by Royall Tyler
The Gion monks came out to receive the chest and were much impressed with the donor’s generosity. “Go get the abbot!” they said to each other. “We can’t very well open it without him.” But the one who went came back, after a long delay, to report that the abbot was nowhere to be found. The retainer complained that he had no time to wait. “I’m here,” he insisted. “Nobody’s going to accuse you of anything. Just go ahead and open it. I’m in a hurry.”
The monks were still wondering what to do when a doleful little voice from inside the chest piped up, “Any monk will do, you know!” The monks could hardly believe their ears, but very gingerly they opened the chest. Out popped the head of their abbot. The sight so alarmed them that they all fled, and so did the retainer. Meanwhile the abbot extracted himself from the chest and ran to hide.
Of course the governor could have hauled Kaishū straight out of the chest and given him a few good, swift kicks, but this would not have looked very good. It was wise of him to shame the man instead. Kaishū was always a fast talker, and even in the chest he had something to say.
22.
THE EMPEROR’S FINGER
While visiting a certain shrine at Awazu in Shiga county of the province of Ōmi, Emperor Tenji decided to build a temple. This was about the year 665. But where should the temple stand? The emperor prayed for help. That night he dreamed a monk came to him and announced that there was an excellent spot to the northwest. The monk said he should look that way right now.
Waking up, the emperor saw a light in that direction. The next morning he sent someone to investigate, and the messenger, still following the glow, came to the foot of Mount Sasanami. Far up a ravine he came to a deep cave under a rock face and peered inside. He was face to face with an extraordinary old man who seemed infinitely holy and wise. The messenger announced that the emperor had sent him to find out why the mountain was shining, and asked the old man politely who he was. The old man ignored him. The messenger was upset, but went back to His Majesty to report.
“I’ll have to go there and question him myself,” said the emperor and set out. His bearers brought his palanquin as close to the cave as they could, and he walked the rest of the way. The old man was still there. He had on a brocade hat and a pale violet robe and looked more like a god than a man. Apparently the emperor did not impress him a bit.
“Who are you, and what are you doing here?” the emperor asked.
The old man brought his sleeves together a little, made a slight gesture of deference, and said, “Immortals have always lived in this cave.” Then, after a few more cryptic words, he vanished.
The emperor decided this was a very holy spot indeed, and certainly a good place for the temple.
The temple, Shigadera, was built the next year, with a sixteen-foot-high statue of Miroku. While the construction was under way, the workmen dug up a miniature pagoda that obviously was not Japanese. It could only have been one of the 84,000 pagodas distributed throughout the world, each with a relic of the Buddha inside it, by the great Indian king Asoka some nine hundred years before.
In front of the temple stood a great lantern. For the consecration of the temple the emperor kindled a flame on the tip of his own right ring finger and lit the lantern with it. Then he cut off the finger and buried it under the lantern, in a stone box, as an offering to Miroku.
Having considerable power, the emperor’s finger would send any visitor who was the least unclean tumbling down into the neighboring ravine. This discouraged pilgrims completely, and a priest who took over the temple much later got bored with having no visitors. The problem was that finger. The priest decided to dig it up and get rid of it.
As soon as the workmen began, a frightful storm broke, with thunder, lightning, rain, and violent wind. This just made the priest angrier than ever, and he kept his men digging till they got to the box. The finger looked perfectly fresh and gave off a pale glow, but it soon turned to liquid and disappeared.
Soon the priest went mad and died.
23.
JAPAN’S FIRST GOLD
Tōdaiji in Nara is a must for every tourist,
and its Great Buddha is famous. The original Great
Buddha was dedicated in 752, in a magnificent ceremony
attended by monks from all over Asia.
When Emperor Shōmu built Tōdaiji, long ago, he had his workmen cast a huge, seated bronze image of the Cosmic Buddha, and he enshrined it in a correspondingly vast hall. This statue was the original of the Great Tōdaiji Buddha we know today.
