Kamo No Chomei 1153-1216 yılları arasında yaşamış bir budist keşiş, şair ve müzisyen. Saray toplumunun çökmesi ile kişisel çatışmalar ve tanık olduğu felaketlerden sonra bir dağa çekilerek küçük kulübesinde yalnız bir hayat sürmeye baslar ve Japon Edebiyatının en tanınmış yazılarından birini burada yazar: The Ten Foot Square Hut.
Chomei'nin kulübesi yalnızlığın da en asgari ölçüleri. Benim kulübeme gelince, fazladan birkaç metre daha yerim var.
Toplamda yedi sayfa kadar olan The Ten Foot Square Hut metninin ingilizcesi aşağıda. Alıntılar metnin Penguin baskısından kısa bir serbest çeviri örneği. Yazı genel olarak Chomei'nin onu yalnız başına bir kulübede yaşama kararına götüren kıtlık, felaketler, yozlaŞan gelenekler, şahit olduğu kötü tanıklıkları ile başlayıp kulübeyi nasıl inşa ettiğinin hikayesi ile sürüyor ve kulübesine olan sevgisi karşısında onu Buda'nın tüm bağlılıklardan vazgeçme ilkesi ile karşı karşıya getiren düşünceler ile bitiyor.
"Altmış yaşındayım. Bir çiğ tanesinden farksız olan hayatımın son yıllarını geçireceğim bu kulübem şimdi, bir geceliğine dağlarda kurulan avcı çadırlarına ya da ipek böceklerinin ördüğü kozalara benziyor."
"Duvarlar kaba sıvalı toprak, çatı ise sazdan yapılmıştır. Tüm eklemler metalle menteşelidir, böylece koşullar beni artık memnun etmiyorsa, onu kolayca indirip başka bir yere taşıyabilirim. Ve bu çok az bir emekle yapılabilir, çünkü tüm yük sadece iki araba yükünü dolduracak kadar. Amida Buda'nın bir portresi, birkaç cilt Japon şiiri ve müziği ve Budist Sutralarından seçmeler içeren üç veya dört siyah deri çantanın durduğu küçük bir raf. Bunların yanında bir arp ve kıvrımlı arp ve eklemli ud denilen türde bir ud bulunur. (...) Doğu duvarında yazı masamın bulunduğu bir pencere var. Yastığımın yanında, kırılmış çalılardan ateş yakabileceğim bir ateş kutusu mobilyayı tamamlıyor. Küçük kulübemin kuzeyinde, çeşitli türlerde şifalı bitkiler yetiştirebilmem için ince, alçak bir çalılıklarla çevrili küçük de bir bahçe yaptım.
Küçük kulübemi, yalnız meskenimi seviyorum.
"Sonuç olarak, bu dünyanın kaprislerine karşı otuz sıkıntılı yıl geçirdim. Her yeni aksilikte şansımın ne kadar kötü olduğunu yeniden anladım. Ve böylece, ellinci yılımın ilkbaharında, evimi terk ettim ve dünyaya sırtımı döndüm. Hiç karım ve çocuğum olmadı, bu yüzden kopması zor olan yakın bağlar yoktu. Vazgeçmem gereken rütbem ve maaşım yoktu. Beni dünyaya bağlayan ne vardı? Tek arzum huzur içinde olmak ve sıkıntılardan uzak yaşamak. Bazıları karısı ve çocukları için ya da daha geniş bir ev için, diğerleri yakınları ve arkadaşları için ev inşa eder, bazıları ustaları veya öğretmenleri için inşa edebilir ve hatta malları, öküzleri ve atları için bile. Ama bu evi yalnızca kendim için inşa ettim. Hayatımı paylaşan hiç kimsem ya da benim için çalışacak herhangi bir hizmetçim yok. Ne de olsa bir tane daha inşa etsem daha büyük bir eve kimi koyarım?
