寒山拾得 English

It is said to be from the Zhenguan era of the Tang dynasty — the early seventh century in the West, a time when Japan had only just begun to have reign-names at all.

There was, it is said, an official by the name of Lü Qiuyin.

Though some say there was no such person.

The reason is that while tradition holds Lü was the prefectural administrator of Taizhou, no biography of him appears in either the Old or New Tang Histories.

The title of administrator is the same office as that of Cishi or Taishu.

All of China was divided into circuits, circuits into prefectures or commanderies, those into counties, counties into townships, and townships into villages.

A prefecture had a Cishi, a commandery a Taishu.

That Japan has given the name "gun" — commandery — to a unit smaller than a county is improper, scholars such as Yoshida Togo have complained.

If Lü was indeed the administrator of Taizhou, he would have been an official of roughly the rank of a Japanese prefectural governor.

That being so, one would expect him to appear in the biographical section of the Tang Histories.

But since without Lü there is no story to tell, we shall simply take it that he existed.

Now, it was the third day after Lü arrived to take up his post in Taizhou.

A man who had been breathing the yellow dust of north China and drinking its murky water in Chang'an had come to Taizhou, where he now trod the rich soil of central China and drank its clear water — he was in excellent spirits.

In addition, throughout these three days a great number of subordinate officials had come to pay their respects.

Each reported formally on the affairs under his charge.

Amid all that bustle, he savored the grandeur of a regional governor's authority, and was in high and swaggering humor.

Lü had spoken to his subordinates the day before, and this morning he rose early and set out for the Guoqing Temple in Tiantai County.

He had resolved, while still in Chang'an, that upon arriving in Taizhou he would go there without delay.

What business had he at the Guoqing Temple? There was a particular reason for that.

When Lü had received his appointment in Chang'an and was about to set out for his post, he happened to be struck by a headache so severe he could not bear it.

It was a simple rheumatic headache, but Lü had always been somewhat nervous by temperament, and the medicine his regular doctor gave him would not bring it to an end.

He was saying to his wife that he might have to put off the day of departure, when a maidservant came in and said: "Just now a mendicant monk has come to the front gate and says he wishes to see the master — what shall I do?"

she said.

"Hm, a monk, is it?"

Lü thought for a moment, then said, "Well, show him in — I'll see him."

So he ordered.

And he sent his wife back into the inner rooms.

Lü had originally studied the classical texts and practiced writing five-character verse in preparation for the civil examinations; he had never read Buddhist scripture nor studied Laozi.

Yet toward monks and Taoist priests he felt a reverence he could not quite account for.

A blind reverence, one might call it, toward that which one does not comprehend.

So when he heard it was a monk, he said he would see him.

Before long, in came a tall monk.

He wore a grimy, tattered robe, and his long-grown hair had been cut level at the eyebrows.

It looked as though he had simply left it until it became a nuisance falling over his eyes.

In his hand he carried an iron begging bowl.

The monk stood silently, so Lü asked him:

"I'm told you wished to see me — what is your business?"

The monk said:

"I understand you are to proceed to Taizhou. And I hear you are suffering from a headache. I have come because I thought I might cure it for you."

"Indeed, it is as you say, and I was thinking of putting off my departure on account of this headache. But how do you intend to cure it? Do you know some remedy or prescription?"

"No. Illness that afflicts the body of the four elements is an illusion. All that is needed is a bowl of clean water in this alms vessel. I will cure it with a spell."

"Ah, you would recite a spell?"

He said this and thought for a moment, then said: "I see no harm in it — please do cast your spell."

So he said.

He had never thought deeply about the art of medicine, and had no fixed principles about which treatments to permit and which to refuse, so he simply relied on his own judgment and decided each case as it arose.

Of course, a man of that sort had not chosen his regular doctor with any great care either.

Rather than seeking out a physician who read the Suwen or the Lingshu, he had settled on a doctor who lived nearby and was convenient to summon — and so he had not been receiving any particularly sound medicine.

His readiness now to put himself in the hands of a mendicant monk came partly from a faith inspired by the monk's air of somehow lofty authority, and partly from the thought that a spell done with nothing but a bowl of water could cause no danger even if it went wrong.

It was much the same as senior officials in Tokyo turning to rouge-therapy or the laying-on of hands.

Lü called the maidservant and ordered her to bring freshly drawn water in a bowl.

The water came.

The monk took it, held it to his chest, and fixed his gaze steadily on Lü.

Clean water would do, dirty water would do; hot water or tea would do equally.

That the water happened to be clean was a stroke of unexpected good fortune for Lü.

As the monk held his gaze, Lü found his own mind drawn, without his realizing it, to concentrate on the water the monk was holding aloft.

At that moment the monk took a mouthful of the water from the iron bowl and suddenly blew it onto Lü's head.

Lü started in surprise, and felt a cold sweat run down his back.

"And your headache?"

the monk asked.

"Ah — it is gone."

