Lotus & Other Tales of Medieval Japan Page 5

  I enjoyed a good night's gambling, and one night of pure pleasure with the most beautiful woman in the world, didn't I." Haseo gave a laugh, but the laugh sounded close to a cry. Suddenly coming to himself, he said to the man, as if he'd just remembered to ask, "And who, by the way, are you?"

  "Me? A devil is what I am. Remember about 'Demon' Tarō? Well, he's a member of our family. But I was a human being myself, once. I had some things on my conscience, some regrets and the like, when I died, and I ended up a devil. That's how I was able to learn the art of making a beautiful woman from a pile of corpses."

  Haseo was not too surprised when he heard this explanation. "You're not at all devilish, you know. You seem very human."

  "Seeming very human is absolutely the best thing for a devil.... The room at the top of the Rashomon was an illusion, you know. You climbed a phantom gate, and played backgammon in a phantom room."

  The man departed, thanking Haseo politely for his kindnesses. Gazing after him, Haseo felt reminded of someone. He couldn't recall who it was, though, so he decided to go to the Rashomon, thinking it might help somehow. The gate was there all right, but it was quite different from the Rashomon where he had played backgammon. It was covered with cobwebs, and the staircase he thought he'd climbed was too rickety by far to bear his weight. Was the Rashomon where he'd gambled with the man a complete illusion, then? Later on, he had Taira no Yasuhira check the police records for him, just to be sure; but there was no record of a "Demon" Tarō. If, then, "Demon" Tarō did not exist in this world, could the man have been, as he claimed, in truth a devil?

  The Nun Oyo

  To the west of the capital, near Sagano, there lived a monk, a solitary recluse. He was not yet even forty, but seemed already to have abandoned all hopes of this world. He could not have been of very good family to begin with, but his present state was truly wretched. No one knew how he had lived in his younger days. No doubt he had moved from one kind of work to another, failing at each, until finally ending as a beggar-monk. Now he had settled down in desolate Sagano, west of the capital, and spent his days reciting the nembutsu, the holy name of Amida Buddha, praying earnestly for rebirth in the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss.

  But there was a story behind his settling there and entering upon the religious life. At a time when everything he touched turned to dust and he had become disgusted with the world, he happened to visit the Seiryōō-ji temple in Saga. It was not that he was particularly devout then. The gods and buddhas seemed to him nothing more than shams devised by men unable to face the sorrows of this world. If his feet turned toward Seiryōō-ji, it was only because he was carried along by the flood of pilgrims on their way there. Even so, having come to the temple, he felt he ought to say a prayer, so he dropped the pittance he had into the offering box, made his reverence to the Buddha as custom demanded, and then started on his way again.

  "Excuse me! You there, young man. I have something I want to say to you."

  It was a male voice, and when he turned around he saw a man in his early fifties standing there, looking as down-at-heels as he himself. For a moment he wondered if his own shadow might have taken on bodily form, so closely did the man resemble him.

  "We do look alike, don't we," the man continued. "You're the image of me when I was younger. Poor and wretched-looking—just the way I was! When I saw you worshipping at Seiryōō-ji, I was so surprised that I followed you here. You really do look the same." The man laughed as he spoke.

  He took another look at the man. He had to admit that, indeed, in their poverty and shabbiness, they were very much alike. No doubt the man had borne more than his share of troubles in this sad world, just as he had. Now, having lost faith in everything within the fleeting world, the man was just passing his days in idleness. In that respect, the two of them were indistinguishable; and yet, the man had something in him that he himself lacked.

  "I've been watching you for quite some time. Your soul, it's floating about, you know—not quite attached to your body. It seems to be wandering about somewhere in empty space. Ten years ago, my soul was floating around too, and I always felt unsettled and anxious, just like you. I was very unhappy. And you, you're very unhappy too. But now I'm filled with joy, and I want to give that joy to you, my look-alike!"

  "Joy"—the word had not existed for him for close to twenty years now. How could this miserable-looking man give him joy? He had no faith in what the man said.

  "It was a monk called Gokuraku Shonin, from Kasagi, who gave me this joy." The man seemed to gaze into his very soul as he continued: "The saint taught me the joy of reciting the nembutsu. If you earnestly invoke the Holy Name, you can be reborn in the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss. And so I put aside all worldly attachments, and now I'm filled with joy at my salvation." The man laughed happily.

