The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rou Putuan)

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 ma

"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 stubbor

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.

[94] The goddess of mercy.