The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou Putuan)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Poem:

Let us tell how the priest Lone Peak had been continually reproaching himself ever since he let Vesperus slip through his fingers. In the last resort my Buddhist powers were not strong enough nor my compassion deep enough, he said to himself. This demon of love and satyr of lust passed right in front of my eyes, and I was not able to capture him. All the blame for letting him pollute mankind and work his evil will on the fair sex belongs to me, not to him. Since I've failed at catching demons and satyrs, what earthly good is this leather bag?

He hung the bag from the top of a pine tree outside his door, then planed a piece of wood, wrote a message on it in small characters, and nailed it to the tree.

The notice read,

For as long as Vesperus stays away, I shall leave this leather bag here, and for as long as it endures, I shall not give up hope. My only wish is that I may soon be able to take it down and that he will not have to occupy the carnal prayer mat forever.

There was something distinctly odd about the bag, for from the time of Vesperus's departure, when it was hung on the tree, a full three years had passed, a thousand and several hundred days in all, and not only had it not deteriorated in the slightest, it had steadily become more durable.

Vesperus could see from a distance that there was something hanging from the tree. At first he supposed it to be a cassock hung out to air, and only when he got closer did he see that it was a leather bag. Then, on reading the notice, he began to weep and wail. There was no need to save his kowtows for his meeting with the priest; instead he treated the notice as if it were the priest's image and kowtowed dozens of times before it. He then climbed the tree, took down the bag, and went into the Buddha Hall wearing it on his head. As on his first visit, Lone Peak was engaged in meditation. Vesperus promptly knelt down and kowtowed nonstop, like the disciple who bowed down before the Fifty-three Deities. [93] He kowtowed from the beginning of the meditation period right through to the end, some six hours in all, far exceeding the one hundred and twenty kowtows he had set for himself.

At last Lone Peak arose from the prayer mat and helped him up. "Worthy lay brother, your favoring me with another visit is generosity enough. Why this elaborate ceremony? Do come up!"

"Your pupil is a born fool!" said Vesperus. "I deeply regret that I did not accept your teaching when last I came here. Through wanton self-indulgence and folly I have done all manner of things sufficient to condemn me to Hell. My thisworldly retribution has already been received, but the otherworldly variety still awaits me. I beseech you, reverend master, take pity on me now and accept me as your pupil, teaching me to repent my sins and turn to religion. Are you willing to take me in?"

"You brought in my leather bag," said Lone Peak, "so you must have seen the notice. After you left, I almost wore out my eyes watching for your return, so how can I refuse you now that you turn to Buddha? My one fear is that your vocation may not be strong enough and that you will fall back into the mundane world. But it was for your sake that I left the bag at the mercy of the elements these past three years."

"I was in the depths of remorse," said Vesperus, "when suddenly I felt the need to repent. I think of myself as having escaped from Hell and would never dare go back. Of course I'll never change my mind! I beseech you, master, take me in."

"Very well, I shall accept you."

Vesperus got to his feet and began to bow in greeting all over again. This time Lone Peak stood there and received the bows, then chose an auspicious day for the tonsure. With Lone Peak 's permission, Vesperus selected his own name in religion: Stubborn Stone. It signified regret over his slowness to repent, which showed the stubbornness of a stone, and also gratitude for Lone Peak's skillful preaching, which had persuaded a stubborn stone that hadn't nodded its head in three years to start nodding it again. In general, too, he wanted a name that would serve him as a reminder, lest he forget what he had done and start thinking evil thoughts once more.

From that time forth he took pride in his Zen meditation and devoted himself wholeheartedly to understanding doctrine. Lest a life of luxury stimulate his lust again, he neither dressed nor ate well, but preferred to develop his religious vocation by exposing himself to hunger and cold.

But any young man joining the order has certain problems he must face. However strongly he tries to rein in his lusts, however firmly he tries to extinguish his desires, prayer and scripture reading will get him through the day well enough, but in the wee hours of the morning that erect member of his will start bothering him of its own accord, making a nuisance of itself under the bedclothes, uncontrollable, irrepressible. His only solution is to find some form of appeasement, either by using his fingers for emergency relief or by discovering some young novice with whom to mediate a solution. (Both methods are regular standbys for the clergy.) Had Vesperus done so, no one who caught him at it would have been disposed to criticize. Even Guanyin herself would have forgiven him, if she had come to hear of it; she would hardly have had him consumed in the fires of his own lust! [94]

Vesperus felt differently, however. He maintained that those who had joined the order ought to accept its commandment against sexual desire as a cardinal rule, whether or not their standbys took the form of actual adultery. Even if the standbys broke no rules and brought no dishonor to those practicing them, they represented a failure to suppress desire just as surely as adultery itself. Moreover, the handgun led to intercourse, and homosexual relations to heterosexual. Sight of the make-believe causes us to yearn for the reality, and one act leads to another by an inexorable process that we must not allow to get started.

