関 Kan

関 Kan.

Kan is a barrier but also a gate, like a checkpoint. This is a useful zen idea-- something that is a barrier is also a gate, a limen and a connection. There are tons of commentaries on this notion, and "Kan" is a popular zen scroll.  For me, I often think of 関 when I'm up against something that is giving me trouble, usually here at Midorikai that trouble is attitude trouble. This would be because we are in a high pressure situation in which the bulk of the work, the massive underpart of the iceberg of which tea procedure is the proverbial tip, is monastery-like, working on the self. There is so much time for self-reflection. Now, I don't think everyone exactly does this, but it's what I find myself doing more of than ever before.

So 関. It's the first of a new month (always extremely busy anyway with special greetings and classes and scholarship receipt) and not just a new month but a new season for Tea-- the opening of the ro sunken hearth-- what is called "chajin no shougatsu"-- Tea people's New Year-- and all that comes along with it (yesterday was a big cleaning day and today there was a special event where gyotei sensei made tea for all the students). For all that all this stuff was great, it's also hard: lots of new things to deal with--for instance, my continuing curse/blessing of having to do everything first of the four of us came true again (at first it was because I'm oldest and the first alplabetically, but it has become cosmic: just by the random rotation of daily duties I've ended up being the first to try out first the brazier charcoal setting and then today the first again randomly to do first charcoal in the sunken hearth.) So that was hard.

There was the icky moment where after we'd all sat down in the waiting room with the sempai ahead of the kohai the sempai, Mike leaned over and informed us that we should rearrange when we went into the tea seating so that the two boys were first and the girls afterward (just as the Japanese students do). Well, I assented, then as we sat there and I relayed the message, I suddenly realized that that idea was repugnant to me. Not because I wanted to be first personally (and anyway, we wouldn't be-- we were in the room with the third years who would obviously all be first, and our boys went after their girls, etc etc.), but because I think it's wrong to perpetuate something so stupid and right to try in a very tiny way to set an example that it's okay for female people to sit first sometimes, and sometimes not.  Now, we spend a lot of time compromising and doing TONS of things we wouldn't otherwise do, including things in which we (I) acquiesce to gender inequalities that I think are wrong.  Let me be quite clear: I do this all the time. Every day at chorei the boys sit highest and the girls are ranged below them. Even though Damian's the youngest of we four, he sits above me, and then we're in alphabetical order. I acquiesced to that and I acquiesce again every single day by sitting in my assigned spot.
But for some reason this felt different. Part of the reason was that it was a disruption to rearrange ourselves as we all flowed smoothly out of the tea room and into the tea room, and because we kohai had whispered amongst ourselves  and decided it was wrong to do it and we would rather not. Because Paivi also thought it was wrong, I was bolstered in the feeling that we should not do this thing, because it was wrong. And Sarah and Damian seemed to agree, but then in the moment there was rustling and whispering and the whole line was stupidly held up while they tried to get Damian into line in front so it was no time to explain that we had carefully considered the matter and that we would actually prefer to go in the order that we had chosen. It was faster and easier to acquiesce again and then in the end we very last girls weren't able to see much of anything because we were ranged around behind the back of the host while the boys were able to see. Which is also not a big deal-- it happens all the time, but it started to be a thing.
When I brought it up afterward, it turns out that the sempai all thought like we did, but have mellowed over six months. And apologised for the way it got handled, since part of the problem was the high-stress situation of having no say, no plans, and no ability to work out what was right. It also turns out that they'd been told at other events to have the boys go first. Which makes it a little harder to strike a tiny blow for gender equality if you've been told not to. On the other hand, it's only just now writing this that I've suddenly realized that the gakuensei may not have phrased their instructions in the form of a command, like "it's bad if you don't have the boys first" but they might have just been telling us how they do it, because it is of course a courtesy to explain the accepted way of doing things. Maybe if in the moment we'd just said (the we here is Midorikai. I wasn't here yet.) "we don't do it that way, we do it by age or experience." they would have shrugged and gone on.

This is one of those problems. The line for a "foreigner" is always, no matter what, different. What a Japanese person can do is not necessarily what a foreigner can do without censure. And vice versa.  Now, the kneejerk American-esque reaction would be to say that's ridiculous and that there's no special essence of Japaneseness that is impenetrable by foreigners. Of course I agree with this. BUT. Pragmatically speaking, it's never going to be like that. No matter if we act totally interchangeable with our Japanese counterparts, it won't make a difference. We will still be perceived as outsiders in certain ways. So I guess I'm saying, why not embrace that discrimination that will remain, and do what you think is right instead of doing what you think is wrong, just because it's what everyone else is doing? In this crazy gig of ours, the same thing as everyone else is almost always going to be the right thing. But I'm suggesting that it won't always be.

Now, to leave this on a bit of a cliffhanger, this tangent I went off on isn't what ate me up all day. A combination of things did; mostly just exhaustion combined with a series of unfortunate events. Worries about other people and a measure of self-pity for some other things that are going on. But it's quite late now, and I need to go to bed. So we'll call this Kan Part I.

And anyway, there's a late afternoon like this:

Shall we just watch the sky instead?