  Recite the nembutsu and be reborn in Paradise—this was the teaching of Saint Hōnen. He knew that, of course; and there were among his acquaintances a good number of nembutsu devotees. But when he saw the black-robed monks reciting the Holy Name, he was unpleasantly reminded of a group of crows noisily cawing. He couldn't believe that anyone would gain rebirth by reciting like that. When he realized that this fellow was one of those nembutsu zealots, he lost all interest.

  But the man continued speaking, his gaze again seeming to penetrate his hearer's soul: "I suppose you think that by 'nembutsu' I mean the oral nembutsu, where you say out loud the words 'Namu Amida Butsu.' But that's an 'accommodated teaching,' designed by St. Hōnen for the guidance of the mass of ignorant people. The nembutsu which the saint himself practiced privately is another thing entirely. It's the meditative nembutsu, explained in the saint's favorite scripture, the Sutra of Meditation on the Buddha of Infinite Life. It teaches that if you meditate upon Lord Amida and his Pure Land of Perfect Bliss, they will be present within you, sleeping and waking; and at the moment of death, you will see Lord Amida coming to welcome you to his Paradise. So your rebirth in the Pure Land is perfectly assured.

  "Now the method of meditation is extremely difficult. What you need above all is concentration of mind. This has nothing to do with intellectual ability. If even a foolish, ignorant man like me was able to acquire it, there is no reason you cannot. There are thirteen stages in the meditation. You begin by visualizing the various aspects of the Pure Land, then the Buddha Amida, Lord of the Pure Land, and finally yourself being born on one of the lotus flowers that bloom in the pond before the Lord Amida.

  "I will give you a more detailed explanation of all thirteen stages later, but for now let's begin with the sun meditation. The course of meditation starts with visualizing the setting sun. As you visualize it day after day, your mind and heart will tend naturally toward the direction where the sun sets, that is, toward the West, where the Pure Land lies. When the sun-meditation is finished, you visualize the waters of the Pure Land. When you can clearly see the waters, you visualize the earth. When that is done, you visualize the various trees that grow from the earth of the Pure Land. After the trees become clearly visible, you concentrate on the lotus pond; and after that, the high pavilions, and after that, the throne of Lord Amida. After all these scenes of the Pure Land have become clearly visible, you visualize the figure of the Lord himself. Amida Buddha will appear radiating light, and that dazzling light will illuminate the whole of the Pure Land that you have visualized.

  "Next there is another meditation on Amida Buddha. The one I just described is of his appearance to the devotee. Now one visualizes the True Body' of Amida, hidden within or beyond the appearance. These last two meditations, the eighth and ninth, are the most essential ones; but then one goes on to visualize Amida's two attendant bodhisattvas, Kannon and Seishi, and then all the multitudes of buddhas and bodhisattvas that exist. Finally, in what is called the meditation on the Body of Perfect Freedom, one visualizes the Buddha manifesting himself freely in a multitude of different forms. And this brings the course of meditation to an end."

  The man said all this without pausi
ng once. As the other listened, the Pure Land seemed to appear before him, and Lord Amida was there, and he felt as if he were an infant, just now born upon the lotus petals.

  "I continued this holy practice for three years; and in the end, the Pure Land became visible to me in every detail. If I thought of the skies of Paradise, or the earth, or the waters, they appeared before me. I became able to call up the Pure Land in its entirety, just as I wished. I am sure I will be reborn there, and so my life now is full of joy and happiness. I would like to share that happiness with you."

  The man was no longer looking at him. He was gazing into the far distance, and on his face was a look of ecstasy. The man looked so happy that the other began to feel the same way and, though he could not believe it was really true, he was willing to join the man in his rosy dream world. And so he decided to take this shabby stranger as his religious master and learn from him how to see the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss while still living in this world.

  From then on, the man came everyday to the hovel where the other lived. But the practice turned out to be extremely severe and difficult. The men may have seemed alike, in their poverty and despair of worldly success; but the other quickly realized the gap between the two of them as soon as he began to practice meditation.