One night he dreamed that some women came to worship at the temple. On approaching them, he was astonished to find that they were all old friends of his. Flora was there, as were Cloud and her sisters, and also his two eloping wives, Jade Scent and Fragrance.

The sight of his wives infuriated Vesperus, and he called on Flora and her nieces to help him catch them. But in the twinkling of an eye the wives vanished, leaving only the four friends, who drew him into a priest's cell and proceeded to do with him what they had done so often before. They undressed and were about to begin another contest, with Vesperus's penis fitted into someone's vagina and ready to thrust, when all of a sudden he was awakened by a dog barking in a nearby wood and realized that he had been dreaming. That erect member of his, however, still assumed there was a treat in store for it, and it butted and burrowed here and there among the bedclothes looking for its old haunts. Stubborn Stone took it in his hand and was thinking of some way to appease it, when suddenly he stopped.

This is the root cause of all my sins, my nemesis, he thought. I don't have to take revenge on it, but I must not let it loose.

Having come to that conclusion, he banished the foolish idea from his mind and tried to get some sleep before it was time to rise and chant sutras again.

But he tossed and turned in bed and could not get back to sleep, tormented beyond endurance by the root of evil under his bedclothes. So long as this accursed thing is attached to me, he thought, I'll always be bothered by it. The best solution is to cut it off and eliminate all the trouble it's going to cause me. Moreover, dog's flesh is anathema to the Buddhists and I oughtn't to have it attached to me. If I don't cut it off, I can never be anything more than an animal. Even if I cultivate my behavior to perfection, the best I can hope for is to be reborn as a human being. How can I ever become a buddha?

Having arrived at this conclusion, he could not wait for daybreak. He lit the lamp, picked up a thin vegetable knife, and honed it a few times on the ewer. Then, taking his penis in one hand, he brought the knife down on it with all the force he could muster, slicing the organ right off.

Evidently he was destined to shed his animal fate and to be transformed, for the amputation did not feel terribly painful. From that time on, his desires ceased and his moral purpose gained in strength, and the perceptiveness shown in his religious studies grew steadily. By this time Lone Peak had numerous disciples, all men of some knowledge. They would gather to listen to his sermons and, of them all, Stubborn Stone was the one most apt to nod his head in understanding.

His first six months were devoted to a general training in moral conduct in readiness for ordination. When the training period was over, Stubborn Stone gathered together a dozen or more priests and asked Lone Peak to take the platform and expound the doctrine. All the priests were men who had committed themselves to accepting the commandments and living a life of meditation, with no thought of ever returning to their old lives.

Now, when monks are about to receive the commandments, their first step is to confess every sin they have committed in the course of their lives and then, having set forth the case against themselves, to kneel down before Buddha and beg an eminent priest to pray for their forgiveness. Any suppression of the facts is known as "cheating Heaven and deceiving Buddha" and infringes upon one of the cardinal tenets of the faith. No transgressor can ever hope to attain true enlightenment, even if he slaves away at moral cultivation for the rest of his life.

The priests invited Lone Peak to mount the platform, where he prayed and then set the order for their initiation. The priests sat in two rows on either side of him as he explained the commandments. After detailing what it meant to accept them, he ordered everyone to confess his sins, holding nothing back. Stubborn Stone, as the last to arrive, was sitting in last place and all he could do, until his turn came, was to listen to the others' confessions. Among them were murderers and arsonists, thieves and bandits, as well as some who, like Stubborn Stone himself, had undermined the moral law with their adulteries. All of them confessed, not daring to hold anything back. At length it was the turn of the priest sitting next to Stubborn Stone, a man who, despite a coarse appearance, seemed to have a certain spiritual air about him.

"In thirty-odd years," he confessed to Lone Peak, "your disciple has done only one evil thing: I indentured myself as a servant, seduced my master's daughter, and then abducted the daughter and her personal maid and sold them both into prostitution. It is a sin that cannot be expiated by death. I beg you, master, to intercede for my forgiveness."

