Sections 181–200181~200단

"As for the words 'Fall, fall, powder snow, powder snow of Tanba' — it is called powder snow because it is like rice pounded and passed through a sieve. What ought to be said is 'Pile up, powder snow,' and by mistake people say 'of Tanba.' It should be sung 'on the fence and in the fork of the tree.'" So said a certain man who knew such things.

Is it a saying that has come down from long ago? It is written in the Sanuki no suke nikki that Retired Emperor Toba, when he was a child, spoke in this way as the snow was falling.

Takachika, the Major Counselor of Shijo, offered up a thing called dried salmon as food for the Emperor. Hearing people say, "There is no offering up so strange a thing," the Major Counselor said, "It would be another matter if salmon were a fish that is not offered up at all. What fault is there in salmon dried plain? Is dried sweetfish not offered up?"

An ox that gores people has its horns cut, and a horse that bites people has its ears cut, and this is taken as the mark of it. When no mark has been put on and a person is hurt, the fault is the owner's.

A dog that bites people must not be kept and fed. In all of these there is guilt, and the penal code (律) forbids them.

The mother of Tokiyori, the Governor of Sagami, was called Matsushita Zenni. There was an occasion when she was to welcome the Governor in, and Zenni, with a small knife in her own hand, went on cutting round and pasting over only the torn places of a sooty paper screen.

Her elder brother Yoshikage, the Jo no Suke, who was seeing to matters that day, said, "Let me take it in hand and have such and such a man paste it. He is a man who knows that sort of work."

"That man will surely not do better than this old nun's handiwork," she said, and went on pasting one panel at a time.

When Yoshikage said again, "To paste it all anew would be far easier. And is it not unsightly, all in patches?" she answered, "This old nun too means to paste it clean and new later on. But today, of set purpose, it must be left like this. It is to let a young person see and learn that a thing is mended only where it is worn, and so to wake him to it." It was a rare thing indeed.

The way of governing the world takes frugality for its root. Though she was a woman, she was in touch with the heart of a sage. Seeing that she had for her child a man able to hold the realm, she was truly no ordinary person.

Jo Yasumori, the Governor of Mutsu, was a horseman without peer. When he had a horse led out and saw it bring its feet together and pass lightly over the threshold, he would say, "This is a spirited horse," and have the saddle moved over to another.

Again, when a horse stretched out its foot and struck the threshold, he would say, "This one is dull and will make a misstep," and would not ride it.

Would a man who did not know the way take as much care as that?

What a horseman called Yoshida said was this. "Every horse is a stubborn thing. You must know that a man is not to contend with it by strength. First look well at the horse you are to ride, and learn where it is strong and where it is weak. Next look to see whether there is anything unsafe in the bit and the saddle gear, and if anything weighs on your mind, do not put that horse to a gallop. To keep this care always is what being a horseman means, and this is the treasured thing."

A man of any way, unskilled though he be, will always come off the better when set beside an able man from outside that way, and it is because keeping careful without slackening and never taking things lightly is not the same as going wholly as one pleases.

It is not in arts and handiwork alone. In ordinary bearing and care of mind as well, to be dull and yet careful is the root of gain, and to be skilled and yet willful is the root of loss.

A certain man made his son a monk, and said, "Study, and come to know the principle of cause and effect, and make preaching and the like your means of getting through the world."

As he was taught, in order to become a preacher he first learned to ride a horse. He thought, "Having neither palanquin nor carriage, if I am asked to serve as the leading priest and they send a horse to fetch me, it would be a sorry thing to have a peach for a seat — to be unable to stay on a horse — and fall off."

Next he thought, "If wine and the like should be pressed on us after the Buddhist service, a monk with no accomplishment at all would leave the patron cold," and so he learned the thing called hayauta.

As the two arts came little by little to a fine pitch, he wished to do them better still, and while he worked at them he had no leisure to learn preaching, and so he grew old.