  Day after day, he devoted himself to imagining the Pure Land; and in time the beautiful land of Paradise began to float into his vision. He could see the ground made of gold and silver, agate and lapis lazuli. But as he continued, before long there was a sudden change: the gold changed color and was transformed into a mountain of excrement. The paradisiacal scene he had worked so hard to produce was soon covered over with muck. His land of beauty was too hideous to look upon. He earnestly tried to visualize the Lord Amida, and in time his radiant Form was revealed. But suddenly that gracious Form turned into a gigantic woman, who bared her flesh and began to do a most peculiar sort of dance.

  He began to feel that the visualization of the Pure Land was quite beyond his powers and confessed this to his master. His teacher laughed heartily: "Yes, I see, I see. The thirteen-stage meditation is certainly difficult; but there are lots of other meditations that can be substituted if you find that one too hard.... I have it! The meditation on the sun as it declines seems just right for you! It's a practice specially devised by Lord Amida for people who still have a lot of worldly passions and can't manage the thirteen stages. You'll remember that the sun meditation, first of the thirteen, involved visualizing the sun as it set in the West, where the Pure Land is. That has proved a little difficult for you, but I'm sure you'll do well with the declining-sun meditation. It's not the sun that sinks toward the Pure Land. It can be sinking in any direction—toward the mountains or the sea, the moorlands or a river. You just imagine the sun sinking! Or it doesn't have to be the sun—it could be the new moon sinking toward the mountain peaks. In fact, it doesn't have to be the sun or the moon! Just imagine a flower, or a leaf, or anything that moves downward. This is a very easy form of meditation, and also one that seems suited to you."

  He did feel somehow drawn to this declining-sun meditation his master had introduced. He felt it would suit him.

  And indeed the declining-sun meditation did suit him. Following his teacher's instructions, he meditated each day on the setting sun—or rather, on anything that fell or drifted downwards. Countless evening suns went down slowly, or rapidly, within his mind. And it was not only suns that dropped downwards but moons and stars, flowers and leaves, men and women. Among the men and women were his father and mother, long dead, and the wife who had left him. But as he kept on with his meditations, the falling objects and persons were replaced for some reason by the slim crescent of the new moon. After a month of meditative practice, his heart was quite purified of passions, and he could see the setting crescent moon whenever he wished. At such times, he always felt the autumn wind blowing against his skin. He reported his completion of the declining-sun meditation to his master, who rejoiced, telling him, "Your meditation is completed. I'm sure your practice will lead you to rebirth in Paradise. There's nothing more for me to teach you, and I myself would like to go to the Pure Land as soon as possible. At any rate, let's say goodbye for now."

  His master now bestowed on him the religious name Rakujitsu Shufū-bō, which means "Setting Sun and Autumn Wind." Then four or five days later, the teacher again paid a visit and announced that he was going to be reborn in Paradise, and he hoped Shufū-bō would come to witness the event. Telling his disciple to follow, he set off into the Western Hills outside the capital, an area he often used to stroll in, as if it were his private garden. They had walked perhaps two hours when they came to a cliff jutting out to the east, and beneath its sharp drop was a small forest. The master had apparently chosen the spot well in advance.

  "This place is due west of the capital. The sun goes down here—it's the direction of the Pure Land. If I die here, I'll be sure to go straight to Paradise. I can already see Lord Amida's gentle, smiling face.... Well, I'll be going then. And you should come along soon yourself!" Turning for a moment to look at his disciple, the master leapt from the top of the cliff. It happened in an instant. As the disciple stood looking down from the cliff in amazement, he saw his master's body fall like the setting crescent moon he had meditated upon so often, finally to disappear into the forest. What a sudden end! And, although a man had most certainly vanished from the world just then, the world was strangely silent, as if nothing at all had happened. Had his master really gone to the Pure Land of Perfect Bliss? Was this cliff, this valley truly the gateway to Paradise? It didn't seem so to him; and the lonely look on his master's face when he turned to gaze at him for the last time was something he could never forget.

  And so it was that he had become the monk Rakujitsu Shufū-bō, leading a solitary life in retirement at Sagano. He had no intention of making the dramatic sort of exit from life that his master had. He wanted to die naturally, quietly sinking like the setting sun. So he continued his meditation on the sun and tried little by little to lose his desire to live, decreasing the amount of food he took each day, engaging in no activities, just patiently waiting for death. It was then early summer, and he was passing his days in peaceful contentment, trusting that, true to the name his master had given him, by the time the autumn winds began to blow, his life would come to an end like the sun setting in the west, and he would be able to welcome the darkness of night.

