Sections 81–10081~100단

When the pictures and the writing on standing screens and sliding doors are done in a stiff, crude hand, the trouble lies less in their being ugly to look at than in the master of the house being thought clumsy.

In general, the furnishings a person keeps can make him seem the lesser for them. This is not to say that one should keep only fine things. It is to say that a thing is made coarse and ugly to look at so that it will not wear out, or that useless additions are put on it to make it seem rare, and so it is dressed up in a fussy way.

What is good is a thing that looks old, is not too showy, costs nothing, and is good in itself.

When someone said, "It is a pity that covers of thin silk wear out so soon," Tona (頓阿) replied, "The silk is splendid only after it has frayed at the top and the bottom, and the roller of mother-of-pearl only after the shell has fallen away." That seemed to me the finer mind.

People say it is unsightly when the books of what is called one set do not match one another. But Koyu Sozu (弘融) said, "To insist that a thing be made into a complete set is what a clumsy man does. It is the incomplete that is good." That too seemed to me splendid.

In all things, to have everything complete is bad. To leave a thing unfinished and set it aside just so is pleasing, and it makes the thing last. "Even when the palace is built, they always leave a part unfinished," a certain person said. In the writings of the wise men of old, inner and outer alike, there are places where a chapter or a section is simply missing.

Nothing would have hindered the Lay Priest Minister of the Left of Chikurin'in from rising to Chancellor, yet he said, "There is nothing new in it. I shall stop at being first among the ministers (一の上)," and he took holy orders.

The Minister of the Left of Toin admired this, and had no wish for the chancellorship.

There is a saying, "The dragon that has risen too high has cause for regret." What is full wanes; whatever is at its height declines. In all things, when the way ahead is blocked, it is a road close to ruin.

Someone heard how Faxian the Tripitaka master, having crossed over to India, grieved at the sight of a fan from his old home, and how, lying ill, he longed for the food of Han, and said, "How sorry a thing, that a man of such stature should show a weak heart in another country." Koyu Sozu said, "A Tripitaka master of ample feeling, was he not." That was not like a priest at all, and it seemed to me to have depth.

Since the hearts of people are not straight, it is not that there is no falsehood in them. Even so, how should there be no one who is honest of himself?

Though a man is not straight himself, to see the worth of another and envy it is the way of the world. The utterly foolish man, when he chances to see a man of worth, hates him. He slanders him and says, "He refuses a small gain in order to get a great one. He puts on a false show to make a name for himself."

He makes this mockery because the other differs from his own heart, and by that we know him. This man is of the lowest folly, a nature that cannot be changed. He cannot decline even a small gain in pretense, and he cannot learn worth even for a moment.

If a man runs down the main street in imitation of a madman, then he is a madman. If he kills a man in imitation of a wicked man, he is a wicked man. One who learns from the horse that runs a thousand li is of that horse's kind; one who learns from Shun is of Shun's company.

Even in pretense, one who would learn to be worthy should be called worthy.

Koretsugu, the Middle Counselor, was a man rich in the talent for poetry and prose. All his life he kept to abstinence and chanted the sutras, and he shared a house with Eni Sojo, who was a temple priest. When Mii-dera burned in the Bunpo era, he met the Sojo and said, "Until now I have called you a temple priest (寺法師), but since there is no temple, from now on I shall call you simply a priest." It was a splendid stroke of wit.

Giving drink to a servant is a thing to take care over.

A man who lived at Uji was on close terms with a priest of the capital called Gukakubo, an elegant man who had withdrawn from the world, for he was his wife's brother, and they visited each other often. Once the man sent a horse to fetch him and said, "It is a long way. Let the groom who leads the horse have a cup first," and brought out the wine. The groom took cup after cup and gulped them down.

He wore a sword and looked capable, so they felt easy about him and took him along. Near Kohata they came upon a priest of Nara with a number of soldiers. This man planted himself before them and said, "It is night in the mountains and you look suspicious. Halt," and drew his sword. The others all drew their swords and fitted arrows to their bows.

