The voice of the great bell in the First Monastery of the Master intones the domination of eternal change over all that is.
The Bo tree, under which the Blessed One attained Enlightenment, foretells, with the glory of its petals, that they who rise up in splendor shall go down again into the ground.
The vain, the haughty glow for an instant, then like a vision, like a dream in April, at twilight, they pass, they fade.
Shorn of power, in the end, the strong, the victorious are cut down. They vanish like dust that is blown away.
IN the chronicles of distant lands there are records of various rulers who turned their faces from the commonweal. Intemperate, seekers after their own pleasure, careless of justice, blind to the evil in their realms, refusing to know the sorrows of their people, they did not survive their hour but were destroyed and faded wholly from the earth.
And in our own country it is well known that many have been tyrannous and shameless, but if we weigh justly the accounts of the Prime Minister Kiyomori, Prince, Priest and Regent, it is apparent that he surpassed them all, both by his edicts and his personal demeanor.
It was particularly at the height of his power, when the
There were many White-Robed Rhythm dancers in the capital and when the news of Gio's good fortune spread among them they received it in various ways. Though there were some whose envy of her was at least mingled with admiration, others felt toward her only a jealous hate. The envious admirers would say, "Ah how fortunate is Gio. If we become dancing courtesans like her we may win the same success. Perhaps by adding the syllable Gi to our names her good luck may also attend us. Let us add this syllable and see." So, one called herself Giichi, another Gini, still another Gifuku, another Gitoku and so the fashion spread. But the jealous ones said: "No, it is not a matter of the name, nor of any way in which it is spoken. Those who inherit luck from previous existence are born lucky;" and few of them added the syllable to their names. So three years passed. Then a day came when the people of all classes in the capital began to praise a new Shirabyoshi dancer from Kaga province, a girl of sixteen named Hotoke. Hearing this the Regent cried out in a high temper, "What is this! These players only appear by command! She dares to come without bidding? If her name were God or Buddha she should not see me while Gio is here. Send her away." Wounded by these cruel words, Hotoke had started silently to withdraw when Gio spoke. "No," she protested, "it is an old custom for players to appear without invitation. And she is very young! It was only a thoughtless impulse of youth that brought her here. It would be cruel to turn her away with harsh words. Shame and distress would follow her out. I can so easily imagine myself in her place for I too once walked the "Indeed!" returned the Regent, "Then solely to please you, I will see her and dismiss her" and he sent a servant with the summons. The stricken Hotoke had already entered her carriage and was leaving the precinct but upon receiving the summons, she returned. The Regent kept her waiting for some time before he appeared, now unattended by Gio, "So, you are Hotoke," he said, when his first careless glance had grown to a keener gaze, "I had not the least intention of seeing you today. But Gio pleaded so earnestly for your cause, that I decided at last to grant you an audience. And now that I have looked upon you, I find in me a desire to hear your voice. Sing me first an Imayo song." (the Imayo being a song in eight or twelve phrases of seven and five syllables). And this was her song: The song was a most auspicious greeting at the first interview, storks, turtles and pines all being symbols of long life and the young pine being Hotoke herself. Ravished by her singing and her beauty, the listeners urged her to repeat the song until she had sung it three times. "And now my lady," the voice of the Regent followed the applause, "since you have shown yourself such an artist in Imayo, your dancing should be equally good. Let us see you dance. Call the hand-drum players." Then with the drummers beating their measures Hotoke danced. And first, through the unfoldings of her art, the glory of her hair dawned upon the watchers, next the beauty of her face appeared to them and last, the marvel of all her graces, unsurpassed on earth, was displayed to the enchanted audience. With gifts like these added to the natural excellence of her voice and its exquisite cultivation, how could she fail in her art? She danced with a perfection unimagined by the Regent, who continued to gaze at her in rapture. His heart had turned wholly to Hotoke. "What is this?" she exclaimed, reading in his manner the intensity of his mood. "First I came uninvited and you sent "Your plea," replied the Regent, "is rejected. But if your hesitation is due to Gio; if her presence here embarrasses you, I will dismiss her." "How could you bring yourself to suggest such a thing?" Hotoke protested. "Even if we were both to be kept here together I should be ashamed. But if you dismiss her and keep me here alone, she will suffer pain far deeper than shame." "If that is the way you feel," was the Regent's answer, "Gio shall go at once" and he sent a messenger to Gio with the command, impatiently repeating it a little later by another messenger and not long after by a third. Although Gio had often brooded on the probability of such an ending she never fixed its date in any present but only vaguely in some future day. But since the Regent's command was absolute and he continued to send it again and again she had no choice but to set her apartments in order and go. Even those who stay briefly in the shade of the same tree or who meet once at the same fountain feel a certain sadness at parting. For such contacts mirror and echo moments in past existences. But she, whose life for three years had grown to be one with the Regent's felt far deeper sorrow than these. Then, taking her carriage, she went to her mother's home, where., in an inner room she gave herself up utterly to her tears. Seeing her condition her mother and sister plied her with questions and entreaties to which she made no reply and it was only from her maid that they drew a confession of what had happened. As a result of the changed conditions, the monthly income of rice and money ceased and it was now the turn of the relations of Hotoke to taste the bliss of prosperity. Rumors of these things soon spread until all the people of the capital, both masters and masses, began to ask, "Can it be true that Gio has been driven away from the palace? Then let us ask her to sing and dance for us." To this Gio returned no answer but lay down with fresh tears at the new wound. Finding her silent, the Regent bade the messenger to return and say, "Why does Gio send no word of her intentions? If she refuses to come, let her give her reason. I have a certain intention toward her." And