A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees

by Kenko

  In due course my companion emerged, but the elegance of the scene led me to stay a little longer and watch from the shadows. Soon the double doors opened a fraction wider; it seemed the lady was gazing at the moon. It would have been very disappointing had she immediately bolted the doors as soon as the visit was over. She could not know that someone would still be watching. Such sensibility could only be the fruit of a habitual attitude of mind.

  I heard that this lady died not long after.

  *

  It is foolish to be in thrall to fame and fortune, engaged in painful striving all your life with never a moment of peace and tranquillity.

  Great wealth will drive you to neglect your own well-being in pursuit of it. It is asking for harm and tempting trouble. Though you leave behind at your death a mountain of gold high enough to prop up the North Star itself, it will only cause problems for those who come after you. Nor is there any point in all those pleasures that delight the eyes of fools. Big carriages, fat horses, glittering gold and jewels – any man of sensibility would view such things as gross stupidity. Toss your gold away in the mountains; hurl your jewels into the deep. Only a complete fool is led astray by avarice.

  Everyone would like to leave their name unburied for posterity – but the high-born and exalted are not necessarily fine people, surely. A dull, stupid person can be born into a good house, attain high status thanks to opportunity and live in the height of luxury, while many wonderfully wise and saintly men choose to remain in lowly positions, and end their days without ever having met with good fortune. A fierce craving for high status and position is next in folly to the lust for fortune.

  We long to leave a name for our exceptional wisdom and sensibility – but when you really think about it, desire for a good reputation is merely revelling in the praise of others. Neither those who praise us nor those who denigrate will remain in the world for long, and others who hear their opinions will be gone in short order as well. Just who should we feel ashamed before, then? Whose is the recognition we should crave? Fame in fact attracts abuse and slander. No, there is nothing to be gained from leaving a lasting name. The lust for fame is the third folly.

  Let me now say a few words, however, to those who dedicate themselves to the search for knowledge and the desire for understanding. Knowledge leads to deception; talent and ability only serve to increase earthly desires. Knowledge acquired by listening to others or through study is not true knowledge. So what then should we call knowledge? Right and wrong are simply part of a single continuum. What should we call good? One who is truly wise has no knowledge or virtue, nor honour nor fame. Who then will know of him, and speak of him to others? This is not because he hides his virtue and pretends foolishness – he is beyond all distinctions such as wise and foolish, gain and loss.

  I have been speaking of what it is to cling to one’s delusions and seek after fame and fortune. All things of this phenomenal world are mere illusion. They are worth neither discussing nor desiring.

  *

  A certain novice monk in Inaba was rumoured to have a beautiful daughter, and many men came asking for her hand. But the girl ate nothing but chestnuts and never touched grains, so her father declared that she was too eccentric to be marriageable, and rejected them all.

  *

  When I went to see the horse racing at the Kamo Shrine on the fifth day of the fifth month, the view from our carriage was blocked by a throng of common folk. We all got down and moved towards the fence for a better view, but that area was particularly crowded and we couldn’t make our way through.

  We then noticed a priest who had climbed a chinaberry tree across the way to sit in its fork and watch from there. He was so sleepy as he clung there that he kept nodding off, and only just managed to start awake in time to save himself from falling each time. Those who saw him couldn’t believe their eyes. ‘What an extraordinary fool!’ they all sneered. ‘How can a man who’s perched up there so precariously among the branches relax so much that he falls asleep?’

  A thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘Any of us may die from one instant to the next,’ I said, ‘and in fact we are far more foolish than this priest – here we are, contentedly watching the world go by, oblivious to death.’

  ‘That’s so true,’ said those in front of me. ‘It’s really very stupid, isn’t it,’ and they turned around and invited me in and made room for me.

  Anyone can have this sort of insight, but at that particular moment it came as a shock, which is no doubt why people were so struck by it. Humans are not mere insensate beings like trees or rocks, after all, and on occasion things can really strike home.

  *

  Those who feel the impulse to pursue the path of enlightenment should immediately take the step, and not defer it while they attend to all the other things on their mind. If you say to yourself, ‘Let’s just wait until after this is over,’ or ‘While I’m at it I’ll just see to that,’ or ‘People will criticize me about such-and-such so I should make sure it’s all dealt with and causes no problem later,’ or ‘There’s been time enough so far, after all, and it won’t take long just to a wait a little longer while I do this. Let’s not rush into things,’ one imperative thing after another will occur to detain you. There will be no end to it all, and the day of decision will never come.

  In general, I find that reasonably sensitive and intelligent people will pass their whole life without taking the step they know they should. Would anyone with a fire close behind him choose to pause before fleeing? In a matter of life and death, one casts aside shame, abandons riches and runs. Does mortality wait on our choosing? Death comes upon us more swiftly than fire or flood. There is no escaping it. Who at that moment can refuse to part with all they love – aged parents, beloved children, lord and master, or the love of others?

  *

  The holy man of Shosha had accumulated such merit through recitations of The Lotus Sutra that he had attained purity of the Six Senses.

