by Alan Spence
This is a miracle, I said.
And as you can see, I have taken your poison to heart and am travelling almost alone.
A few villagers, curious, were peering in at the gate. One of the samurai took a step towards them and they ran off.
I have brought you a little gift of my own, said the Daimyo, and he nodded to the pikeman who reached into the palanquin, brought out two small packages, exquisitely wrapped. The Daimyo took them from him, handed them to me.
From the scent of it, one was the finest and subtlest incense. I breathed it in, thanked him. The other package was slightly larger, but still light, and I couldn’t tell what was inside. I shook it, but that gave no clue.
This may offset the bitterness of the strawberries, he said. And I knew then it was a box of my favourite konpeito.
Perhaps with some tea? he suggested.
Forgive me, I said, and I invited him inside.
The young Daimyo had indeed taken my words to heart. He was reining back the extravagances of his household, sincerely trying to simplify his own life and uphold the precepts. He had come, in all humility, to receive teaching from this old monk. When we had sipped tea and eaten a few of the delicious konpeito, I began by instructing him to look after his health. Only then would he be able to extend his span of years and work to bring prosperity and wellbeing to his subjects.
Be moderate in what you eat and drink, I said. (Here I raised an eyebrow at the little dish before me, bearing the last few sugared sweets. The Daimyo laughed.)
Show restraint in your physical desires, I said. (I added that his concubines would not thank me if they heard this advice. Again he laughed, though perhaps less heartily.)
Nourish your life, I said. Be strong in your mind and firm in your faith. Do this by developing the power of introspection.
I then gave him instruction in naikan, as Hakuyu had taught me, as I had taught Torei and others.
This will help conquer illness, I said, and debilitating weakness. It will give you the strength to carry out your duties. And remember always that your noble birth at this time, in this peaceful and well-governed domain, is the result of past good karma. You have gained merit from good deeds in a previous life when you rigorously practised the disciplines. Take care in this life that you do not exhaust those blessings or fall into cause and effect and accumulate new karmic suffering. Only then will you fulfil your destiny as a great leader.
Think of the great Minamoto no Yoshiie. (An ancestor of mine fought alongside him.) He never recklessly took any life, and he recited every day a verse from the Lotus Sutra. Going into battle he had a tiny gold figure of Kannon Bodhisattva woven into his hair. Thus protected, he defeated a vast enemy army. Strong in mind, firm in faith.
In your case, I told the Daimyo, you should chant the Kannon Sutra.
Emmei Jikku Kannon Gyo.
It will cure disease and ensure long life. Join me in chanting it.
Emmei Jikku Kannon Gyo.
Emmei Jikku Kannon Gyo.
We had sat so long the afternoon was beginning to darken. It had also grown cold, and I asked the monk attending to bring us some warm sake, which I poured.
So, I said.
He bowed.
Thank you.
We sat for a time in companionable silence, watching the light fade. I looked out across the courtyard and saw the pikeman standing there, motionless, guarding the norimon. The samurai were seated on the verandah, but he had had to stay at his post.
He must be cold, I said. We have talked a long time. Perhaps you could take him some warm sake.
The Daimyo looked confused, then he realised I was actually asking him to do this small thing, and it mattered. He nodded, poured sake from the flask into a cup and carried it carefully out to the pikeman. The man looked even more confused than his lord, then grateful as he sipped the drink.
When the Daimyo came back in I said now he would have to promote the man to the rank of samurai.
Is that not the case?
Yes, he said. Only samurai can receive sake in this way from the Daimyo. And for me to pour it for him is an acknowledgement of that.
He smiled and poured a little more sake for himself, and for me.
Sakasaraba!
Later, as they were preparing to leave, the pikeman stood in front of me and bowed.
Thank you, Sensei, he said. I know this was your doing. I have a family to keep, and I am grateful.
It was your own merit, I said. I was merely the instrument.
His lord called to him and he returned to his duty, led the little procession back out onto the road. The Daimyo gave me a wave of the hand then his curtain swung closed and he returned to his own world.
A little later, Torei approached and asked if the meeting had gone well.
As you can see, I said, I still have my head.
That in itself is a miracle, he said.
I had been pressing Torei to continue writing my biography so generations to come would be able to sup my poison, albeit in diluted form. He had been working away at it diligently, occasionally becoming exasperated at the yarns I would spin, the different versions of my story. For my early life, he had to take my word for it. At times he would be quite blunt.
Is this true, he would ask, or is it seen from the Night Boat of your imagination?
It’s all true, I told him. In its own way.
Now he wanted an account of my meeting with the Daimyo. He sensed it was important and wanted to get it down while it was still fresh and comparatively unembellished, so I told him what I could, as much as could be communicated.
And you’re right, I said. It is important. The Daimyo has a long way to travel but he is well intentioned and could do great good for the people. He also mentioned five or six other Daimyo who might visit when they are passing along the Tokaido. So perhaps we might make sure they receive copies of my poisonous rant, my Snake-strawberries. Let us see if they can digest it.
