Sink Into Sleep
by Eri Snow
Kenji Sagawa opened his eyes. The young businessman was aware again of breath coursing through his body. He felt a spider-like tingling in his legs as they woke from the lotus position. He remembered where he was and what he was doing.
He rose to his feet. The interior of the Tenryūji temple in Kyoto grew clear. Columns, banners covered in fluttering Japanese kanji and Siddham calligraphy rose around him, framing a frozen smile on the statue of the Buddha. A book of Zen koans, the Rinzai Roku, lay at his feet.
Kenji had been unable to stay focused on his meditation. He seemed no longer able to hold a meditation for very long at all. Visions diverted his concentration. Visions of dragons rising out of rivers.
"Another day of the same?" asked Sōseki.
Kenji nodded. "It feels like insomnia," Kenji said. "Except it's a spiritual insomnia. I try to meditate. But I can't keep my focus. It's been like that for a while."
Sōseki nodded. He was an aging optometrist with a cancerous growth like a veined pale turnip bulb on his neck. Kenji had seen him meditating in the temple during his very first visit.
"I spent most of my life facing that statue, trying to achieve the same goal. Even now, I'm far away. Enlightenment doesn't come to those who spend the most time in Buddha's shadow."
The old man's eyes glanced at Kenji's book of koans.
"It doesn't come to those that read the most koans either. "
"No," said Kenji. He tucked the text under his arm.
"Enlightenment comes when you don't expect it. In the flash of an instant."
"Tomoe's waiting for me," said Kenji. "It's past dinnertime."
"Tomorrow, then."
Kenji bowed.
Kenji took the short walk to his home in Arashiyama, an exclusive suburb of Kyoto. He was in the funeral business, supplying formaldehyde and other preservative solutions to the western Kyoto trade. It was profitable. And dull. He preferred admiring the Kameyama mountain range framing the landscape. The dying evening light broke against the far white peaks in wintry sparkles.
"Beautiful," he thought.
The day had been like every other. Work. A brief session of meditation. Tomoe. The cycle of the three was the waltz of his days, turning over and over. The unchanging days. There were entertainments: last weekend he went to Hiro's bachelor party. Next week he would go to the premiere of Yuki's newest film. The week after that there would be something else. Something that changed nothing. Nothing ever really changed.
He reached his house, entered, and took off his sandals.
"I'm home."
Tomoe rose from her chair to greet him. She had long black hair and deep brown eyes and was beautiful. She wore her favorite deep blue kimono. Kenji had given it to her as an engagement gift. They had been married for five months now. But every day she still greeted him in the same, traditional, way.
"I thought you would be back later," she said. "I've barely started preparing the meal."
Kenji nodded. It was always like this.
"Let me know when it's ready," he said.
Kenji went to the bedroom to lie down on the bed until dinner was ready. He felt his back sink into the soft comfortable mattress, saw the pale walls, heard the murmur of Tomoe's cooking. Their lives were like a videotape, rewound again at the end of every day, and then replayed the next. They were good days, pleasant days, but it was getting harder and harder for him to tell one day from the next. He thought of the burial he had attended the other day. The grey face of the man lowered into the ground.
Was Sōseki right? About enlightenment coming in a moment? Complete understanding, complete liberation? Could it really happen to him one day? T hen, on that day, would the videotape snap?
Tomoe came into the room.
"Dear? Did you pick up my medicine on your way to the temple?"
"Yes."
He reached into his pocket and took out a slim plastic container. Tomoe once had a period of insomnia. She now took sleeping pills every night to make herself sleep. Translucent blue pills. Did she really need them anymore, thought Kenji?
He looked at the slim pale case for a moment, and handed it to his wife.
Kenji opened his eyes. There was Buddha again, still smiling, still stone. Kenji turned his head. There was Sōseki as well, still in meditation on the other side of the temple.
Kenji rose to go home.
A few meters behind him, kneeling in seiza position, was a woman. Her name was Hana. Her black hair fell long and straight, like Tomoe's. Her eyes were brown. She was dressed in a burgundy-colored Western dress. A kanji symbol was tattooed on her left hand: rakuen. Paradise.
He first noticed her last April at the temple. The cherry blossoms were about to bloom. She was wearing a Western dress then too. She looks like Tomoe, he thought. He was attracted to her.
One day they entered together and he smiled and spoke to her. Her hands rose and traced symbols in the air. She was mute.