Gukakubo rubbed his hands together and said, "He is a man drunk out of his senses. Be so good as to forgive him." They each of them laughed at him and went on their way.

The man turned on Gukakubo. "Your reverence has done a regrettable thing. I was not drunk at all. I was about to win honor, and you have made my drawn sword come to nothing," he said in anger, and cut him down at a stroke.

Then he shouted, "Bandits!" and the people of the village came swarming out. "I am the bandit," he cried, and rushed at them, slashing about him, until many of them wounded him, brought him down and bound him.

The horse ran into the house at Uji Oji with blood on it. Appalled, they sent a number of men running, and they found Gukakubo lying face down and groaning in a field of gardenias, and carried him home. His life was barely saved, but his hip was cut through and ruined, and he was left maimed.

A certain man kept what he said was the Wakan roeishu written in the hand of Ono no Tofu. Someone said to him, "I would not say that the tradition by which it came down to you is empty, but if Tofu wrote what the Major Counselor of Shijo selected, would the ages not fail to match? It is hard to believe." "That is just why it is a thing rarely met with in this world," he said, and treasured it all the more.

"In the deep mountains there is a thing called a cat demon, and they say it eats people," someone said. Another said, "Even where it is not the mountains, here too a cat grows old, becomes a cat demon, and carries people off."

A priest who composed linked verse, called So-and-so Amida Butsu, lived near Gyoganji, and hearing this he was thinking, "One who goes about alone must take care." Just about that time, he had been composing linked verse at a certain place until deep in the night, and was going home alone when, at the edge of a stream, the cat demon he had heard of came straight at his feet, sprang upon him at once, and tried to bite him about the neck.

His wits left him. He tried to fend it off but had no strength, and his legs would not hold him. He rolled into the stream and cried out, "Help me! A cat demon! Here, here!" People lit pine torches in one house after another and came running, and when they looked, it was a priest they knew from thereabouts.

"What is this?" they said, and lifted him up out of the stream. The fan and the small box he had won as prizes at the linked verse and was carrying in his breast were soaked as well.

Barely alive, he crawled into his house. It was the dog he kept, they say, that had known its master even in the dark and leapt upon him.

Ototsurumaru, who served the Major Counselor Hoin, knew a person called Yasura-dono and was always going back and forth to him. Once, when he came back from going out, the Hoin asked, "Where have you been?" "I went to Yasura-dono's," he said.

"And is this Yasura-dono a man or a priest?" he asked again. Drawing his sleeves together, he answered, "How should it be? I did not see the head."

Why should it be that the head alone was not to be seen?

The thing called the red tongue day (赤舌日) is not dealt with in the way of yin and yang. The people of old did not shun it. Who it was that spoke of it in these times and began to shun it, I do not know. They say that what happens on this day does not carry through to the end, that what is said and what is done on that day does not come about, that what is gained is lost, and that what is undertaken fails. It is foolish.

If one were to count up the things done on a chosen lucky day that did not carry through to the end, it would come to the same.

The reason is this. In a realm that is impermanent and changing, what seems to be there does not remain, and what has a beginning has no end. Purposes are not accomplished; desires do not cease. The heart of a person has no fixity, and all things are phantoms. What is there that stays even for a while? It is this principle that they do not know.

It is said, "To do evil on a lucky day is always unlucky; to do good on an unlucky day is always lucky." Luck and ill luck rest with the person, not with the day.

A man who was learning to shoot the bow held two arrows between his fingers and faced the target. His master said, "A beginner must not hold two arrows. Trusting to the second, he grows careless with the first. Each time, whether it hits or misses, think that you will settle it with this one arrow."

With only two arrows, would he mean, before his master, to be careless with one of them? Yet the slack heart, though he does not know it himself, the master knows.