*
The Ten Foot Square Hut
On flows the river ceaselessly, nor does its water ever stay the same. The bubbles that float upon
its pools now disappear, now form anew, but never endure long. And so it is with people in this
world, and with their dwellings.
In our dazzling capital the houses of high and low crowd the streets, a jostling throng of roof and
tile, and have done so down the generations – yet ask if this is truly so and you discover that
almost no house has been there from of old. Some burned down last year and this year were rebuilt.
Others were once grand mansions, gone to ruin, where now small houses stand.
And it is the same with those that live in them. The places remain, as full of people as ever, but
of those one saw there once now only one or two in twenty or thirty still survive. Death in the
morning, at evening another birth – this is the way of things, no different from the bubbles on the
stream.
Where do they come from, these newborn? Where do the dead go? I do not know. Nor do I know why our hearts should fret over these brief dwellings, or our eyes find such delight in them. An owner and
his home vie in their impermanence, as the vanishing dew upon the morning glory. The dew may
disappear while the flower remains – yet it lives on only to fade with the morning sun. Or perhaps
the flower wilts while the dew still lies – but though it stays, it too will be gone before the
evening.
Over the more than forty rounds of seasons since I first grew conscious of the world about me, I
have seen many extraordinary things.
It would have been the twenty-eighth day in the fourth month of the third year of Angen.1 The wind
was fierce and the night tumultuous, and at the Hour of the Dog a fire broke out in the capital’s
south-east, and spread to the north-west. Eventually the Shujaku Gate, the Hall of State, the
University Hall and the Civil Affairs Bureau3 all caught fire, and in a single night were reduced
to ashes.
It was said the fire started in Higuchi Tominokōji, and began in a lodging house where some dancers
were staying. The flames spread hither and yon on the fickle wind, fanning out wide over the city.
Houses beyond were choked with smoke, while from those nearby, flames spouted and sparks rained
down. Clouds of ash poured up into the sky, lit red by the fire beneath, and in the midst of all
this blazing scarlet the ragged flames leaped whole blocks at a time, flying unresisting on the
wind. For those caught up in the blaze, it must have seemed a nightmare. Some fell, choked with
smoke; others were blinded by the flames and quickly perished. Where others managed to escape with
their life, they left behind them all their worldly goods. All those countless treasures were
turned to dust and ashes. How much was lost, all told?
In this fire sixteen noble houses alone were destroyed, not to mention the countless others. It is
said that fully one- third of the capital was lost. Scores of men and women died, and who knows how
many horses and oxen besides?
All human undertaking is folly, but it is most particularly futile to spend your wealth and trouble
your peace of mind by building a house in the perilous capital.
Again, in the fourth month of the fourth year of Jishō a great whirlwind sprang up in the
Nakamikado Kyōgoku area, and swept down through the city to around Rokujō.
Over three or four blocks, every single house, large or small, in the path of the swirling wind was
destroyed. Some were utterly flattened, while only the pillars and beams of others remained. The
wind tore up gates and brought them down four or five blocks away. It blew away fences, making
houses one with their neighbours. Needless to say, every last belonging inside the houses flew into
the air, while cypress bark thatch and shingles swirled in the gale like winter leaves. The wind
raised such a spiralling smoke of dust that the eye was quite blinded, and the dreadful roar
drowned out all speech. The karmic wind8 of hell itself would be such as this, it seemed. Not only
houses were damaged – countless people were hurt or maimed in trying to repair them. At length the
winded off south-south-west, causing grief to many.
Whirlwinds are quite common, but do they ever blow like this? This was no ordinary wind, and all
wondered whether it was not some portent from on high.
Also in the sixth month of the fourth year of Jishō, the capital was suddenly relocated,
confounding everyone. One generally hears it said that this city has been the capital since it was
so designated in the time of Emperor Saga, more than four hundred years ago. It should never have
been moved arbitrarily on a casual whim like that, and it was only too natural that everyone was so
distressed and anxious.
