I met Klebe Sato years ago, before TheWars. He was running a whore house in Subic Bay and I was in black market military... surplus, let's say. Those were heady days, my friend. None of us could keep track of the money, and besides the nominal street tax, it was all free. But then they shut down Subic Bay and the salad days were over.

I drifted into derivatives and I heard from a mutual friend that Klebe had gotten some sort of medical certificate from a diploma mill in Tango, and that he was working as a surgeon in various third world conflicts and uprisings, often for both sides.

I hadn't heard anything about Klebe for some years, but then heard from the same mutual friend that Klebe had fallen on hard times as the the pre-9/11 wars had died down. In the late 90's I was attending a convention for international fugitives in Rio and ran into Klebe briefly. He told me that when the wars dried up he was left with no alternative but to get a job as an ambulance driver in Glasgow, Scotland. I remember him leaning in close to me then, his breathe reeking of cheap bourbon, and him whispering: "Of all the horrors and carnage I've seen, none of it, none of it compares to what I've seen on a Saturday night in Glasgow." Just then, as a joke, it turned out, someone burst in and screamed: "Interpol!" and the party broke up. I last saw Klebe diving through a plate glass window, running down the street bloody, waving a hand full of yen at a line of taxis.

Just recently I was having lunch with my esteemed council, General Zoar, the same mutual friend, who gave me an interesting installment on Klebe.Understand that Zoar is insane as the day is long, but smart as a box of foxes. He was discharged under a cloud as a captain back in the Somalia days for allegedly getting involved in the ivory trade, but during the court martial the Marine Corps decided to bounce him as a nutcase. Brady Billed and all, although he subsequently got his law license and has been a thorn in the side of blind justice ever since.

He put his big, old-school-spit-shined boots on his desk, knocking over a half dozen psychotropic pill bottles and a liter of Stolichnaya in the process, while taking a big drag on a chronic blunt, "I don't know if I told you this but a few years ago Klebe contacted me about some war crime vulnerabilities he had..." He exhaled and handed it to me, "Anyway, I advised him to make for a Zen Buddhist monastery in Southeast Asia at once. I warned him that it would be difficult and that he could forget about women, which we'll read as: 'little boys', knowing Klebe as we do, but he managed, and more than that, I heard that he worked some extortion racket on his master and was promoted to 'enlightened' years ahead of his peers. Well, the long and short of it is Klebe is now Zen Master Klebe Sato and has his own monastery right here in the islands." Zoar then took a big handful of gabapentin and said that he had a two o'clock tee time. He gave me Klebe's digits and crawled towards the door.

A few days later I looked up the address that Zoar had given me. It turned out to be a section 8 flop house in Waianae. I called the number. A cracking voiced teenager answered the phone: "Zen Master Klebe Sato's Temple Incorporated, how may I direct your call?" I told him that I was an old friend of the master's and gave him my name. "Ehms? Ehms? Let's see, how do you spell that?" Then there was an uproar. I heard bottles hitting the floor and Zen Master Klebe Sato yelling, "You fool! You call yourself a student of the way!?" Then I heard a sound that once you hear you never forget. I hadn't heard it in a long time, not since my time in the East. It was the 'Whish' of a bamboo cane swinging; and then the thud; and then the cracking teenage voice whimpering. The phone hit the floor. More yelling and 'Whishing' and whimpering and then, finally, an out of breathe Zen Master Klebe Sato: "Ehms? Ehms, is it really you?" I assured him that it was and told him that I'd like to see him, professionally, in his new vocation. His voice turned professional, "I see, is it serious Ehms?"

"I'd like to talk to you in person, Master Sato."

"Oh, please, call me 'Zen Master Klebe Sato'".

"Alright, Zen Master Klebe Sato, when can we meet?"

"Ehms, even the grass and trees will be enlightened." Then told me to meet him at nine the next evening at a stripe club in Pearl City, called The Pink Gate.

Zen Master Klebe Sato was easy to spot at the bar, his light colored robe was glowing eerily in the club's black lights. I pulled up into the stool next to him. It was obvious that he had been there a while. A long while. His, I presumed, student, the cracking voiced teenager, was sitting at the stool on the other side of his master. He was facing away from the bar and the dancers. The Master and I hugged and then I pointed my thumb at the kid with a question mark. "Oh, he's underage. Don't want to contributed to his delinquency."

"Might be too late for all that."

The Master ignored me. "So, Ehms, what is it that I can do for you?" But before I could answer  a young Thai girl got up on stage and The Master began waving a handful of singles at her. She slunk over to him and he started shoving the singles deep into her thong and whispering Zen Koans (riddle poems used for meditation) at her.

