Regarding Stories presents A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki this week. One of the most prominent characters has to be the greatgrandma, a 104-year-old Japanese Zen Buddhist nun named Jiko Yasutani. The title of this post honours greatgrandma Jiko’s lessons to her teenage greatgranddaughter, Naoko, affectionately known as Nao or Nattchan. Here is Nao recalling the moment:
“Nattchan, I think it would be best for you to have some true power. I think it would be best for you to have a superpower.” She was talking in Japanese, but she used the English word, superpower, only when she said it, it sounded like supah-pawah. Really fast. Supapawa. Or more like SUPAPAWA–! “Like a superhero?” I asked, using the English word, too. “Yes,” she said. “Like a SUPAHIRO–! With a SUPAPAWA–!” She squinted at me from behind her thick glasses. “Would you like that?” It’s weird to hear a really, really old person talk about superheroes and superpowers. Superheroes and superpowers are for young people. Did they even have them back when Jiko was a kid? I was under the impression that in the olden days, they only had ghosts and samurai and demons and oni. Not SUPAHIRO—! With SUPAPAWA–! But I just nodded. (Ozeki 176)
Through the voice of Nao, A Tale for the Time Being attempts to unsettle many expectations. A troubled teenager who spent her formative years in Sunnyvale, California, and identifies as American, Nao finds herself thrown to Japan as a returnee to become a bully victim, an outcast. In a way, the book can be categorized as a coming-of-age novel, except that the complexity of its structure and themes resist easy pigeon-holes. A majority of the book is presented as Nao’s diary intentionally addressing a reader unknown to her. The outset of the diary is to document the last days before her suicide; what sustains her from that day, is the goal of writing the story of her dear Jiko.
Jiko is an unconventional female figure. Before she renounced her worldly attachments to be ordained a Zen Buddhist nun, she had led an avant-garde life as a novelist, feminist, anarchist. The turning point was the death of her son, Haruki #1, a student soldier and conscripted pilot in the tokkotai (The Japanese Special Forces, also known as the kamikaze) (150). Nao bonded with her greatgrandmother during a summer’s stay at the temple. Jiko embodies the word supapawa in its wonder and contradiction.
This brings the literary trope of grandmas in diasporic novels to centre stage. It strikes me how the grandma persona embodies wisdom that is the conduit to cultural knowledge and traditions. A conversation with a friend reminded me to be careful of oversimplification. My friend cautioned against viewing the grandma figure as the keeper of tradition, and the granddaughter as the stock character constantly negotiating between the host and root cultures (also contesting the idea of home). The conversation suggests that the risk of doing so is almost like reverse Orientalism, which I have to agree and to be mindful.
The contemporary discourse in Canada – where Regarding Stories is situated – seems to make a cautious, reactionary, almost defensive effort to uphold a multicultural environment, and to be ever fearful of appropriation and political incorrectness. It is a big relief for me, a person of East Asian descent, to read Ozeki poking fun at stereotypes through the dyad. If anyone, Ozeki’s training as a Zen Buddhist priest gives her authenticity to shed light on and to poke fun at Jiko. Based on my rudimentary understanding of Zen Buddhism, Jiko is an embodiment of what she practices, but I fail to go further in providing a legitimate elaboration, other than to make space for the respective lessons written in the story.
Jiko’s Introduction
At their first encounter, Nao received Jiko and her assistant Muji who appeared unannounced at their doorstep. She was unimpressed by their stature and appearance. As what could be expected of a teenager, she mostly avoided contact with her guests, while her parents lavished care in being as good a host as they could be, under their circumstance. It should be added that Nao’s father, Haruki #2, had an affectionate relationship with his grandmother, and they only became estranged after he was dispatched to the Silicon Valley for work. On Nao’s behalf, the parents agreed to take up Jiko’s invitation to spend summer vacation at the temple. Nao protested to no avail, and she made every possible gesture to show her reluctance.
“Jiko opened her eyes then. I don’t know how I knew this, because I wasn't even looking at her, but I could feel a kind of energy coming from her side of the table, and so when she leaned forward and placed her old hand on top of mine, I wasn’t surprised. Her hand was so light, like a trickle of warm breath, and my skin began to tingle. She kept watching me, and even though I couldn’t see her, I could feel her melting the ice, pulling my mind toward hers through the coldness. I could feel my pulse returning and my blood beginning to flow again. I blinked. Dad was still talking.” (Ozeki 140)
Throughout her diary, Nao would remark time and again that greatgrandma Jiko has this superpower of making people feeling okay in her sheer presence. This marks a promising beginning for the two.
