Authors: Yukio Mishima
Spring Snow (35 page)
“You see, when Kri and I were children, we used to hear all sorts of stories from the
Jataka Sutra.
Our nurses would tell us how even the Lord Buddha underwent many rebirths while he was still a bodhisattva—as a golden swan, a quail, a monkey, a great stag, and so on. So we were speculating just now as to what we might have been in our previous existences. However, I’m afraid that we didn’t agree at all. He maintained that he had been a deer and I a monkey. And I insisted that it was just the other way around: he was the monkey and I the deer. But what do you say? We’ll leave it to you.”
Jataka Sutra.
Our nurses would tell us how even the Lord Buddha underwent many rebirths while he was still a bodhisattva—as a golden swan, a quail, a monkey, a great stag, and so on. So we were speculating just now as to what we might have been in our previous existences. However, I’m afraid that we didn’t agree at all. He maintained that he had been a deer and I a monkey. And I insisted that it was just the other way around: he was the monkey and I the deer. But what do you say? We’ll leave it to you.”
Whichever way they answered, they ran the risk of offending somebody, so they just smiled, hoping that would serve as a reply. Then Kiyoaki, wanting to turn the conversation to other matters, said that he knew nothing about the
Jataka Sutra
and he wondered if the princes would be kind enough to tell him and Honda one of the stories from it.
Jataka Sutra
and he wondered if the princes would be kind enough to tell him and Honda one of the stories from it.
“We’d be glad to,” said Chao P. “There’s the one about the golden swan, for example. It took place when the Lord Gautama was a bodhisattva, during his second reincarnation. As you know, a bodhisattva is someone who voluntarily travels the road of mortification and suffering before entering into the full enlightenment of buddhahood. And in his previous existence the Lord Gautama himself was a bodhisattva. The austerities they practice are the works of
paramita
, one’s good deeds to others, by means of which one crosses from this sphere to the sphere of total enlightenment. As a bodhisattva, Buddha is said to have lavished abundant grace on mankind. He was reincarnated in many guises and there are all sorts of stories about the good works he performed.
paramita
, one’s good deeds to others, by means of which one crosses from this sphere to the sphere of total enlightenment. As a bodhisattva, Buddha is said to have lavished abundant grace on mankind. He was reincarnated in many guises and there are all sorts of stories about the good works he performed.
“For example, in very ancient times, he was born to a Brahmin family. He married a woman of another Brahmin family and after having three daughters by her, he died, forcing his bereaved wife and daughters to make their home with strangers.
“But after his death as a Brahmin, the bodhisattva took on another life in the womb of a golden swan. And he carried within him the knowledge that would in due course make him fully aware of his previous existence. And so the bodhisattva grew into an adult swan, covered in gold feathers and unrivaled in beauty. When he glided over the water, he glowed like the rising full moon. And when he flew through the forest, the very leaves that he brushed looked like a golden basket. And when he rested on a branch, it seemed as though the tree had borne some fabulous golden fruit.
“The swan came to realize that he had been a man in his previous existence and also that his wife and children were compelled to live with strangers, eking out their existence by doing whatever work they could find.
“‘Any one of my feathers,’ he said to himself one day, ‘could be hammered out into a sheet of gold and sold. And so, from time to time, I’ll give a feather to my poor companions whom I’ve left behind to lead such hard lives in the world of men.’
“And so the swan appeared at the window of the house where his wife and daughters of times gone by were living. And when he saw how wretched their condition was, he was overcome with pity.
“Meanwhile, his wife and daughters were amazed at the sight of the glittering figure of the swan on their window ledge.
“‘What a beautiful bird!’ they cried. ‘Where have you come from?’
“‘I was once your husband and father. After I died, I came to life again in the womb of a golden swan. And now I have come to change your poor lives into ones of happiness and plenty.’
“So saying, the swan dropped one of its feathers and flew off. Afterwards he came back at regular intervals and left a feather in the same way, and soon life had greatly improved for the mother and her three daughters.
“One day, however, the mother spoke to the girls.