  Then suddenly one day there came an intruder into Shufū-bō's quiet life. He was deep in meditation, his ego almost lost in trance, when he became aware that someone was with him. Turning around, he saw a figure standing there bearing a large cloth sack on its head.

  "It's raining cats and dogs out there! The sun was shining so nicely, and now suddenly it's a downpour. I'm drenched.... What a mess! Lucky for me there's this hermitage out here. Excuse me, reverend sir, but I'd like to come in for a bit."

  The voice was a loud one, and it belonged to a woman looking somewhat over sixty, dressed as a nun. Her face was deeply wrinkled, but she still had a womanly plumpness, and her voice was loud and lively, like a young woman's. Her eyes traveling over his modest room, she exclaimed, "My, what a shabby place! The paper screens and windows are full of holes. And there's really nothing you could call furniture. It's so bad one almost wants to applaud. You're quite the monk." She shot an upward glance at him. "Living here all alone? Why did you pick such a lonesome spot? And you still so young! You must have had some hard times. I bet some woman deceived you, you poor thing...."

  He had spent the last thirty days immersed in meditation without once seeing anyone, and now he felt very grateful for the presence of another human being, even if it was an old woman. He felt like talking to her, but it was not easy to get a word in as the woman jabbered on, apparently endlessly, in a loud voice. The woman completely ignored his attempts to say a word, and just kept on talking.

  "My robe's all wet. I'll just have to change it. But, you know, no matter how old she ge
ts, a woman is still a woman! You mustn't peek when a lady's changing her clothes! There's only this one room, though, isn't there? Well, just look the other way for a minute, won't you? I wouldn't want you to see me naked," she concluded with a titter.

  There was nothing for it but to turn away and close his eyes, he decided; but his heart began to beat faster. The sound the cloth made as the woman took off her robe aroused thoughts of pleasure. Come to think of it, he had not touched a woman for well over ten years.

  "I'm all changed. You can look now."

  A flirtatious something in the woman's voice cast its spell as he hung her wet robe on the clothes frame, one of the few furnishings in the house.

  "Why, thank you. You're so kind! I see the rain's letting up. I wonder, though, if you wouldn't let me stay just a little longer, until my robe dries out. And look at this! My sack is wet right through! All my wares will be ruined.... Oh, this sack? It's no ordinary one, I'll tell you. It's full of treasures— rare objects that even the grandest people are eager to get hold of. I keep them in this dirty old sack to fool would-be robbers. No one would imagine a sack like this contained any treasures. Or that a woman like me would be carrying any!" She laughed again, loudly. "Do you want to take a look? I bet you do! Come a little closer, and I'll show you. I had a very good day today until the rain started. I sold an ornamental hairpin at the mansion of a Grand Councilor. It was a rare one, brought all the way from China, the finest quality item, of tortoise shell worked with gold and silver. The Grand Councilor's wife loved it the minute she saw it, and snapped it up. And oh yes ... I have another one very like it right here. I'll show it to you." The woman removed from her wretched, filthy-looking sack a fine tortoise shell hairpin. "Nice, isn't it? Its price is twenty ryō. I sold it to the lady for fifteen. You think I lost five ryō on the deal? Don't be silly, I made five ryoō, because I bought it for ten! The lady is awfully tight-fisted; she never buys anything at the asking-price. So today I pushed for thirty ryoō right off. I knew she wanted it; she had to have it. But Too high,' she says. 'Make it cheaper.' So I said, 'This hairpin could suit only a person of quality like your ladyship. I'm honored if it pleases you. So I'll give it to you for half-price, just fifteen ryoō.' She was very pleased: 'Oh, thank you! It's nice of you to come down so much.' As she thanked me, she handed right over the fifteen ryoō in cash. I made five ryoō and got thanked into the bargain—what more could I ask for? I'm good at business, don't you think? Anyway, I'd made my five ryoō so I closed up shop for the day. I was hurrying to get home when this rain started. I don't know whether you'd call it good luck or bad. I guess I'd have to say good, since that's how I met you!"