And indeed, the headache that Lü had been feeding by constantly thinking about it — it hurts, it hurts — and had not been able to shake off, was lost and forgotten the moment his attention was seized by the monk's water.

The monk quietly tilted the remaining water in the bowl onto the floor.

Then he said, "Well then, I shall take my leave"

and with that, he turned his back on Lü and walked toward the door.

"Just a moment, please"

called Lü, stopping him.

The monk turned around.

"Is there something you need?"

"I should like to offer you a small token of thanks."

"No. I go about begging in order to benefit all living beings and to humble the arrogant, but I do not accept payment for healing."

"I see. Then I shall not press the matter. But I should like to know who you are and where you come from."

"Where I have been living? That would be the Guoqing Temple in Tiantai."

"Ah, so you have been at Tiantai. And your name?"

"I am called Feng Gan."

"Feng Gan of the Guoqing Temple in Tiantai."

Lü knitted his brows as if making a deliberate effort to fix the name firmly in his memory.

"As I too am now on my way to Taizhou, I find it particularly heartening. While I have the chance, may I ask — are there in Taizhou any remarkable people worth calling on, from whom one might profit?"

"Well, at the Guoqing Temple there is one called Shide. He is in truth Samantabhadra. And to the west of the temple there is a stone cave called Hanya, where one called Hanshan dwells. He is in truth Manjushri. — And now I take my leave."

Having said this, he slipped out and was gone.

It was because of this connection that Lü was now setting out for the Guoqing Temple in Tiantai.

――――――――――――

In general, there are three kinds of attitudes that people in the world hold toward the Way or religion.

Those absorbed in their own work, who simply pass their years in ceaseless, grinding labor, pay no heed to anything called the Way.

The same is true even of the educated.

Of course, if one read deeply and thought long, one could not help but arrive at the Way.

But without going that far in one's thinking, one can still manage the demands of daily duty.

These are people of complete indifference.

Next are those who seek the Way with deliberate intent.

Some devote themselves wholly to seeking the Way and cast everything else aside; others do not neglect their daily duties yet keep the Way always in their sights.

Whether they enter Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, or Christianity, the pattern is the same.

When such people penetrate deeply enough, their daily duties themselves become the Way.

In sum, these are all people who seek the Way.

Between these indifferent people and those who seek the Way, there is another kind: those who acknowledge objectively that something called the Way exists, who are not wholly indifferent to it, yet who do not on their own initiative seek it out; who resign themselves to being persons remote from the Way, and imagine that there are others who are close to it, and hold those others in reverence.

Reverence exists in all kinds of people, but speaking only of cases where the same object is revered: in someone seeking the Way it is the less advanced revering the more advanced; in these middle-kind persons it is the revering of what one does not understand, what one cannot grasp.

There blind reverence arises.

With blind reverence, even if the object toward which it happens to be directed is perfectly worthy, it amounts to nothing.

――――――――――――

Lü changed his clothes, boarded his palanquin, and departed from the official residence in Taizhou.

He had several dozen attendants.

It was early winter, and there was a light frost on the ground.

They proceeded northward, following the left bank of the Shifeng Stream, a tributary of the Jiaojiang River.

The sky, which had been overcast at first, gradually cleared, and a pale sun shone on the red autumn leaves along the bank.

Old and young who met them on the road all moved aside and knelt as the palanquin passed.

Inside the palanquin, Lü was feeling thoroughly pleased with himself.

The notion that he, in his role as shepherd of the people, was paying reverence to a man of virtue felt like a worthy achievement, and gave him a deep satisfaction.

From Taizhou to Tiantai County was about sixty-and-a-half li.

About six and a half ri in Japanese measure.

As the palanquin had been carried at a leisurely pace, it was already past noon when they met the officials who had come out from the county to greet them.

They rested and were entertained at the county magistrate's residence, and learned over the meal that from here to the Guoqing Temple was another sixty li of steep, uphill road.

They would not arrive until after dark.

So Lü decided to spend the night at the county magistrate's residence.

The following morning he set out, seen off by the county magistrate.

The weather was no different from the day before.

That Tiantai stands eighteen thousand zhang high — whoever measured it, it seems an exaggeration in any case — but at any rate it is a mountain that harbors tigers.

The road did not go as smoothly as the day before.

They ate a midday meal along the way, and as the sun began to tilt toward the west, arrived at the main gate of the Guoqing Temple.

It was a temple, so it was said, that the Sui Emperor Yang had built after the death of the Great Teacher Zhizhe.

The temple, too, would not take lightly a visit from the prefectural administrator.

A monk named Daoqiao came out to meet them and led Lü to the reception room.

When the welcome of tea and cakes was done, Lü asked:

"Has there been a monk by the name of Feng Gan at this temple?"

Daoqiao answered:

"Feng Gan, you say? He was until recently in the monks' quarters behind the main hall, but he went off on pilgrimage and has not returned."

"What was he doing here at the temple?"

