A Security Blanket Made of Stone

I keep thinking about Odawara Castle as a security blanket made of stone.

By 1590, the Hōjō had spent generations expanding their stronghold. Its outer defenses enclosed the castle and town in roughly nine kilometers of earthworks and moats. An extraordinary amount of labor had gone into making that place difficult to take. Then Hideyoshi surrounded it, and after about three months the Hōjō surrendered. The preparation had not secured the future it was built to secure. (Castle history; Odawara City’s account of the siege)

What holds my attention is the construction. All the intelligence, skill, and effort gathered around the hope that enough preparation could finally put fear to rest. I look at that enormous enclosure and see something painfully familiar: the wish to build a place where life can no longer get at us.

Fear can commission beautiful work.

We build our own versions without lifting a stone. We prepare answers to accusations nobody has made. We rehearse the conversation until every possible injury has a reply. We assemble a history of who wronged us, what it means about people, and why we must never be caught unprepared again. Each conclusion makes the next one easier to justify. Eventually the whole arrangement feels like common sense.

From inside it, the labor looks necessary. We remember what each wall cost. We can explain why it went up. There is a story behind every defense, and we have told those stories often enough to mistake them for the ground beneath our feet.

Meanwhile, we are still afraid.

That is the part the building never seems to settle. A little more certainty, a better explanation, one final rehearsal: the promise keeps moving just beyond whatever we have finished. The castle gives fear somewhere to live and an endless list of repairs. We can become so occupied with maintaining it that we hardly notice how much of our life is being spent indoors.

There is another castle in the Odawara story. Hideyoshi built Ishigakiyama on a nearby height. According to the famous tradition, surrounding trees were cleared to make the completed fortress appear to have risen in a single night. The spectacle was meant to break the defenders’ confidence. I keep returning to that image too: one immense construction confronted by another, with the appearance of impossible power doing work of its own. (Odawara Tourism Association’s historical guide)

We are vulnerable to that kind of spectacle whenever our peace depends on a story about being secure. Someone needs only to introduce a more frightening story. A look, a rumor, an unanswered message, a possibility we had not prepared for, and the council starts again. We may spend the whole night inside it.

This is where Odawara meets Bankei for me.

When I read him, I hear a challenge to the need for the whole inner fortress. How much of what I call myself has been built to secure something that did not need securing? How much thought have I spent preparing to be present, preparing to be whole, preparing to live, while life was already here?

Bankei says, “What you all have from your parents innately is the Unborn Buddha Mind alone.” — Bankei Zen, translated by Peter Haskel, “Listen carefully”

He points to the ordinary fact of hearing: a sound is recognized before we organize an effort to recognize it. Reading that, I find myself looking again at everything I have constructed around the simple fact of being here. The explanations arrive afterward. So does the person who wants credit for holding everything together.

The castle in my mind makes a claim on that life. It tells me that without its precautions I would have nothing to stand on. It asks me to keep building, because stopping would expose how unnecessary the project was. I can understand why I began it and still see that it has consumed years without delivering what it promised.

Even the wish to be a better practitioner can supply more material. A schedule, a vocabulary, a picture of the calm person I expect to become: soon I am measuring the walls again. I have given the same fear a respectable occupation.

What interests me about the Unborn is the possibility of leaving that construction alone. A sound can be heard. A person can be answered. Something in front of me can be done. None of it needs the council to settle who I am before the morning begins.

I do not want to spend the rest of my life making a more convincing security blanket. I want to notice when I am reaching for it, especially when I am calling it wisdom.

Odawara stays with me because the scale makes the promise visible. So much work went into being ready. I recognize the temptation to admire the work and stop asking what it was for.

I have spent enough time building a place from which I could finally live.

The day is already happening outside.