by Royall Tyler
He knew that when he took to the air he would find himself clothed in the robe of an Immortal, so he put on nothing but the simplest and most abbreviated wrap; for, he said, he now needed nothing more. Then he strode forth with his water jar (his last and most prized possession) slung from his waist.
A large crowd had gathered to watch him go to the Land of the Immortals. When all the spectators were in place, he climbed to a spur of rock that jutted from the mountainside. “Of course, I’d rather go straight up,” he explained, “but since all these people are here I suppose I really ought to give them a good look at a proper Immortal in action. So first I’ll glide down from here to those pines and land on a branch.”
It was forty or fifty feet down to the tops of the pines. The ascetic dove off head first and the crowd roared. Unfortunately, his body was heavier than he expected, and his strength far less. Missing his target entirely, he crashed to the ground. Though shaken, the crowd remained confident (after all, he must surely have known what he was doing!) that at any moment he would rise again into the air.
Actually he had smashed into a rock. His water jar was in smithereens and so was he, or very nearly. His horrified disciples desperately called his name but got no reply. Since he was at least still breathing, though, they hauled him back to his hut while the crowd dispersed, laughing derisively.
He survived in the end, but was so twisted and broken that he could hardly even stand. He had to take back the hut and possessions he had so bravely given away, and lived on crooked and hopeless.
Not everyone gets to be an Immortal.
90.
THE RICEPOOP SAINT
A holy ascetic in the reign of Emperor Montoku had long ago given up all grain, which was a very difficult and virtuous thing to do. He ate pine needles instead. The emperor heard about him and invited him to come and live in the imperial garden. In time the emperor came to revere the ascetic deeply.
One day some brash young courtiers were joking among themselves when they decided to go and have a look at this famous ascetic. The fellow certainly looked impressive, and the young lords prostrated themselves before him. Then they boldly asked him, “Holy man, how many years has it been since you gave up eating grain? And how old are you, anyway?”
“I’m seventy,” the ascetic replied, “and I gave up grain in my youth. That must be fifty years ago or so, I suppose.”
One of the young gentlemen now began to wonder what a man’s feces would look like if he took no grain. They would have to be a bit unusual. He took his friends off to sneak a peek into the ascetic’s privy. What they saw was full of rice. How could this be?
Back they went to the ascetic’s hut, and while he was gone for moment, they rolled up the mat he had been sitting on. There was a hole in the floor under it and the earth below had been disturbed. They were onto something. A little digging revealed a sack of white rice. “Well, well!” thought the young lords, putting everything back as it had been.
When the holy man returned they broke into broad grins. “Riceshit saint! Riceshit saint!” they chanted, roaring with laughter. The mortified ascetic fled and was never heard of again.
91.
WHAT THE STORM WASHED IN
Late one spring, in Hitachi province, there was a terrific storm, and in the course of a furious night a human corpse was washed up on the beach. It was more than fifty feet long, and even though it was half buried in the sand, all you could see of a rider passing by on the other side of it was the tip of the rider’s bow. The head was gone, as were the right arm and the left leg. No doubt they had been eaten by the creatures of the deep. What a being this must have been when alive and whole! Since the body lay on its front, it was hard to be sure whether it was a man or a woman, but the overall shape suggested a woman.
The discovery created a sensation. People came from far away to see the prodigy and to offer one theory or another about its origin. One learned monk declared that there was nothing in the words of the Buddha to suggest that the inhabitants of any of the lands in our world are giants; he could only suppose that this impressive specimen must belong to the race of Warring Demons who are said sometimes to live at the bottom of the sea.
Meanwhile the provincial administration had decided they had to report so unusual a find to the court, and they were about to do so when the local people protested. “If we report it,” they said, “a court emissary will be down here for a look, and we’ll have no end of trouble and expense entertaining him. No, it would be much better to hush the whole thing up.” So in the end the governor kept the discovery quiet.
As the days went by, the processes of decomposition set in and people for hundreds of yards around had to evacuate their houses. The stench was just too much.
Of course, the governor told the whole story when he got back to the Capital.
92.
SEA DEVILS
Eight days into the seventh moon of 1171 a ship put in to Oki Island in the province of Izu. The islanders assumed that it had been blown in by a storm and went to have a look.
The ship rode seventy or eighty yards offshore. As the islanders watched, the devils on board let down ropes and moored it on all four sides to rocks on the sea bottom. Then eight devils jumped into the sea and shortly emerged on land. The islanders offered them food and millet wine. Though they never said a word, the devils ate and drank like horses.
The devils were eight or nine feet tall, with wild and tangled hair. Their bodies were blackish and hairless, and their eyes as round as monkeys’ eyes. Apart from some seaweed they had wrapped around their waists they were naked, but all sorts of pictures were drawn on their skin, with a sort of outline frame around each. Each devil carried a good long staff.
A devil asked to see one of the islanders’ bow and arrows. When the islander hesitated, the devil killed him with one blow of his staff. The devils then struck eight others, of whom four died while four, though wounded, survived. Next, the devils belched fire from their sides. Thinking they were all going to be killed, the islanders took out the bows and arrows belonging to the god of their shrine and prepared to defend themselves. At this point the devils went back into the sea and swam underwater out to their ship. Then they sailed away against the wind.
