But I have a different theory. I think his interest in Buddha-carving actually came before he had this change of heart. It may have gone more like this: this Koyama is pretty much a creep of a guy…but even he can see that Buddha statues are beautiful…so why not try carving one?…and carving turns out to be fun…so why not take it up full time?…and a full-time Buddha-carver looks pretty much like a respectable guy…so now the creep looks respectable…and then it turns out it’s actually easier to make your living respectably…so why not just be a respectable guy? At some point the question of whether you really are or aren’t loses its meaning. Anyway, that’s my theory about Koyama.
But then I actually went to Eiganji. Which I think was the first time I’d ever been to a temple. And I got to thinking about what it would be like to actually live there—in this really, really simple place where you do Zen, sitting all day every day, scrubbing the floors and reading sutras and all, and it occurred to me you might really turn into a stand-up guy in a place like that, might feel like you had to start carving Buddhas. I mean, human beings can’t live without finding something enjoyable in life.
But for some reason, this Yoshitaka Koyama ended up making the same Asura over and over without ever being satisfied. He was apparently a real pro when it came to carving other Buddhas, popping them out like clockwork, but he could never finish the Asura. The head priest kept seeing his Asuras when they were almost finished, and he thought they were fantastic. He would even show up sometimes with collectors who wanted to buy them and were willing to pay top dollar, but Koyama would always say there was something wrong with the carving and immediately take an axe to it. The priest would be horrified, but he had no choice but to let him be. The rumor at the temple was that Koyama somehow saw some link between his former wicked self and the Asura statue, and since he was forever searching for a version of himself he could totally accept, he was forever remaking the statue. But I think that sort of misses the point. I think they were right that Koyama was identifying with the Asura, that he thought of it as somehow a double of himself, but I don’t think he kept making it over because he was looking for some perfect version. I think Koyama found his own special bliss in the act of destroying the Asura. In other words, since the Asura was him, by chopping it to bits again and again and again, he was actually obliterating himself.
I’d go further than that. I think that deep down most people would be tempted to destroy themselves—as long as it didn’t involve any real, bullet-to-the-brain kind of pain. We’re not all totally in love with ourselves—not by a mile. And for those of us who aren’t, for the ones who don’t really like themselves much at all, destroying the self can look like a pretty decent option, especially if it comes with the chance of a fresh start. Lots of people feel there’s something missing in the self they got dealt, something incomplete, unripe. So what’s the point of struggling on with it? These folks opt for destroying the old, unsatisfactory self in favor of a new one. Basically, they just hit the reset button on life. And what about that wouldn’t be great? Totally awesome. I suppose most of us feel that way, at least a little bit, some of the time. I know I do. For instance, when I was there by the cliff, and Yoji told me he didn’t really feel “that way” about me, what did I do? I let go of Tansetsu’s hand—because I felt for a minute that I wanted to die. Something inside me was tempted by the idea of being reborn as someone else, moving on in the great circle of transmigrating souls. If I could have looked back at myself just then, I would have probably wanted to take an axe to that failed monster called “me.”
On the other hand, how do you know the new you is going to be any better? You don’t, of course. Anyway, to get back to the point: the Asura statue.
Koyama saw himself in the Asura because Asura himself had been something of a bad boy at the beginning. I don’t know the details, but apparently before he became a god he went around making trouble for the Buddha and generally acting out. But clearly something happened; he underwent some sort of conversion under the Buddha’s influence, and he became a good god himself.
Never underestimate the Buddha.
I know I don’t. Though I have to admit I’ve got my own personal image of Him, my own personal-version God—put together just the way I like Him.
My God doesn’t punish people like the Christian god, or scold them or test them. He just waits, with infinite compassion, for people to achieve enlightenment. He’s never impatient. Time doesn’t matter one bit to my God. Those impatient gods tend to make up trials and tribulations and punish you if you don’t get them right, but my God is easygoing and optimistic, so He’s willing to wait, with those narrow, smiley eyes of His, until you have a change of heart. Just wait and wait. He knows that if He waits long enough, any bad boy—or bad god, for that matter—will eventually see the light and stop doing all that bad stuff. Just like you eventually get tired of playing the same character all the time in a computer game, you eventually get tired of being bad; and when you’re really tired of it, when you’re fed up with it completely, you might end up doing something just a little bit good. And doing something even a little bit good
