“Okagami, or the Great Mirror” in the summary
I visited recently in the Temple of the Cloud Forest, where the ceremony of explaining the Sutra of the Flower of the Law took place, and met two amazing old men there, they were older than ordinary people. One was one hundred and ninety years old, the other one hundred and eighty. Many people crowded in the temple, monks and laymen, servants and servants, important gentlemen and ordinary people. But the mentor – interpreter of the sutras did not appear, and everyone patiently waited. Here word for word, and the elders began to recall the past – in fact they survived thirteen imperial boards and saw, and remembered all the courtiers and emperors. All present moved closer, too, to listen to stories about the past. When else will you hear this! The elders, and their name was Etsugi and Shigaki, very much wanted to remember what happened in the old days, they said that in ancient times people, if they wanted to speak, but could not,
How funny it was to look at the old
The gathered in the temple were delighted and moved even closer to the elders. And Etsugi said: “Since the creation of the world, one after another, until the present rule, seven generations of the gods, sixty-eight generations of emperors have changed, the first was the emperor Lzymmu, but nobody remembers those remote times. the first day of the third moon of the third year of Kadze, the year of the younger brother of fire and horse, the emperor Montoku ascended the throne and ruled the world for eight years. The beautiful poems of the renowned poet Arivar Narihir were dedicated
Shigaki said: “You raised the mirror, and it reflected the numerous fates of the noble and famous people. We have the feeling that the morning sun has brightened us, facing the darkness of many years. I am now like a mirror in the box for the crests that lies abandoned in It’s hard to see anything in it, when we stand against you like a polished mirror, then we see past and future, fates, characters and forms. “
Etsugi summed it this way: “I am an old mirror, / And I see in me / Emperors, their descendants – / Alternative – / Not hidden either”.
Etsugi said: “The left minister of Morotada was the fifth son of the noble Tadahira, who had a daughter of inexplicable charm.” When she was going to the palace and getting into the stroller, her hair ran through the whole yard to the main pillar in the reception hall, and if you put white under your hair paper, you will not see a piece. “The corners of her eyes were slightly lowered, which was very elegant. Once the emperor learned that this young lady knew by heart the famous anthology” The Collection of Old and New Songs of Japan “and decided to test it. hid the book and memorized the ital the initial lines of the Preface, “The Songs of Yamato…”, and she easily continued and then read the verses from all sections, and there was no discrepancy with the text. He heard about this, the noble lord her father, the left minister of Morotada, , washed his hands and commanded everywhere to read the sutras and himself prayed for her. And the emperor fell in love with the daughter of Morotada with an unusual love, taught her to play the zither himself, but then, they say, his love has completely passed. She gave birth to a son, the son was good and beautiful to everyone, but was mourned by the head. So the son of the great ruler and the grandson of the glorious husband of the left minister of Morotada turned out to be weak-minded – this is truly amazing! “
Etsugi said: “When the monk-emperor Sandze was still alive, everything was fine, but when he passed away, for the disgraced prince everything changed and it did not become like it was.” The courtiers did not come to him and did not indulge in entertainment, no one served him, there was no one who would share the hours of boredom with him, and he could only indulge in recollections of better times. The courtiers became fearful and, fearing the wrath of the new emperor, avoided the prince’s quarters, and the Chelyadins in the house felt that It is difficult for him to serve, and the lowest The servants of the department of the palace order were considered shameful to clean up in his chambers, and therefore the grass grew thickly in his garden, and the dwelling was dilapidated. The rare courtiers who sometimes visited him advised him to renounce the inheritance and resign himself before being forced to do so this.
