Shibumi

'How could I? The rest is the very opposite of hate.'

'Is it love, then?'

'Love is what it might be, if it concerned people. But it doesn't concern people.'

'What does it concern?'

'Everything. Me. Those two are the same. When I am resting, everything and I are... I don't know how to explain.'

'You become one with everything?'

'Yes. No, not exactly. I don't become one with everything. I return to being one with everything. Do you know what I mean?'

'I am trying to. Please take this 'rest' you experienced a short time ago, while we were playing. Describe to me what happened.'

Nicholai lifted his palms helplessly. 'How can I do that?'

'Try. Begin with: we were playing, and you had just placed stone fifty-six... and... Go on.'

'It was stone fifty-eight, Teacher.'

'Well, fifty-eight then. And what happened?'

'Well... the flow of the play was just right, and it began to bring me to the meadow. It always begins with some kind of flowing motion... a stream or river, maybe the wind making waves in a field of ripe rice, the glitter of leaves moving in a breeze, clouds flowing by. And for me, if the structure of the Go stones is flowing classically, that too can bring me to the meadow.'

'The meadow?'

'Yes. That's the place I expand into. It's how I recognize that I am resting.'

'Is it a real meadow?'

'Yes, of course.'

'A meadow you visited at one time? A place in your memory?'

'It's not in my memory. I've never been there when I was diminished.'

'Diminished?'

'You know... when I'm in my body and not resting.'

'You consider normal life to be a diminished state, then?'

'I consider time spent at rest to be normal. Time like this... temporary, and... yes, diminished.'

'Tell me about the meadow, Nikko.'

'It is triangular. And it slopes uphill, away from me. The grass is tall. There are no animals. Nothing has ever walked on the grass or eaten it. There are flowers, a breeze... warm. Pale sky. I'm always glad to be the grass again.'

'You are the grass?'

'We are one another. Like the breeze, and the yellow sunlight. We're all... mixed in together.'

'I see. I see. Your description of the mystic experience resembles others I have read. And this meadow is what the writers call your 'gateway' or 'path.' Do you ever think of it in those terms?'

'No.'

'So. What happens then?'

'Nothing. I am at rest. I am everywhere at once. And everything is unimportant and delightful. And then... I begin to diminish. I separate from the sunlight and the meadow, and I contract again back into my bodyself. And the rest is over.' Nicholai smiled uncertainly. 'I suppose I am not describing it very well, Teacher. It's not... the kind of thing one describes.'

'No, you describe it very well, Nikko. You have evoked a memory in me that I had almost lost. Once or twice when I was a child... in summer, I think... I experienced brief transports such as you describe. I read once that most people have occasional mystic experiences when they are children, but soon outgrow them. And forget them. Will you tell me something else? How is it you are able to play Go while you are transported... while you are in your meadow?'

'Well, I am here as well as there. I depart, but I don't leave. I am part of this room and that garden.'

'And me, Nikko? Are you part of me too?'

Nicholai shook his head. 'There are no animals in my rest place. I am the only thing that sees. I see for us all, for the sunlight, for the grass.'

'I see. And how can you play your stones without looking at the board? How do you know where the lines cross? How do you know where I placed my last stone?'

Nicholai shrugged. It was too obvious to explain. 'I am part of everything, Teacher. I share... no... I flow with everything. The Go ban, the stones. The board and I are amongst one another. How could I not know the patterns of play?'

'You see from within the board then?'

'Within and without are the same thing. But 'see' isn't exactly right either. If one is everyplace, he doesn't have to 'see.'' Nicholai shook his head. 'I can't explain.'

Otake-san pressed Nikko's arm lightly, then withdrew his hand. 'I won't question you further. I confess that I envy the mystic peace you find. I envy most of all your gift for finding it so naturally—without the concentration and exercise that even holy men must apply in search of it. But while I envy it, I also feel some fear on your behalf. If the mystic ecstasy has become—as I suspect it has—a natural and necessary part of your inner life, then what will become of you, should this gift fade, should these experiences be denied you?'

'I cannot imagine that happening, Teacher.'

'I know. But my reading has revealed to me that these gifts can fade; the paths to inner peace can be lost. Something can happen that fills you with constant and unrelenting hate or fear, and then it would be gone.'

The thought of losing the most natural and most important psychic activity of his life disturbed Nicholai. With a brief rush of panic, he realized that fear of losing it might be fear enough to cause him to lose it. He wanted to be away from this conversation, from these new and incredible doubts. His eyes lowered to the Go ban, he considered his reaction to such a loss.

'What would you do, Nikko?' Otake-san repeated after a moment of silence.

Nicholai looked up from the board, his green eyes calm and expressionless. 'If someone took my rest times from me, I would kill him.'

This was said with a fatalistic calm that made Otake-san know it was not anger, only a simple truth. It was the quiet assurance of the statement that disturbed Otake-san most.

'But, Nikko. Let us say it was not a man who took this gift from you. Let us say it was a situation, an event, a condition of life. What would you do then?'

'I would seek to destroy it, whatever it was. I would punish it.'

'Would that bring the path to rest back?'

'I don't know, Teacher. But it would be the least vengeance I could exact for so great a loss.'

Otake-san sighed, part in regret for Nikko's particular vulnerability, part in sympathy for whoever might happen to be the agent of the loss of his gift. He had no doubt at all that the young man would do what he said. Nowhere is a man's personality so clearly revealed as in his Go game, if his play be read by one with the experience and intelligence to interpret it. And Nicholai's play, brilliant and audacious as it was, bore the aesthetic blemishes of frigidity and almost inhuman concentration of purpose. From his reading of Nicholai's game, Otake-san knew that his star pupil might achieve greatness, might become the first non-Japanese to rise to the higher dans; but he knew also that the boy would never know peace or happiness in the smaller game of life. It was a blessed compensation that Nikko possessed the gift of retirement into mystic transport. But a gift with a poisoned core.

Otake-san sighed again and considered the pattern of stones. The game was about a third played out. 'Do you mind, Nikko, if we do not finish? My nagging old stomach is bothering me. And the development is sufficiently classic that the seeds of the outcome have already taken root. I don't anticipate either of us making a serious error, do you?'

'No, sir.' Nicholai was glad to leave the board, and to leave this small room where he had learned for the first time that his mystic retreats were vulnerable... that something could happen to deny him an essential part of his life. 'At all events, Teacher, I think you would have won by seven or eight stones.'

Otake-san glanced at the board again. 'So many? I would have thought only five or six.' He smiled at Nikko.