(1763–1827)
Selections from THE SPRING OF MY LIFE
STILL CLOTHED IN THE DUST of this suffering world, I celebrate the first day in my own way. And yet I am like the priest, for I too shun trite popular seasonal congratulations. The commonplace “crane” and “tortoise” echo like empty words, like the actors who come begging on New Year’s Eve with empty wishes for prosperity. The customary New Year pine will not stand beside my door. I won’t even sweep my dusty house, living as I do in a tiny hermitage constantly threatening to collapse under harsh north winds. I leave it all to the Buddha, as in the ancient story.
The way ahead may be dangerous, steep as snowy trails winding through high mountains. Nevertheless I welcome the New Year just as I am.
New Year greeting-time:
I feel about average
welcoming my spring
In cherry blossom
shadows, no one, really, is
a stranger now
Written on Buddha’s Death Day
[March 15, 1819]
Aloof and silent
like the Buddha, I lie still—
still troubled by flowers
Even as he sleeps,
Buddha smilingly accepts
flowers and money
During meditation:
He glares back at me
with an ugly, surly face,
this old pond frog
Several people told me a story about some folks who heard heavenly music at two in the morning on New Year’s Day. Furthermore, they all said, these people have heard it again every eighth day since. They described exactly when and where each hearing occurred.
Some people laughed it off as the trickeries of the wind, but I was reluctant to either accept or dismiss the story without evidence. Heaven and earth are home to many mysteries. We all know the stories of dancing girls who pour the morning dew from high above. Perhaps the spirits who observe from the corridors of the heavens, seeing a peaceful world, called for music to rejoice. And perhaps we who failed to hear it were deafened by our own suffering.
I invited a few friends to visit my hermitage the morning of March 19th, and we spent the whole night listening. By the time first light broke in the east, we’d heard nothing. Then, suddenly, we heard singing from the plum tree outside a window.
Just a bush warbler
to sing morning Lotus Sutra
to this suffering world
Summer’s first melon
lies firmly hugged to the breast
of a sleeping child
Buzzing noisily
by my ear, the mosquito
must know I’m old
I’ve had this in mind for a long time, trying to find a way to say it:
Even the flies
in the village of my birth
draw blood with each bite
When I bowed before
the Buddha, hungry mosquitoes
swarmed from his shadow
My home is so poor
even the resident flies
keep their family small
Lying in hammocks,
we speak so solemnly of
distant thunder, distant rain
Toshiyori wrote:
Lured by the branches
set out to trap them, fish thrash
helplessly about.
Likewise people are enticed
by the lures of ignorance.
Kōsetsu wrote:
I’d love to slap that
fly on the beautiful face
of my young stepchild
It is often said that the greatest pleasures result in the greatest misery. But why is it that my little child, who’s had no chance to savor even half the world’s pleasures—who should be green as new needles on the eternal pine—why should she be found on her deathbed, puffy with blisters raised by the despicable god of smallpox? How can I, her father, stand by and watch her fade away each day like a perfect flower suddenly ravaged by rain and mud?
Two or three days later, her blisters dried to hard scabs and fell off like dirt softened by melting snow. Encouraged, we made a tiny boat of straw and poured hot sake over it with a prayer and sent it floating downriver in hopes of placating the god of the pox. But our hope and efforts were useless and she grew weaker day by day. Finally, at midsummer, as the morning glory flowers were closing, her eyes closed forever.
Her mother clutched her cold body and wailed. I knew her heartbreak but also knew that tears were useless, that water under the bridge never returns, that scattered flowers are gone forever. And yet nothing I could do would cut the bonds of human love.
This world of dew
is only the world of dew—
and yet . . . and yet . . .
In the classic collection of Zen koans, Mumonkan, it is written:
He comes without lifting a foot;
he teaches without moving his tongue.
However you lead the way, remember:
There is always one you follow.
In a temple storehouse:
Smiling serenely,
the Buddha gently points to
a little stinkworm
Visiting my daughter’s grave on July 25th, one month after her death:
The red flower
you always wanted to pick—
now this autumn wind
Pretending wisdom,
a man tells a woman all
about the eclipse
Backwards, ass over
teakettle, the small boy held
fast to his radish