"I have to say, Klebe, er, Zen Master Klebe Sato, I didn't think you went in for that sort of thing."

He threw back half a tumbler of cheap whiskey and fixed his red pig eyes on me. "I don't Ehms, I do it as a sacrifice. In the first place I have to keep up appearances, and, secondly, most importantly, we are all divine beings, Ehms, most of just don't know it and are horribly maimed due to our ignorance. I simply minister to this poor, injured, young girl. She will be enlightened some day and her injuries healed." Then he threw back the rest of his whiskey and turned to his student, who had nodded off on his stool. The bamboo cane came out with lightening speed, Whish, across the student's back. I winced. "You lazy servant, I asked for you to watch with me for an hour and you can't even do that. Get me another drink at once." Then he turned back to me, "So, Ehms, once again, what is it that I can do for you?"

I decided to cut right to the chase, "Zen Master Klebe Sato, I have been wrestling Mara most of my life, but recently the battle has intensified. Days and nights straight, I've spent locked in a battle with him."

The Master became very interested, in an uncomfortable, prurient kind of way. The girls were pole dancing to War's "Cisco Kid". There was a black strobe light going. The Master put his face very close to mine. His eyes narrowed. I could see oil from the cheap whiskey across his nose and the big pores of his sagging cheeks. "Really? For a long time, but intensifying? But how do you know you're wrestling with The Destroyer and not The Creator?"

I thought about it a moment. I was mesmerized by The Master's glowing robes and red eyes. "I don't know." was all I could say.


"Well, it's purely academic I suppose. All are in one. But, Ehms, I have to tell you, wrestling matches with the divine are extremely dangerous. You remember that Jacob walked with a limp for the rest of his life after his match with God?"


"Yes, I remember." I said, zombie. I was zoning. It was the strobe lights and music.


The Master got closer still. "Ehms, the in-material  obviously has some interest in you. Either it's the Destroyer who seeks to destroy you before you can be enlightened, or it is God, to your Western mind, who is slapping you around just so that you will wake and be enlightened. Does this make any sense to you?"

"Yes Zen Master Klebe Sato." Only robot was coming out of my mouth.

"You're fight is ultimately about your own redemption, Ehms, to again, use terms that your Western mind can understand."

"Yes, I see."

"Not at all, I'm afraid, but let me put this to you simply, Ehms, we are all divine, temporarily wrapped in flesh. We are ignorant of our divinity and horribly injured. Once we understand this then it is our duty to bind the wounds of those around us and to lovingly seek for their enlightenment so that they may be completely healed, redeemed, if you will. do you understand this."

"Yes Zen Master Klebe Sato."

"Probably not, but I will give you some practical advice..." The Staple Singers' "I'll Take There" started up. "Make yourself strong, Ehms. Just surviving a wrestle match with the Divine is something, but you should make yourself strong, bind your own wounds, treat yourself as you would any other injured beast you ran across, then you can aid the other injured beast and so be twice redeemed. Be strong and of good courage, Ehms."

Indeed. I slid a fat envelope across the bar to The Master. It was a hundred dollars in singles."Something for the temple Zen Master Klebe Sato."




_______________________________________

--Zenkai, the son of a samurai, journeyed to Edo and there became the retainer of a high official. He fell in love with the official's wife and was discovered. In self-defense, he slew the official. Then he ran away with the wife.

Both of them later became thieves. But the woman was so greedy that Zenkai grew disgusted. Finally, leaving her, he journeyed far away to the province of Buzen, where he became a wandering mendicant.

To atone for his past, Zenkai resolved to accomplish some good deed in his lifetime. Knowing of a dangerous road over a cliff that had caused the death and injury of many persons, he resolved to cut a tunnel through the mountain there.

Begging food in the daytime, Zenkai worked at night digging his tunnel. When thirty years had gone by, the tunnel was 2,280 feet long, 20 feet high, and 30 feet wide.

Two years before the work was completed, the son of the official he had slain, who was a skillful swordsman, found Zenkai out and came to kill him in revenge.

"I will give you my life willingly," said Zenkai. "Only let me finish this work. On the day it is completed, then you may kill me."

So the son awaited the day. Several months passed and Zendai kept on digging. The son grew tired of doing nothing and began to help with the digging. After he had helped for more than a year, he came to admire Zenkai's strong will and character.

At last the tunnel was completed and the people could use it and travel in safety.

"Now cut off my head," said Zenkai. "My work is done."

"How can I cut off my own teacher's head?" asked the younger man with tears in his eyes--

Koan 60

_____________________________


mike edwards