In this world
If there were no ox-cart
How should we escape
From the burning mansion of our thoughts--anon
世の中に牛の車の無かりせば 思ひの家を如何で出でまし
++
She was a lady that didn't get out much. In fact, Izumi Shikibu spent quite a lot of time sitting on her wooden veranda, sometimes listening to the autumn insects and gazing out at the brilliance of the moon; and other times wondering when the long rains would stop and she could see him again. Her time sitting on the verenda gazing out at the world was not unlike the Two Venetian Ladies in Carpaccio's oil painting--sitting on their wooden altane, wiling away the hours looking out toward the lagoon.
Not a lot happened in the world of aristocratic ladies of the Heian period --unless, of course, they were in the midst of a love affair. Then, a lady's lover would visit her after dark on consecutive nights, or sometimes she might go out riding together with him in his ox-drawn cart.
Many, many years ago, I bought a black lacquer comb (簪). It had caught my eye at a department store the first week I arrived in Japan. I knew it was a comb for a woman's hair, but I had no idea that what decorated the comb was a picture of an ox-drawn horse, parked among the pine trees in front of a lady's veranda.
And, when I finally did figure it out years later, I liked the comb even more.
By that time, I knew that ox-drawn carts were not just a means for ladies to go about town in Heian times, but the image of an oxcart also calls to mind the Parable of the Burning House from the Lotus Sutra. I don't know why but the Parable has long been one of my favorites-- the image of the kind father whose house is on fire luring his sons, who refused to listen, to come outside with promises of new toy carts to play with ("expedient means"). And there outside, there are indeed carts (real ones) to wisk them away to safety.
The oxcart of the poem at the top, just as in the parable, stands for Buddhism; while the burning house (思ひの家→ 「思ひ」 の 「ひ」 を 「火」 にかけて,火の家つまり火宅(かたく)をいう)is the mundane world, or samsara.
When I showed the poem to Mei-- herself a beautiful Heian lady, with long flowing dark hair who spends her evenings writing exquisite love poems to her beloved--she said,
The Burning mansion of thoughts reminds me of another quote by Kafka: "This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces… And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me." (The Diaries of Franz Kafka).
This immediately reminded me of a certain Kashmiri carpet-wallah (who happens to be married to Mei) who had only just reminded me of the fundamental and absolute importance of faith. I love the quote by Kafka and was so happy Mei thought to tell me about it. As Kierkegaard insisted, our interiority is paramount, but we must take a stand and actualize our defining commitments. And, this "exteriority of interiority"is probably only possuble via faith. Mei later explained that what her carpet wallah meant by faith is "not thinking "everything will be fine," but more a complete surrender to what's beyond us, what's unknown, mystic and infinite (basically what's out of our control). To let go."
"To let go".... now that is a challenge, indeed.
Below, Faye Wong singing the Heart Sutra.
Note to Mei:
In a translation today, I came across the expression 醍醐味. I looked up the history of the phrase and learned about the "five flavors of making ghee 五味相生の譬 , from which it is derived.
See here:
Lastly, Shakyamuni Buddha preached the Lotus Sutra and revealed that the Dharma were taught in three different ways, but all converged to One Buddha Vehicle without any contradiction. For those who obtained the prediction of their future Buddhahood, it is like transforming butter to ghee.
Posted by: peony | August 02, 2012 at 01:53 PM
Thank you for this beautiful, beautiful post, my dearest 姊姊! I remember, once when I was going through a deeply blue period (much darker than our Huizong Blue!) - it was completely inexplicable, and just happens sometimes, as I'm sure you remember that period too - I would listen to Faye singing Heart Sutra in Chinese (this exact rendition you posted) over and over again. At night, before trying to fall asleep, I would also repeatedly sing it to myself, silently, in my head. Even during the day I would recite those lines (in particular the final few in Sanskrit) to myself, when I walked on the streets and when I was at home (sure hope no one outside thought I was crazy)... It in fact helped. It soothed me in a way I could not explain. Perhaps it helped me accept and "let go" - of whatever mood or situation one finds oneself in.