It is not this monk alone. People of the world all have this about them. While they are young they set in their minds all that they would do over the long years ahead — make something of themselves, accomplish some great way, master an art, pursue learning — and yet they take the world easily and are slack, and being caught up in only what lies before their eyes they let the months and days go by. So they do nothing in any of it, and their bodies grow old. In the end they become masters of nothing, nor do they carry themselves as they meant to. It is no age for taking back what is regretted, and they decline like a wheel running down a hill.

Therefore, among the things one would chiefly wish for in a lifetime, one should weigh well which is the better, settle on the first of them, cast the rest away, and put one's strength into that one thing.

Within a single day, within a single hour, many things will come; one should take in hand the one whose profit is even a little greater, throw the rest aside, and hurry the great matter. Hold it in your mind that you will give up nothing, and not one thing will come to be.

It is like a man playing go, who wastes not a single move, gets ahead of his opponent, and gives up the small to take the great. And in this, to give up three stones and take ten is easy, but to give up ten and take eleven is hard. One ought to go to the better side though it be better by one, but once it has come to ten it seems too dear, and one is loath to trade it for stones that are not much greater. With a heart that would keep this and take that as well, one does not get that and loses this.

A man living in the capital may be hurrying on business to Higashiyama and have arrived there already; yet if he sees that going to Nishiyama would be of greater profit, he should turn back from the gate and go to Nishiyama. Because he thinks, "Having come this far, let me speak of this matter first. The Nishiyama business is not fixed to a day, so let me go back and think it over again," one hour's sloth becomes at once a lifetime's sloth. This is what one should fear.

If you would surely accomplish one thing, you must not grieve that other things fall to pieces. You must not be ashamed at people's mockery. Unless you trade away all things, the one great matter cannot be accomplished.

Among a number of people, one man said, "There are such words as 'masuho no susuki' and 'masoho no susuki.' The holy man of Watanabe has had them handed down to him and knows them." The monk Toren, who was there in that company, heard it, and though rain was falling he said, "Have you a straw cape and a hat? Lend them to me. I will go and seek out the holy man of Watanabe to learn about that susuki grass."

People said, "This is far too much of a bustle. Wait until the rain stops." He said, "You say a senseless thing. Does a man's life wait for a break in the rain? If I die and the holy man is gone too, could I go and hear it then?" And he ran out and went and learned it. That this has been handed down seems to me splendid and rare.

"When one is quick, then there is achievement" — so it stands, they say, in the writing called the Analects. As he wondered about this susuki grass, so one ought to have thought about the causes of the one great matter.

Though I think that today I will do that thing, some other urgent matter comes up first and I pass the day caught up in it. The person I wait for is prevented and does not come, and the person I did not count on comes. The business I trusted in goes wrong, and only the road I never thought of comes out right.

What looked troublesome passes without trouble, and what should have been easy torments the heart.

The way the days go by is not like what was thought beforehand. So it is with the business of a year. So it is too through a whole life.

Just as one thinks that all that was reckoned beforehand is going wrong, there are things that of themselves do not go wrong, and so it is harder still to fix anything.

Only to understand that nothing is fixed is true and does not go wrong.

A wife is the very thing a man should not have. To hear of someone that he lives always alone — that has a fine air about it.

When one hears, "He has become so and so's son-in-law," or again, "He has taken some woman in and lives with her," he sinks utterly in one's eyes.

One guesses meanly that he has settled on a woman of no account, thinking her good, and lives at her side; and if she is a fine woman, one is sure to think, "This man dotes on her and guards her as his own Buddha. Well, he is only so much."

Still more, a woman who takes the house in hand and rules it is a sad thing indeed. That children should come and be cosseted and cherished is a pity. The look of her when the man has died and she has become a nun and grown old is dreadful even after he is gone.

Whatever woman she may be, living face to face with her morning and evening you will come to find her thoroughly displeasing and hateful. And for the woman too it would be a half-hearted thing.

To live apart and go to and fro now and then — that is the tie which, though years and months pass, will not be broken. To come for a little while and stay the night would surely be fresh.

A person who says that when night comes on things have no show is much to be pitied. The luster of all things, their ornament and their color, are splendid at night and at no other time.

By day a plain and sober dress will do. At night a bright and gay dress is very good.

