BUDDHIST ALLUSIONS IN JAPANESE FOLK-SONG
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Hearn, Lafcadio
But even as a summer unusually warm is apt to herald a winter of exceptional severity, so too much happiness in this life may signify great suffering in the next:—
Always I suffer thus!... Methinks, in my last existence. Too happy I must have been,—did not suffer enough.
Next in point of exotic interest to the songs expressing belief in preëxistence and rebirth, I think I should place those treating of the doctrine of ingwa, or Karma. I offer some free translations from these, together with one selection from a class of compositions more elaborate and usually much longer than the dodoitsu, called hauta. In the original, at least, my selection from the hauta—which contains a charming simile about the firefly—is by far the prettiest:—
Weep not!—turn to me!... Nay, all my suspicions vanish! Forgive me those words unkind: some ingwa controlled my tongue!
Evidently this is the remorseful pleading of a jealous lover. The next might be the answer of the girl whose tears he had caused to flow:
I cannot imagine at all by what strange manner of ingwa Came I to fall in love with one so unkind as you!
Or she might exclaim:—
Is this the turning of En?—am I caught in the Wheel of Karma? That, alas! is a wheel not to be moved from the rut![9]
A more remarkable reference to the Wheel of Karma is the following:—
Father and mother forbade, and so I gave up my lover;— Yet still, with the whirl of the Wheel, the thought of him comes and goes.[10]
This is a hauta:—
Numberless insects there are that call from dawn to evening, Crying, "I love! I love!"—but the Firefly's silent passion, Making its body burn, is deeper than all their longing. Even such is my love ... yet I cannot think through what ingwa I opened my heart—alas!—to a being not sincere![11]
If the foregoing seem productions possible only to our psychological antipodes, it is quite otherwise with a group of folk-songs reflecting the doctrine of Impermanency. Concerning the instability of all material things, and the hollowness of all earthly pleasures, Christian and Buddhist thought are very much in accord. The great difference between them appears only when we compare their teaching as to things ghostly,—and especially as to the nature of the Ego. But the Oriental doctrine that the Ego itself is an impermanent compound, and that the Self is not the true Consciousness, rarely finds expression in these popular songs. For the common people the Self exists: it is a real (though multiple) personality that passes from birth to birth. Only the educated Buddhist comprehends the deeper teaching that what we imagine to be Self is wholly illusion,—a darkening veil woven by Karma; and that there is no Self but the Infinite Self, the eternal Absolute. In the following dodoitsu will be found mostly thoughts or emotions according with universal experience:—
Gathering clouds to the moon;—storm and rain to the flowers: Somehow this world of woe never is just as we like.[12]
Almost as soon as they bloom, the scented flowers of the plum-tree By the wind of this world of change are scattered and blown away.
Thinking to-morrow remains, thou heart's frail flower-of-cherry? How knowest whether this night the tempest will not come?[13]
Shadow and shape alike melt and flow back to nothing: He who knows this truth is the Daruma of snow.[14]
As the moon of the fifteenth night, the heart till the age fifteen: Then the brightness wanes, and the darkness comes with love.[15]
All things change, we are told, in this world of change and sorrow; But love's way never changes of promising never to change.[16]
Source notes
[9]
Meguru en kaya? Kuruma no watashi Hiku ni hikarénu Kono ingwa.
There is a play on words in the original which I have not attempted to render. The idea is of an unhappy match—either betrothal or marriage—from which the woman wishes to withdraw when too late.
[10]
Oya no iken dé Akirameta no we Mata mo rin-yé dé Omoi-dasu.
The Buddhist word Rin-yé, or Rinten, has the meaning of "turning the Wheel,"—another expression for passing from birth to birth. The Wheel here is the great Circle of Illusion,—the whirl of Karma.
[11]
Kaäi, kaäi to Naku mushi yori mo Nakanu hotaru ga Mi we kogasu. Nanno ingwa dé Jitsu naki hito ni Shin we akashité,— Aa kuyashi!
Lit.: "'I-love-I-love'-saying-cry-insects than, better never-cry-firefly, body scorch! What Karma because-of, sincerity-not-is-man to, inmost-mind opened?—ah! regret!" ... It was formerly believed that the firefly's light really burned its own body.
[12]
Tsuki ni murakumo, Hana ni wa arashi: Tokaku uki-yo wa Mama naranu.
This song especially refers to unhappy love, and contains the substance of two Buddhist proverbs: Tsuki ni murakumo, hana ni kazé (cloud-masses to the moon; wind to flowers); and Mama ni naranu wa uki-yo no narai (to be disappointed is the rule in this miserable world). "Uki-yo" (this fleeting or unhappy world) is one of the commonest Buddhist terms in use.
[13]
Asu ari to Omō kokoro no Ada-zakura: Yo wa ni arashi no Fukanu monokawa?
Lit.: "To-morrow-is that think heart-of perishable-cherry flower: this-night-in-storm blow-not, is-it-certain?"
[14]
Kagé mo katachi mo Kiyuréba moto no Midzu to satoru zo Yuki-Daruma.
Lit.: "Shadow and shape also, if-melt-away, original-water is,—that-understands Snow-Daruma." Daruma (Dharma), the twenty-eighth patriarch of the Zen sect, is said to have lost his legs through remaining long in the posture of meditation; and many legless toy-figures, which are so balanced that they will always assume an upright position however often placed upside-down, are called by his name. The snow-men made by Japanese children have the same traditional form.—The Japanese friend who helped me to translate these verses, tells me that a ghostly meaning attaches to the word "Kagé" [shadow] in the above;—this would give a much more profound signification to the whole verse.
[15] According to the old calendar, there was always a full moon on the fifteenth of the month. The Buddhist allusion in the verse is to mayoi, the illusion of passion, which is compared to a darkness concealing the Right Way.
[16]
Kawaru uki-yo ni Kawaranu mono wa Kawarumai to no Koi no michi.