5:11 About a Nun of Eguchi1
from the Senjūshō
translated by Yoshiko Dykstra
A nun runs with a piece of a plank.
About the ninth month of Jishō 2 (1178), I was traveling leisurely with a hijiri monk2 through various places. We were not in hurry, even as the sun was setting. Soon we came to a courtesan’s house located between the banks of two rivers in Eguchi-Katsumoto.
While gazing at the [shabby] house, we wondered about the life of a courtesan who would exchange temporary relationships with travelers and pass her life engaging in sinful deeds. “What sort of existence would she have in her life after death? Is it due to karma from her previous existence that she live as a courtesan in this life? Indeed she is engaging in something against the Buddha’s Way, all the while spending her short life as futilely as dew.3 Committing sin herself is one thing, but involving so many other people in her sinful practice is lamentable. But some who who take lives as courtesans and fishermen attain enlightenment by solely aspiring for deliverance. What does this mean? If everything is due to the Way followed in previous lives, why are they involved in such lamentable practices? If their enlightenment depends on their conduct in this life, then how can they attain enlightenment?”
Quietly pondering these questions, I came to wonder if it all depended on their hearts and minds. In order to prolong her futile life, a courtesan associates with this man and that man, but she never attaches her heart and mind to them. Even when she says sinful words and performs evil deeds, if her heart constantly aspires for her future deliverance after this life, then her heart and mind will remain beautiful and this will eventually lead her to enlightenment.
Talking of these things we were about to continue out of the village when suddenly a violent shower of winter-like rain caught us, and we were obliged to take shelter under the eaves of the courtesan’s house. As we stealthily peeped inside, we saw a nun4 running here and there with a piece of a plank trying to patch the leaky roof. Seeing this I casually recited a renga linked verse:5
Shizuga fuse ya o
Fukizo wazurau,
Troubled in trying
To patch the shabby hut,
The nun was busily running about, but as soon as she heard my verse, she threw away the board and added her verse:
Tsuki wa more
Shigure tamare to
Omou ni wa...
Wishing for the moonlight
Through [the crack in the roof]
While the shower leaks floods...
Greatly moved by her elegant verse, we could not leave and stayed at her shack through the night exchanging linked verses. Towards dawn my traveling companion recited his verse:
Kokoro sumarenu6
Shiba no io kana.
Truly, your heart can never rest
In this brushwood hut.
Immediately the nun added in reply,
Miyako nomi
Omou kata towa
Isogare te.
My heart hastens
As I yearn
Only for the capital.
Her verse truly touched our hearts.
There was no one so elegant as she among all the people I had met during my journey wandering through some sixty provinces in this country. If she were a man, we would have tried to persuade her to join us, so that we would forget our hunger while conversing with her. My hijiri monk companion greatly missed the nun of Eguchi and [talked about her] even after we had left her place.7
~~~ The End ~~~
©2008 by Yoshiko Dykstra
1A similar story appears in the Senjūshō (9:8).
2A hijiri was a holy man, and the term often refers to a self-ordained monk or a recluse.
3The comparison with dew (often on a flower petal), which drops and disappears so quickly and easily, is a a typical and traditional Japanese way of expressing the transience, mutability, futility or impermanence of life.
4Nuns were often involved in prostitution at the time.
5In renga poetry one person composes the first two lines of the verse and another completes the poem by adding the concluding three lines.
6Here the word, sumarenu, “not to clear,” also means “can not live or stay.”
7The Hyakuninshu Hitoyogatari (8:1) mentions the nun of Eguchi exchanging linked verses with Saigyō.