This wooded mountain
I have prayed upon so long—
must it now reverse
and come at last to be a
peak where no one dwells at all
- Meaning
-
Must this mountain where I have prayed so long now turn about and end as a peak with no one living on it?
- Commentary
-
Volume Two: The Ruin of the Mountain
On Mount Hiei the quarrel between the scholar-monks and the hall servants finally came to open battle. The court sent troops to help the scholars, but at Hayaizaka three thousand monks and more than two thousand mounted men—five thousand in all—pressed forward without being able to fight: the monks told the soldiers to take the front, and the soldiers wanted the monks to lead. Meanwhile stones were pried from the walls above and rolled down on them, and with countless dead on both sides the hall servants won again. Among them were thieves, robbers, and pirates from every province, men who fought as though each stood alone, and they were strong.
The ruin that followed was severe. Almost no one remained on the mountain, and nothing was left of the place that had been called the capital of truth. No one raised the lamp of the Tendai teaching that had burned three hundred years; the incense smoke that had never ceased was dying out; the halls that once rose against the sky stood in ruin, and gilded images stood out in the rain.
The tale widens its view here, listing the Bamboo Grove and Jetavana monasteries of India gone over to wolves and foxes, Mount Tiantai, Wutai, Baima-si, and Yuquan-si in China left without occupants, the seven great temples of Nara fallen into ruin, and Atago and Takao become the haunts of tengu. The decay of holy places is the way of the world, it seems to say—and yet, it adds, what a loss. At that point the poem appears, said to have been found written on a pillar of an emptied monk's cell.
"This wooded mountain" echoes the vow of Dengyō Daishi Saichō at the founding of Mount Hiei: buddhas of perfect enlightenment, grant your unseen protection to this mountain where I stand. The words spoken at the mountain's founding are set at the center of the poem.
What then does the work is the phrase "turn about." It reverses that founding prayer. The mountain prayed over for so long is turning inside out, prayer and all, into a peak where no one lives. Three hundred years are overturned in thirty-one syllables.
Because it was written on a pillar, the poet is unknown; but only someone who knew the mountain well could have used Saichō's vow this way. That he left no name and set down only the mountain's ending is what gives the poem its weight.
waga tatsu soma……the mountain one enters to practice; from Saichō's vow, meaning Mount Hiei.
soma……a mountain from which timber is cut.
hikikaete……reversing, turning about.
nari ya hatenan……will it end as such?
gakuryo……monks of the scholarly order.
dōshu……lower-ranking monks who served the halls, later armed.
Dengyō Daishi……Saichō, founder of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei.
myōga……the unseen protection of the gods and buddhas.
anokutara sanmyaku sanbodai……supreme perfect enlightenment.
- Source
-
Heike Monogatari
- Other
-