On the fourteenth day of the tenth moon, a report on the incident was forwarded to the provincial government, together with a sash that one of the devils had dropped. They say the sash is now in the treasury of Sanjūsangendō, the famous temple in Kyoto.
93.
THE DANCING MUSHROOM
Four or five woodcutters from the Capital once went into the mountains north of the city and, as fortune would have it, got lost. They were puzzling over which way to go when they heard people coming down the hillside. Who could they be? Four or five nuns, singing and dancing their way along, as jolly as you please. The woodcutters took fright. Real nuns would never behave this way! They couldn’t be human! No, they must be tengu, or demons of some sort!
The nuns made straight for the woodcutters who, despite their alarm, managed to ask the estimable ladies why they were carrying on that way, and why on top of everything else they were coming down from high on the mountain.
“Oh dear, all our dancing and singing must have rather frightened you!” the nuns replied. “You see, we’re nuns from such-and-such a convent. We all went into the mountains to pick flowers for the altar and then got completely lost. When we noticed some mushrooms, we realized we were hungry. Of course we realized the mushrooms might be poisonous, but we decided we might as well go ahead and eat them as starve. They tasted good. Then we began dancing. We didn’t mean to dance, you see, we just found ourselves doing it. We were quite surprised!”
The startled woodcutters now noticed how hungry they were. The nuns had kept their leftover mushrooms. “Why, rather than starve,” thought the men, “we might as well beg some off the nuns and eat too!” So they did.
As soon as they had eaten the mushrooms they found themselves dancing. N
uns and woodcutters danced and laughed together, and when the drunkenness passed they went their separate ways, thought by what paths no one knows. Ever since, that mushroom has been called maitake, the “dancing mushroom.”
All in all, the incident is a bit odd. We have this maitake too, in our own time, but the people who eat it don’t always dance. On balance the story is dubious, as even they who tell it readily confess.
94.
THE BEST-LAID PLANS …
There once lived an old monk who was the abbot of the temple at Golden Peak. In those days (although no longer) the senior monk of the mountain got appointed abbot, and this one had been a monk longer than any of his colleagues.
The next monk in line often wished his superior would hurry up and die, but being a sturdy old fellow the abbot gave no sign of popping off. In fact, at past eighty he was obviously more hale and hearty than anyone had a right to be even at seventy, and the successor knew all too well that he himself was now in his seventieth year. “Why, I could actually die and never be abbot!” the successor groaned to himself. “I can’t just have him murdered. Someone would be bound to find out. I’ll have to poison him!”
Of course the successor was afraid of how the Buddha might feel about this, but the temptation was too great and he began to think about what kind of poison to use. What poison was really deadly? Well, there was a toadstool called “great beyond” that was sure to kill anyone who ate it. He would gather plenty of great beyonds, make a really delicious dish of them, and feed them to the abbot as ordinary mushrooms. That would take care of him. “And then I’ll be abbot,” the successor gloated.
It was fall. He went straight off by himself into the mountains, gathered lots of great beyonds, and at dusk brought them back to his hut. Then he cut them up into a pot, seasoned them nicely, and made them up into a very attractive stew.
The new day had hardly dawned when he sent a disciple to invite the abbot over right away. The abbot arrived, leaning on his cane. “Yesterday I was given some beautiful mushrooms,” the successor explained, “so I made a stew of them and thought you should have some. It’s when you’re old that you appreciate delicacies like this!”
The abbot smiled, nodded, and sat down. His host made rice, heated up the great beyond stew, and set them both before him. The abbot ate heartily. As for the host, he ate mushrooms he had prepared separately.
They ended their meal with a hot drink. “Well, that’s it,” thought the successor, and waited anxiously for the old boy to start acting crazy and going mad with a headache. But nothing happened. It was very odd. Then the abbot’s toothless mouth broke into a grin. “Best batch of great beyonds I ever tasted!” he declared.
He had known! The successor stole speechless from the room while the abbot went on home. The abbot had been enjoying great beyonds for years, though of course the successor had not known this, and had never been poisoned by them. So the whole clever plan went wrong.
95.
REAL FLAMES AT LAST!
When a neighbor’s house caught fire and the wind threatened to carry the flames to his own, Yoshihide, a painter of buddhas, ran out into the street. He left inside a painting of Fudō he had been working on, not to mention his wife and children, who at the time were not even fully clothed. He forgot all about them and was quite satisfied to have gotten out himself.
Yoshihide’s own house was soon smoking and burning, but he just watched from across the street, ignoring the neighbors who rushed in horror to help him. As he watched his house go up, he nodded agreement from time to time, or smiled. “What a sight! All these years I’ve been painting them wrong!” he finally muttered.
One of the neighbors told him he was crazy. “Some spirit must have gotten into you!” he said.
“Spirit?” answered Yoshihide. “Oh no, it’s the flames. For years I’ve been painting the flames of Lord Fudō’s halo all wrong. Now I see how they burn. What a sight! You’re not a painter so you wouldn’t understand.” He laughed mockingly.
