The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by Неизвестный

  Senjumaru did his best to encourage the younger child. But neither the encourager nor the encouraged found his curiosity to be easily or fully satisfied by this kind of exchange. According to their master, the world outside was nothing but delusion. The scenes they viewed from the mountaintop, though they might seem lovely, were like moonlight reflected on the surface of the water, mere shadows, or foam on the sea. “Look at the clouds above the mountaintop,” their master would say. “Seen from afar, they seem as pure as snow, as bright as silver; but if you were in the midst of them, you’d find they weren’t snow or silver but just dense mist. You boys know what it’s like to be wrapped in the clouds of mist that rise from the valleys here on the mountain, don’t you? The world outside is just like those clouds.”

  The boys felt almost convinced by their master’s helpful explanations, but not quite. Their greatest source of unease was the fact of never having actually seen the creature they called “a woman”—some sort of human being that lived in the outside world and was held to be the source of almost every calamity.

  “They say I was only three when I came to the mountain, but you were out in the world until you were four; weren’t you? So you must be able to remember something about it. Never mind about other women—you can remember something about your own mother, can’t you?”

  “Sometimes I try to remember how she looked, and I’m almost at the point of being able to, but then a kind of curtain seems to come between us. It’s so frustrating! I just have some vague impressions of the way her warm breasts felt against my tongue and the sweet smell of her milk. Women have these soft, full, rounded breasts, completely different from anything on a man’s body—that much I do know. Memories of those things keep coming back, but the rest is vague, remote, like things that happened in a former life. . . .”

  At night, the two boys had whispered conversations like these as they lay side by side in the room next to their master’s.

  “If women are supposed to be devils, why should they have such soft breasts?” wondered Rurikōmaru.

  “You’re right. . . . How could a devil have nice, soft things like that?” echoed Senjumaru, bending his head a little to one side, as if starting to doubt his own memories.

  Both of them should have been well aware from the sutras they’d been studying since early childhood what ferocious creatures women were, but they were quite unable to imagine what form their ferocity took. There were the lines from the Sutra of King Udayana: “Women are the worst workers of evil. They bind men and lead them through the gates of sin.” And in the Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra: “One can take up a sword against an enemy and conquer him, but much harder yet is it to prevent the tribe of women from harming one.” So, then, women must be like robbers who bind men’s hands behind their backs and drag them off to some sinister place. Then again there was the passage in the Nirvana Sutra: “Woman is the Great Demon King, capable of devouring men in their entirety.” So perhaps women were monstrous beasts, larger and more fearsome than lions or tigers. And if the words of the Great Treasure Store of Sutras were true, where it says, “One glance at a woman can mean the loss of all innocence in the eye. Better to look at a great serpent than on a woman,” then the latter must be some kind of reptile that spits out poison from its body, like the huge pythons that lived in the depths of the mountains. Senjumaru and Rurikōmaru sought out fresh passages concerning women from many different sutras, then compared notes and exchanged opinions.

  “You and I had two of these ‘evil women’ for mothers—they even cradled us on their laps! Yet we managed to come through it all right. So maybe women aren’t like wild beasts and huge snakes that swallow people whole and spit out poison, after all.”

  “It says in the Treatise on Consciousness Only: ‘Women are messengers from Hell’; so they must be even more terrifying than wild beasts and snakes to look at. We were very lucky not to have been killed by them!”

  “But do you know the rest of that passage?” interrupted Senjumaru. “ ‘Women are messengers from Hell, in whom the seeds of the Buddha have long since been destroyed. Their outward appearance is like unto a bodhisattva, but their inner nature is like unto a demon.’ Well, then, even if inside they’re demons, they must have beautiful faces! The proof is that a merchant who came to worship here the other day was staring at me in a kind of trance and muttered to himself that some of these acolytes were as pretty as any girl.”