For the emperor, this Great Buddha was the priceless jewel that was to draw our land together in the Buddhist faith, and he gave himself to the project heart and soul. When the time came to build the dais for the Buddha to rest on (the dais would look like a lotus flower), the emperor dug the first spadefuls of earth himself, and his empress carried the earth away in the long sleeves of her robe.
The temple was quickly built, with willing support from all, and the Great Buddha was cast. The next thing was to get thousands of sheets of gold foil to gild the Buddha with. But where were they to come from? Japan had never had any gold. The emperor sent an envoy to China, laden with treasure, to buy the gold required, and the next spring the envoy returned. Craftsmen were assembled and started work, but the color of the gold was wrong, and besides, there still was not enough of it even for the Great Buddha, let alone the many smaller images in the other, lesser halls of the temple.
In this desperate situation the emperor called in the greatest monks of the time to ask their advice. They told him about Golden Peak, a mountain in Yoshino county of Yamato province, and said this mountain was bound to have gold. But they reminded His Majesty that a powerful god watched over Golden Peak, and recommended that before taking any gold His Majesty should first speak to this god.
The emperor ordered Rōben, the monk in charge of the whole project, to beg the god respectfully for some of his gold. After praying for seven days and nights, Rōben had a dream. The god appeared as a monk and said to him, “The gold of my mountain was placed here by Miroku, the Future Buddha. It will be given out when Miroku comes into the world, and must be kept till then. My role is only to guard it. But I will tell you what to do. In Shiga county of Ōmi province, along the river that runs into Lake Biwa, there is a spot called Tagami. Nearby is a low, isolated hill whose eastern spur forms Tsubaki Point. You will find there a group of standing rocks. There always used to be an old man fishing from one of them. Build a chapel on that rock and enshrine Nyoirin Kannon, then pray there for your gold. You will get it, I promise.”
Rōben reported his dream and the emperor sent him straight off to Ōmi. The hill was there and Tsubaki Point had the strange rocks the god had mentioned. Among them was the one the old man had fished from. Rōben had soon made a Nyoirin Kannon and built the chapel, and he prayed there for gold.
Shortly Mutsu and Shimotsuke provinces in the north sent a gift to the emperor in the form of some gold-colored sand. Metalworkers summoned to melt it found that it really was the most beautifully yellow gold. The delighted emperor sent for more, and it quickly arrived. So much was left over from gilding the Great Buddha that there was plenty for all the other Buddhas too.
That was how gold was first found in Japan.
24.
GYŌGI AND BARAMON
Baramon’s name is simply a japanization of
“brahman,” meaning an Indian of high caste.
Long ago Emperor Shōmu invited Gyōgi to preside at the consecration ceremony for the Great Buddha of Tōdaiji. This was natural because Gyōgi was a beloved saint: a great teacher, preacher, and builder whose work helped everyone throughout the land.
But Gyōgi declined. “No, Your Majesty,” he said, “I’m not worthy. The man you need is on his way here from across the sea.” His Majesty let Gyōgi lead a hundred monks and a band of court musicians to Naniwa in Settsu province, where they waited on the shore to welcome the foreign monk.
The monk Gyōg
i meant was Baramon, an Indian from Kabirae where the Buddha himself was born. Baramon, who longed to meet the Bodhisattva Monju in person, had learned in a dream that Monju lived on a Chinese mountain named Godaisan. He left for Godaisan immediately, but an old man he met on the way told him that for the benefit of all sentient beings there, Monju had now been born again in Japan. So Baramon went on to Japan. Thanks to divine inspiration, Gyōgi knew he was coming.
When Baramon failed to arrive at Naniwa, Gyōgi set a bowl of holy water afloat in the sea. The bowl sailed off westward, undisturbed by the waves, till it vanished from sight. Then it reappeared, sailing landward this time in front of Baramon’s ship. Baramon knew about the consecration and hoped he would be in time.
