Part 10
The Buddhist word _Rin-yé,_ or _Rinten,_ has the meaning of "turning the Wheel,"--another expression for passing from birth to birth. The Wheel here is the great Circle of Illusion,--the whirl of Karma.]
This is a _hauta_:--
_Numberless insects there are that call from dawn to evening,_ _Crying, "I love! I love!"--but the Firefly's silent passion,_ _Making its body burn, is deeper than all their longing._ _Even such is my love ... yet I cannot think through what_ ingwa _I opened my heart--alas!--to a being not sincere!_[11]
[Footnote 11:
Kaäi, kaäi to Naku mushi yori mo Nakanu hotaru ga Mi we kogasu. Nanno ingwa dé Jitsu naki hito ni Shin we akashité,-- Aa kuyashi!
Lit.: "'I-love-I-love'-saying-cry-insects than, better never-cry-firefly, body scorch! What Karma because-of, sincerity-not-is-man to, inmost-mind opened?--ah! regret!" ... It was formerly believed that the firefly's light really burned its own body.]
If the foregoing seem productions possible only to our psychological antipodes, it is quite otherwise with a group of folk-songs reflecting the doctrine of Impermanency. Concerning the instability of all material things, and the hollowness of all earthly pleasures, Christian and Buddhist thought are very much in accord. The great difference between them appears only when we compare their teaching as to things ghostly,--and especially as to the nature of the Ego. But the Oriental doctrine that the Ego itself is an impermanent compound, and that the Self is not the true Consciousness, rarely finds expression in these popular songs. For the common people the Self exists: it is a real (though multiple) personality that passes from birth to birth. Only the educated Buddhist comprehends the deeper teaching that what we imagine to be Self is wholly illusion,--a darkening veil woven by Karma; and that there is no Self but the Infinite Self, the eternal Absolute. In the following _dodoitsu_ will be found mostly thoughts or emotions according with universal experience:--
_Gathering clouds to the moon;--storm and rain to the flowers:_ _Somehow this world of woe never is just as we like._[12]
[Footnote 12:
Tsuki ni murakumo, Hana ni wa arashi: Tokaku uki-yo wa Mama naranu.
This song especially refers to unhappy love, and contains the substance of two Buddhist proverbs: _Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kazé_ (cloud-masses to the moon; wind to flowers); and _Mama ni naranu wa uki-yo no narai_ (to be disappointed is the rule in this miserable world). "Uki-yo" (this fleeting or unhappy world) is one of the commonest Buddhist terms in use.]
_Almost as soon as they bloom, the scented flowers of the plum-tree_ _By the wind of this world of change are scattered and blown away._
_Thinking to-morrow remains, thou heart's frail flower-of-cherry?_ _How knowest whether this night the tempest will not come?_[13]
[Footnote 13:
Asu ari to Omō kokoro no Ada-zakura: Yo wa ni arashi no Fukanu monokawa?
Lit.: "To-morrow-is that think heart-of perishable-cherry flower: this-night-in-storm blow-not, is-it-certain?"]
_Shadow and shape alike melt and flow back to nothing:_ _He who knows this truth is the Daruma of snow._[14]
[Footnote 14:
Kagé mo katachi mo Kiyuréba moto no Midzu to satoru zo Yuki-Daruma.
Lit.: "Shadow and shape also, if-melt-away, original-water is,--that-understands Snow-Daruma." Daruma (Dharma), the twenty-eighth patriarch of the Zen sect, is said to have lost his legs through remaining long in the posture of meditation; and many legless toy-figures, which are so balanced that they will always assume an upright position however often placed upside-down, are called by his name. The snow-men made by Japanese children have the same traditional form.--The Japanese friend who helped me to translate these verses, tells me that a ghostly meaning attaches to the word "Kagé" [shadow] in the above;--this would give a much more profound signification to the whole verse.]
_As the moon of the fifteenth night, the heart till the age fifteen:_ _Then the brightness wanes, and the darkness comes with love._[15]
[Footnote 15: According to the old calendar, there was always a full moon on the fifteenth of the month. The Buddhist allusion in the verse is to _mayoi,_ the illusion of passion, which is compared to a darkness concealing the Right Way.]
_All things change, we are told, in this world of change and sorrow;_ _But love's way never changes of promising never to change._[16]
[Footnote 16:
Kawaru uki-yo ni Kawaranu mono wa Kawarumai to no Koi no michi.