Jiko’s Lesson 1: Gratitude
In Jiko’s Buddhist practice, she makes a ritual of saying prayers before most actions – to express gratitude, to manifest her love and compassion, and by doing so, to alleviate sufferings of all beings. Nao was amused by the extent of how ritualistic Jiko said prayers before taking a bath, before brushing her teeth, before spitting out toothpaste, and even before going to the toilet. Here is Nao’s observation:
“They bowed and thanked the toilet and offered a prayer to save all beings. That one is kind of hilarious and goes like this:
As I go for a dump,
I pray with all beings
that we can remove all filth and destroy
the poisons of greed, anger, and foolishness.
At first I was like, No way am I saying that, but when you hang out with people who are always being supergrateful and appreciating things and saying thank you, in the end it kind of rubs off, and one day after I’d flushed, I turned to the toilet and said, “Thanks, toilet,” and it felt pretty natural. I mean, it’s the kind of thing that’s okay to do if you’re in a temple on the side of a mountain, but you’d better not try it in your junior high school washroom, because if your classmates catch you bowing and thanking the toilet they’ll try to drown you in it. I explained this to Jiko, and she agreed it wasn’t such a good idea, but that it was okay just to feel grateful sometimes, even if you don’t say anything. Feeling is the important part. You don’t have to make a big deal about it.” (Ozeki 167)
Reading Ozeki’s words gives me the assurance that even if this sounds ridiculous, it is written by an insider well-versed in the teachings and practice of Zen Buddhism, which makes the farce acceptable. It is refreshing to break the habit of self-censorship, to confront oneself beyond duality, and to prioritize intention over appearance.
The cross-generational exchange is valuable, in a sense that neither Jiko nor Nao is imposing their way as the only right way. There is a growing understanding on both parts that they are creating a non-judgemental space for each other. It is not hierarchical in a sense that Jiko imparts while Naoko receives; there is mutual learning. Jiko readily adjusts to different contexts and emphasizes on setting intentions, whereas Nao readily questions to challenge and makes reality checks so that she would not make a fool of herself.
Jiko’s Lesson 2: Zazen
During Nao’s stay at the temple, she followed greatgrandma’s instructions on doing chores, performing rituals, and occasionally helping out at services. The scene earlier quoted in this post, when Jiko offered to teach Nao supahiro– supapawa–! led to a lesson on zazen, one of the daily practices that takes places at the temple. In the fashion of Nao writing to her diary-reader an instruction on zazen (which she had requested and received permission from Jiko prior to doing so), readers can go into details of the what’s and how’s. But here is Nao’s reflection of what a surprisingly challenging – and rewarding – practice of sitting still while mindfully breathing and letting go of idle thoughts looks like:
One, two, three, etc. That’s all you have to do. It doesn’t seem like such a great thing, but Jiko is sure that if you do it every day, your mind will wake up and you will develop your SUPAPAWA–! I’ve been pretty diligent so far, and once you get the hang of it, it’s not so hard. What I like is that when you sit on your zafu (or even if you don’t happen to have a zafu handy, for example, if you’re on the train, or on your knees in the middle of kids who are punching you or getting ready to tear off your clothes … in other words no matter where you are) and you return your mind to zazen, it feels like coming home. Maybe this isn’t a big deal for you, because you’ve always had a home, but for me, who never had a home except for Sunnyvale, which I lost, it’s a very big deal. Zazen is better than home. Zazen is a home that you can’t ever lose, and I keep doing it because I like that feeling, and I trust old Jiko, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to try to see the world a little more optimistically like she does. Jiko also says that to do zazen is to enter time completely. I really like that.” (Ozeki 182-3)
By showing Nao how to zazen, Jiko gives her a space to enter peace and calm amid all that she cannot control.
Jiko’s Lesson 3: Deep Bow
Jiko demonstrates another way of being that has a surprising influence on people, one that would acknowledge each other at one’s best.
“No one said anything. The girls were jutting out their chins and hips and shifting restlessly from side to side. Finally, I guess old Jiko understood what she was looking at. She dropped my hand and I held my breath. And then she bowed. I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t a little bow, either. It was a deep bow. The girls were, like, what the fxxx? One of them, a fat girl squatting in front, kind of nodded back – not quite a bow, not completely respectful, but not a punch in the face either. But then the tall one in the middle, who was clearly the girl boss, reached over and gave the fat one a swift punch in the head. “Nameten no ka!” she snarled. “Chutohampa nan da yo. Chanto ojigi mo dekinei no ka?!” (Translation in footnote: “Are you messing with me? That’s half-assed. Can’t you even bow properly?!) She smacked the fat girl once more, and then she stood up straight, put her palms together, and bowed deeply from the waist. The rest of her crew jumped up and did the same. Jiko bowed to them again, and nudged me, so I bowed, too, but I did it half-assed, so she made me do it again, which made things even because now it was like old Jiko was the girl boss of our gang, and I was the fat screwup who couldn’t bow properly.” (Ozeki 191-2)
This is an example of greatgrandma Jiko being absolutely at ease. From Nao’s perspective, part of it is Jiko’s oblivion as to what is going on; part of it, Nao believes, is the cataract – or, flower of emptiness, as Jiko poetically refers to it – that rounds of the edges of difficult situations. This can also be read as Jiko being present in any situations.