This warning reaches over all things. One who studies the Way thinks in the evening that there will be a morning, and in the morning that there will be an evening, and promises himself that he will practice again with care. How then should he know that within a single instant a slack heart is there?

Why is it that to do a thing at once, in this one thought of the present moment, is so very hard?

Someone told this. "There was a man selling an ox. The buyer said that he would bring the price the next day and take the ox. In the night the ox died. The one who would have bought it has the gain; the one who would have sold it has the loss."

Hearing this, a man at his side said, "The owner of the ox has indeed a loss, and yet he has a great gain as well. The reason is this. That a living thing does not know how near its death is, the ox has already shown. It is the same with people. Without its expecting it the ox died, and without his expecting it the owner is alive. A single day of life is heavier than ten thousand pieces of gold, and the price of an ox is lighter than a goose feather. A man who gains ten thousand pieces of gold and loses a single coin cannot be said to have suffered a loss."

They all laughed at him and said, "That principle need not be confined to the owner of the ox."

He said again, "Then if people hate death, they should love life. Should we not rejoice day by day in the joy of being alive? The foolish forget this joy and bustle about seeking joys outside it. They forget this treasure and hazard themselves coveting the wealth of others, so that their desire is never filled. To take no joy in life while one lives, and then to fear death when death comes, cannot be the way of it. That people take no joy in life is because they do not fear death. It is not that they do not fear death; it is that they forget how near death is. And if one should say that one has nothing to do with the forms of life and death, it may be said that he has grasped the true principle." At this the people laughed all the more.

When the Chancellor of Tokiwai was going to serve at the palace, a guard of the hokumen (北面) carrying an imperial letter met him and got down from his horse.

Afterward the chancellor said, "So-and-so of the hokumen is a man who got down from his horse while carrying an imperial letter. How should such a man serve his sovereign?" And the guard was put out of the hokumen.

An imperial letter is to be held up and shown from the horse. One must not dismount.

I asked a person versed in court usage (有職), "On which side should the cord be fastened to the cut-out of a box?" He said, "There are two accounts, fastening it to the roller side and fastening it to the cover side, so neither is at fault. A box for documents is mostly fastened on the right. For a hand box, fastening it to the roller side is common as well."

There is a plant called menamomi. They say that if a person bitten by a viper crushes that plant and lays it on, he is healed at once. It should be known.

There are more things than can be counted that cling to a thing and waste it and spoil it.

On the body there are lice. In the house there are rats. In the country there are thieves. For the small man there is wealth. For the gentleman there is benevolence and righteousness. For the priest there is the Law.

I looked at a book that had set down the words left by holy men of worth and was named, I think, the Ichigon hodan (一言芳談). These are the things in it that touched my heart.

One. A thing one wavers over, whether to do it or not, is on the whole better not done.

One. He who thinks of the life to come should not keep even a single jar of bean paste. To keep fine things, down to the sutra he carries and the image he worships, is a useless business.

One. For one who has withdrawn from the world, to arrange his life so that he does not miss what he does not have is the finest way.

One. The high should become the low, the wise should become the foolish, the rich should become the poor, and the able should become the unable.

One. To seek the way of the Buddha is nothing apart from this. To become a man with leisure, and to hold nothing of the world in mind, is taken for the first of the ways.

The rest of what was there I do not remember.

The Chancellor of Horikawa was a handsome and prosperous man, and with no particular reason he was fond of excess in display.

He made his son, the lord Mototoshi, the chief of the police office, and while he was carrying on the business of the office, he said that the Chinese chest of the office was unsightly and gave word that it should be made anew in splendid form.

But this chest had come down from ancient times, its beginning unknown, and had passed some hundreds of years. Goods handed down through the generations take their old and worn state for their model, and the officials versed in old usage (故實) submitted that it could not easily be changed. And so the matter was dropped.

When the Chancellor of Koga called for water in the courtiers' hall, the Tonomozukasa offered him an earthenware cup. "Bring the magari," he said, and drank from a magari.