"That is far too grievous a sin," replied Lone Peak. "I'm afraid it is beyond the reach of forgiveness. As the adage goes, 'Of all evils, adultery is worst.' Adultery on its own would be bad enough, how could you go and compound it with abduction? Both adultery and abduction are always extremely difficult to gain forgiveness for. Why did you sell her into prostitution and turn one man's wife into every man's mistress? She cannot be set free in this life, which means you cannot be set free either. Even if I pray for forgiveness, I'm afraid Buddha won't grant it. What can I do?"

"Master, I beg leave to explain. It was not by my own choice that I did this. I was forced into it. The woman's husband seduced my wife and then made me sell her, and I was powerless to resist. So I had to go outside the law and do these terrible things. But they were done under extenuating circumstances; I should not be compared to some lecher who is merely seeking to gratify his lust. I wonder, might you still be able to pray for my forgiveness?"

Stubborn Stone found himself strangely affected by the man's confession. "Let me ask you, worthy brother," he said to the priest, "what was the name of the woman you abducted? Whose wife and whose daughter was she? And where is she now?"

"She was the wife of Scholar Vesperus and the daughter of Master Iron Door. Her name is Jade Scent and her maid's name is Ruyi. She and the maid are in the capital now, entertaining clients. You don't happen to know her, by any chance?"

Stubborn Stone was thunderstruck. "Then you must be Honest Quan," he said. "How do you come to be here?"

"Let me ask, might you be Scholar Vesperus?"

"Yes, I am."

The two men left their prayer mats and begged each other's forgiveness. Then they revealed to Lone Peak all that had happened and each confessed his sins.

Lone Peak roared with laughter. "What a fine pair of enemies you are! You were bound to cross each other's paths sooner or later. Since you knew what the outcome would be, why didn't you pay heed at the outset? Luckily for you, Buddha's compassion has given you this broad highway on which enemies can pass without let or hindrance. If you'd met on any other path, you'd now be locked in endless struggle. In principle your sins are beyond forgiveness, but thanks to your virtuous wives' redeeming your debts for you, much of the burden has been lifted from your shoulders. Otherwise, even if you cultivated your conduct for ten lives, let alone one, you'd still be condemned to the cycle of birth and death, unable to escape your fate. I shall now pray for your forgiveness and beseech the Bodhisattva to extend her compassion and show you a measure of mercy for the sake of those wives of yours. Pity these poor women! Each of them was worthy of a memorial arch or tablet, but was forced by her husband's lechery to behave like a wanton and redeem his debts. And even after she has discharged his debts in this world, there will still be debts for her to discharge in the other. The men we needn't concern ourselves with, but oh, how they ill-use the women who redeem their debts, women unjustly condemned to lives of shame!" He told both men to kneel down in front of Buddha while he recited from the scriptures and prayed for their forgiveness.

"Master," Stubborn Stone asked him when the prayers were done, "I have a question for you. If, to give a hypothetical example, an adulterer were to have both a wife and a daughter, once the wife has redeemed his debts, can the baby daughter be spared, so that she doesn't have to redeem them, too?"

Lone Peak shook his head. "Quite impossible. The adulterer's only hope is to have no daughters at all. Any daughter he has will be a potential redeemer. How can she be forgiven?"

"To be frank with you, master," said Stubborn Stone, "your disciple has the misfortune to be the father of two potential redeemers, both of whom are at home. From what you say, they will definitely not be forgiven. Your disciple therefore wishes to return and eradicate these roots of evil with the sword of wisdom, as if they had been drowned at birth. That should not be too grave a sin."

"Amitabha Buddha!" exclaimed Lone Peak, placing his palms reverently together. "Such a wicked suggestion should never have left your lips or entered my ears! How can a priest who has accepted the commandment not to kill even think of such a thing? A layman is forbidden to kill, let alone a priest! They're still in swaddling clothes, they've done nothing wrong! What crime are you going to kill them for? And if you wait until they have done something wrong, it will be too late to reclaim the debts they'll have repaid. Your violence will all be in vain anyway. Far better to spare them!"

"But how can I settle this matter?"

"Those two are not your daughters," said Lone Peak. "They were sent by the Lord of Heaven to redeem your debts when he saw the intolerable evil you were doing. As the proverb says, 'One good deed cancels out a thousand evil deeds.' If you turn your mind steadfastly to goodness, the Lord of Heaven may change his decision and recall them. There's no need for any sword of wisdom!"

