Quotation from the Hojoki

Posted: June 15, 2009 | Author: Doug 陀愚 | Filed under: Buddhism, Confucius, Japan, Japanese, Language, Religion | 2 Comments »

This weekend, thanks to a nice rainstorm, the family and I were stuck at home watching TV. Our little girl enjoys watching certain children’s TV shows from NHK, the national public broadcasting studio in Japan. We get these via DVDs my wife’s sister records for our daughter. One segment I enjoy watching particularly is Nihongo de Asobo (にほんごであそぼ) or “Let’s play with Japanese Language”. The first time I watched this show, I totally didn’t understand what was going on.

However, my wife explained that the show is taking really, really traditional Japanese songs, dances and myths and reviving them for modern times. The show is quite artistic, but for most Japanese kids (including my daughter whose ancestry is Japanese), this is probably the first exposure they get to the past. I remember watching this in Japan during the nanakusa holiday, and the show traditional songs about the 7 roots and herbs that go into nanakusa porridge.

One example I like a lot is an old folk song from Nagasaki called denderaryūba:¹

You can see how artistic this is, especially with all the Chinese influences, but also notice the childrens’ hand motions, which are part of the game that goes with the song. The song is actually a word-play of Nagasaki dialect and has nothing to do with dragons, but the word ryū in standard Japanese can also mean 竜 or dragon, so it’s like wordplay of a wordplay. Very clever.

Anyways, I always enjoy watching this show when we get new episodes, and so this weekend they featured a famous poem from a 13th century text, the Hōjōki (方丈記). Here, hōjō is a unit of measurement of about 10 square feet, so the meaning is “Account [of my life] in a 10-foot [hut]“. The author, Kamo no Chōmei (鴨長明),² was a man whose life experienced one tragedy after another, and finally retreated from the world in small hut and wrote his thoughts down. I read excerpts of it in college, but can’t remember any of it.

Separately, my wife was surprised when they featured a segment on nihongo de asobo of the first line of the Hojoki:³

ゆく河の流れは絶えずして、
しかももとの水にあらず。

Yuku kawa no nagare wa taezushite,
shikamo moto no mizu ni arazu.

The translation, as I see it (with lots of help from other sources) is: The waters of the river flow without end, yet they are never the same.

Compare this with something Confucius once said, as recorded in the Analects:

Standing by a stream, the Master [Confucius] said, It flows on like this—does it not?—never ceasing day or night. (Book 9, verse 17)

Or the words of the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus:

Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν.

“We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.”

There’s something profoundly Buddhist in these statements, in that the world is ceaselessly flowing, unfolding, and yet never the same from one moment to the next. No past, no future, just ceaseless unfolding, like a river. This is the essence of Buddhism I believe.

Namo Amida Butsu

¹ Haven’t been able to find a translation yet of the song.

² The Kamo River (鴨) is a famous river of Kyoto, and a cultural icon. There is an apocryphal quote Shinran that when he died, his body should be thrown in the Kamo River for example.

³ Slightly different versions seem exist on the web, using more modern kanji. This is the version as posted on the show, with my wife helping with the romaji translation. Thanks honey!

---