Lit.: "Change changeable-world-in, does-not-change that-which, 'We-will-never-change'-saying of Love-of Way."]
_Cruel the beautiful flash,--utterly heartless that lightning!_ _Before one can look even twice it vanishes wholly away!_[17]
[Footnote 17:
Honni tsurénai Ano inadzuma wa Futa mé minu uchi Kiyété yuku.
The Buddhist saying, _Inadzuma no hikari, ishi no hi_ (lightning-flash and flint-spark),--symbolizing the temporary nature of all pleasures,--is here playfully referred to. The song complains of a too brief meeting with sweet-heart or lover.]
_His very sweetness itself makes my existence a burden!_ _Truly this world of change is a world of constant woe!_[18]
[Footnote 18: Words of a loving but jealous woman, thus interpreted by my Japanese friend: "The more kind he is, the more his kindness overwhelms me with anxiety lest he be equally tender to other girls who may also fall in love with him."]
_Neither for youth nor age is fixed the life of the body;_ _--Bidding me wait for a time is the word that forever divides._[19]
[Footnote 19:
Rō-shō fujō no Mi dé ari nagara, Jisetsu maté to wa Kiré-kotoba.
Lit.: "Old-young not-fixed-of body being, time-wait to-say, cutting-word." Ro-shō fujō is a Buddhist phrase. The meaning of the song is: "Since all things in this world are uncertain, asking me to wait for our marriage-day means that you do not really love me;--for either of us might die before the time you speak of."]
_Only too well I know that to meet will cause more weeping;_[20] _Yet never to meet at all were sorrow too great to bear._
[Footnote 20: Allusion is made to the Buddhist text, _Shōja hitsu metsu, esha jōri_ ("Whosoever is born must die, and all who meet must as surely part"), and to the religious phrase, _Ai betsu ri ku_ ("Sorrow of parting and pain of separation").]
_Too joyful in union to think, we forget that the smiles of the evening_ _Sometimes themselves become the sources of morning-tears._
Yet, notwithstanding the doctrine of impermanency, we are told in another _dodoitsu_ that--
_He who was never bewitched by the charming smile of a woman,_ _A wooden Buddha is he--a Buddha of bronze or stone!_[21]
[Footnote 21: Much more amusing in the original:--
Adana é-gao ni Mayowanu mono wa Ki-Butsu,--kana-Butsu,-- Ishi-botoké "Charming-smile-by bewildered-not, he-as-for, wood-Buddha, metal-Buddha, stone-Buddha!" The term "Ishi-botoké" especially refers to the stone images of the Buddha placed in cemeteries.--This song is sung in every part of Japan; I have heard it many times in different places.]
And why a Buddha of wood, or bronze, or stone? Because the living Buddha was not so insensible, as we are assured, with jocose irreverence, in the following:--
_"Forsake this fitful world"!_--
{_Lord Buddha's_} _that was_ _or_ _teaching!_ {_upside-down_ }
_And Ragora,[22] son of his loins?--was he forgotten indeed?_
There is an untranslatable pun in the original, which, if written in Romaji, would run thus:--
Uki-yo we sutéyo t'a {Shaka Sama} Sorya yo {saka-sama } Ragora to iū ko we Wasurété ka?
_Shakamuni_ is the Japanese rendering of "Sakyamuni;" "Shaka Sama" is therefore "Lord Sakya," or "Lord Buddha." But _saka-sama_ is a Japanese word meaning "topsy-turvy," "upside down;" and the difference between the pronunciation of Shaka Sama and _saka-sama_ is slight enough to have suggested the pun. Love in suspense is not usually inclined to reverence.
[Footnote 22: Râhula.]
_Even while praying together in front of the tablets ancestral,_ _Lovers find chance to murmur prayers never meant for the dead!_[23]
And as for interrupters:--
_Hateful the wind or rain that ruins the bloom of flowers:_ _Even more hateful far who obstructs the way of love._
Yet the help of the Gods is earnestly besought:--
_I make my_ hyaku-dō, _traveling Love's dark pathway._ _Ever praying to meet the owner of my heart._[24]
[Footnote 23:
Ekō suru toté Hotoké no maé yé Futari mukaité, Konabé daté.
Lit.: "Repeat prayers saying, dead-of-presence-in twain facing,--small-pan cooking!" _Hotoké_ means a dead person as well as a Buddha. (See my _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan:_ "The Household Shrine")-_Konabé-daté_ is an idiomatic expression signifying a lovers' tête-à-tête. It is derived from the phrase, _Chin-chin kamo nabé_("cooking a wild duck in a pan"),--the idea suggested being that of the pleasure experienced by an amorous couple in eating out of the same dish. _Chin-chin,_ an onomatope, expresses the sound of the gravy boiling.]