A person's looks too — those that are good are good in the lamplight of night. A voice heard in the dark is guarded, and has a fine air. Scents and the sound of instruments as well are splendid beyond compare at night alone.

On a night with nothing at all to mark it, someone who comes when it is late, looking neat and clean, is very good.

Young people who watch one another with their hearts engaged do not mind the hour, so it is just at the times when one is apt to be off guard that one wishes to be well groomed, with no telling everyday from best.

A fine man who washes his hair as the day darkens, and a woman who, as the night deepens, slips away, takes up a mirror and puts her face in order before she comes out — that is charming.

To gods and buddhas too, it is good to go on a day when people do not make their visits, and to go at night.

That a man in the dark should take the measure of another and think he knows that other's wisdom can never hit the mark.

A clumsy man may be quick and skillful at playing go and nothing else, and, seeing a wise man poor at this art, may settle it that the wise man's wisdom does not come up to his own. That a master of any way should see that others do not know his way and think himself the better for it is a great error.

The monk who knows only the letters and the Zen master who puts forward only his enlightenment take each other's measure and think the other no match for himself, and both are wrong.

One must not contend over what is not one's own province, nor judge it right or wrong.

The eye with which an accomplished man sees people is not wrong in the least.

Suppose someone frames a lie and sets it loose in the world to take people in. There are those who take it straight for the truth and are led along just as they are told. There are those who believe too deeply and go on to add troublesome falsehoods of their own to what they have understood. And there are those who think nothing of it and pay it no mind.

There are those who find it a little doubtful and neither trust it nor distrust it, but sit turning it over. And there are those to whom it does not seem true, but who let it pass, thinking that since another says so it may be as he says.

There are those who put on the look of having guessed it out this way and that, and who nod wisely and sit smiling, and yet know nothing at all. There are those who reckon it out and think it is likely so, and yet are uneasy lest there be some mistake.

There are those who clap their hands and laugh and say it was nothing out of the way. And there are those who have seen through it and yet do not say they know, and who, where they have no doubt, say nothing one way or the other and pass for the same as those who do not know.

And there are those who from the first see the real drift of this lie, are not taken in at all, and, coming to be of one mind with the man who framed it, lend him their strength.

Even the jesting of fools among themselves cannot be hidden before a man who knows; all these degrees of understanding are plain in their words and in their faces. How much more must a man of clear sight see us in our confusion as he would see a thing on the palm of his hand.

Only, by guesswork of this kind one must not go on to speak of the Buddha's Law as though it were the same.

A certain man, passing along the Koga Nawate, saw a man in a narrow-sleeved robe and oguchi trousers pressing a wooden Jizo down into the water of a paddy and washing it with great care.

While he watched, unable to make it out, two or three men in hunting robes came out and said, "So you were here," and took the man away with them.

It was the Inner Minister of Koga. At the times when he was in his usual state, he was a person of rare gifts and high nobility.

When the sacred palanquin of Todai-ji returned from the Wakamiya of To-ji, the nobles of the Genji attended it. This lord, as Major Captain, had the way cleared before it, and the Chancellor of Tsuchimikado said, "How would it be to give the warning cry (警蹕) before the shrine (社頭)?"

He answered only, "The bearing of the escort (隨身) is a matter for the houses of arms (兵仗) to know."

Afterwards he said, "This Chancellor has looked at the Hokuzansho and did not know the teaching of Saigu. Because the evil demons and evil gods among the attendant spirits are to be feared, there is a reason why the way should be cleared with special care at a shrine."

It is not of the monks of the various temples alone: the term jogaku (定額) nyoju (女嬬) is seen in the Engishiki. It is the general name for public servants (公人) whose number is fixed.

Not the yomyo no suke (揚名介) alone: there is also a thing called the yomyo no sakan (揚名目). It is in the Seiji yoryaku.

What Gyosen Hoin of Yokawa said was this. "The land of Tang is a land of ryo (呂), and has no ritsu (律) tone. Japan is a land of ritsu alone, and has no ryo tone."

The kuretake has narrow leaves, and the kawatake has broad leaves. Those near the palace channel (御溝) are kawatake, and those planted over toward the Jijuden are kuretake.