He smiled, and I asked him why.
Hunger-and-Cold, he said. The Master of Poverty-Temple. And here you are advising some of the most powerful men in the land.
I laughed.
Who could have imagined it?
TALL TALES
I
t was a dark and wintry night . . .
. . . and Hunger-and-Cold, Master of Poverty-Temple, was seated with a few of his followers (Torei and Suio among them). There was something about the cold and the dark, closing in around us, the sheer depth of the midwinter night. Spirits and demons would be close at hand. It was a night for telling tales of the other worlds. I turned down the lamp a little, to save oil. The light flickered, turned us into shadows, and I began . . .
Back from the Land of the Dead.
There were seven elderly women making a pilgrimage and they came to Shoin-ji and knocked on my door. They had a terrifying tale to tell, and the oldest of them took it on herself to tell it to me.
This is a true story, she said, and it concerns my daughter. She would have been with us on this pilgrimage, but she fell ill and took to her bed. She grew weaker by the day and eventually she stopped breathing and lay lifeless. The physician pronounced her dead, but our local priest said he thought he still detected a little warmth in the centre of the chest, and he told us to delay the funeral arrangements if we could.
Ten days went by and we thought perhaps that was long enough, and we should prepare her for burial. Then suddenly in the middle of the night, she came back to life and sat upright with a great cry. And this is the story she told.
A little time ago – I don’t know how long and have no way of knowing – I was led from here by some dark hooded figures. They had no faces – beneath each hood was a featureless blank mask – and I was numb with fear as I followed them along the rim of a great valley. There was no sun or moon, only the black flames of hell rising up from the worlds below.
Screams of torment rose up from the depths, and I could see the damned were from all walks of lif
e – aristocracy and beggars, the famous and the outcast, saints and sinners. There were even monks and nuns among them, unable to understand how they had fallen to this place, and I saw people I knew, people from my home village.
A great featureless plain extended all around, further than the eye could see, inhabited by skeletal figures burned black and wailing in pain. When we’d crossed the plain for an endless length of time we came to a huge iron gate that towered hundreds of feet in the air, and above it, in letters of flame, was written The Palace of Emma, Lord of the Dead. Inside the gate, darkness within darkness, was a dank and terrifying prison, its walls fetid and decaying, collapsing in on themselves, and locked inside, in cramped cells, were countless more beings who had once been human, thousands upon thousands of them. So many, so many. They had no tongues, they had lost the power of language, and all they could do was howl in agony and misery and rage.
I felt them drawing me down among them, into that place of desolation. Then there was a great roaring and a rush of wind, and I woke up in the mortuary, screaming myself hoarse.
The old woman was shaking as she came to the end of her story.
Since this happened, she said, my daughter has been terrified. She cannot sleep for fear of waking again in that terrible, terrible place and being consigned there forever.
She bowed and asked with deepest humility if I might write something she could take back to her daughter, a scroll with the sacred words, a charm against damnation.
Moved that she had made a pilgrimage to ask me, I drew the characters with a slow careful hand.
Namu Amida Butsu.
Let her chant this with devotion every day, I said, and the words will guide her through.
I thought of my own mother, her simple dedication.
I handed the scroll to the woman and tears of gratitude filled her eyes.
Realm of the Angry Demons.
This is a story I was told about the priest Gedatsu Shonin when he was residing at Mount Kasagi. One dark night, after he had been meditating, he sat up late in his room, reading the Lotus Sutra by the faint light of a lamp. Everyone else at the temple had fallen asleep and a great silence had descended on everything.
Suddenly there was a huge uproar outside the room, a howling and screaming and growling. The noise was terrifying, non-human, not of this world, and Gedatsu, for all his courage, felt his blood turn to ice. Trembling, his legs weak, he went to the window and tore a tiny hole in the paper screen, placed his eye to it and peered out.
What he saw almost stopped his heart with fear. He was looking into the realm of angry demons, creatures with the heads of horses or goats, tigers or wild dogs, creatures with horns, fangs, tails, claws, all snapping and tearing at each other, consumed by rage.
Gedatsu could hardly breathe. He didn’t want to stand there watching. He was too afraid to run away. He thought he might fall over in a faint. Then he realised the figure of an ancient monk had appeared beside him, absorbed in meditation. His voice a croaking whisper, he asked the monk who these creatures might be.
The old monk came out of his trance and spoke in a solemn voice.
Strictly speaking, he said, it is wrong even to talk about them. But you have asked, and I must tell you. These wretched beings were once monks and priests. But because they did not possess the Mind of Enlightenment, they fell from the true path into evil ways. They are always with us, day and night, waiting for opportunities to lure others into their midst. Be resolute and do not be drawn into their world.
There was a smell of incense and the old monk rose into the air and disappeared. The noise had stopped and the hellish creatures had vanished from sight. But Gedatsu knew their realm was closer than his own heartbeat and they might reappear at any time and he had to be on his guard.
He bowed with gratitude.