Stubborn Stone nodded. "You are perfectly right, master, and your disciple will do your bidding." From that day forward he ceased to worry about his family and turned his whole mind to the service of Buddha.

Another six months passed. One day, as Stubborn Stone was talking to Lone Peak in the hall, a great, strapping fellow whom he recognized as the Knave came rushing in. The new comer paid homage to the image of Buddha, then bowed before Lone Peak.

"Master," explained Stubborn Stone, "this is my sworn brother, A Match for the Knave of Kunlun, whom I have often mentioned. He is the foremost gallant of the age, one who manages to do righteous deeds in the midst of evil."

"Am I to understand that you are that hero of a burglar with his Five Abstentions?" asked Lone Peak.

"He is," said Stubborn Stone.

"In that case you're a bodhisattva of a thief!" said Lone Peak. "Who am I to receive bows from a bodhisattva?" He was about to kneel down and return the bows, when the Knave reached out and stopped him.

"If the master is unwilling to receive a thief's bows," said the Knave, "I can only assume it is because you want to exclude me from the faith. Your disciple may be a thief, but I have a kinder heart than many who are not thieves. The reason I came to this treasure mountain was both to visit a friend of mine and also to pay my respects to a living buddha. If you refuse to accept my bows, you will be cutting off my path to goodness and strengthening my will to evil. It would seem as if we ought to hide the nature of our profession and become the sort of thieves who are clad in official robes rather than the sort who break and enter, and that would never do."

"In that case," said Lone Peak, "I shall not dare return your bows."

After greeting Stubborn Stone, the Knave sat down and exchanged a few polite remarks with Lone Peak, then drew the Stone aside for a private conversation.

"I have told the master everything," said the Stone. "Whatever the family secret, you can talk about it in front of him. Anyway, this living buddha knows the past as well as the future and cannot be deceived."

The Knave sat down again and told Stubborn Stone the news of his family, apologizing for failing in his responsibilities and breaking his promises to a friend. Not only was he unfit to entrust a wife to, he was also unfit to take care of children, and he was ashamed to face his friend.

"From what you are saying," said Stubborn Stone, "I gather something must have happened to the fruits of my sin?"

"Just so. I don't know why, but your daughters suddenly died, both at the same time. They weren't suffering from smallpox or convulsions, and they were sleeping peacefully when it happened. The night of their death the wet nurses heard a voice calling out in their dreams: 'His debts have been settled and there is no need for you anymore. Come back with me.' When the nurses awoke, they had no sooner touched the children than they realized it was too late. There is something terribly strange about the whole affair."

Stubborn Stone said nothing in response, but went and bowed several times in front of Buddha and again before Lone Peak. Then he told the Knave how he had been worried lest his daughters redeem his debts and how Lone Peak had told him that if he turned his mind steadfastly to goodness, the Lord of Heaven might change his decision and recall them. "It's a stroke of good fortune," he went on to say, "that these agents of retribution have been removed. You ought to be congratulating me, brother, rather than talking about a breach of trust."

At these words the Knave felt a chill run down his spine and paused a moment before continuing. "Apart from the bad news, I do have one piece of good news that should cheer you up."

"What is that?" asked Stubborn Stone.

"I felt terrible when that slut Fragrance ran away. I tried to catch her, but without success. It turned out she had been abducted by a priest, who kept her hidden in a cellar. Quite by chance I found her there and rid you of this root of evil. Doesn't that cheer you up?"

"A cellar would seem to be a safe enough place to hide," said Lone Peak. "How did you happen to find her?"

"The priest was living near a crossroads, where he used to rob and murder passersby. I heard that he had a vast sum stashed away in the cellar, so one night I went there to steal it. Imagine my surprise when I found him in bed talking with a woman who sounded exactly like Fragrance! I kept out of sight and listened, and gradually the situation became clear to me. I heard my name mentioned as well as yours. She said her first husband was Honest Quan, who, although a little coarse, was at least a one-woman husband, without any other wives or concubines. To her surprise a certain person helped another person to seduce her and force her into marriage, after which the latter abandoned her and gave himself up to debauchery, leaving her alone in an empty house. Eventually, physically worn out, he was unable to cope with his domestic duties and set off on a long journey to escape them, heedless as to whether his wife and children lived or died. 'Why should I stay with such a faithless wretch?' she said. At this point my anger could no longer be restrained. Luckily I had a sword on me, so I flung aside the curtain and cut them both in two with a single stroke, then lit a torch and hunted for their booty. I found over two thousand taels, which I brought back and donated as I saw fit to countless poor people, doing numerous good deeds. Let me ask you, master, was it right, in your opinion, to kill this couple and take their money?"