he bade the messengers announce this, using the impersonal authority of the Regent's priestly title. The message, therefore, contained a sinister threat, "a certain intention" meaning that he planned some form of punishment. Her mother, upon hearing this, began to entreat her: "Why do you send no answer, whether you will or will not go? Why not be warned by such a rebuke? " "If I thought I should go," Gio's words rose through her Finding her still firm in her resolution of silence, the mother added her own tears to Gio's. "You must remember," she began again, "that the subjects of his realm cannot disobey the commands of the Regent. But far beyond this law are the laws that control us from former existences. "The relation between man and woman is not one which begins in the life we are now living. Even of those who pledge to cling together for a thousand or ten thousand years, there are some who are soon parted. "And again; a connection first supposed to be brief, sometimes lasts through life. The one most uncertain thing in the world is this relation between man and woman. "Then too, the favors you have received during these past three years, have been so great that they should content you. Upon hearing these words, unable to withstand any longer her mother's appeal, Gio rose and with the depths of her pitiful suffering apparent in her eyes, made ready to go. To support her on the journey she took her sister Gijo with her, and attended by two other dancing girls the four went in a carriage to the palace. Upon her arrival she was conducted not to the place that had formerly been hers, but to one far down in the lower part of the hall. "Alas," she said to herself, "Why should it be? No fault was found in me, yet first I was dismissed and now I must suffer this further humiliation." And fearful lest she should disclose her sorrow to the company, she held up her sleeve before her face to conceal the tears she could not stay. Twice she sang the song, no longer able now to conceal her sorrow, so that all who were seated in the hall, princes, courtiers, the highest nobles and Samurai were moved. to tears. Arriving at her home, she cast herself down, musing half aloud, "I had made up my mind not to go, but in order not to disobey my mother's will, I went and suffered agony. Twice to have endured this torment is bitterness indeed. If I remain in this world I may be put to the torture again. I can go no farther. This day I must escape from this body." The murmured words were heard by Gijo and her mother. "Sister," said the younger daughter, "if you leave this world, I will go with you." Stricken with deeper sorrow by what she heard, the mother sadly spoke: "I was wrong. My remorse is deep indeed for begging you to go when I did not know what you would have to suffer. If you end your life Gijo says she will join you, and if my two young daughters die first, of what use would the few sad years left me, be to your mother? No, I would not stay. I would end them with you. "But to prevent one's mother from living out the appointed Turned again by her mother's words, unable to bear their implication, Gio sadly submitted. "No," she said, "I am not willing to take upon me the burden of one of the five great sins. I said I would escape out of my life, from the pain which is pursuing me. I will not do so by killing this body. But if I remain in the capital my suffering would constantly be renewed. There is another path leading out of the world and it shall be mine." Gio then, at the age of only one and twenty, became a nun. High in a mountain village in the recesses of Saga she built a hut of brushwood and lived there, calling upon the name of the Blessed Lord. News of this, reaching the younger sister, Gijo, was not without its effect upon her. "I promised," she thought, "that I would go with my sister even unto death. How much more willing I should be to go with her now that she has merely set her face toward another life." So she, at the age of nineteen So the spring passed and summer came and faded. When the autumn winds began to blow, when the wild geese flew across the ford of heaven, when lovers wrote their longings on the flaming leaves, the three pitiful ones, by night, would gaze at the Herdsman and the Weaving Maiden, the lover-stars, drawing near to each other in the heavens. And when the day had passed behind the blue hills they would watch the evening sky unfold the sunset vision; the Eternal Gardens, the Western Paradise, The Pure Land. "Some day," they thought, "we shall be born there, in The Pure Land, at the end of the paths of sorrow." But they continued to tread those paths in a sadness deeper than their tears. One evening, while the twilight was flowing into night, they had shut their latticed bamboo door and lighted the dim lamp. The three, mother and daughters, were already at their So, strengthening each other, hand in hand, they threw wide the bamboo door. It was no demon who stood there. It was Hotoke. "How can it be you?" Gio whispered, half to herself, "it must be a dream." "If you will listen to my story," Hotoke's tears rose through her words, "it may seem to you merely like a dream. But if I do not tell you, I may always seem to you as one without human feeling. So I will tell you my whole heart from the beginning. I have not forgotten that I first went to the Regent's palace "From that hour I was envious of you and continually begged the Regent for my freedom, but he always refused. "Brooding over these things brought me to realize that the colors and splendors of this world are but dreams within a dream. "What is pleasure? And what is prosperity? "If it is difficult to achieve a human body, how much harder it is to live in this body and at the same time to do the Blessed Lord's will. "If, lured by the shadow-glories of this life, I should fall into the Hells, how much more difficult it would be for me, "The hour when this breath shall part forever from our dust, who knows it? "Briefer than the gossamer fly that lives an hour in May, fleeter than the lightning, is our life. "To be proud of the splendor that passes away and never to know of eternal life; is this understanding? "At last, having considered these things, I made my escape secretly from the palace and came here." With this she threw off the cloak she wore and revealed herself in a nun's habit. "Now that I too have entered the Path," Hotoke continued, "I have come to beg your forgiveness. If you can grant it, we will supplicate the Blessed Lord together and together we may sit upon one lotus in Paradise. "But if you cannot forgive me, I shall have to wander away, making my bed on moss or on the roots of the pine. Yet even then I shall worship the Blessed One to the end of my life," Hotoke held her sleeve before her f ace to hide her tears as she ended) "May He guide my feet to Paradise."
With him who is her Lord, through joys and tears
Sings of her hope that he may hear the beating
Wings of the passage of a thousand years;