Mitinaga, fearing that the prince might change his mind, appeared to him accompanied by his sons and a numerous brilliant suite, with speedways and riding forward. His exit was crowded and loud, and, perhaps, in the heart of the prince, although he decided, it was uneasy. Mr. Mitinaga understood his feelings and served him at the table, served meals, wiped his table with his own hands. Having lost his high rank, the former prince grieved over the loss and soon died. “
Etsugi said: “One senior adviser was naturally skilled at making things, the emperor was still very young at that time, and he kindly ordered his courtiers to bring him new toys, and everyone rushed to look for different curiosities – gold and silver, lacquer and carved – and brought to the young emperor a whole mountain of beautiful toys. The senior adviser also made a top, and attached purple cords to it, and twisted it in front of the emperor, and he began to run after the top of the circle and have fun. And this toy became his constant but he did not even look at the mountain of expensive curiosities. And the courtiers also made fans of gold and silver paper with sparkles, and the slats were made of fragrant wood with different fancies, they wrote rare poems on inexpressibly beautiful paper. The senior adviser also took for the fan a simple yellowish paper with a watermark and, “restraining the brush,” amazingly wrote “herbal letter” a few poetic words. And everyone came to admiration, and the sovereign put this fan in his hand-held casket and often admired them. “
Etsugi said: “Once, a long time ago, the sovereign traveled on horseback and took a young page from the Fujiwara family with him, the tsar was pleased to play with the game on the zither, and played it with the help of special claws put on his fingers, and so the emperor of this claw somewhere, I was not able to find them on the way, and no matter how I looked for them, I could not find them, and on the journey I could not get any other claws, and then the sovereign ordered the page to stay in that place and claws must be found. “He turned his horse and went to the palace. put a lot of effort to find those claws, but There was no return, and the boy gave a vow to the Buddha that he would build a temple in the place where claws were found, how could such a desire have arisen in such a young heart? Apparently, all this was predetermined: and that the emperor will drop his claws, and what will lead the page to look for them. This is the story of the temple of Horakuji. He planned to build a very young boy, which, of course, is amazing. “
Etsugi said: “From the daughter of the prince, two boys were born, like two slender trees, beautiful and intelligent, grew and became junior commanders at the court, gentlemen” tearing flowers. “Once in the year of the elder brother of the Tree and the Dog, a fierce frenzy erupted, and the elder the brother died in the morning, and the younger one in the evening. I can only imagine what the feelings of the mother, who had two children died during the day, had been zealously fulfilling the laws of the Buddha for many years and, dying, said to his mother: “When I pass away, do with my t I do not want anything in this case, just read me the Sutra of the Flower of the Law, and I will certainly return. “This is not what his mother left her, but because she was not herself after the death of two, someone else from the house turned a head to the west and so on, that was supposed, and therefore he could not return. Later he dreamed of his mother’s dream and turned to her with poems, for he was a wonderful poet: “She promised me hard, / But how could you forget / That I will soon return / From the banks of the River / Intersected.”
And how she regretted it! The younger son was a rare beauty, and in future generations it is unlikely that someone will be his superior. He was always lightly casual in his clothes, but much more elegant than anyone who tried his best. He did not pay attention to people, but only mumbled under the nose of the Sutra of the Flower of the Law, but with what unsurpassed elegance he was fingering the crystal beads! The older brother was also handsome, but much rougher than the younger one. One day after death, they appeared in a dream to a learned monk, and he began to question them about his fate in the abode of death and tell how his mother was grieving for his younger brother, who answered with a kind smile: “What we call rains, / These are the lotuses scattered with a carpet. / Why / From the tears wet sleeves / In my home native? “
The courtiers remembered how, one day during the snowfall, the younger brother visited the left minister and broke a plum branch, aggravated with snow, in his garden, he shook it, and the snow slowly crumbled on his dress, and as the underside of his dress was pale yellow, and the sleeves, when he tore off a branch, turned inside out, then the snow stained them, and he was so beautiful in the snow that some even shed tears. It was so sad!
Etsugi said: “One emperor was possessed by an evil spirit and often in a bad mood and sometimes he could completely forget himself and appear ridiculously before his subjects, but he knew how to compose beautiful songs, people passed them by word of mouth, and no one could compare with him in poetry. He surrounded himself only with exquisite things, I was honored to see his inkling, which he sacrificed for reading the sutras when the sixth prince fell ill: on the beach there was a picture of Horai mountain, long-legged and long-legged creatures, and everything is made with an extraordinary skill His shoes were shown to the people, he was very skilful in painting, he was able to paint in an inimitable art the cartwheeling wheels of the crew, and once he depicted the customs accepted in rich houses and commoners, so that everyone took a liking to it “.
There was no end to the stories of Etsugi, another elder of Shigaki echoed him, and other people, servants, monks, servants, also recalled details and added that they knew about the life of remarkable people of Japan. And the elders did not stop repeating: “How fortunate we met, we opened the sack, that for years remained closed, and ripped all the gaps, and all the stories broke out and became the property of men and women.” There was such a case: once a man of holy life, who wanted to devote himself serving the Buddha, but hesitating, arrived in the capital and saw how the minister was dressed in a brilliant court, servants and bodyguards running ahead of him, and the subjects were marching around him, and thought that it was probably the first person in the capital. appeared before M Itingaga of Fujiwara, a man of extraordinary will and intelligence, powerful and unshakable, a holy man understood, that it is he who surpasses all. But then a procession appeared and announced the arrival of the emperor, and by the way he was expected and accepted and how the sacred palanquin was introduced, how he was respected, the holy man realized that the first person in the capital and in Japan is a mikado. But when the emperor, having descended to the ground, knelt before the face of the Buddha in the hall of Amid and created a prayer, the saint said: “Yes, there is no one who is above the Buddha, my faith has now become immeasurably strengthened.”
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