He convinced her to join him at a café regardless, somehow. Kenji knew nothing of sign language. He faced her and spoke slowly, so she could see his lips forming the words. She answered by writing on napkins. He learned she had a medical condition. She tired quickly. She took medication for it, and came to the temple to develop clarity and alertness. She worked at a place called Iidin. She was single. She didn't care for men in the funeral business.
Kenji looked down at her now, as she knelt in meditation. She was completely locked in her meditation. Her medicine case was on the floor beside and a little behind her. He looked at her again. He bent down, picked up the case, and rose and opened it. He made no sound. Hana's pills were translucent, like Tomoe's, but red in color. He took out one, than another, and closed the medical case and placed it back down again beside Hana, deep in meditation.
He looked at the two pills in his hand. Both were marked with the same kanji. Kurenai. Crimson.
"Kenji. I didn't hear you come in," said Sōseki, behind him.
Kenji's hand shut over the pills.
"You were meditating when I arrived," said Kenji, without turning. "I didn't want to disturb you."
"Are you alright? You seem distracted. Have you meditated yet?"
"Yes. I have to go. Tomoe's waiting for me," Kenji said.
The old man looked at him for a moment. Sōseki nodded, and gestured at the corridor that led from the Temple. They walked together.
"Let me tell you a story,” he said. “The Buddha -- the Awakened One -- became enlightened one day while sitting under a tree in meditation. He entered into wakefulness, in every sense of the word. Spiritual, emotional, metaphysical. But having become awakened, he also became different. He was different from people who spent their entire waking life asleep. This is why we look up to him. Why he is on a totally different plane from us."
"I don't understand," said Kenji.
"To get enlightenment we have to give up everything that is not enlightenment. We have to give up everything else. Everything in this world. Look at me. A dying old man. I will soon have nothing left in this world. You can't achieve enlightenment if you can't picture this. If you can't imagine yourself without attachments. To achieve enlightenment, you must give up your attachment to everything in your life. Everything. Even going home to Tomoe."
Kenji eyed the growth on the old man's neck. He looked briefly again at Hana, still kneeling, still meditating. He turned to go.
Kenji entered his home again and took off his sandals.
"I'm back," he said.
Tomoe rose from her chair to greet him.
"I thought you would be back later," she said. "I've barely started preparing the meal."
"I'll be in the bedroom," he said.
Kenji lay down on the bed.
Tomoe came into the room.
"Dear? Did you pick up my medicine on your way to the temple?"
He reached into his pocket. His fingers brushed Hana's pills.
"I'll give you your pills later," he said.
"Thank you."
She bowed and left.
Tomoe woke him.
She was dressed in her evening kimono, getting ready for sleep.
Kenji mumbled. "What?"
"You fell asleep after dinner. We had dinner. Don't you remember? Dear, it's late. I need to go to sleep, but I need the pills. Could you get them for me?"
He rose, half asleep, and went into the kitchen. He filled a glass with water and brought it back into the dark bedroom. Tomoe sat on the bed. Her hands were folded in her lap. She lifted her head and closed her eyes. Kenji put a pill into her mouth and gave her the glass and kissed her after she had taken her sip.
An hour passed. Tomoe reached over and put her hand on Kenji's shoulder.
"What's wrong?"
"Dear, I can't sleep. I'm not tired at all."
Tomoe got up. "I'm need another pill." She left to go to the kitchen.
Kenji stared at the ceiling. He thought of his dream. Of dragons, and rivers.
Tomoe came back into the bedroom with the red pill.
"Kenji. What is this?"
It was then he remembered he had left the other pill on the counter.
"Your pill, dear, " he said.
"This is not my pill," she said. "Where did you get it?"
"The pharmacist said the company that makes the pills is putting out an improved version now. Something better."
"I want the old ones."
Tomoe looked around the room.
"There have to be some left. I need them."
She began going through drawers.
"I need them."
Tomoe slept. She had found one of her usual blue pills. Kenji was awake.
He walked out to the kitchen and filled a glass of water and took out two of Tomoe's usual blue pills from the container he had picked up earlier that day. He looked at them. He thought of Sōseki.
Kenji returned to the bedroom and climbed back into bed and lay next to Tomoe. He looked at her. She was, indeed, very beautiful. His fingers drifted down her long hair.
Rakuen, he thought. Paradise. Wasn’t it?
The pills began to take effect. He began to sleep. He felt like the cadavers his supplies helped to embalm. His body sank into the bed. A dream began. A dragon sinking slowly into an azure river. The water closing. Darkness.
"I'm sorry, old man," he whispered.