But complaints availed them nothing; everyone, from the emperor to his ministers and nobles, was
obliged to move. And how could any among those in attendance at the palace choose to remain back
there alone in the old capital? Those hoping to advance their rank and position, those who relied
on the emperor’s support, strove to make the move as soon as possible, while others, who had missed
their moment, had been passed over in life and could hope for no advancement, stayed behind and
grieved.
As the days passed, ruin fell upon those fine houses with their jostling throng of roofs. The
buildings were dismantled and floated down the Yodo, and before our eyes the land turned to
cropping fields. Tastes changed – now everyone prized only the horse and saddle, and the ox and
carriage went quite unused. Now property on the south-west seaboard was sought after, while no
one cared for estates to the north or east.
At around this time I happened to have reason to visit the new capital, so I went down to Settsu.
Looking around, I noted that the area was too cramped to be sectioned off into proper wards. To the
north the land rose steeply up to mountains, while to the south it sloped straight down to the
nearby sea. There was a constant crash of waves, and a fierce offshore wind blew. The imperial
palace stood back in the hills, and was rather reminiscent of how the old Log Palace might have
looked, almost charming in its eccentricity.
Where could all those houses be, that had day after day been dismantled and floated downstream in
such quantities that they clogged the waterways? Empty plots were everywhere, buildings were few.
The old capital was now a ruin, while the new had yet to rise. Every last person felt suspended,
unsettled, adrift as floating clouds. The place’s former residents lamented the loss of their land.
Those who had moved there bewailed the difficulties of building. Along the roads I witnessed men
who should by rights travel in a carriage sitting astride a horse, and courtiers who would normally
be dressed in court robes wearing instead the new hitatare. The old capital’s ways had undergone
a sudden transformation, and fashions now were indistinguishable from the uncouth country
warrior’s.
It is said that changes in customs presage times of upheaval, and indeed it was so, for as the days
passed all grew increasingly disturbed and restive, until at length the people’s grievances bore
fruit, and in the winter of that year the capital was returned to its former site. Who knows what
happened to all the houses that were dismantled and taken down there, however, for many were never
restored.
It is told that in the days of the wise rulers of old the land was governed with compassion – the
eaves of the reed- thatched palace roofs were left untrimmed, and if the emperor saw only a thin
trail of smoke rising from his people’s cooking fires, he excused them payment of even the
stipulated taxes. This was because these rulers were given to benevolence and service to their
people. We need only compare our present age to theirs to see the difference.
Again, around the Yōwa era I believe it was, although so much time has passed that I no longer
quite remember, there was a terrible two-year famine in the world. Drought in spring and summer,
typhoons and floods in autumn – disaster followed on disaster, and all the crops failed. In vain
did people till the fields in spring and plant in summer; autumn and winter brought no bustling
harvest, no storing up of food.
All this drove people throughout the provinces to leave their land and migrate elsewhere, or desert
their homes and simply take to the hills. Various prayers to the gods were instigated and fervent
Buddhist ceremonies performed at the palace, but to no avail. All the capital’s many activities
essentially depended on the countryside, and once provisions ceased to arrive, what hope was there
of keeping up even a semblance of normalcy? People were driven to offer all their treasured
possessions to buyers for a song, but no one would so much as glance at them. And if any exchange
did happen to be made, money meant almost nothing, while grain was everything. Beggars crowded the roadsides, and the sound of their wailing filled the ears.
So the first year drew somehow to a close. We hoped for recovery in the new year, but instead a
plague was added to our woes, and every semblance of the old life was now gone. All despaired,19
and we were like fish in a fast- drying pond as calamity tightened its grip on the world from day
to day. Finally, those who still looked reasonably presentable took to the streets, clad in hats
and leggings, going from door to door, desperately begging. These miserable wretches could be seen
staggering along one minute and fallen the next. Countless numbers starved to death by walls and on
roadsides. None knew how to dispose of all these corpses; the air was filled with their stench, and
one could only avert the eyes from the frequent sight of slowly decomposing bodies. As for the dry
river bed,20 the bodies lay so thick that there was no room for horses and carts to pass.