“‘We can’t trust that swan,’ she said to them. ‘Even if he’s really your father, who knows if he might stop coming here one day? So next time he comes, let’s pluck every one of his feathers.’
“‘Mother, how cruel!’ said the girls, very much opposed to this.
“Nevertheless, the next time the swan appeared at the window, the greedy woman pounced on him, took him in both hands, and plucked out every single one of his feathers. But strangely enough, each gold feather turned as white as a heron feather as she pulled it out. Still undaunted, his former wife then took the helpless swan and thrust him into a large empty container and fed him while she waited doggedly for his golden feathers to grow again. But when the feathers did appear, they were ordinary white ones. And once they had grown, he flew off and his shape grew smaller and smaller in the sky until it became a white dot lost in the clouds, never to be seen again.
“And that was one of the stories that our nurses used to tell us from the
Jataka Sutra
.”
Jataka Sutra
.”
Honda and Kiyoaki were surprised to find that many of the fairy tales that had been told to them were very similar to the prince’s story. The conversation then turned into a discussion of reincarnation itself and whether or not it was credible as a doctrine.
Since Kiyoaki and Honda had never talked about anything like this before, they were naturally somewhat perplexed. Kiyoaki glanced at Honda with a questioning look in his eyes. Usually headstrong, he always began to look forlorn whenever abstract discussions took place. His look now urged Honda to do something, as if he were prodding him lightly with silver spurs.
“If there is such a thing as reincarnation,” Honda began, betraying a certain eagerness, “I’d be very much in favor of it if it were the kind in your story, with the man himself being aware of his previous existence. But if it’s a case of a man’s personality coming to an end and his self-awareness being lost so that there’s absolutely no trace of them in his next life, and if a completely new personality and a totally different self-awareness come into being, well, in that case I think that various reincarnations extending over a period of time are no more significantly linked to one another than the lives of all the individuals who happen to be alive at the same given moment. In other words, I feel that in such a case the concept of reincarnation would be practically meaningless. Something has to be passed on in transmigration, but I don’t see how we can take any number of separate and distinct existences, each with its own self-awareness, and bracket them together as one, claiming that a single consciousness unites them. Right now, each one of us has no memory at all of even a single previous existence. And so it’s obvious that it would be pointless to try to produce any proof of transmigration. There’s only one way that it could be proved: if we had a self-awareness so independent that it could stand aside from both this life and previous lives and view them objectively. But as it is, each man’s consciousness is limited to the past, the present, or the future of that single life. In the midst of the turmoil of history, each one of us builds his own little shelter of self-awareness and we can never leave it. Buddhism seems to hold out a middle way, but I have my doubts: is this middle way an organic concept which a human being is capable of grasping?
“But to go back just a bit. . . . Granted that all human concepts are mere illusion, in order to distinguish the various illusions arising from other reincarnations from the illusion of the present reincarnation of that same life, you must nevertheless be able to observe them all from a thoroughly independent viewpoint. It’s only when one stands aside in this way that the reality of reincarnation would be apparent. But when one is in the midst of a reincarnated existence oneself, the whole must remain an eternal riddle. Moreover, since this independent standpoint is probably what is called full enlightenment, only the man who has transcended reincarnation can grasp its reality. And wouldn’t it then be a case of finally understanding it at a time when it was no longer relevant?
“There is an abundance of death in our lives. We never lack reminders—funerals, cemeteries, withered commemorative bouquets, memories of the dead, deaths of friends, and then the anticipation of our own death. Who knows? Perhaps in their own way the dead make a great deal of life. Perhaps they’re always looking in our direction from their own land—at our towns, our schools, the smokestacks of our factories, at each of us who has passed one by one back from death into the land of the living.
“What I want to say is that perhaps reincarnation is nothing more than a concept that reverses the way that we, the living, ordinarily view death, a concept that expresses life as seen from the viewpoint of the dead. Do you see?”
“But how is it,” replied Chao P. quietly, “that certain thoughts and ideals are transmitted to the world after a man’s death?”
“That’s a different problem from reincarnation,” Honda said emphatically, with a trace of the impatience to which intelligent young men are susceptible showing in his voice.