  “Me too! There’ve been lots of times when the older monks teased me for looking ‘just like a girl.’ I thought they meant I looked like a devil and got so upset I started crying once. But then someone said I shouldn’t cry, they just meant I had a bodhisattva’s face. I’m still not sure if I was being praised or blamed.”

  The more they talked to each other like this, the less they could grasp what sort of being a woman really was. Even on the holy mountain, sacred as it was to the memory of the founder, Dengyō Daishi, there were poisonous snakes and powerful wild animals. It was just like the world outside in that when spring came, the bush warblers sang and flowers bloomed, while in winter the trees and grasses withered and snow fell. The only difference was that there was not a single woman anywhere. But if the Buddha disliked women so much, how could they look like bodhisattvas? And why were women more dangerous than great serpents if their faces were so beautiful?

  “If the world outside is an illusion, then women must be beautiful illusions, too. And because they’re illusions, ordinary, unenlightened men are led astray, like travelers in deep mountain country who get lost in the mists.” Having thought about the matter carefully, the two boys came to this conclusion. A beautiful illusion, a beautiful nothing, that’s what a woman was. This was the only conclusion that could satisfy them and calm their minds.

  Now the younger Rurikōmaru’s curiosity was a passing, whimsical thing, like the fancies of a young child about some fairyland. But something much stronger than mere curiosity lay coiled in his older friend’s breast. Night after night Senjumaru gazed at the innocent face of the boy lying fast asleep across from him and wondered why he alone had to undergo such torments. He couldn’t help envying the other his innocence. And when he did manage to close his eyes, images of women of every kind floated before him so vividly that his whole night’s sleep was disturbed. At times they appeared as buddhas with the thirty-two signs of sanctity and seemed to embrace him in a purple golden radiance; at others, they took the form of demons from the Avici Hell about to burn him up with tongues of flame that blazed from the tips of their eighteen horns. Sometimes, covered in a cold sweat, he would be wakened from his nightmares by Rurikōmaru and would start up from his bed in terror.

  “You were moaning and saying strange things in your sleep! Were you being attacked by some evil spirit?”

  When Rurikōmaru asked him this, Senjumaru would bow his head in distress and say, his voice shaking a little, “I was being attacked by women in my dreams.”

  As the days passed, the look on Senjumaru’s face, his gestures and movements, gradually lost any trace of a child’s natural liveliness and simplicity. Whenever he had the chance of doing so unobserved by Rurikōmaru, he would stand in the inner sanctuary of the Great Lecture Hall and gaze dreamily at the lovely faces of the bodhisattvas Kannon and Miroku, lost in his own thoughts.

  At such times the line from the Treatise on Consciousness Only, “Their outward appearance is like unto a bodhisattva,” would fill his mind. Even if their inner selves were fiendish, even if their appearance was unreal, if there lived in the world human beings like the bodhisattvas worshiped in the many halls and pagodas of the holy mountain, what a grave sort of beauty they must possess! As he thought of this, he found his fear of women fading; all that remained was a strange kind of longing. He spent his days dreamily wandering among the sacred halls—the Hall of the Healing Buddha, the Lotus Hall, the Chapel of the Ordination Platform, the Chapel of the Mountain King—gazing at the holy images, the central ones with their att
endant statues, and the host of carved angels that flew along the beams. He no longer indulged in speculation about women with his younger friend. The word “woman” came to Rurikōmaru’s lips as easily as before, but now, for him, such talk had come to seem strange and deeply sinful.

  “Why can’t I treat the whole business of women innocently, like Rurikōmaru? Why do evil fantasies of women come to mind even when I worship the sacred images of the buddhas there in front of me?”

  Perhaps this was what was meant by “worldly passions.” . . . The very thought made his skin crawl. He had been relying on the master’s assurance that there were no seeds of passion to be found on the holy mountain, yet had he himself not become a prisoner of the passions? All the more reason, then, to reveal his troubles to the master. But a voice whispered over and over in his ear, “Do not reveal yourself so easily!” His troubles were painful but, at the same time, sweet. He wanted to keep them all to himself, somehow.