[Footnote 24: To perform the rite called "o-hyaku-dō" means to make one hundred visits to a temple, saying a prayer each time. The expression "dark way of Love" _(koi no yami_ or _yamiji)_ is a Buddhist phrase; love, being due to _mayoi,_ or illusion, is a state of spiritual darkness. The term "owner of my heart" is an attempted rendering of the Japanese word _nushi,_ signifying "master," "owner,"--often, also, "landlord,"--and, in love-matters, the lord or master of the affection inspired.]
The interest attaching to the following typical group of love-songs will be found to depend chiefly upon the Buddhist allusions:--
_In the bed of the River of Souls, or in waiting alone at evening,_ _The pain differs nothing at all: to a mountain the pebble grows._[25]
_Who furthest after illusion wanders on Love's dark pathway_ _Is ever the clearest-seeing,[26] not the simple or dull._
[Footnote 25:
Sai-no-kawara to Nushi matsu yoi wa Koishi, koishi ga Yama to naru.
A more literal translation would be: "In the Sai-no-Kawara ('Dry bed of the River of Souls') and in the evening when waiting for the loved one, '_Koishi, Koishi_' becomes a mountain." There is a delicate pun here,--a play on the word _Koishi,_ which, as pronounced, though not as written, may mean either "a small stone," or "longing to see." In the bed of the phantom river, Sai-no-Kawa, the ghosts of children are obliged to pile up little stones, the weight of which increases so as to tax their strength to the utmost. There is a reference here also to a verse in the Buddhist _wasan_ of Jizō, describing the crying of the children for their parents: _"Chichi koishi! haha koishi!_" (See _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan,_ vol. i. pp. 59-61.)]
[Footnote 26: Clearest-sighted,--that is, in worldly matters.]
_Coldly seen from without our love looks utter folly:_ _Who never has felt_ mayoi _never could understand!_
_Countless the men must be who dwell in three thousand worlds;_ _Yet among them all is none worthy to change for mine._[27]
_However fickle I seem, my heart is never unfaithful:_ _Out of the slime itself, spotless the lotos grows._[28]
_So that we stay together, even the Hell of the Blood Lake--_ _Even the Mountain of Swords--will signify nothing at all?_[29]
[Footnote 27:
San-zen sékai ni Otoko wa arédo, Nushi ni mi-kayeru Hito wa nai.
"San-zen sékai," the three thousand worlds, is a common Buddhist expression. Literally translated, the above song runs: "Three-thousand-worlds-in men are, but lover-to-exchange person is not."]
[Footnote 28: The familiar Buddhist simile is used more significantly here than the Western reader might suppose from the above rendering. These are supposed to be the words either of a professional singing-girl or of a _jorō_. Her calling is derisively termed a _doro-midzu kagyō_ ("foul-water occupation"); and her citation of the famous Buddhist comparison in self-defense is particularly, and pathetically, happy.]
[Footnote 29:
Chi-no-Iké-Jigoku mo, Tsurugi-no-Yama mo, Futari-dzuré nara Itoi 'a sénu.
The Hell of the Blood-Lake is a hell for women; and the Mountain of Swords is usually depicted in Buddhist prints as a place of infernal punishment for men in especial.]
_Not yet indeed is my body garbed in the ink-black habit;_ _--But as for this heart bereaved, already it is a nun._[30]
_My hair, indeed, is uncut; but my heart has become a religious;_ _A nun it shall always be till the hour I meet him again._
But even the priest or nun is not always exempt from the power of _mayoi_:--
_I am wearing the sable garb,--and yet, through illusion of longing,_ _Ever I lose my way,--knowing not whither or where!_
So far, my examples have been principally chosen from the more serious class of _dodoitsu._ But in _dodoitsu_ of a lighter class the Buddhist allusions are perhaps even more frequent. The following group of five will serve for specimens of hundreds:--
[Footnote 30: In the original much more pretty and much more simple:--
Sumi no koromo ni Mi wa yatsusanedo, Kokoro hitotsu wa Ama-hōshi.
"Ink-black-_koromo_ [priest's or nun's outer robe] in, body not clad, but heart-one nun." _Hitotsu,_ "one," also means "solitary," "forlorn," "bereaved." _Ama hōshi,_ lit.: "nun-priest."]
