by Royall Tyler
Having done his bit Zōga tidied up, then addressed the empress in ringing tones. “What did you want me for, anyway?” he complained. “I don’t get it. Did you hear I’ve got a big dick or something? Well yes, it’s bigger than most, but it’s as limp as silk floss right now.”
All over the rooms eyes popped and jaws dropped. Who knows how the empress felt? It was unbelievable! The holy aura was gone and the speechless assembly broke out instead in a cold sweat.
Zōga’s farewell followed. “I’m an old man, you know,” he went on. “My insides don’t work and I’ve got the trots so bad all the time that I shouldn’t have come at all. The honor was just too tempting, I suppose. But now, you understand, I can’t hold it in any more and, begging your pardon, I’ve just got to go.”
He squatted on the veranda, tucked up his skirts, and let it squirt. The noise was revolting and the stench a horror. Both hit the empress full force. The younger courtiers went into convulsions of laughter, while the monks muttered to each other that Her Majesty was crazy herself to have called in such a lunatic. But nothing Zōga could do seemed to tarnish his unwanted fame.
He was past eighty, as sound as ever in body and spirit, when he understood he was to die in ten days. “At last I’ll have what I’ve always prayed for!” he exclaimed. “Soon I’ll leave this world behind and be reborn in paradise!” He had his disciples write verses on going to paradise, and cheerfully made one up himself from a classic paradox:
Eighty years of patience,
with age slowly wrinkling me
into an old man!
What a joy at last to find
the jellyfish’s bones!
Zōga announced the great day himself. When he called for a go board his disciples brought him one from next door, assuming he wanted to put the Buddha on it. But no, he demanded to be propped up and in a weak voice invited a close friend to play.
The friend was shocked and saddened that at a time like this, when Zōga should have been calling on Lord Amida and looking forward to his welcome, he was thinking of such foolishness instead. Why, he must be out of his mind! But Zōga was so eminent that the friend dared not disobey. He sat down at the board, and he and Zōga each placed their first ten stones. “All right,” said Zōga, “no more,” and swept the stones from the board.
“Why did you want to play go?” the friend asked timidly.
“I’ve watched people play ever since I was a boy, and as I was calling the Name just now I wanted to try it too.”
Now Zōga demanded to be propped up again. “Get me a pair of stirrup guards,” he commanded, meaning the leather guards that protect a rider’s feet. When they came, he had them tied together and hung round his neck. Then he opened his arms wide, though it was clearly painful for him to do so, and announced he would dance. After doing a little dance he had them removed.
“When I was first on the mountain,” he explained, “a bunch of young monks lived next door and they had a very good time. Once I saw one hang a pair of stirrup guards round his neck and dance to the tune of a clever song which I suppose he’d just made up. It really tickled me. I’d forgotten all about it, but the memory came back just now and I felt like doing it too. That’s all, though. I’ve nothing more on my mind.”
The Venerable Zōga then sent everyone away and retired to an inner room, where he sat in a crude chair facing the west and chanted the Lotus Sutra till he passed into Nirvana.
214.
THE STINKING HUT
A monk once roamed the provinces, worshipping at each holy place, till in Kyushu one day he got lost in a deserted stretch of mountains. For days he saw no sign of another human being.
He was enormously relieved to find a hut at last, but the woman who came to the door warned him that this was no house for him to stay in. He protested that he was a pilgrim, exhausted and lost. “I don’t care what your house is like,” he said, “as long as I can rest for a while.” In the end the woman gave in and agreed to let him spend the night.
She led him inside, spread a clean mat, and fed him a good meal which he ate gratefully. After dark a man came in with a big bundle on his shoulders and set it down. He was in a religious robe but his hair was cut short, not shaven, and he was too disgustingly filthy to go near.
“Who’s this?” he asked on seeing the monk, and when the woman told him, muttered that he was a bit surprised since no one like that had been around for years. Next, he began eating some of the stuff he had brought in. It was all chunks of cattle and horse meat.