Nao carries with her these three lessons – among others – after a summer’s stay at Jiko’s temple. To say this is life-changing would undermine the journey she was meant to go through. To reveal more would also compromise a reader’s agency in engaging with the story, which is masterfully facilitated in this novel. Back to the premise of this post, I believe these four examples would give a taste on how nuanced greatgrandma Jiko is, through her comfortable co-existence with hilarity, while being no-nonsense, at ease, and in touch with matters concerning her teenage greatgranddaugther. There is no better word to associate Jiko than her supapawa–!, through the eyes of Nao.
P.S. Here is author Ruth Ozeki introducing novelist-turned-Zen-Buddhist-nun Jakucho Setouchi, on whom her character Jiko was based.
I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that Jiko’s lessons – which are core features of Japanese zen buddhism – are packaged by Jiko herself using a foreign word ‘supapawa’ and even dovetailing the current superhero narrative. I’d say the first lesson, gratitude, is actually more shinto than zen (if we see zen in its earliest form, that is, a Chinese Taoist inflection of mahayana buddhism), but of course, Japanese zen and shinto were mutually influential of each other historically, to the point where there’s no real point in differentiating them nowadays. The third lesson too – you don’t see Chinese zen for example emphasising so much on bowing, so again there’s a shinto influence there as well. (Interestingly, in your next post, uji and the existentialist notion of time and self are actually more orthodox ‘zen’ concepts.)
But overall, I kind of feel that these three lessons are just very ‘Japanese’, and I can’t help but feel that this whole returnee story again ends up reifying some ‘uniquely’ Japanese ‘traditional’ values that the ‘West’ can learn from. Of course, the important thing here is the religious element; religion is very often the carrier/transmitter of older, more traditional values and practices to the contemporary/modern age.
Which is why I find the word supapawa interesting. For it’s an English word, which sounds like an effort to package zen teachings in an easy-to-digest way for the English-speaking, bred-in-the-West youngster. But it’s also pronounced in a Japanese way, and the slightly different sound creates a dissonance that ultimately illustrates the point of zen. Whether it’s superpower or supapawa, zen or shinto, Japan or Canada, East or West, it’s the inner knowledge, temperament, attitude, value, and belief, that count. In this light, it’s highly remarkable you (or maybe the book) name the first lesson ‘gratitude’, even though what is described in that section is the behaviour of saying thank you prayers. This behaviour, together with the second and third lessons, zazen and bowing, are all actions. But ‘gratitude’ alone is the intangible belief, and hence the core value of Japanese zen. One can copy all the zen practice, but it means nothing if the value of gratitude doesn’t take root in one’s heart. By the same token, a zen buddhist teacher can couch zen teachings in whichever effective way so as to teach their students, but at the end of the day the most important thing is to make sure the student/follower appreciates the value of gratitude.
It is in this gap between practice and belief that I see a possibility of transcending the current ‘almost reactionary’, obsessed fetish of ‘multiculturalism’. Not to say, of course, that cultural appropriation is acceptable, but in an era where people are so scared of being accused of (accidentally or not) misappropriating other people’s ‘culture’, Jiko would probably say, zen is EVERYBODY’S culture, and would welcome anyone to come ‘appropriate’ it for themselves.
Thank you for offering a critque steeped in cultural nuances, and a counter-argument to what you raised. It seems that discussions on literature of a particular culture (which means all literature) invites a dance between careful, critical examination of the relevant contexts, loosening the grip to give space, and scrutinizing it all over again. The powerful thing about the plausibility of Jiko granting access and ownership of zen to everybody is one thing, but it has to come from a certain insider, right? I gather we would agree to call out the fallacy and danger of colourblindness (or culture-blindness, for the matter). I especially appreciate your sharp observation on what could fall into pandering presumably to a mass, profitable international readership. To this, I want to defend A Tale for the Time Being to be a piece of work nuanced enough to appeal to a broad readership without oversimplifying key concepts. But of course, the book also plays on many accessible stereotypes and do them justice by giving them enough depth – could this be a redeeming factor? As for the decision to place the gratitude next to the practices of bowing and zazen – you made it sound more remarkable than it was. But agreed, the essence is in the attitude.