_Never can be recalled the word too quickly spoken:_ _Therefore with Emma's face the lover receives the prayer._[31]
_Thrice did I hear that prayer with Buddha's face; but hereafter_ _My face shall be Emma's face because of too many prayers._
_Now they are merry together; but under their boat is_ Jigoku.[32] _Blow quickly, thou river-wind,--blow a typhoon for my sake!_
_Vainly, to make him stay, I said that the crows were night crows;_[33]-- _The bell of the dawn peals doom,--the bell that cannot lie._
[Footnote 31: The implication is that he has hastily promised more than he wishes to perform. Emma, or Yemma (Sansc. Yama), is the Lord of Hell and Judge of Souls; and, as depicted in Buddhist sculpture and painting, is more than fearful to look upon. There is an evident reference in this song to the Buddhist proverb: _Karu-toki no Jizō-gao; nasu-toki no Emma-gao_ ("Borrowing-time, the face of Jizō; repaying-time, the face of Emma").]
[Footnote 32: "Jigoku" is the Buddhist name for various hells (Sansc. _narakas)._ The allusion here is to the proverb, _Funa-ita ichi-mai shita wa Jigoku:_ "Under [_the thickness of] a_ single boat-plank is hell,"--referring to the perils of the sea. This song is a satire on jealousy; and the boat spoken of is probably a roofed pleasure-boat, such as excursions are made into the sound of music.]
[Footnote 33: _Tsuki-yo-garasu,_ lit.: "moon-night crows." Crows usually announce the dawn by their cawing; but sometimes on moonlight nights they caw at all hours from sunset to sunrise. The bell referred to is the bell of some Buddhist temple: the _aké-no-kane,_ or "dawn-bell," being, in all parts of Japan, sounded from every Buddhist _tera._ There is a pun in the original;--the expression _tsukenai,_ "cannot _tell_ (a lie)," might also be interpreted phonetically as "cannot _strike_ [a bell]."]
_This my desire: To kill the crows of three thousand worlds,_ _And then to repose in peace with the owner of my heart!_[34]
[Footnote 34:
San-zen sékai no Karasu we koroshi Nushi to soi-né ga Shité mitai ]
I have cited this last only as a curiosity. For it has a strange history, and is not what it seems,--although the apparent motive was certainly suggested by some song like the one immediately preceding it. It is a song of loyalty, and was composed by Kido of Chō-shū, one of the leaders in that great movement which brought about the downfall of the Shōgunate, the restoration of the Imperial power, the reconstruction of Japanese society, and the introduction and adoption of Western civilization. Kido, Saigō, and Ōkubo are rightly termed the three heroes of the restoration. While preparing his plans at Kyōto, in company with his friend Saigō, Kido composed and sang this song as an intimation of his real sentiments. By the phrase, "ravens of the three thousand worlds," he designated the Tokugawa partisans; by the word _nushi_ (lord, or heart's-master) he signified the Emperor; and by the term _soiné_ (reposing together) he referred to the hoped-for condition of direct responsibility to the Throne, without further intervention of Shōgun and daimyō. It was not the first example in Japanese history of the use of popular song as a medium for the utterance of opinions which, expressed in plainer language, would have invited assassination.
*
While I was writing the preceding note upon Kido's song, the Buddhist phrase, _San-zen sékai_ (twice occurring, as the reader will have observed, in the present collection), suggested a few reflections with which this paper may fitly conclude. I remember that when I first attempted, years ago, to learn the outlines of Buddhist philosophy, one fact which particularly impressed me was the vastness of the Buddhist concept of the universe. Buddhism, as I read it, had not offered itself to humanity as a saving creed for one inhabited world, but as the religion of "innumerable hundreds of thousands of myriads of _kôtis_[35] of worlds." And the modern scientific revelation of stellar evolution and dissolution then seemed to me, and still seems, like a prodigious confirmation of certain Buddhist theories of cosmical law.