The Fudō he painted next impresses everyone, now as then.
96.
THE PAINTED HORSE
The painter Kanaoka made many pictures for retired Emperor Uda’s palace, and the best of all was one of a horse painted on a wall. That horse would get out of the painting every night and eat his way through the neighboring fields. No one could figure out what was doing all the damage until finally someone noticed that every day there was fresh mud on the painted horse’s hooves, and put two and two together. Kanaoka promptly scraped off the horse’s eyes. Nothing bothered the fields after that.
97.
A MODEL DEMON
Nichizō led the life of a wandering hermit in the Ōmine Mountains. One day on a remote trail he met a seven-foot-tall, dark-blue demon with red hair like flames, a slender neck, a grossly protruding breastbone, a swollen belly, and skinny shanks. The demon turned to Nichizō beseechingly and began to weep.
Nichizō asked it how it had gotten that way. “Four or five hundred years ago I was a man,” the demon sobbed, “but then my grudge against someone I hated made me like this. Yes, I murdered him and his sons, his grandsons, his great-grandsons, and his great-great-grandsons too, and now there’s no one left for me to kill. If only I knew where they were reborn, I’d murder them all over again. My rage burns as fiercely as ever, but my enemy’s descendants are gone! Now I’m alone with the pain of this fire that nothing will extinguish. If I’d never felt this way I might even have been born into paradise, but hate has brought me an eternity of suffering. A grudge against someone else is just like a grudge against yourself. I wish I’d known, I only wish I’d known!”
The demon’s tears swelled to a flood as it spoke, and flames leaped from the top of its head. Suddenly it turned and fled further into the mountains.
Nichizō felt sorry for it and prayed the best he knew how that it might suffer less.
98.
THE RIVER OF SNAKES
Nichizō’s master, like his disciple, practiced in the Ōmine Mountains, and he never left his remote refuge to visit the profane world. For years he chanted the Darani of Thousand-Armed Kannon in a deep valley toward the southern end of the range.
He had found the valley after a long struggle down slopes thick with dwarf bamboo. After assuming at first that it was waterless, he saw water after all; but the “water” then turned out to be a mass of huge snakes whose undulating backs from a distance resembled a stream. They seemed to have caught the intruder’s scent on the wind because they lifted their heads in the air as he approached.
Their backs were dark blue-green and their throats a lustrous crimson, while their eyes glittered like polished bronze bowls and their tongues flickered like flames. The ascetic thought he was lost and scrambled back up the steep slope, pulling himself along as best he could by the tough dwarf bamboo stems. He made such slow progress that hot, fetid serpent breath was soon gusting up at him from below. Any moment he would be devoured, if he did not black out first and die from the horrible smell.
Something was coming down the slope toward him, although he was too dazed by the stench to be able to tell what it was. The thing seized his arm and slung him roughly across its shoulders. Terrified, he felt over the creature with his free hand but found nothing reassuring. It was clearly a demon and would only be hauling him off to eat him. His last thought before he passed out was that today, one way or another, he would die.
The demon raced up hill and down dale till it put down its burden on a distant peak. The ascetic came to and expected the end, but since nothing happened he asked the demon timidly what it was. “I’m the demon Kuhanda,” it answered. At last the ascetic opened his eyes. Naked but for a loincloth, the creature was ten feet tall. Its black skin glistened like lacquer and its red hair bristled straight up. Suddenly it turned away and vanished.
The ascetic realized that his own devotion to Thousand-Armed Kannon must have saved him, because only Thousand-Armed Kannon could have come to his aid. T
he thought brought tears to his eyes and he prostrated himself in thanks.
He set off toward the northeast, all the while chanting the darani, till he came to a waterfall tumbling a good fifty feet from among the crags. It was so beautiful that he stopped awhile to admire it. The moss on the rocks beside it was especially lovely. All at once a boulder many yards across rose from the pool at the base of the fall, thrust twenty feet into the air, then sank again. Shortly it rose and subsided as before. The ascetic watched the cycle several times with mounting astonishment till he saw that the rock was actually a huge snake which filled the pool and which was lifting its head into the pounding waters of the fall. The snake must have been there so long! Despite his fear and loathing, he was touched by compassion for the snake’s suffering, and he recited many sutras for it and called often on Thousand-Armed Kannon before he went his way.
99.
THE WINE SPRING
Once a monk passing though the Ōmine Mountains lost his way and found himself heading down into a totally unknown valley. In the valley was a large village.
He was looking forward to asking where he was, but first he came to a roofed spring. The ground all around it was paved with stone. When he went for a welcome drink, he found that the water was all yellow. It turned out actually to be wine.
While he puzzled over this amazing discovery, a crowd of villagers gathered and wanted to know who he was. He explained how he happened to be there.
“Come with me,” one said. The monk followed unwillingly, wondering where they were off to and whether he would be killed. They got to a large, prosperous house and a gentleman came out to meet them. He too asked the monk to explain himself and the monk told his story as before.