“Why is it different?” asked Chao P. in the same gentle tone. “It seems that you are willing to admit that the same sense of self-awareness might inhabit various bodies successively over a period of time. Why then do you object so strongly to differing senses of self-awareness inhabiting the same body over a similar period of time?”
“The same body for a cat and a human being? According to what you said before, it was a matter of becoming a man, a swan, a quail, a deer, and so on.”
“Yes, according to the concept of reincarnation, the same body. Even though the flesh itself might differ. As long as the same illusion persists, there is no difficulty in calling it the same body. However, rather than do that, perhaps it would be better to call it the same vital current.
“I lost that emerald ring that was so rich in memories for me. It wasn’t a living thing, of course, and so it won’t be reborn. But still, the loss of something is significant, and I think that loss is the necessary source of a new manifestation. Some night I might see my emerald ring appear as a green star somewhere in the sky.”
The prince abruptly abandoned the problem, apparently overcome with sadness.
“Chao P., maybe the ring was actually a living thing that underwent a secret transformation,” Kridsada responded with earnest naïveté, “and then it ran off somewhere on legs of its own.”
“Then, round about now it might be reborn as someone as beautiful as Princess Chan,” Chao P. said, now completely absorbed in thinking about his loved one. “People keep telling me in their letters that she’s well, but why don’t I hear anything at all from her herself? Perhaps they’re all trying to protect me from something.”
Honda, meantime, had ignored the prince’s last words, as he was lost in thought about the strange paradox that Chao P. had brought up a few minutes earlier. One could certainly think of a man not in terms of a body but as a single vital current. And this would allow one to grasp the concept of existence as dynamic and on-going, rather than as static. Just as he had said, there was no difference between a single consciousness possessing various vital currents in succession, and a single vital current animating various consciousnesses in succession. For life and self-awareness would fuse into a whole. And if one were then to extrapolate this theory of the unity of life and self-awareness, the whole sea of life with its infinity of currents—the whole vast process of transmigration called
Samsara
in Sanskrit—would be possessed by a single consciousness.
Samsara
in Sanskrit—would be possessed by a single consciousness.
While Honda organized his ideas, the beach had gradually been growing darker, and Kiyoaki became absorbed in building a sand temple with Kridsada. The sand did not lend itself to molding the tall pointed towers and the upswept roof-corner tiling that distinguished Siamese temples. Nevertheless Kridsada skillfully added wet sand and built up the slender peaks, and carefully molded up the corners of the roof as if he were drawing a woman’s dark, slender fingers from her sleeve. They curved out into the air for an instant, and then as soon as they dried out, the black sand-fingers twisted convulsively, crumbled, and fell down.
Honda and Chao P. stopped talking to watch the others playing with the sand in childlike glee. Their sand temple needed lanterns. All the care they had lavished on the fine detail of the facade and the tall windows now went for nothing, for darkness had already reduced the temple to a small, dim outline silhouetted against the white foam of the breakers, which seemed to reflect what lingering light there was, much as the last flickers of life show in the eyes of a dying man.
Unnoticed, the sky over their heads had become filled with stars, dominated by the brilliance of the Milky Way. Honda did not know much about them, but even he could make out the Weaver Maid and her lover the Herd Boy, separated by the broad stream of the Milky Way, and also the Northern Cross of the Swan constellation, which stretched its huge wings in flight as it acted as go-between for the two lovers.
The roar of the waves seemed to have grown much louder than it had been during the day. The beach and the water had each been part of their own sphere in daylight, but now they seemed to have merged under cover of darkness. The inconceivable array of stars above overwhelmed the four young men. To be surrounded by such majestic massive power was like being shut up within a vast koto.
Indeed, it was precisely that. They themselves were like four grains of sand that had somehow found their way into its base, an enormous world of darkness, outside which all was light. Above them were stretched thirteen strings from one end to the other. And fingers of a whiteness that was beyond words were touching these strings, making the koto come alive with the grand and solemn music of the spheres, its immense vibrations shaking the four grains of sand within.
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