"He was pounding the rice that the monks eat."

"I see. And was there anything about him that set him apart from the other monks?"

"Yes, there was, and it was on account of that we began to hold Feng Gan in high regard — at first we thought him simply a hardworking, good-natured fellow lodger who never shirked his labor. Then one day he suddenly went away."

"What happened, exactly?"

"A most extraordinary thing it was. One day he came back from the mountain riding on a tiger. And just like that he rode into the corridor and walked the length of it on the tiger's back, chanting verse. He was a man who was fond of chanting verse — in the monks' quarters at the back too, he would chant verse when night fell."

"Ah. A living arhat, no less. And what has become of those monks' quarters?"

"It stands vacant even now, but from time to time when night comes a tiger comes there and roars."

"Then, if it is not too much trouble, please show me there."

So saying, Lü rose from his seat.

Daoqiao went ahead, brushing away cobwebs, and led Lü to the vacant quarters where Feng Gan had lived.

The sun had already nearly set, and looking around the dim interior, it was bare and empty, with not a single thing inside.

Daoqiao bent down and pointed to tiger's footprints on the stone floor.

Just then a mountain wind blew past outside the window and swept up the great pile of fallen leaves in the garden.

The sound broke the silence with a rustling roar, and Lü felt as though the roots of his hair were being clenched tight, and gooseflesh rose over his entire body.

Lü made haste to leave the empty dwelling.

And he said to Daoqiao, who was following behind:

"Is the monk called Shide still at this temple?"

Daoqiao looked at Lü's face with an expression of puzzlement.

"You know of him, do you. Just now he was over in the kitchen there, warming himself by the fire with someone called Hanshan — if you have need of him, shall I call him over?"

"Oh? Hanshan is here as well? That is more than I could have hoped for. Please, since you are already taking the trouble, show me to the kitchen."

"Certainly."

He said, and Daoqiao walked westward along the main hall.

Lü called out to him from behind:

"How long has Shide been at this temple?"

"For quite some time now. He was an abandoned child that Feng Gan picked up and brought back from the pine forest."

"I see. And what does he do here at the temple?"

"About three years after he was brought in, I am told they had him burning incense and offering lamp-oil before the image in the refectory, and making other offerings and the like. Then one day he was found having laid a meal before the image of Pindola Bharadvaja and sitting across from it eating together with it. He apparently did not know how sacred that image was. These days he washes the monks' dishes in the kitchen."

"Ah."

Lü said, and after walking a few steps more, he asked:

"And just now you mentioned someone called Hanshan — what sort of person is he?"

"Hanshan? He is someone who lives in a stone cave to the west of this temple called Hanya. When Shide washes the dishes, he sets aside leftover rice and vegetables in a bamboo tube, and Hanshan comes to collect them."

"I see."

Lü said, following along.

In his mind he was turning over the question of what sort of being Feng Gan, who rode tigers, could be, if Hanshan and Shide — who went about doing such things — were Manjushri and Samantabhadra; he felt rather as a country person does when watching a play, puzzling over which actor is playing which role.

――――――――――――

"It is a frightfully rough place"

Daoqiao said, leading Lü into the kitchen.

The room was full of steam, and entering it suddenly one could barely make out anything clearly.

Through the grey haze three large stoves could be seen, in each of which the remaining firewood burned bright red.

Standing there for a moment, shapes gradually emerged: along the stone wall, at a long built-in table, several monks could be seen ladling rice, vegetables, and soup from pots and kettles.

At this moment Daoqiao turned toward the back and called out, "Hey, Shide!"

He called.

Following Daoqiao's gaze, Lü looked toward the stove farthest from the entrance, and there he saw two monks crouching and warming themselves by the fire.

One had a bare head with hair grown two or three inches, and on his feet he wore straw sandals.

The other wore a hat woven from tree bark, and on his feet wore wooden clogs.

Both were thin, shabby little men, nothing like the big frame of Feng Gan.

When Daoqiao called out, the one with the bare head turned and gave a grinning smile, but said nothing.

This, it appeared, was Shide.

The one with the hat did not stir.

This must be Hanshan.

With this judgment in mind, Lü stepped closer to the two of them.

He drew his sleeves together and bowed with great ceremony, saying: "I am called Lü Qiuyin, Chaoyi Dafu, Acting Military Commissioner, Prefectural Administrator of Taizhou, Upper Pillar of the State, and Bearer of the Crimson Fish-Pouch."

So he announced himself.

The two of them looked at Lü simultaneously.

Then they looked at each other, let out a laugh that seemed to well up from the depths of their bellies, and at the same moment leapt to their feet and fled out of the kitchen.

As they fled, Hanshan called out, "Feng Gan let it slip!"

and those words were heard.

Around Lü, who stood there in astonishment watching them go, the monks who had been ladling rice, vegetables, and soup came crowding and pressing in.

Daoqiao stood rooted to the spot, his face gone white as a sheet.

January, Taisho 5