By this time the monk was wondering what sort of place he had come to. Obviously the man not only ate meat but lived by supplying the local hunters with meat to feed their dogs. To a pious soul the very thought was horrifying, but in the dark there was nowhere else to go. The monk was stuck, disgusted and miserable, in the little stinking hut.
Very late at night the man got up, washed in warm water, changed into a fresh robe, and went out behind the hut. The curious monk saw him enter a tiny chapel and light the altar lamps and incense. He went on to do the Lotus Confession rite, then chanted the Lotus Sutra through. Finally, after prostrating himself before the altar, he intoned the Name of the Buddha Amida. His voice was deeply holy.
When he left his chapel at dawn, he and the monk found themselves face to face. He said his name was Jōson and he quickly apologized for his ignorance and uncouthness. He acknowledged that despite having been born in a human body he was still committing terrible sins. “If only I could really follow the Buddha’s Teaching!” he cried. “But I can’t, and that’s why I live off meat, which normal people won’t touch. I’m so glad karma has brought you here, though, because years from now, on a date I’ll tell you, I’m going to leave this world behind and be reborn into the Land of Bliss. Come again then, if you’d like to have the blessing of my passing!”
The monk saw that the man he had taken for an especially brutish sort of beggar was actually a saint, and he promised to return. Then he went his way.
He came back on the date named by Jōson, curious to see whether or not the prediction would come true. Jōson, now properly shaven and bathed and wearing a clean robe, greeted him joyfully. “I haven’t touched meat for months,” he said, “and tonight I’m going to be reborn in paradise!” His wife was now a nun.
The couple spent the night in their chapel, calling Amida’s Name. As dawn broke, light burst through the chapel door. The monk heard the sweetest of music resound in the sky and move slowly away toward the west, while a delicious fragrance filled the air. At daylight he went into the chapel. Jōson and the nun were seated together facing the west with their palms pressed together in prayer. They had passed away.
The weeping monk prostrated himself in reverence and awe. He never left again, and everyone in the province who heard the story came to receive the blessing of the place.
215.
BE GOOD TO YOUR MOTHER AND FATHER!
Koma no Yukimitsu, a dancer attached to the Kasuga Shrine in Nara, had learned the dance Katen from his father when he was fifteen. Since then he had often danced it all by himself at the shrine, just for the god’s pleasure.
Once he fell ill. Then his breathing stopped and he found himself at the palace of Emma, the king of hell. When a majestic gentleman arrived, Emma welcomed him with every sign of respect.
“This man has been loyal to me ever since he was fifteen,” the gentleman declared. “I want him released.”
King Emma obeyed, and the gentleman led Yukimitsu away.
“My lord,” said the amazed Yukimitsu, “I thank you for having gotten me pardoned. But who are you?”
“I’m the God of Kasuga,” the gentleman answered. “Would you care to see hell?”
“Yes, please,” said Yukimitsu.
The god took him right off to show him hell. Yukimitsu saw so many kinds of horrible suffering that it would be impossible to describe them all, and afterwards he begged to be told how he could escape the same awful fate.
�
��Be good to your mother and father!” said the god. “That’s the highest virtue. If you cultivate it, you won’t fall into hell.”
216.
HELL IN BROAD DAY
Having contracted a painful illness, the wife of a provincial official in Etchū eventually died. Her husband and three sons looked after the funeral as well as they could and had the proper rites performed for seven whole days, but when the seven days were over the sons found that their grief was as fresh as ever.
They wanted at least to find out where their mother had been reborn, and they knew that to do this they would have to visit Tateyama, a steep and forbidding mountain in the same province, covered with hot hell-springs and other such horrors. In this unearthly landscape you could sometimes get news of the dead. So they persuaded a holy man to join them and set off without delay to see the hells of Tateyama burn, and to discover what had become of their mother.