Baramon and Gyōgi joyfully took each other’s hands. It was a wonder how the Japanese and the Indian seemed to have known each other all their lives and talked together like the best of friends. Gyōgi said in verse, “The love we pledged each other as brothers in truth, before Shaka on Vulture Peak, is still alive; and so we meet again!” And Baramon, who recognized in Gyōgi the bodhisattva he sought, answered, “How rightly we pledged each other love in Kabirae, for now at last I see Monju’s face!”
That was how we in Japan found out that Gyōgi was actually an incarnation of Monju.
Gyōgi brought Baramon to the emperor, who was very happy to meet him and immediately appointed him to preside over the consecration. It went off beautifully.
25.
THE OLD MACKEREL PEDDLER
When Tōdaiji had been built and the Great Buddha was ready to be consecrated, Emperor Shōmu appointed the Indian monk Baramon, recently arrived in Japan, to preside over the ceremony. But who should Baramon’s assistant be? The emperor could not decide, and he worried till he had a dream in which a holy being came to him and said, “You must appoint as assistant the first man to pass the temple on the day of the consecration. Never mind whether he is a monk, or a layman, or a noble, or a nobody.”
The consecration was set for the fourteenth day of the third moon of 752. The emperor made up his mind to do exactly as he had been told and posted guards at the appropriate time to keep watch. Along came an old man carrying a basket of mackerel over his shoulder on a pole. The guards whisked him straight off to the emperor, who dressed him in priestly robes and had almost appointed him when the old man finally protested, “Dear me, Your Majesty, I’m not at all the man you’re looking for! I’m just an old mackerel peddler!” But the emperor ignored him.
Soon it was time for the ceremony, and the old man was installed on a throne right next to Baramon with his basket of mackerel beside him. His pole was stuck in the ground east of the entrance to the hall. When the rite was over, Baramon came down from his throne and the old man just vanished.
“I thought so!” said the emperor to himself. “He was magic!” Then he had a look at the basket. Those had definitely been mackerel in there, but now they were the eighty scrolls of the Kegon Sutra. The emperor wept and prostrated himself in awe. His vow to build the temple had been well conceived and a buddha had come to help him!
The mackerel peddler’s pole is still by the entrance to the hall. It hasn’t grown, or burst into bloom, or done anything in particular. It’s just there.
26.
KŌBŌ DAISHI
Kōbō Daishi (Daishi means “Great Teacher”)
is credited with many extraordinary
accomplishments including the invention of the Japanese
phonetic script, and his temple on Mount Kōya is
still an important pilgrimage center. Women have been
allowed there only since the late nineteenth century.
A vajra is a key ritual implement in Esoteric Buddhism.
The term means “diamond” or “thunderbolt” in Sanskrit.
Long ago Kōbō Daishi braved the voyage to China to study the Teaching and brought back the Esoteric Buddhism which he then spread far and wide. When he was getting old, he gathered his disciples together and distributed among them the many temples he had founded. But there was one temple, the greatest of all, which he had yet to found because he still did not know where to build it. This was the one on Mount Kōya.
Kōbō Daishi had planned this temple even in China. The day before he left China, he stood on a cliff overlooking the sea and hurled a three-pronged vajra toward Japan. As he did so, he prayed that the vajra should land at the right place for a temple — a temple that would last till Miroku comes into the world. The vajra soared high up and disappeared into the clouds.
Now that his disciples were provided for, Kōbō Daishi decided to go looking for the vajra. He set out from the Capital in the sixth moon of 816. Finally, in Uchi county of Yamato province, he met a hunter, an immensely powerful, red-faced man eight feet tall, wearing a greenish coat and armed with a bow and arrows. The hunter had two black dogs, one big and one little. He asked Kōbō Daishi where he was going and Kōbō Daishi explained about his vajra. “I prayed for it to land on a mountain good for meditation,” he went on, “and now I’m looking for it.”
“I’m a hunter from Mount Kōya,” the hunter replied. “I know where your vajra is. Let me tell you the way.” He loosed his dogs and they quickly disappeared.