"They deserved to die," said Lone Peak, "but it was for Heaven to kill them, not you, worthy layman. And they deserved to lose their money, but it was for the authorities to take it, not you. Your action is deeply satisfying, to be sure, but it doesn't quite square either with the Principle of Heaven or with the law, and I'm afraid you will not be able to escape retribution for it in this world or the next."

"But if our nature is in accord with the Principle of Heaven," said the Knave, "so long as we feel an action to be deeply satisfying, why shouldn't it square with the manifest justice of the Principle? Your disciple has spent his entire life as a thief without ever getting into any trouble. Are you telling me that I'm now going to fall foul of the law?"

"That's not the way to look at it, layman," said Lone Peak. "Both the Principle of Heaven and the law are absolutely watertight. No one who harms the Principle or breaks the law ever gets away with it. His retribution may come early, or it may come late. If it comes early, it will be less severe, but if it is long delayed, it will suddenly burst upon him with intolerable force. That priest had broken the commandment against lust and the woman the law against adultery, and of course the Lord of Heaven would have destroyed them. But does he not have the Thunder God to do it for him? Does he need to turn to a mere mortal for help in killing them? Even if he does, well, every mortal in the world has a pair of hands. Why should he turn to you in particular? Are your hands the only ones that can kill? The sovereign authority must not be lent, nor the sword of authority allowed to slip away. The Lord of Heaven cannot handle such a serious matter himself, so he sees that sinners are killed by other sinners. No one, absolutely no one, is left out! Thus your otherworldly retribution certainly cannot be avoided.

"Perhaps your action is less serious and will be judged a little less severely than if you had killed honest folk. But since you've followed this profession all your life, surely by now every official in the country knows your reputation. As the proverb says, 'A man fears fame as a pig fears to grow fat.' You may have done good by giving your money to the poor, but no one will ever believe it; people will always suspect that you have a secret cellar under your house where you've hidden the money, and sooner or later they'll come after you. If you really had the stolen money at home, you could use it to buy them off and so save your skin. But I'm afraid you'll find the money you gave to the poor impossible to recall at short notice, and your life will be in jeopardy. Thus your thisworldly retribution is inescapable too. And a delayed retribution may well prove worse than the sin itself."

The Knave had always been a violent man with a fiery temper that everyone feared, so he had never received any moral advice. Now, confronted with the priest's compelling arguments, he felt moved by a spirit of repentance. There was no need to pressure him further; he was committed to reforming himself.

"Admittedly," he said to Lone Peak, "the things I have done are not the actions of a good or superior man. But since rich men are unwilling to distribute their money themselves, it has been my practice to take a little from them and do a few good deeds in their behalf: In doing so, I am thinking of others, not myself. From what you say, however, I have done many evil things for which retribution is inescapable, both in this world and in the next. If I repent now, will you still be able to intercede for forgiveness?"

Lone Peak pointed to Stubborn Stone. "His sins were far worse than yours, but because he turned his mind to goodness, he moved Heaven into taking back the daughters who would have redeemed his debts. That is something you saw with your own eyes, not something I made up, so you already know whether you can be forgiven."

Stubborn Stone was delighted when he heard of the Knave's intention to turn his mind to goodness. He told how he himself had rejected the master's advice three years before and thrown himself into all kinds of debauchery, and how the retribution he suffered as a consequence had borne out the master's warnings to the letter. He urged the Knave to heed his example.

The Knave took his decision and made his bows to Lone Peak that very day, acknowledging him as his teacher. Receiving the tonsure, he embarked on a strict course of self-denial and in less than twenty years attained the fruits of enlightenment. He died sitting in the buddha position, like Lone Peak and Stubborn Stone.

Obviously there is no man who is unfit to become a buddha. It is only because we are so controlled by money and sex that we cannot avoid the path of error and reach salvation's shore. That is the reason why Heaven is so sparsely populated and Hell so densely crowded, why the Jade Emperor has nothing to occupy his time and King Yama is too busy to cope. In a more general sense it is all due to the meddling of the Sage who separated Heaven and Earth. He should never have created woman or instituted money, reducing man to his present sorry state. Let me now sum up the case against the Sage with a quotation from the Four Books: "Was it not the Sage himself who invented burial images?" [95]