They visited hell after hell on the mountain and felt as though they themselves were burning, because all around them water was boiling up amid curls of flame. Even from a distance the heat was terrible, and it was awful to imagine the torments of the unhappy spirits immersed in such fierce waters. They had the holy man shake his staff, tipped with jangling brass rings, in powerful rhythm as he chanted a litany for these spirits, and they had him preach the Lotus Sutra. When he did this, the flames of the hell they were in would plainly die down.
At last, in a hell that was even hotter and more hideous than the rest, they had the holy man shake his staff and proclaim the Teaching as before. The flames had just dimmed a little when they heard their dear mother’s voice calling her eldest son’s name from a cleft in the rocks: “Tarō, Tarō!” At first they refused to believe their ears and did not answer, but the cry came again and again till they were terrified. “Who’s calling?” Tarō cried. The voice from the cleft answered, “How can you ask? Could a son not know his mother’s voice? In life I was mean and committed many sins, and now I suffer endless and unspeakable agony!”
The sons had heard of the dead visiting the living in dreams, but never of the dead speaking to the living in broad daylight. Yet the voice was their mother’s. “How can we help you?” they cried in reply.
The voice came again: “There’s no easy way for you to lighten the suffering my sins have brought me. You’re too poor to afford the good works that would help me. It wil be eons before I escape from this hell!”
“But what would it take to free you?” her sons insisted.
“The only way is to make a thousand copies of the Lotus Sutra and dedicate them all for me on the same day.”
The sons knew how hard it was to do one copy a day. Not ten, not a hundred, but a thousand copies were clearly impossible, but now that they had seen their mother’s agony with their own eyes they could not simply ignore her and leave. Each would far rather have taken her place in hell. The holy man had to remind them that although one might take another’s place in this world, in the afterlife we all receive the impartial reward for our own actions so that no one can be punished for another’s sins. “Go home,” he urged them, “copy the Sutra as best you can! Even a single copy will help her a little!”
They went home stunned with grief and told their father what they had seen and heard. He acknowledged that a thousand Lotus Sutras was more than they could manage. Since they would just have to do what they could, they decided to start off with a goal of three hundred.
When the governor of the province heard what had happened, he called in the father and got the whole story from him. Pious and compassionate, he responded by vowing to join in the Sutra copying and encouraged everyone he knew in the neighboring provinces to do the same. A thousand copies were soon done and the dedication rite performed.
Knowing that their mother was now delivered from the torments of hell the sons rejoiced, and the eldest had a dream. His mother came to him, exquisitely beautiful, and told him that their care had lifted her up to rebirth in the Tōri Heaven. Then she flew off into the sky. Naturally he broadcast this dream far and wide, and it gladdened everyone who heard it.
Later on the sons returned to Tateyama and went round the hells again, but this time no voice came from the rocks.
The hells themselves, of course, are still there.
217.
THE OLD WOMAN ON THE MOUNTAIN
An old woman living with a younger couple at Sarashina in Shinano province looked after them for many years like a mother. But the wife, who in her heart detested her, hated especially the way the old woman was being deformed by age. She kept harping to her husband about how awful the old woman was. He tried to discourage her complaints, but he too ended up as often as not neglecting the old woman, whose body in the meantime had bent almost in two.
Finally the wife could take no more. Why, the hag did not even have the grace to die! Telling her husband she had had enough, she ordered him to take the old woman somewhere far into the mountains and abandon her. He did not like the idea a bit and at first did nothing, but she pestered him mercilessly till he was fed up and gave in.
It was the fifteenth night of the eighth moon, the great full-moon night of the year. Moonlight flooded the sky. “Come, dear,” said the husband, “there’s a very holy service at the temple. I’ll take you there!”
The old woman was eager to go. He put her on his back and headed straight up the high mountain behind their village. When he was sure she could never get back by herself, he put her down and fled. She shouted after him in vain.
