Sections 61–8061~80단

Dropping a steamer at a birth is not a fixed rule. It is a charm for when the afterbirth is slow to come. If it is not held back, this is not done.

The practice arose from below, and there is no authority worth naming for it. They send for a steamer from the village of Ohara. In an old treasure-hall (寶藏) picture, a steamer is drawn being dropped where a woman of low birth is giving birth.

When Enseimon'in was a child, she had a poem spoken for her, as a message, to someone who was going to the retired emperor.

The two-stroke letter, the ox-horn letter, the straight letter, the crooked letter — by these I think of you

It means that she longed for him.

The Goshichinichi ajari gathering warriors began, at some time or other, after a thief was met with, and from then, with men set to keep the night watch, it has grown as noisy a business as this.

The signs for the whole year are said to appear in how things go during this rite (修法), so using soldiers is not a seemly thing.

"The five cords of a carriage do not necessarily go by the man. When he reaches the office that is the limit of his station, he rides in one." So a certain person said.

"Caps nowadays have grown far higher than they were of old." So a certain person said. Those who own an old cap box piece out the rim and use it now.

The Okamoto Kanpaku ordered Shimotsuke no Takekatsu, his falconer, to add a pair of birds to a branch of red plum in full bloom and present them tied to that branch. Takekatsu said, "I do not know the art of tying a bird to a flowering branch, and I do not know of tying two to one branch either."

The lord asked the kitchen office (膳部), and had others questioned as well, and then told Takekatsu again, "Then tie it as you think best and present it." So Takekatsu tied one bird to a plum branch that had no flowers on it and presented that.

This is what Takekatsu said. "They are tied to a brushwood branch, or to a plum branch in bud or past its flowers. They are tied to five-needle pine and the like. The branch is seven feet long, or six, cut back five bu with a return of the blade, and the bird is tied at the middle of the branch. There is a branch for the tying and a branch for the feet to rest on. It must be bound in two places with shijira wisteria, left unsplit. The end of the wisteria is cut to the length of the flint feather and bent like an ox horn.

On the morning of the first snow, he carries the branch on his shoulder and comes in through the middle gate with due ceremony. He treads along the stones of the great paving so as to leave no tracks in the snow, plucks a little of the rain-guard down loose and scatters it, and leans the branch against the railing of the two-ridged palace. If a reward is brought out, he shoulders it, bows, and withdraws.

Even at a first snow, he does not present it when the snow is not deep enough to hide the toes of his shoes. Scattering the rain-guard down is because a hawk takes its prey by the small of the back, and it shows that the imperial hawk (御鷹) made the kill."

Why is it that a bird is not tied to a flowering branch? In the Ise monogatari there is the poem about an artificial plum branch with a pheasant tied to it around the Ninth Month, "The flower I break for you knows no season." Perhaps an artificial flower gave no trouble.

Iwamoto and Hashimoto at Kamo are Narihira and Sanekata. People are always confusing the two, so one year when I went to worship there I stopped an old shrine officer who was passing and asked him.

"Since Sanekata is said to be the one whose reflection fell on the Mitarashi, I take it that Hashimoto must be his, being the nearer to the water. As for the poem the abbot of Yoshimizu made,

He who loved the moon and gazed at the blossoms, that gentle man of old, is here at Ariwara

I have heard it set down that it was the shrine of Iwamoto. But you would know it far better than such as we." He said it so humbly that it struck me as splendid.

The woman called Konoe of the Imadegawa In, many of whose poems are in the collections, used in her youth to compose a hundred-poem sequence (百首) again and again and offer it before those two shrines, writing it with water. Her fame was truly high, and many of her poems are on people's lips. She wrote Chinese verse and prefaces excellently too.

In Tsukushi there was a man of the sort called a provincial constable, who for many years had roasted and eaten two radishes every morning, holding them to be a fine medicine for every ill.

Once an enemy watched for a moment when there was no one within the house, came and attacked, and pressed the siege. Then two warriors came out from inside the house, fought without sparing their lives, and drove them all off.

He thought it very strange and asked, "Even if you have been here all this while, you are men I have never seen, and yet you fight for me like this. Who are you?" They said, "We are the radishes you have trusted these many years and eaten every morning," and then they were gone.

When a man gives his faith deeply, there is even such a virtue in it as this.

The holy man of Shosha had piled up merit in reciting the Lotus Sutra, and had come to the purity of the six senses (六根). When he went into a rough hut on a journey, he heard the bubbling sound of beans being boiled over a fire of bean husks, and it said, "You who are no strangers to us boil us, spitefully, and put us to a bitter pass."

The crackling sound of the burning husks was heard to say, "Is it by my own heart that I do it? How hard it must be to be burned, but there is no help for it. Do not resent me so."

At the Gen'o playing in the Seishodo (清暑堂), at the time when Genjo the biwa had been lost, the Kikutei Minister was to play Bokuba. He took his seat, felt first for the frets, and one of them had fallen off.

He had rice paste in the breast of his robe and fastened it back on, and while the offerings to the gods were being brought in it dried well, so there was no mishap.

What grudge could there have been? They say a woman who was watching went up, pulled it off, and set it back as it had been.

The moment one hears a name, one feels that the face can already be guessed at; yet when one sees the person, there is never a face just as one had pictured it beforehand.

When I hear an old tale, too, I feel it must have been about such a corner of the house of someone living now, and the people in it I liken to those I see today. Does everyone feel so?