  Once, on a journey, he entered the lodging where he was to stay the night and heard the bubbling of a pot of beans being boiled over a fire made from their husks. ‘We’re so closely related and yet you boil us so brutally!’ they were crying, and the bean husks crackling in the flames seemed to him to reply, ‘Do you imagine we’re boiling you on purpose? It’s excruciating for us to be burning like this, heaven knows, but we’re powerless to stop. Enough of these recriminations!’

  *

  As soon as I hear someone’s name, I feel I can picture their face, but when I actually meet them no one ever looks as I had been imagining all that time.

  Also, I wonder if everyone, on hearing some old tale, imagines it as taking place in a certain part of some house he knows, and identifies the characters with people he sees in life, as I do.

  And is it just I who sometimes feels a conviction that what someone is saying, or what you’re seeing or thinking just then, has already happened before, though you cannot remember when?

  *

  Unpleasant things – a great many things cluttering up the area where someone is sitting. A lot of brushes lying on an ink stone. A crowd of Buddhist images in a private worship hall. A large collection of stones and plants in a garden. Too many children and grandchildren in a house. Too much talk when meeting others. A long list of one’s virtuous acts in a supplicatory prayer.

  Things that are not unpleasant in large amounts are books on a book cart, and rubbish on a rubbish heap.

  *

  What kind of man will feel depressed at being idle? There is nothing finer than to be alone with nothing to distract you.

  If you follow the ways of the world, your heart will be drawn to its sensual defilements and easily led astray; if you go among people, your words will be guided by others’ responses rather than come from the heart. There is nothing firm or stable in a life spent between larking about together and quarrelling, exuberant one moment, aggrieved and resentful the next. You are forever pondering pros and cons, endlessly absorbed
in questions of gain and loss. And on top of delusion comes drunkenness, and in that drunkenness you dream.

  Scurrying and bustling, heedless and forgetful – such are all men. Even if you do not yet understand the True Way, you can achieve what could be termed temporary happiness at least by removing yourself from outside influences, taking no part in the affairs of the world, calming yourself and stilling the mind. As The Great Cessation and Insight says, we must ‘break all ties with everyday life, human affairs, the arts and scholarship’.

  *

  I cannot bear the way people will make it their business to know all the details of some current rumour, even though it has nothing to do with them, and then proceed to pass the story on and do their best to learn more. Wandering monks up from some provincial backwater seem particularly adept at prying into tales about others as if it was their own concern, and spreading the word in such detail that you wonder how on earth they came to know so much.

  *

  Nor can I bear the way people will spread excited rumours about the latest marvels. A refined person will not learn of things until the rumours are old and stale.

  If someone new comes visiting, the boorish and insensitive will always manage to make the visitor feel ignorant by exchanging cryptic remarks about something they all know among themselves, some story or name, chuckling and exchanging knowing glances.

  *

  When someone complained that it was a great shame the way fine silk covers are so soon damaged, Ton’a replied, ‘It is only after the top and bottom edges of the silk have frayed, or when the mother-of-pearl has peeled off the roller, that a scroll is truly impressive’ – an astonishingly fine remark, I felt. Similarly, an unmatched set of bound books can be considered unattractive, but Bishop Kōyū impressed me deeply by saying that only a boring man will always want things to match; real quality lies in irregularity – another excellent remark.

  In all things, perfect regularity is tasteless. Something left not quite finished is very appealing, a gesture towards the future. Someone told me that even in the construction of the imperial palace, some part is always left uncompleted.

  In the Buddhist scriptures and other works written by the great men of old there are also a number of missing sections.

  *

  The Dainagon Abbot employed a young acolyte by the name of Otozuru-maru, who came to be on intimate terms with one Yasura-dono and was constantly coming and going to visit him.

  One day, seeing the lad return, the abbot asked where he had been. ‘I’ve been to see Yasura-dono,’ he replied.

  ‘Is this Yasura-dono a layman, or a monk?’ enquired the abbot.

  Bringing his sleeves together in a polite bow, the acolyte replied, ‘I really don’t know, sir. I’ve never seen his head.’

  I wonder why not – after all, he would have seen the rest of him.

  *

  The Yin-Yang masters do not concern themselves with those days of the calendar marked ‘Red Tongue Days’. Nor did people of old treat the day as unpropitious. It seems someone more recently has declared it unlucky, and now everyone has begun to avoid it, believing that things undertaken on this day will miscarry. This idea – that whatever is said or done on this day will fail, that objects gained on the day will be lost and plans made will go awry – is ridiculous. If you count the number of failures that happen on an auspicious day, you will find there are just as many.

  This is because, in this transient phenomenal world with its constant change, what appears to exist in fact does not. What is begun has no end. Aims go unfulfilled, yet desire is endless. The human heart changes ceaselessly. All things are passing illusion. What is there that remains unchanging? The folly of such beliefs springs from people’s inability to understand this.

  It is said that evil performed on an auspicious day is always ill-fated, while good performed on an inauspicious one will be blessed by good fortune. It is people who create good fortune and misfortune, not the calendar.

  *

  A man who was studying archery took two arrows in his hand and stood before the target.