The poor wood-cutters and other common folk could no longer carry wood from exhaustion, so even
fuel became scarce in the city, and those who had nowhere else to turn were reduced to tearing down
their own houses and selling the wood in the marketplace. It was said that the price for what a man
could carry there would not even keep him alive a day. Strangely, among the wood sold for fuel one
saw some with touches of cinnabar or gold leaf – on enquiry, I learned that some as a last resort
were going to run-down old temples, stealing the Buddhist images, dismantling the decorative
woodwork in the worship hall and breaking these up to sell. Born into these vile latter days, it
has been my lot to witness such heartbreaking things.
And I saw other pitiful things besides. Where a man could not bear to part from his wife, or a
woman loved her husband dearly, it was always the one whose love was the deeper who died first – in
their sympathy for the other they would put themselves second, and give their partner any rare
morsel that came their way. So also, if parent and child lived together the parent was always the
first to die; a baby would still lie suckling, unaware that its mother was dead.
A monk by the name of Ryūgyō Hōin from Ninnaji, sorrowing to see people dying in such countless
numbers, took to inscribing the sacred Sanskrit syllable ‘A’ on the forehead of any he met with,
to lead them to rebirth in paradise. When a count was made of all the dead, the total for the
fourth and fifth months came to over 42,300 in the area from Ichijō south and from Kujō north, from
East Kyōgoku west and Shujaku east. Of course there were many who died before and after this
time, and if all the outlying areas such as the Kamo riverbed, Shirakawa and the Nishi no Kyō
were added in, the numbers would be incalculable – and how much more so with the provinces beyond!
Such things also happened, I have heard, in the reign of Emperor Sutoku back in the Chōshō era,
but I know nothing of the experience of those times. What I have seen with my own eyes was
certainly strange and dreadful.
Also around the same time, as I recall, there was a great earthquake, and a quite exceptional one
it was. Mountainsides collapsed, damming the streams, and the sea tilted up and flooded over the
land. Water gushed from the rent earth, great rocks split asunder and tumbled into the valleys
below. Boats rowing offshore were tossed in the waves, while horses lost their footing on the
roads. Not a single temple building or pagoda around the capital remained intact. Some collapsed,
others leaned and fell. Like thick plumes of smoke, the dust rose. The roar of shuddering earth and
the crash of buildings resounded like thunder. Anyone indoors was sure to be crushed, but we rushed
out only to find the earth split open at our feet. Lacking wings, there could be no escaping to the
air. Had we only been dragons, we might have fled to the clouds! Among all the terrors, I realized
then, the most terrifying is an earthquake.
The dreadful shaking soon ceased, but the aftershocks continued for some time. Not a day passed
without twenty or thirty tremors, of a strength that would normally seem startlingly strong.
Finally, ten or twenty days later, the intervals between them lengthened – it would be four or five
times a day, then two or three, then every second day, then once in two or three. All told, the
aftershocks must have been felt for around three months.
Of the four elements, water, fire and wind commonly inflict harm, while earth causes no great
disruptions. Back in the old days, perhaps in the Saikō era, there was a great earthquake that
knocked off the head of the buddha of Tōdaiji Temple and caused tremendous damage, but it was not
as bad as this.
At the time, all spoke of how futile everything was in the face of life’s uncertainties, and their
hearts seemed for a while a little less clouded by worldliness, but time passed, and now, years
later, no one so much as mentions that time.
Yes, take it for all in all, this world is a hard place to live, and both we and our dwellings are
fragile and impermanent, as these events reveal. And besides, there are the countless occasions
when situation or circumstance cause us anguish.
