing only to say that even to have met the abbot is a tremendous experience and, as he sees that he is busy, he will ask him another time. Perhaps he will come back later, on another occasion.