Christianity was put down in Japan

Christianity was put down in Japan, for political reasons, in the 17th century. The Philippines had been invaded. There was a fifth column of Christians, and the Philippines were invaded by Spain. The Japanese thought it would happen to them. They put down Christianity ruthlessly, but in certain of the remoter areas there were what were called ‘hidden Christians’, and they had tremendous heroism and courage.

The missionaries had all been killed or expelled, but the hidden Christians kept up certain formulae they could recite, and they had certain secret signs. For instance, the bottom of a teacup, if you turned it over, there would be a cross. Normally, nobody would turn a teacup over, but they could recognise each other in various ways – they were tremendously brave, for 200 years.

Then Japan was opened up, and the missionaries gradually came to hear. The new missionaries heard of the hidden Christians, so they went to them and said, “Now we can tell you all the things that you have forgotten, or lost, or never knew in the first place.” But the hidden Christians hadn’t got the faintest interest in it. They didn’t want to hear about Christ and Mary. They just wanted to keep up their old customs, and keep the cross at the bottom of the plates, and have these little hidden signs over the place. It had become a sort of secret society, without any purpose at all. Just by keeping the forms, although with great heroism and great courage, the thing had gone out of it.

We can learn the forms by heart. Sometimes you can go along and you can see two men putting up pieces for chess. You think, “Oh,” and ask them, “Can I just have a watch?” “Oh,” and you see them play. Then they make the opening moves. I haven’t played serious chess for quite a time, but I recognise one of the standard openings. Then one of them makes a remarkable improvement I’ve never seen, a brilliant improvement, so I look at it; but the other man is equally good and comes back as black, with a sharp counter-attack. The position is absolutely critical. White has built up a massive position, but perhaps black can puncture that, if the attack is very strong. You think, “I’m going to enjoy this. These are county champions or something.”

Then, suddenly, white begins to dismantle his strong position, and black, instead of pursuing his counterattack, begins doing nothing on the other side of the board. You think, “Have they gone mad?” But what happens is they’ve learnt by heart the opening moves of some recent championship games. So, up to about the 10th move, they’re playing like world champions, by memory. Then they have to use their own heads and it all falls to pieces.

In the same way, we can learn, even in Zen, some of the things, “He says this, you say that,” and so on, and it’s like learning those chess things. “The Rōshi explained that, didn’t he? The Buddha held up a golden flower.” “Oh,” you think, “Now, what was that? Oh, yes, I know that one.” You smile, but somehow, it doesn’t work.

The form is the crystallised experience of centuries, but, unless we understand it to some extent and make some of the living spirit in ourselves out of that form, then it’s just deadening. A form can become obsessive. There’s a central element in it where there can be life, and then you can go, you can elaborate, and there the life can give up. The form corresponds to the means by which you mean to express something living. In music, technique is the form of expression. Music is the content, but in the last century, especially, they became obsessed with technique.

There was a man called Dreyschock, who used to play the 10^th study of Chopin, the ‘Revolutionary Study’, in octaves. It’s widespread arpeggios in the left hand. He played them in octaves. Nobody today could dream of doing that. It took him years to master it, but what was the point? He could do it. It was an acrobatic performance, a remarkable one. Some people don’t believe that it could ever have been done, but there are records by competent critics that they heard him and saw him do it. What was the musical value? They took the poet Heine, who was a very good critic of music, to hear him, and he simply said, “Well, he certainly makes a hell of a racket.”

There, the form is simply swallowed up. The content has become nothing. It’s just the correct form. If we just imitate, like we can imitate the smile or the flower, there’s no life. We don’t understand what we’re doing, and yet the form is an expression of the life. The life must find a satisfactory expression, and the form is the expression which centuries have crystallised, but it must be a living form. If we just imitate, it’s a blind imitation, and the imitation can be negative.

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Collected Stories

Part 2: Egoism or Pride

Part 3: Christianity was put down in Japan

Part 4: Fifty-two stages of Buddhism

Part 5: You are caught in technique

Part 6: I have nothing

Part 7: Advance in emptiness