  It happened in the spring of the year that Senjumaru turned sixteen and Rurikōmaru fourteen. The mountain cherries were in full bloom in the five valleys that surrounded the Eastern Precinct, and among the young green leaves that enfolded the forty-six hermitages, the sounds of the monastery bells were muffled by an atmosphere that was somehow heavy and oppressive. One day at dawn the two boys were on their way back from an errand they’d been sent on by their master, to the high priest of Yokawa. They had stopped to rest a while, sitting in the shade of a cryptomeria in a place where passersby were few. Senjumaru let out a great sigh from time to time, gazing intently at the morning mist as it rose from the bottom of Paradise Valley and flowed up to join the clouds above the mountaintop.

  “You must think I’ve been strange lately,” he said suddenly, turning an unsmiling face toward his young friend. “Ever since we talked about the world outside, I’ve been worried about this matter of women; I think about it all the time. I don’t want to actually meet a woman at all; but to my shame, I find that when I kneel before the image of the Tathagata, no matter how hard I try to pray, images of women keep flitting before my eyes, with hardly a moment when I can concentrate on the Buddha. I’m disgusted with myself!”

  Rurikōmaru was surprised to see tears flowing down Senjumaru’s cheeks: It must be serious, he thought, if his friend was so distressed. Still, he couldn’t understand how the problem of women could cause him so much pain.

  “You won’t be ordained for another year or two,” continued Senjumaru, “but the master said that I was to become a monk this year. But what’s the point of taking a vow to follow the path to enlightenment in this shameful state of mind? Even if I practiced the six bodhisattva virtues and kept the five major precepts, this obsession of mine would ensure that I was never released from the round of birth and rebirth, to the end of time. Women may be just a sort of mirage, like a rainbow in the empty sky. But fools like me have to go right into the clouds to see for themselves that the rainbow is unreal; they won’t learn just from listening to well-meaning advice. And that’s why I’ve decided to slip away from the mountain just once before my ordination and see for myself what this creature they call woman is really like. Only in that way can I hope to understand the nature of the illusion. And then the obsession will vanish—in a flash—I’m sure of it!”

  “But won’t the master be very angry with you?”

  Senjumaru’s determination to go and discover the real nature of women so as to dispel the clouds of delusion in his mind touched Rurikōmaru deeply. He felt uneasy, though, at letting his only friend face the perils of the outside world alone. What would he do if he encountered the dragon god of Lake Biwa or the giant centipede of Mount Mikami? Would he not, perhaps, be bound hand and foot by some woman and dragged into a dark cellar somewhere? And if by chance he should return alive, would he be allowed to stay on the holy mountain, after breaking the master’s strict rule never to leave the mountain without his permission?

  Senjumaru’s answer to all this was clear and firm: “Of course I realize that there are all sorts of dangers waiting for me outside here. But to be caught on the fangs of some wild animal or the blade of a bandit would also be a way of following the Law. Wouldn’t it be better to lose my life than to continue being tormented by these passions? Besides, from what the older monks say, it seems the capital is only a journey of two leagues from here, so if I leave early in the morning, I might be back by a little past noon. And if the capital seems too far, I can just go to Sakamoto at the foot of the mountain. They say you can see women there, too. If I can get away for just half a day without the master’s noticing, I should be able to see my plan through. And even if I’m found out later, I’m sure the master will be pleased to learn that these obstacles on the path of my enlightenment have been removed. I appreciate your worrying about me, but please don’t try to stop me. My mind is made up.”

  Senjumaru looked at the disk of the sun as it rose, gliding through the dawn mists that hung over the surface of Lake Biwa, spread out beneath them. Laying a hand on Rurikōmaru’s shoulder, he said to him soothingly: “And today is the perfect chance for it. If I leave now, I can be back by two or so. I’ll return safe and sound, you just wait and see, with some interesting tales to tell you this evening.”