Imagine you are someone of no account, who lives next to a powerful man. There may be something
that deeply delights you, but you cannot go ahead and express your joy. If something has brought
you terrible grief, you cannot raise your voice and weep. You worry over your least action and
tremble with every move you make, like a sparrow close to a falcon’s nest. Or take a poor man who
lives next to a rich one. Ashamed at the sorry sight he makes, he is forever cringing obsequiously
before his neighbour as he comes and goes. He must witness his wife and children and his servants
filled with envy, and have to hear how the neighbour despises him, and each fresh thought will
unsettle him so that he has not a moment’s tranquillity.
If you live in a cramped city area, you cannot escape disaster when a fire springs up nearby. If
you live in some remote place, commuting to and fro is filled with problems, and you are in
constant danger from thieves. A powerful man will be beset by cravings, one without family ties
will be scorned. Wealth brings great anxiety, while with poverty come fierce resentments.
Dependence on others puts you in their power, while care for others will snare you in the worldly
attachments of affection. Follow the social rules, and they hem you in; fail to do so, and you are
thought as good as crazy.
Where can one be, what can one do, to find a little safe shelter in this world, and a little peace
of mind?
I came into house and property through my paternal grandmother, and lived there for many years.
Later, my ties with the place were broken, I came down in the world and, for all my fond memories,
I eventually had to leave my home. Past thirty, I chose to build another little house.
It was a mere tenth the size of my former home. I built only a single dwelling for myself; there
was no means to add any decent outbuildings.31 I managed to put a wall around it, but funds did not
stretch to a front gate. I used bamboo as the frame for a shed to hold the carriage. Things were
always far from safe whenever snow fell or the wind blew. The place was near the river so was in
deep danger of flooding, and robbers were a source of constant worry.
All told, I spent some thirty troubled years withstanding the vagaries of this world. At each new
setback, I understood afresh how wretched my luck is. And so, in the spring of my fiftieth year, I
came to leave my home and take the tonsure, and turned my back on the world. I had never had wife
and children, so there were no close ties that were difficult to break. I had no rank and salary to
forgo. What was there to hold me to the world? I made my bed among the clouds of Ōhara’s
mountains, and there I passed five fruitless years.
Now at sixty, with the dew of life about to fade, I have fashioned for myself another dwelling to
hold me for these final years. I am, if you will, like a traveller who throws up a shelter for the
night, or an old silkworm spinning his cocoon. It is not a hundredth the size of the house of my
middle years. As I complained my way through life, each passing year has added to my age, and each
move reduced my dwelling.
This house looks quite unlike a normal one. It is a mere ten feet square, and less than seven feet
high. Since I was not much concerned about where I lived, I did not construct the house to fit the
site. I simply set up a foundation, put up a bit of a roof and fastened each joint with a metal
catch, so that if I didn’t care for one place I could easily move to another. Just how much trouble
would it be to rebuild, after all? The house would take a mere two cartloads to shift, and the only
expense would be the carrier.
Since retiring here to Mount Hino, I have added a three-foot awning on the east side of my hut,
beneath which to store firewood and cook. On the south I put up a veranda of bamboo slats, with an
offerings shelf at its western end. Inside there is a standing screen dividing off the north-west
section of the room, where I have set up a painted image of Amida with another of the bodhisattva
Fugen hung next to it, and a copy of The Lotus Sutra placed before them. At the room’s eastern
edge I have spread a tangle of bracken to serve as bed. A shelf hangs from the ceiling in the
south-west corner, holding three black leather boxes that contain extracts from the poetic
anthologies, musical treatises, Essentials of Salvation and so forth. Beside this stand one koto
and one biwa. The koto is the folding kind, the biwa has a detachable neck. Such is my temporary
abode.
