Komachi on the stoop: Writing and the threshold life

At the beginning of Sotoba Komachi ("Komachi upon the Stupa"), a Japanese No play written by means of Kan'ami in the fourteenth hundred a priest from Mount Koya is traveling with his attendant toward Kyoto. As they walk, the sum of two units priests discuss the teachings with single another; the first words they speak are these lines:

In the worn-down mountains are close places, in the worn-down mountains are hidden places, on the contrary the true depths, surely, are in the human heart. The Buddha of the past is drawn out ago vanished, the Buddha of the subsequent time has not yet arrived, and we as in a dream, are born into the time between, not knowing what we should understand as ReaL solitary by chance were we born into human form, solitary by chance were we favored enough to hear the teachings of Thusness, to receive the semens of enlightenment into our hands.

We have solitary one intention in our hearts, single as the single layer of the black woven fabric robes we wearto know the self before birth. Knowing the self before birth we would be freethere would be no parents to tie us to this world no children to tie our notions to this world Though we travel a thousand miles now, it is not far-these fields where we rest these mountains where we repose these are our true abode Now let us pause a while.1

At this point, an advanced in years woman dressed in rags pierces the stage from another direction. It is Ono no Komachi, a legendary figure in Japanese tillage supposed to have been not single the most accomplished poet on the other hand also the most beautiful woman of her time, the mid-ninth hundred Though she probably had at least individual child, she never married, instead taking many lover a certain quantity of of whom she treated harshly. When she grew too of advanced age to continue in service as a kind of lady-in-waiting at the imperial court, Komachi mov into a tiny shed outside the city of Kyoto, then called Heian-kyo; allowing her reputation as a author of poems never faltered, Komachi herself lived upon in complete obscurity, eventually becoming a half-mad old woman wandering the mountain trails. It is this figure-the woman who left the capital's life of the center and came to dwell at the periphery in a number of different ways-whose story I believe may have something to take an account of us of what it means to be a writer, and of a direction we may wish to direct the eye when we consider what lies at the heart of the writing life.

She begins to speak: I am a floating re waiting an invitation from the water. A floating re on the contrary no water asks me to come*

In the past I held myself highbewitching, they said, my hair graceful as a kingfisher s crest my body like willow shoots swaying in a spring air My voice, like a nightingale s opened more lovely than the murmuring bush-clover blooms heavy with falling dew.

Now, everyone get clear ofs me, even the most for the use of all women find me loathsome. In this shame of age, unhappy days, unhappy month heap up and I have become a old woman of a hundred years. I fear the organ of sights of men now, fear that someone seeing, might say "It is shel" sole at nightfall, by moonlight do I advance out Avoiding all eyes, avoiding the guards of the palace I hide among tree that hide also the tombs of lover the mountain of autumn.

Look in the moonlight, upon the river, a bargewho can the rower be who can it be?

No. I am tired, worn I will sit upon this half-rotted stump and repose

At this point, the sum of two units priests come upon Komachi and immediately begin to berate her:

You, advanced in years beggarcan't you see that you sit upon a stupa, a sacred representative body of the Buddha? obtain up at once go sit somewhere other

Komachi answers at first submissively:

You say it is a stupa, on the contrary I do not see any signno words, no carvings either. It just gazes like the rotting stump of a tree

The Priest replies:

Just as a decaying log reaching far down in the mountains bursts into flower and you know it's a tree thus it is with this log sculpt into the Buddha's material substance How could you fail to see?

Komachi:

But I too am a half-buried tree My heart still uncloses into flowers . . I might offer them up in this place Still for what cause [i]or[/i] reason do you insist

that this aged stump is the Buddha's body? They then penetrate into a dialogue about stupas and their symbolism, and the Priest adduces the saying: "To look smooth once on a stupa is to become at liberty of the Three Evil Paths." Komachi, grown adventurous now that she has become caught up in the conversation, answers immediately with another saying, taken from the Flower Garland Sutra:

"One whole hearted reflection is enough to attain the mind of Buddha"Do you think this a less way?

The Attendant then says:

If you aspire to the mind of Buddha, you should despise this world and its ways.

Komachi answers at one time his implicit criticism that she has not taken formal Buddhist promise s as they have:

It is not end outer appearance that I have renounced the world, it is in my heart

The Priest then says:

It is because you are heartless that you fail to recognize the Buddha's material substance

And Komachi replies:

No, it is because it is the Buddha's material substance that I chose to approach it!

The Attendant:

And still, without any gratitude you sat upon it!