  “If you really are going, then take me along with you,” said Rurikōmaru, weeping. “With luck, you should come back safely, but even if it is only a half-day’s journey, something might happen to you. Who knows when we might meet again? You say you’re ready to give your life if you have to: how can I say good-bye to you like this, it’s too unkind! And what if the master asked me where you went—what could I answer? If I’m going to be scolded anyway, I’d rather leave the mountain with you. If it’s ‘following the Law’ for you, why then, it’s the same for me as well!”

  “No. My mind is chained in darkness, yours isn’t. We’re as different as charcoal and snow. You’re as pure as crystal; there’s no need for you to test your faith in ways that put you in danger. If something happened to you, what excuse could I ever offer to our master? If it were some amusing place I was going to, I’d never leave you behind, but the outside world is a disgusting, terrifying sort of place. If all goes well and I come back, the scales will have fallen from my eyes and I’ll be able to tell you all about it, in detail, so you’ll understand the meaning of illusion without having to see the outside world yourself. Just stay here and wait. If the master asks anything, say you wandered off on a mountain path and lost sight of me.”

  Senjumaru drew closer to Rurikōmaru and pressed his cheek sadly against the younger boy’s, remaining like that for some time. To leave behind—even for a short while—the holy mountain and this friend from whom he’d never been parted was both a painful and a daring thing to do. He felt something akin to the excitement of a warrior going into battle for the first time. The fear that he might actually die and the hope that he could win through and return victorious swirled within him.

  Two then three days passed, but Senjumaru did not return. Fearing that he might have tumbled into one of the mountain gorges and died there, his fellow acolytes and monks split up into several parties and set out in all directions, scouring the mountain for traces of him, but in vain.

  “Master, I’ve done a very wicked thing: I lied to you the other day.” Rurikōmaru prostrated himself before the master and confessed how for the very first time he’d broken the commandment against false speech. It was about ten days after Senjumaru had disappeared. “I was lying when I said I lost sight of Senjumaru on the way back from Yokawa. He isn’t anywhere on the mountain now. I know it was wrong of me to tell an outright lie, even if someone asked me to. Please forgive me. Oh, why didn’t I stop Senjumaru from ever leaving?” The boy lay flat on the floor, his body shaking with sobs of remorse.

  He had looked on Senjumaru as his elder brother, and now where was he? Was he sleeping among the tufts of moor grass somewhere, wet with dew? He’d firmly promised to come back within half a day, so something must have h
appened to him. Knowing this, it made no sense to be searching the mountain when they ought to be combing the world outside instead. And if he had fortunately survived, Rurikōmaru hoped they’d save him from that fearful world without delay. These were his feelings as he decided to risk a harsh scolding and tell the master everything about Senjumaru’s motives for leaving the mountain.

  “Well, it’s like tossing a pebble into the ocean. There’s no telling what might have become of him, out there in the world.” The master had closed his eyes and taken a deep breath before speaking slowly, with great concentration, so as to impress the gravity of the situation on the lad. “Still, you did well not to be misled yourself and to stay on the mountain. You’re the younger of the two, but your character has always been different from Senjumaru’s. It’s a matter of breeding, I suppose.”

  Senjumaru’s parents, though well-to-do, came from peasant stock, while Rurikōmaru was the scion of an aristocratic family that served at court. The word “breeding” had often been used when people drew comparisons between the two boys, in looks or temperament. Rurikōmaru had heard it himself before, but now for the first time from the master’s own lips.

  “It was wicked of him to break the rules and decide on his own to go, but I daresay he’s paying for his foolishness now, so I feel sorry for him, too. He may have been eaten by wild dogs or attacked by bandits—I’m sure something bad has happened to him. Perhaps we should assume he’s no longer of this world and offer up prayers for his soul. You, at any rate, must be careful never to give way to worldly passions. Let Senjumaru’s fate be a lesson to you!” The master looked into Rurikōmaru’s large, lively eyes and gently patted him on the back, as if to say, “What a good, clever lad you are!”