Reports from the Zen Wars. Steve Antinoff

      Seven years later I was accosted by Dr. Ebuchi, the master’s best friend, in front of Rinko-in Temple. He ordered me to resume training at the monastery. I did not.

      My doctoral thesis ate up the next several months. I did attend one sesshin at another temple. My legs were so deconditioned that by the second day, every cell in my thighs seemed to have burst. In July I was offered a teaching position in Tokyo.

      Before leaving, there was a last sesshin. Run by a group of laymen and -women and held, to my surprise, in the same mountain village as the Thief’s temple. My monk friend Saburi-san had recently achieved notoriety as one of the Gang of Four, a cohort of priests who had organized a multiyear boycott when the mayor of Kyoto had tried to tax admission fees that local temples received from tourists. He initiated the clever idea of having every Zen temple in the city admit visitors gratis and accept only voluntary—which Japanese politeness translated into obligatory—”donations.” Donations, went his argument, were exempt from tax. The city government was furious; Saburi-san was enjoying himself immensely. I asked him to help me get permission to call on the Thief. Within in a few days, he’d received an answer: I could try.

      I skipped the noon meal on the sesshin’s second day, cut through the rice paddies, and ascended the steps to the temple. An attractive woman in a kimono, very kind, accepted the loaf of German bread I had brought the Thief, explaining that he was not available and that I should try two o’clock the following day. The next morning my friend Tanemura-san, one of the lay practitioners from the monastery, amazed me by saying that he was attending the sesshin for the chance to say goodbye before I left Kyoto. Years before he’d given his one-word assessment of the Thief: “Wonderful!”

      I asked Tanemura-san and my friend Mark Thomas, who had never seen the Thief in action, to accompany me to the temple. I called out the customary “Onegai itashimasu” from the foyer while my pals waited outside. The same woman appeared, apologizing that the priest had been summoned away but was expected back soon. I suggested I come another day. She cocked an ear, asked me to excuse her, reappearing to happily inform me that the priest had returned and would see me. For ten minutes I waited alone in the foyer, where in all Japanese temples one leaves one’s shoes before stepping up onto the roka, the wooden corridor that leads into the interior rooms. The door through which the woman had vanished slid open along its rails. The Thief, splendid in a white kimono, dropped his rear onto the roka, completely relaxed, his legs dangling down into the foyer where I stood.

      “Some friends have come to pay their respects,” I said.

      He rejected the request with one windshield-wiper swipe of his forearm — of such explosive force that in the years since I have rehearsed it, always unsuccessfully, in ongoing disbelief that a human arm can move with such speed. The gesture said: “You requested a meeting. This is between you and me.”

      “I wish to do sanzen with you.”

      “Sanzen is no joke. Not something to be done by jumping from master to master.”

      “I know that.”

      “It’s like this. At a certain point I saw that being a monastery master wasn’t for me.” The guy was live ammunition. “Do you know the word rijin?”

      I said no.

      “Ri is hanareru [to separate]. Jin is hito [people].

      “You mean you have renounced the world?”

      He laughed. “That would be an exaggeration. I exist apart from people.” Silence. “Have you looked around the temple grounds?”

      “Not yet.”

      “Take a look around. It’s a pretty place.” His way of telling me what I had witnessed so often: that his Way, conjoined with meditation, was gardening and hard physical work.

      “I’m deadlocked,” I said.

      “To be deadlocked is good. ‘When deadlocked there is a change, with the change you break through.’”

      “Only if it’s the true deadlock. I’m deadlocked from reaching the true deadlock.”

      His eyes widened. “You understand well!” It was the first time I had expressed to him where I stood in life and why I had sought out Zen. He seemed to want to give it some thought. Finally, he added: “There are a lot of young Zen masters coming onto the scene. Study with one of them.”

      “I do not believe any of them can help me.”

      I believe he recognized that what I said was true and that he knew as well as I there was no one among the new generation of masters like him. He waited a good while before adding, with surprising tenderness: “Then I’ll have you pursue the Zen quest alone. It’s sufficient, you’ll find, and it won’t matter whether you are in America or Japan . . . Well, I am a bit tired.” He shot to his feet like a geyser. He bowed and with a huge smile said: “It was great to see you.” And he was gone behind a closing sliding door.

      I was not disappointed. He would never accede to my request as long as his master, nominally my master, was still alive.

      Thousands of miles block me from Japan right now. A few years ago I asked Mrs. Maeda to remind him that it was my lifelong dream to have him as my teacher.

      The Thief replied: “He’s too serious.”