The man of science to-day cannot ignore the enormous suggestions of the new story that the heavens are telling. He finds himself compelled to regard the development of what we call mind as a general phase or incident in the ripening of planetary life throughout the universe. He is obliged to consider the relation of our own petty sphere to the great swarming of suns and systems as no more than the relation of a single noctiluca to the phosphorescence of a sea. By its creed the Oriental intellect has been better prepared than the Occidental to accept this tremendous revelation, not as a wisdom that increaseth sorrow, but as a wisdom to quicken faith. And I cannot but think that out of the certain future union of Western knowledge with Eastern thought there must eventually proceed a Neo-Buddhism inheriting all the strength of Science, yet spiritually able to recompense the seeker after truth with the recompense foretold in the twelfth chapter of the Sutra of the Diamond-Cutter. Taking the text as it stands,--in despite of commentators,--what more could be unselfishly desired from any spiritual teaching than the reward promised in that verse,--"_They shall be endowed with the Highest Wonder"?_
[Footnote 35: 1 kôti = 10,000,000.]
IX
NIRVANA
A STUDY IN SYNTHETIC BUDDHISM
I
"It is not possible, O Subhûti, that this treatise of the Law should be heard by beings of little faith,--by those who believe in Self, in beings, in living beings, and in persons."--_The Diamond-Cutter._
There still widely prevails in Europe and America the idea that Nirvana signifies, to Buddhist minds, neither more nor less than absolute nothingness,--complete annihilation. This idea is erroneous. But it is erroneous only because it contains half of a truth. This half of a truth has no value or interest, or even intelligibility, unless joined with the other half. And of the other half no suspicion yet exists in the average Western mind.
Nirvana, indeed, signifies an extinction. But if by this extinction of individual being we understand soul-death, our conception of Nirvana is wrong. Or if we take Nirvana to mean such reabsorption of the finite into the infinite as that predicted by Indian pantheism, again our idea is foreign to Buddhism.
Nevertheless, if we declare that Nirvana means the extinction of individual sensation, emotion, thought,--the final disintegration of conscious personality,--the annihilation of everything that can be included under the term "I,"--then we rightly express one side of the Buddhist teaching.
*
The apparent contradiction of the foregoing statements is due only to our Occidental notion of Self. Self to us signifies feelings, ideas, memory, volition; and it can scarcely occur to any person not familiar with German idealism even to imagine that consciousness might not be Self. The Buddhist, on the contrary, declares all that we call Self to be false. He defines the Ego as a mere temporary aggregate of sensations, impulses, ideas, created by the physical and mental experiences of the race,--all related to the perishable body, and all doomed to dissolve with it. What to Western reasoning seems the most indubitable of realities, Buddhist reasoning pronounces the greatest of all illusions, and even the source of all sorrow and sin. "_The mind, the thoughts, and all the senses are subject to the law of life and death. With knowledge of Self and the laws of birth and death, there is no grasping, and no sense-perception. Knowing one's self and knowing how the senses act, there is no room for the idea of or the ground for framing it The thought of 'Self' gives rise to all sorrows,--binding the world as with fetters; but having found there is no 'I' that can be bound, then all these bonds are severed._"[1]
The above text suggests very plainly that the consciousness is not the Real Self, and that the mind dies with the body. Any reader unfamiliar with Buddhist thought may well ask, "What, then, is the meaning of the doctrine of Karma, the doctrine of moral progression, the doctrine of the consequence of acts?" Indeed, to try to study, only with the ontological ideas of the West, even such translations of the Buddhist Sutras as those given in the "Sacred Books of the East," is to be at every page confronted by seemingly hopeless riddles and contradictions. We find a doctrine of rebirth; but the existence of a soul is denied. We are told that the misfortunes of this life are punishments of faults committed in a previous life; yet personal transmigration does not take place. We find the statement that beings are reindividualized; yet both individuality and personality are called illusions. I doubt whether anybody not acquainted with the deeper forms of Buddhist belief could possibly understand the following extracts which I have made from the first volume of "The Questions of King Milinda:"--
*
The King said: "Nagasena, is there any one who after death is not reindividualized?" Nagasena answered: "A sinful being is reindividualized; a sinless one is not." (p. 50.)
"Is there, Nagasena, such a thing as the soul?" "There is no such thing as soul." (pp. 86-89.) [The same statement is repeated in a later chapter (p. 111), with a qualification: "_In the highest sense,_ O King, there is no such thing."]
"Is there any being, Nagasena, who transmigrates from this body to another?" "No: there is not." (p. 112.)
"Where there is no transmigration, Nagasena, can there be rebirth?" "Yes: there can."
"Does he, Nagasena, who is about to be reborn, know that he will be reborn?" "Yes: he knows it, O King." (p. 113.)
Naturally the Western reader may ask,--"How can there be reindividualization without a soul? How can there be rebirth without transmigration? How can there be personal foreknowledge of rebirth without personality?" But the answers to such questions will not be found in the work cited.