Outside in the courtyard something screeched, something rustled.
An owl, I said. Dead leaves.
But one of the young monks asked if he could turn the lamp up just a little.
The Undying Lamp of Zen, I said, and I nodded to Torei who bowed.
Your inner lamp is lit, I said to the young monk. How brightly does that burn?
Not brightly enough, he said, suddenly grateful for the shadow.
Tend to that, I said. But then I did turn the lamp up a fraction.
Just a little, I said. Then I asked one of the older disciples, Daikyu Ebo, to tell a tale of his own, about something that had happened to him many years ago. He bowed and composed himself, began speaking in a slow measured voice, entering deep into the memory of the experience.
Release of a Soul in Torment.
It was in Kyoto, he said, after I had given a lecture at Tofuku-ji. As I was leaving the hall, a young woman, clearly from a wealthy family, approached me without saying a word and handed me a note. The note was a request for an immediate meeting with me, in private. My first thought was to say no, without hesitation, but the look in her eyes was one of absolute despair and desolation. They were not her own eyes, but the eyes of a soul in torment.
I consulted with a few of my fellow priests and she was allowed to join me in an anteroom and tell her story. As soon as she opened her mouth to speak, the chill of fear gripped my heart. The voice was not the voice of the young woman in front of me. It was the voice of an old crone and it shook and wavered with anguish and pain. The young woman was possessed.
I was a good woman, said the voice speaking through her, a virtuous woman, an honest trader. I sold rice and other grains in the marketplace and I treated my customers fairly. In my youth I had followed the Pure Land teachings and chanted the Nembutsu with great devotion. Then in middle age I fell under the influence of a priest who taught the doctrine of the Unborn. Death is the end of everything, he said. There is no afterlife, no heaven or hell, nowhere to fall. Here and now you are a Buddha. Why then should you chant sutras or sit in zazen?
Her voice broke at this point, said Daikyu, and she found it difficult to continue.
I am so ashamed, she said at last. I listened to his advice and my life changed. I no longer sat in meditation. I no longer took inspiration from chanting the Nembutsu. I fell from grace. My life lost all meaning and before long I was cheating my customers, using false measure and selling them short.
A great sob broke from her and shook the young girl’s body. When the voice continued it was mournful and desolate and came from a deep dark place.
I died, she said. And no, that was not an end of it. The priest had been wrong. I fell into this hell and have been here ever since, tortured more than anything by memory of my earlier life when my devotion was simple and true. But perhaps some vestige of my good karma remained, a tiny glimmer of light in all that darkness. From somewhere came the will to escape, and I found myself in my disembodied form seeking out this young girl and entering into her. She has understood my plight and has brought me to you for help.
At this point in the telling, Daikyu seemed exhausted, as if he were revisiting the episode, reliving it, and identifying once more with the woman’s suffering. At times in bringing the story to life, he had mimicked the woman’s voice, almost as if he too had been taken over. But now he sat upright, folded his hands in gassho.
We conducted a ceremony of purification, he said. We burned incense and read from the sutras. I composed a verse and recited it. We made offerings of fruit and water for the liberation of all beings. When all of this was done, the woman’s voiced breathed out, Thank you! And she fell into a trance.
When she opened her eyes again the young woman was herself once more. Her eyes shone and she said the old woman had been released to dwell in a higher realm.
It’s a fine story, I said when Daikyu had told his tale. A false priest consigned the woman to hell, a true priest rescued her.
He bowed.
Here’s a verse for you, I said.
And what’s the vilest creature? A stinking skunk?
Creeping cockroach? Slithering snake? A thie
ving monk!
There are many tales, I said, of true priests coming to the rescue of the living and the dead.
Questioning the ghost.
There was a young man whose wife fell ill and died. With her last breath she made him promise never to marry again, and if he did so, she would return as a ghost to haunt him. He was distraught at his loss, as any young man would be. But in the fullness of time he met another woman and fell in love again, and made plans to remarry.
But a ghost took the form of his wife and came to visit him every night, claiming to be in torment at the prospect of the marriage. He was pledged to her, she said, and the vows they had made were forever.
The young man was torn apart. On the one hand he wanted to be true to his wife’s memory, on the other he wanted to make a new life. And there was something else, a deep unease when the ghost appeared. Was this really the ghost of his wife? She certainly knew a great deal about him, as if she could read his thoughts.
Eventually he approached a Zen priest and told him the story.
The priest said she must be a very clever ghost, to know what he was thinking. But there is one way to test her, he said. Ask her one simple question. If she answers it correctly, she is indeed your wife and you will do what she asks. If she cannot answer, then she is a creature of your imagination and has no substance.
And what is the question?
Take a handful of soya beans and ask if she can tell you exactly how many you are holding.
The young man returned home, and the ghost appeared to him again.
Well? she asked.
You are a very clever ghost, he said, to know so much about me.
And I know you went to see that Zen master today, she said.
I did. And he told me to test you by asking one simple question.
And what might the question be?