Kōbō Daishi followed the hunter’s directions till he reached a large river on the border between Yamato and the province of Kii. There he met a mountain man, who told him that the place he wanted was a basin in the mountains some way to the south. The man went with Kōbō Daishi. “I’m the Mountain King,” he told Kōbō Daishi as they walked along. “All this land is my gift to you.”
They got to a place that was just like a bowl, with eight peaks all around it. Huge cypresses towered there, as dense and straight as bamboos. One of the trees was forked, and in the fork was the vajra. Kōbō Daishi was overjoyed. He asked the god his name and learned it was Nifu no Myōjin. “And the hunter you met,” the god went on, “is Kōya no Myōjin.” Then he vanished.
Kōbō Daishi went back to the Capital, resigned all his offices, and settled his affairs. Then he returned to Mount Kōya, where he built the temple and named it, by imperial wish, Kongōbuji, Temple of the Vajra Peak. Finally he prepared the place for his own passing.
On the twenty-first day of the third moon of 835, he sat in a cave, in lotus posture, and passed into eternal meditation as his disciples around him chanted the name of the Buddha Miroku.
Long afterwards his disciples opened the cave, shaved his head (for his hair had continued to grow), and changed his clothes. But they never came back, and it was only much later that someone opened the cave again. This was Kanken, a student of one of Kōbō Daishi’s disciples and a high-ranking monk on the mountain.
When Kanken opened the cave, he was met by a thick cloud of dust. When the dust cleared, he saw that it had been from Kōbō Daishi’s robe, which had disintegrated and been swept up by the wind as he opened the cave. Kōbō Daishi’s hair was a foot long. Kanken, who had washed and put on a fresh robe beforehand, shaved the saint’s head once more with a new razor. The cord of the saint’s crystal rosary had rotted away, and the beads lay scattered before him. Kanken gathered them up, strung them on a new cord, and put the rosary back in Kōbō Daishi’s hand. Finally he dressed the saint in a new robe. As he left the cave he wept, overcome by a feeling of deep personal loss.
No one has ever opened the cave again, but when a pilgrim comes there the doors of the chapel built against it open of themselves, and the mountain is heard to rumble. Sometimes people hear the sound of a small gong. It is also remarkable that here, so deep in the mountains that even birdsong is rare, no one ever feels afraid.
The two gods, Nifu and Kōya, have their shrines side by side below the mountain and still protect it as they vowed to do so long ago. Countless pilgrims still visit Mount Kōya, all men. Women have never been allowed on the mountain.
27.
THE KANNON IN THE PINE
One hall at Kōfukuji, the great temple in Nara
, enshrines a miraculous statue of Eleven-Headed Kannon. This is how the statue came to be there.
On the very first day of 1007, a monk named Chōkon was on his way back to the place called Deer Park, a little way south of the temple, when a small boy came up to him, asking to go home with him and serve him. Chōkon readily agreed.
Six years later, in 1013, the boy lay dying. “I won’t last much longer,” he told Chōkon. “When my breathing stops, don’t disturb my body in any way. Put me exactly as I am in a coffin, then hang the coffin in the pine tree at Deer Park where we first met. After seven days, but not earlier, you may open the coffin and look at me.” Then he died as though falling asleep.
Weeping, Chōkon followed the boy’s instructions and hung him in the pine. He walked on from there several hours to Hasedera and went into retreat before that temple’s own most holy Eleven-Headed Kannon. Now and again he could not help bewailing his advancing age and charging Kannon with having neglected him.
Seven days later he headed back to Nara. A delicious fragrance filled the air around the pine at Deer Park, and when he opened the coffin a blaze of light burst forth. Inside was a life-sized statue of Eleven-Headed Kannon. Astonished and overjoyed, Chōkon regretted all his complaints. He carried the statue on his back to Kōfukuji and enshrined it in its present hall.
After he died an oracle revealed that he had passed on to Fudaraku, Kannon’s paradise.