As for its surroundings, to the south is a bamboo water pipe, and I have placed rocks there to make
a pool. The forest is close by the house, so I am not short of brushwood to gather. The name of the
place is Toyama. Vines cover the paths, trees throng the nearby valley, but the land is open to
the west. Indeed there are not a few aids to my meditations. In spring I gaze upon swathes of
wisteria, which hang shining in the west like the purple clouds that bear the soul to heaven. In
summer I hear the song of the hototogisu, and at each call he affirms his promise to lead me over
the mountain path of death. In autumn the voice of the cricket fills my ears, a sound that seems
to sorrow over a fleeting life so soon cast off. In winter, the snow fills me with pathos. The
sight of it piling high only to melt and vanish is like the mounting sins that block our path to
redemption, which penitence will erase.
When I tire of chanting the nenbutsu and feel disinclined to read the sutras, I can choose to
rest and laze as I wish. There is no one to stand in my way or to shame me. Though I have taken no
vow of silence, my solitude protects me from the evils of speech. I make no special effort to
abide by the precepts, but with such conducive surroundings, what could lead me to break them?
On mornings when my thoughts turn to the ‘white retreating waves’ of this transient life, I gaze
out to the boats that ply the river at Okanoya, and savour as my own the feelings of the old poet
Novice Mansei. On evenings when the wind rustles in the leaves of the katsura trees, I cast my
thoughts back to Xunyang Inlet, and pluck my biwa in the way of Tsunenobu. And if the mood is
still upon me, often I play to the sough of wind in the pines the piece called ‘Autumn Wind Music’,
or ‘Flowing Spring’ to the murmur of running water. My skill is poor, but then I do not aim to
please the ears of others. I play alone, I sing alone, simply for my own fulfilment.
There is a little brushwood shack at the foot of the mountain, the home of the local warden. He has
a little boy who sometimes comes to visit, and in idle hours I go off rambling with him. He is ten,
I am sixty – a vast difference in age, yet we find our pleasure in the same things. We pick the
seed-heads of grasses, collect rock-pear berries, gather mountain yams or pluck wild parsley. At
other times we might go down to the rice fields, to glean the fallen ears of rice and sheave them
up. If the day is fine we scramble up to the peak and gaze off to the skies of the capital, my old
home, or look out over Mount Kohata, Fushimi Village, Toba and Hatsukashi. No one owns a splendid view, so nothing prevents the heart’s delight in it.
If the walk is not too much for me, and I feel inclined to go further afield, I follow the
ridgeline over Mount Sumi and Kasadori to pay my respects at Iwama or Ishiyama Temples. At other
times, I might go on over the plain of Awazu to call on Semimaru’s old site, or cross Tanakami
River to visit the grave of Sarumaro. On my way back, depending on the season, I may linger over
the cherry blossoms, search out the autumn leaves, pluck young fern shoots or gather nuts as I go,
as offerings for the altar or as gifts to take home.
On quiet nights, the moon at my window recalls to me past friends, and tears wet my sleeve at the
cries of the monkeys. The fireflies in the nearby grass blend their little lights with the
fishermen’s fires of distant Makinoshima; the sound of dawn rain comes to me like a storm wind in
the treetops. When I hear the soft cry of the pheasant, it seems to me my own father or mother;
the mountain deer that have learned to come so close reveal to me how distant from the world I have
become.
There are times when I stir the embers of my fire to keep me company in the wakefulness of old age.
There is nothing to fear from this mountain – the owl’s cry is poignant to my ears, and through the
seasons I never tire of the mountain’s moving beauties. And for one who thought and understood more
deeply still than I, this place would surely hold yet greater joys.
When I first came to live here, I thought my time would be brief, but already five years have
passed. This passing shelter of mine has slowly become a home; the eaves are deep in rotting
leaves, moss covers the foundations.
When news of the capital happens to come my way, I learn of many people in high places who have met their end since I retired to this mountain, and other lesser folk besides, too many to be told. And
how many houses, too, have been lost in all those fires? In all this, my mere passing shelter has
remained tranquil and safe from fears.