  ‘A beginner should not hold two arrows,’ his teacher told him. ‘You will be careless with the first, knowing you have a second. You must always be determined to hit the target with the single arrow you shoot, and have no thought beyond this.’ With only two arrows, and standing before his master, would he really be inclined to be slapdash with one of them? Yet although he may not have been aware of his own carelessness, his teacher was. The same injunction surely applies in all matters.

  A man engaged in Buddhist practice will tell himself at night that there is always the morning, or in the morning will anticipate the night, always intending to make more effort later. And if such are your days, how much less aware must you be of the passing moment’s indolence. Why should it be so difficult to carry something out right now when you think of it, to seize the instant?

  *

  Someone told the following tale. A man sells an ox. The buyer says he will come in the morning to pay and take the beast. But during the night, the ox dies. ‘The buyer thus gained, while the seller lost,’ he concluded.

  But a bystander remarked, ‘The owner did indeed lose on the transaction, but he profited greatly in another way. Let me tell you why. Living creatures have no knowledge of the nearness of death. Such was the ox, and such too are we humans. As it happened, the ox died that night; as it happened, the owner lived on. One day’s life is more precious than a fortune’s worth of money, while an ox’s worth weighs no more than a goose feather. One cannot say that a man who gains a fortune while losing a coin or two has made a loss.’

  Everyone laughed at this. ‘That reasoning doesn’t only apply to the owner of the ox,’ they scoffed.

  The man went on. ‘Well then, if people hate death they should love life. Should we not relish each day the joy of survival? Fools forget this – they go striving after other enjoyments, cease to appreciate the fortune they have and risk all to lay their hands on fresh wealth. Their desires are never sated. There is a deep contradiction in failing to enjoy life and yet fearing death when faced with it. It is because they have no fear of death that people fail to enjoy life – no, not that they don’t fear it, but rather they forget its nearness. Of course, it must be said that the ultimate gain lies in transcending the relative world with its distinction between life and death.’

  At this, everyone jeered more than ever.

  *

  A lady who had reason to withdraw from the world for a time had retired to a lonely tumbledown house, where she was idling away the long days of her seclusion, when one dimly moonlit evening a certain man decided to call; but as he was creeping stealthily to her door, a dog set up a fierce barking. This brought one of the maidservants. ‘Where do you hail from?’ she enquired. The man promptly announced himself, and was shown in.

  His heart was heavy as he took in his forlorn surroundings. How must she spend her time here? He stood hesitating on the veranda’s rough wooden boards. ‘This way,’ came a wonderfully serene and youthful voice, so he slid open the door with some difficulty and entered.

  The place was not so shabby after all, but was modest and refined. At the far end a lamp shone softly, revealing the beauty of the furnishings, and the scent of incense lit some time earlier imbued the place with an evocative and beguiling air.

  He heard orders being given among the servants – ‘Take care to lock the gate. It may rain. Put the carriage under the shelter of the gate roof’ – and talk of where his retainers should spend the night. Then one added, in a soft murmur that nevertheless reached his ears because he was quite close, ‘Tonight at least we can sleep easy.’

  The two spoke together of all that had happened since they last met, until the first cock crowed while it was yet night. On they talked earnestly, of matters past and to come, and now the cock’s crow was loud and persistent. The day must by now have dawned, he thought, but this was not a place he must hasten to leave before light,
so he lingered on a little, until sunlight whitened the cracks in the door. At last, with promises not to forget her, he departed.

  Recalling the enchanting scene, he remembers how beautifully green the trees and garden plants glowed in that early summer daybreak, and even now, whenever he passes the house, he turns to gaze until the great camphor tree in the garden is lost to sight.

  *

  A man famed for his tree-climbing skills once directed another to climb a tall tree and cut branches. While the fellow was precariously balanced aloft, the tree-climber watched without a word, but when he was descending and had reached the height of the eaves the expert called to him, ‘Careful how you go! Take care coming down!’

  ‘Why do you say that? He’s so far down now that he could leap to the ground from there,’ I said.

  ‘Just so,’ replied the tree-climber. ‘While he’s up there among the treacherous branches I need not say a word – his fear is enough to guide him. It’s in the easy places that mistakes will always occur.’

  Lowly commoner though he was, his words echoed the warnings of the sages.

  Apparently one of the laws of kickball also states that if you relax after achieving a difficult kick, this is the moment when the ball will always fall to the ground.

  *

  There are seven types of people one should not have as a friend.

  The first is an exalted and high-ranking person. The second, somebody young. The third, anyone strong and in perfect health. The fourth, a man who loves drink. The fifth, a brave and daring warrior. The sixth, a liar. The seventh, an avaricious man.

  The three to choose as friends are – one who gives gifts, a doctor and a wise man.

  *

  The domestic animals are the horse and the ox. It is a shame to tether the poor things and make them suffer, but it can’t be helped, since they are indispensable to us. One should most certainly have a dog, as they are better than men at guarding the house. However, since all the houses around you will have dogs, you probably don’t need to go out of your way to get one yourself.