No, I do not long
for home. Under a strange sky
or in the city,
neither of them is a place
where a man may stay for good
- Meaning
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No, I do not long for home. Neither this strange sky nor the capital is a place where a man may stay for good.
- Commentary
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Volume Ten: Down the Sea Road
This is Shigehira's reply, made on the spot, to the poem Jijū sent him at the Ikeda station.
Told that he must be longing for home, he answers that he is not. He is not refusing her courtesy; he supplies a reason—the capital is no final dwelling either.
It is an answer grounded in the Buddhist view of impermanence. If everywhere is a temporary lodging, then a stopping place on the road and the capital are the same, and there is nothing to long for. As reasoning it holds.
But Shigehira was living in the capital a year before this. That the capital is no final dwelling was taught him by his own house's flight from it. What is stated is not impermanence learned from books but impermanence undergone.
This is the man who burned Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji in Volume Five and who, at Anraku-ji in Volume Eight, composed on how he longed for the old capital and how the god there must know that longing. What he entrusted then to Michizane he here cuts off himself. At Dazaifu he said he longed; on the sea road he says he does not. His language grows drier after his capture.
furusato……one's home; here the capital.
koishiku mo nashi……I do not long for it.
tabi no sora……away from home.
tsui no sumika……a final dwelling place.
naraneba……since it is not.
mujō……impermanence; that nothing holds its form.
Kajiwara Kagetoki……the Minamoto commander escorting him.
kari no yado……a temporary lodging; a Buddhist figure for this world.
- Source
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Heike Monogatari
- Other
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