Small it may be, but there is a bed to sleep on at night, and a place to sit in the daytime. As a
simple place to house myself, it lacks nothing. The hermit crab prefers a little shell for his
home. He knows what the world holds. The osprey chooses the wild shoreline, and this is because he
fears mankind. And I too am the same. Knowing what the world holds and its ways, I desire nothing
from it, nor chase after its prizes. My one craving is to be at peace, my one pleasure to live free
of troubles.
People do not always build a house with the important things in mind. Some will build for wife and
children or for the wider household, others for their intimates and friends. Some may build for
their master or their teacher, or even for their possessions or their oxen and horses. But I have
built this house for my own self and for no one else. And this is because, the world being what it
is, and the way I am now, I have no one who shares my life, nor any servants to work for me. Who
would I put in a larger house if I built one, after all?
People who cultivate friendships prize men with wealth, and prefer those who are eager to please.
They do not always cherish friends who are loving, or pure of heart. Best by far is the company of
flute and strings, and of the flowers and moon. Servants and retainers crave endless rewards, and
love a master who showers them with favours. They have no interest in affectionate concern or a
calm and peaceful life. Better far to be your own servant. How? If something needs doing, use
yourself to do it. It may be tiring, but it is easier than employing another and troubling yourself
over him. If you need to go somewhere, walk yourself. You may grow weary, but better far than
worrying over horse and saddle, oxen and cart.
These days, I divide myself into two uses – these hands are my servants, these feet my transport.
They serve me just as I wish. Mind knows when things feel hard for the body; at such times it will
grant the body rest, and work it when it is willing. Yet, work the body though it does, the mind
will never push too far, and if the body is reluctant, this will not perturb the mind. Indeed the
habit of walking and working is good for the health. Why sit idly about, after all? It is a sin to
bring trouble to others. Why should I borrow another’s strength?
So too with food and clothing. Be it robe of vine fibre or hempen quilt, I cover myself in
whatever comes to hand, and keep myself alive with wild asters from the fields and nuts from the
mountains. Since I do not mix with others, shame causes me no regrets. Plain fare tastes all the
better when food is scarce.
I do not make claims for these pleasures to disparage the rich. I am simply comparing my past life
with my present one. The Triple World is solely Mind. Without a peaceful mind, elephants, horses
and the seven treasures things, palaces and fine towers mean nothing.
I love my tiny hut, my lonely dwelling. When I chance to go down into the capital, I am ashamed of
my lowly beggar status, but once back here again I pity those who chase after the sordid rewards of
the world. If any doubt my words, let them look to the fish and the birds. Fish never tire of
water, a state incomprehensible to any but the fish. The bird’s desire for the forest makes sense
to none but birds. And so it is with the pleasure of seclusion. Who but one who lives it can
understand its joys?
Like the moon that hangs above the mountain rim, my life now tilts towards its close. Soon I will
enter the darkness of the Three Paths. What point is there in mulling over past actions?
The Buddha’s essential teaching is to relinquish all attachment. This fondness for my hut I now see
must be error, and my attachment to a life of seclusion and peace is an impediment to rebirth. How
could I waste my days like this, describing useless pleasures?
In the quiet dawn I ponder this, and question my own heart: you fled the world to live among forest
and mountain in order to discipline the mind and practise the Buddhist Way. But though you have all
the trappings of a holy man, your heart is corrupt. Your dwelling may aspire to be the hut of the
holy Vimilakīrti himself, but the practice you maintain in it cannot match even that of the fool
Śuddhipanthaka.61 Have you after all let the poverty ordained by past sins distract you? Or have
your delusions tipped you over into madness?
When I confront my heart thus, it cannot reply. At most, this mortal tongue can only end in three
faltering invocations of the holy, unapproachable name of Amida.
Written in his hut on Toyama at the close of the third month in the second year of Kenryaku, by the
monk Ren’in.
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