Shindaréba koso ikitaré.
“Only because of having died, does one enter into life.”
--_Buddhist proverb._
I
Behind my dwelling, but hidden from view by a very lofty curtain of
trees, there is a Buddhist temple, with a cemetery attached to it. The
cemetery itself is in a grove of pines, many centuries old; and the
temple stands in a great quaint lonesome garden. Its religious name is
_Ji-shō-in_; but the people call it Kobudera, which means the Gnarled,
or Knobby Temple, because it is built of undressed timber,--great logs
of _hinoki_, selected for their beauty or strangeness of shape, and
simply prepared for the builder by the removal of limbs and bark. But
such gnarled and knobby wood is precious: it is of the hardest and most
enduring, and costs far more than common building-material,--as might
be divined from the fact that the beautiful alcoves and the choicest
parts of Japanese interiors are finished with wood of a similar kind.
To build Kobudera was an undertaking worthy of a prince; and, as a
matter of history, it was a prince who erected it, for a place of family
worship. There is a doubtful tradition that two designs were submitted
to him by the architect, and that he chose the more fantastic one under
the innocent impression that undressed timber would prove cheap. But
whether it owes its existence to a mistake or not, Kobudera remains one
of the most interesting temples of Japan. The public have now almost
forgotten its existence;--but it was famous in the time of Iyemitsu;
and its appellation, Ji-shō-in, was taken from the kaimyō of one of the
great Shogun’s ladies, whose superb tomb may be seen in its cemetery.
Before Meiji, the temple was isolated among woods and fields; but the
city has now swallowed up most of the green spaces that once secluded
it, and has pushed out the ugliest of new streets directly in front of
its gate.
[Illustration: GATE OF KOBUDERA]
This gate--a structure of gnarled logs, with a tiled and tilted Chinese
roof--is a fitting preface to the queer style of the temple itself.
From either gable-end of the gate-roof, a demon-head, grinning under
triple horns, looks down upon the visitor.[16] Within, except at the
hours of prayer, all is green silence. Children do not play in the
court--perhaps because the temple is a private one. The ground is
everywhere hidden by a fine thick moss of so warm a color, that the
brightest foliage of the varied shrubbery above it looks sombre by
contrast; and the bases of walls, the pedestals of monuments, the
stonework of the bell-tower, the masonry of the ancient well, are
muffled with the same luminous growth. Maples and pines and cryptomerias
screen the façade of the temple; and, if your visit be in autumn, you
may find the whole court filled with the sweet heavy perfume of the
_mokusei_[17]-blossom. After having looked at the strange temple, you
would find it worth while to enter the cemetery, by the black gate on
the west side of the court.
* * * * *
I like to wander in that cemetery,--partly because in the twilight of
its great trees, and in the silence of centuries which has gathered
about them, one can forget the city and its turmoil, and dream out of
space and time,--but much more because it is full of beauty, and of the
poetry of great faith. Indeed of such poetry it possesses riches quite
exceptional. Each Buddhist sect has its own tenets, rites, and forms;
and the special character of these is reflected in the iconography and
epigraphy of its burial-grounds,--so that for any experienced eye a
Tendai graveyard is readily distinguishable from a Shingon graveyard,
or a Zen graveyard from one belonging to a Nichiren congregation. But
at Kobudera the inscriptions and the sculptures peculiar to several
Buddhist sects can be studied side by side. Founded for the Hokké,
or Nichiren rite, the temple nevertheless passed, in the course of
generations, under the control of other sects--the last being the
Tendai;--and thus its cemetery now offers a most interesting medley of
the emblems and the epitaphic formularies of various persuasions. It was
here that I first learned, under the patient teaching of an Oriental
friend, something about the Buddhist literature of the dead.
* * * * *
No one able to feel beauty could refuse to confess the charm of the
old Buddhist cemeteries,--with their immemorial trees, their evergreen
mazes of shrubbery trimmed into quaintest shapes, the carpet-softness
of their mossed paths, the weird but unquestionable art of their
monuments. And no great knowledge of Buddhism is needed to enable you,
even at first sight, to understand something of this art. You would
recognize the lotos chiselled upon tombs or water-tanks, and would
doubtless observe that the designs of the pedestals represent a lotos
of eight petals,--though you might not know that these eight petals
symbolize the Eight Intelligences. You would recognize the _manji_,
or svastika, figuring the Wheel of the Law,--though ignorant of its
relation to the Mahâyâna philosophy. You would perhaps be able to
recognize also the images of certain Buddhas,--though not aware of the
meaning of their attitudes or emblems in relation to mystical ecstasy
or to the manifestation of the Six Supernatural Powers. And you would
be touched by the simple pathos of the offerings,--the incense and the
flowers before the tombs, the water poured out for the dead,--even
though unable to divine the deeper pathos of the beliefs that make the
cult. But unless an excellent Chinese scholar as well as a Buddhist
philosopher, all book-knowledge of the great religion would still
leave you helpless in a world of riddles. The marvellous texts,--the
exquisite Chinese scriptures chiselled into the granite of tombs, or
limned by a master-brush upon the smooth wood of the _sotoba_,--will
yield their secrets only to an interpreter of no common powers. And
the more you become familiar with their aspect, the more the mystery
of them tantalizes,--especially after you have learned that a literal
translation of them would mean, in the majority of cases, exactly
nothing!
* * * * *
What strange thoughts have been thus recorded and yet concealed? Are
they complex and subtle as the characters that stand for them? Are
they beautiful also like those characters,--with some undreamed-of,
surprising beauty, such as might inform the language of another planet?