Komachi on the stoop: Writing and the threshold life

American Poetry Review, The, Sep/Oct 1996 by Hirshfield, Jane

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

In the worn-down mountains are secret places, in the worn-down mountains are hidden places, but the true depths, surely, are in the human heart. The Buddha of the past is long ago vanished, the Buddha of the future has not yet arrived, and we as in a dream, are born into the time between, not knowing what we should understand as ReaL Only by chance were we born into human form, only by chance were we lucky enough to hear the teachings of Thusness, to receive the seeds of enlightenment into our hands.

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We have only one intention in our hearts, single as the single layer of the black cloth 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 thoughts to this world Though we travel a thousand miles now, it is not far-these fields where we sleep, these mountains where we rest these are our true home. Now let us pause a while.1

At this point, an old woman dressed in rags enters the stage from another direction. It is Ono no Komachi, a legendary figure in Japanese culture, supposed to have been not only the most accomplished poet but also the most beautiful woman of her time, the mid-ninth century. Though she probably had at least one child, she never married, instead taking many lovers, some of whom she treated harshly. When she grew too old to continue in service as a kind of lady-in-waiting at the imperial court, Komachi moved into a tiny hut outside the city of Kyoto, then called Heian-kyo; though her reputation as a poet never faltered, Komachi herself lived on in complete obscurity, eventually becoming a half-mad crone 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 tell us of what it means to be a writer, and of a direction we may wish to look when we consider what lies at the heart of the writing life.

She begins to speak: I am a floating reed, waiting an invitation from the water. A floating reed, but 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 boughs swaying in a spring breeze. My voice, like a nightingale s, opened more lovely than the murmuring bush-clover blossoms heavy with falling dew.

Now, everyone shuns me, even the most common women find me loathsome. In this shame of age, unhappy days, unhappy months heap up, and I have become a crone of a hundred years. I fear the eyes of men now, fear that someone, seeing, might say "It is shel" Only at nightfall, by moonlight do I go out Avoiding all eyes, avoiding the guards of the palace I hide among trees that hide also the tombs of lovers, the mountain of autumn.

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

No. I am tired, worn I will sit on this half-rotted stump and rest

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

You, old beggarcan't you see that you sit on a stupa, a sacred symbol, body of the Buddha? Get up at once go sit somewhere else.

Komachi answers at first submissively:

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

The Priest replies:

Just as a decaying log deep in the mountains bursts into flower and you know it's a tree, so it is with this log sculpted into the Buddha's body. How could you fail to see?

Komachi:

But I too am a half-buried tree. My heart still opens into flowers . . . I might offer them up in this place Still why do you insist

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

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

The Attendant then says:

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

Komachi answers at once his implicit criticism that she has not taken formal Buddhist vows, as they have:

It is not through 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 body.

And Komachi replies:

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

The Attendant:

And still, without any gratitude you sat on it!

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Komachi on the stoop: Writing and the threshold life

American Poetry Review, The, Sep/Oct 1996 by Hirshfield, Jane

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