At home again he found he could not forget what his wife had made him do, and considering how kindly the old woman had once looked after them he wished he had not done it. All night long, with the moon bright over the mountain, he lay sleepless and his thoughts went out to her. As he lay there he murmured the poem:
This heart of mine
refuses comfort,
ah, Sarashina!
as I watch the moon
bright over Mount Obasute.
Then he went back up the mountain, brought the old woman down, and cared for her as before.
So don’t let your wife’s unpleasant tongue turn your mind to unworthy thoughts. No doubt this sort of thing goes on even now, though.
As for the mountain, it’s been called Obasuteyama ever since: “Mountain of the Deserted Crone.” Until then people had always called it Kamuriyama, “The Cap,” because it’s shaped like the cap a gentleman wears.
218.
MOTHER
Two brothers who hunted for a living went one day, as usual, into the mountains. Each had his lookout in the fork of a tall tree. The pair of trees were about fifty yards apart, and the brothers would wait for deer to drift in down below, between them.
It was a pitch-black night late in the ninth moon. Unable to see a thing, they waited patiently just to hear the deer. Hour after hour crept by. The deer did not come.
All of a sudden something reached down from higher up in the elder brother’s tree, gripped his hair, and hauled him upward. He made a frantic grab at the top of his head and touched a wizened hand. A demon was dragging him off to eat him!
“If something had me by the hair and was pulling me up,” he shouted to his younger brother across the way, “what would you do?”
“I’d take good aim and shoot it!”
“Well, do it! Because that’s exactly what’s happening!”
“All right, I’ll aim by your voice!” The younger aimed at the spot just above where his brother’s voice had come from and felt he had a hit. “Bet I got it!” he yelled.
The elder brother felt the top of his head again and his fingers closed on the hand, now severed at the wrist. “You cut its hand off!” he shouted. “Let’s call it a night! I’ll keep the hand!”
The pair climbed down from their trees and got home well past midnight.
Their mother, so old and tottery that she could hardly even stand, lived in a room between the two. They heard her groaning when they came in and called to ask
what the matter was, but got no answer.
By the light of a lamp they examined the hand. It looked very like their mother’s. In fact it was their mother’s, beyond a doubt.
“Thanks a lot!” snarled their mother when they slid open her door. She leapt to her feet and nearly hurled herself at them, but they just said, “Did you lose something, Mother?” then tossed the hand into the room and closed the door.
Soon she was dead. The poor thing had gotten so old and senile that she had turned into a demon and gone off to the mountains to eat her children.
219.
PERILOUS GRATITUDE
A poor couple in Kyushu lived by the sea, and every day the wife would go out to comb the shore. One day she went gathering shellfish with a neighbor’s wife. On the beach she took the baby off her back, put it down on a flat rock, and set a child to watch it. The spot was close to the hills.
While working, the two women noticed a monkey by the water, apparently trying to catch fish. This deserved a closer look. They assumed the monkey would flee when they got too close, and it certainly seemed frightened; but it stayed crouched where it was, chattering furiously. Something was wrong.
They soon saw what it was. In reaching for a huge clam it hoped to eat, the monkey had stuck its hand into the clam’s open shell. The clam had snapped shut and trapped the monkey’s hand. Now the tide was coming in and the clam was burrowing deeper and deeper into the sand. Soon the monkey would be overwhelmed by the sea.
The women took in the scene and laughed heartily. The neighbor’s wife picked up a big stone to bash at the monkey with but her friend, the woman with the baby, reproved her sharply and snatched the stone away. “I only want to kill it so I can roast it for dinner,” the neighbor’s wife complained. But the baby’s mother insisted, and with a bit of wood pried the clam open far enough for the monkey to get its hand out. Then she declared it would also be wrong to kill the clam, and so even though both women were actually there to collect shellfish she carefully removed the clam from their harvest and buried it again in the sand.