And at certain moments, what a man is saying this very instant, and what meets the eye, and what is in my own heart, all feel as though such a thing had happened at some time before; and though I cannot recall when, I feel sure it was so. Am I alone in thinking this?

Things that look mean. Much furniture about where one sits. Many brushes on an inkstone. Many Buddhas in a private chapel. Many stones and plants and trees in a garden. Many children and grandchildren in a house. Many words when one meets a person. Many good works written into a votive text (願文).

Things that are not ugly for being many are the books in a book cart and the dust on a rubbish heap.

What the world hands down is almost all false, perhaps because the truth has no charm in it. People make a thing out to be more than it is; and all the more when the years have passed and the place is far off, they tell it as they please, and once it is set down with a brush it is fixed.

Of how great the masters of this or that way are, a stubborn man who does not know the way speaks at random, as though of a god; but one who knows the way puts no faith in it at all. What one hears of and what one sees are different in everything.

To let the mouth run on, heedless that it will be found out at once, is heard for the empty thing it is. And to speak as another spoke, working the nose as one says it, while thinking oneself that it is not likely true, is not that man's own lie.

The lie told with a plausible air, blurred here and there, with a show of not quite knowing, and yet with its corners fitted together, is a fearful thing.

A lie told so as to give oneself credit, others do not much dispute; and a lie that everyone is enjoying, it is useless for one man to say alone was not so, so while he sits and listens he is even made a witness to it, and it is fixed the harder.

One way or another, it is a world full of lies. If a man takes things simply as the common, unremarkable things they are, he will go wrong in nothing.

In the talk of people of low sort there is nothing but what startles the ear. Good people do not tell of strange things.

Yet for all this, the wonders of the Buddhas and the gods, and the lives of those who came as incarnations (權化), are not to be so wholly disbelieved. To believe the lies of the world in earnest is foolish, and to say "surely it cannot be" is idle; so on the whole one should treat such things as true, neither believing them utterly, nor doubting and mocking them.

They gather like ants, hurry east and west, run north and south. There are the noble and the mean, the old and the young. There are places to go to and houses to return to. They sleep at evening and rise in the morning.

What is it they are about? They covet life and seek gain, and never stop.

They tend the body, and wait for what? What they are promised is only old age and death. It comes swiftly, and does not halt for the space of a thought. While one waits for it, what pleasure can there be?

The deluded do not fear it, because they are drowned in fame and gain and do not look to how near the end is. The foolish, again, grieve over it, because they wish things to stay as they are and do not know the principle of change.

What can be in the mind of a man who suffers from having nothing to do? To be alone, with nothing to draw the heart away, is the best of all.

If one follows the world, the heart is taken by the dust outside it and goes astray easily; if one mixes with people, one's words follow the ears of others, and are no longer one's own heart. One jests with people and quarrels over things, now resents and now rejoices, and the matter is never settled. Judgments rise at random, and gain and loss never cease.

One is drunk on top of delusion, and dreams within the drunkenness. To run about busily, and to be dazed and forgetful, is what all people do.

Even if one does not yet know the true way, to leave one's ties and make the body idle, to take no part in affairs and set the heart at ease, may well be called a pleasure for a while.

"Put an end to the several ties — livelihood, human affairs, the arts, learning and the rest." So it stands in the Makashikan as well.

In a house whose standing in the world is brilliant, where there is grief and joy and many people come and go, to see a holy priest mixed in among them, sending in a word and lingering about, looks like a thing he could well do without.

Even if there is good reason for it, a priest had better keep his distance from people.

When something is the talk of the world at a given time, it is hard to bear that a man with no business in it should know the whole of it, tell it to others, and go asking after it.

Holy priests from out-of-the-way corners in particular seem to noise abroad the affairs of people in the world as though they were their own, having gone asking after them until one wonders how they came to know so much.

To spread about what is newest among the fashions of the day, and make a show of it, is again hard to bear. A man who does not know a thing until the world has grown tired of it has depth in him.

When someone newly come is present, those in the know trade half-said phrases, the turns of speech and the names of things they use between themselves, and glance at one another and laugh, leaving the one who does not know at a loss. This is what ill-bred people who do not know the world are sure to do.

In everything it is good to show no sign of having gone deep into it. Would a good man speak of what he does know with such an air of knowing?

It is the man who has come up from some backwoods place who answers as though he were versed in every way. So there are points in him that others may feel ashamed before, and yet the look of thinking himself great is a coarse thing.

In the way one knows well, the mouth is sure to be heavy, and to say nothing unless asked is the splendid thing.

Every man loves only what is far from his own calling. Priests set up the way of the warrior; men of the frontier, who do not know how to draw a bow, put on the air of knowing the Buddha's Law, compose linked verse, and take pleasure in strings and winds. Yet for that they will be the more despised, beyond even their own clumsy way.

It is not priests alone. Among the senior nobles and the courtiers and those of high place, there are many who love the arts of war.

Even one who fights a hundred times and wins a hundred times cannot yet be given the name of valor. The reason is that when a man rides his luck and crushes the enemy, there is no one who will not call him brave. It is a way in which the name is shown only after his soldiers are spent and his arrows gone, and he still will not surrender to the enemy, and holds death lightly. While he lives he must not boast of arms.

It is conduct far from the way of men and near to that of birds and beasts. Unless it is the calling of his house, there is no profit in taking pleasure in it.