I've always loved the Chinese translations of Buddhist sutras and in particular Sanskrit names/terms translated into Chinese - I find them to be poetry in itself. One of Carpet Wallah Prince and my heroes, Shantideva, has such a beautiful name in Chinese: 寂天。
"I offer every fruit and flower
And every kind of healing medicine;
And all the precious things the world affords,
With all pure waters of refreshment;
Every mountain, rich and filled with jewels;
All sweet and lonely forest groves;
The trees of heaven, garlanded with blossom,
And branches heavy, laden with their fruit;
The perfumed fragrance of the realms of gods and men;
All incense, wish trees, and trees of gems;
All crops that grow without the tiller’s care
And every sumptuous object worthy to be offered;
Lakes and meres adorned with lotuses,
All plaintive with the sweet-voiced cries of water birds
And lovely to the eyes, and all things wild and free,
Stretching to the boundless limits of the sky;
I hold them all before my mind, and to the supreme Buddhas
And their heirs will make a perfect gift of them.
O, think of me with love, compassionate lords;
Sacred objects of my prayers, accept these offerings."
(The Way of the Bodhisattva, by Shantideva)
Posted by: Mei | August 02, 2012 at 05:16 PM
I love how you juxtapose the different ideas. But I have an unformed thought about the word 'faith' - I wrote my undergrad thesis on Kant vs. Tsongkhapa and focused on their ideas of faith. Buddhists define faith as the result of thinking, meditation, and contemplation. You arrive at faith (in the lama, mostly) as a result of examination. Once you come to the conclusion that someone is trustworthy and you haven't any doubts left, then you have faith in someone. In the Christian tradition represented by Kant in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, faith means believing in God even though you can never have rational knowledge about his existence. I 'm not sure if Kierkegaard had a different view.
I'm not sure if this is related to what you were saying, though, so thought i would ask you! ;)
Posted by: 千恵 | August 03, 2012 at 11:00 AM
千ちゃん、I thought your comment was so amazing since it really got to the heart of the matter. I mean, not only was it related to what I was saying but it is at the very core of what is on my mind!!!!Like Kant, I think Kierkegaard arrives at the idea of faith in a similar manner but maybe the big difference is Kierkegaard’s existentialist “knight of faith” must take a stand on her defining commitment and then EMBODY it.
This is the heroic mode of being (Aristotle’s “greatness of soul”) stance where the hero is both capable of taking up her heroic task in the first place, but also is courageous to accept misfortunes with fortitude and to shape her life around this homeric necessity.
You know so much more than me on this but I would think the Buddhist tradition would be far less problematic not having to overcome a strong duality between mind and body. Does the Tibetan epistemology have that same Kantian division of human understanding in terms of reason(Vernunft) /understanding(Verstand)/ sensibility(Sinnlichkeit)? I don’t think, for example, Zen has that issue to have to overcome when talking about faith.
For me, though the most interesting aspect of the carpet wallah’s idea of faith is is that it is exactly that of the classic hero, which stresses this idea acceptance of necessity. I know I mentioned that book Providence Lost but it is an absolutely fascinating philosophy book about free will and providence. The two must go hand and hand as when you undermine providence, free will falls apart and turns into this idea that everyting is somehow up to us and threfore inevitably our responsibility (like in New Agey ideas of “karma”)--It is really a form of narcissism which you see in the relentless will to impose one’s ego onto events (rather than sitting back a but and letting things unfold and adapting to necessity, you see people who wanting to “make the most of thier lives” try to force life to fit how they thing it “should” be in terms of Ego.
Hannah Arendt is fascinating on this because she brings it into the realm of the political (as she felt that some of the worst political pathologies of her time were of leaders trying to force a universalist blueprint of the world onto the world, rather than seeing th world how it actually is.) xoxo
Posted by: Peony | August 03, 2012 at 11:09 AM
Meimei chan, I love every single thing you wrote above so much!!! Especially the poetry of the OFFERING. Your carpet wallah's words touched me so much!! I really do think that this kind of acceptance of things is essentially for happiness and for greatness of soul (aristotle's hero's path). It doesn't mean that one is passive but rather is an aproach to act by trying to quiet/restrain the ego's relentless need to fix things or to try and impose on the world the ego's blueprints for how it thinks the world should be. In Japan, my doctor in the hospital where my baby hippo was hatched said, "remember, every medical intervention leads to another medical intervention so in giving birth we have to strive to be as natural as possible and to give in to the kind of birth that unfolds." It is not being passive but it is a very Japanese kind of stoicism to do one's best in the face of relentless trouble :)))))
That is 美徳 (hehe!!!)
Posted by: Peony | August 03, 2012 at 11:27 AM