therein stranger than that of the nation of Flying Heads.[1] “Irrepressible bursts and luxurious ease,”[2]―such was always one enthusiastic strain. “For ever indulging in liberal thought,”[3]―thus spoke another openly without restraint. Were men like these to open my book, I should be a laughing-stock to them indeed. At the cross-road men will not listen to me, and yet I have some knowledge of the three states of existence spoken of beneath the cliff;[4] neither should the words I utter be set aside because of him that utters them.[5] When the bow was hung at my father's door,[6] he dreamed that a sickly-looking Buddhist priest, but half covered by his stole, entered the chamber. On one of his breasts was a piece of plaster like a cash; and my father, waking from sleep, found that I, just born, had a similar black patch on my body. As a child, I was thin and constantly ailing, and unable to hold my own in the battle of life. Our home was chill and desolate as a monastery; and working there for my livelihood with my pen, I was as poor as a priest with his alms-bowl. Often and often I put my hand to my head and exclaimed, “Surely he who sat with his face to the wall[7] was myself in a previous state of existence;” and thus I referred my non-success in this life to the influence of a destiny surviving from the last. I have been tossed hither and thither in the direction of the ruling wind, like a flower falling in filthy places; but the six paths of transmigration[8] are inscrutable indeed, and I have no right to complain. As it is, midnight finds me with an expiring lamp, while the wind whistles mournfully without; and over my cheerless table I piece together my tales, vainly hoping to produce a sequel to The Infernal Regions.[9]
- ↑ A fabulous race, whose heads leave their bodies at night and fly off in search of food.
- ↑ From the poet Wang Pieh, a.d. 648-676.
- ↑ ? The poet Li Po, d. a.d. 762.
- ↑ Referring to the story of an old priest who said that these states, present, past, and future, bore no relation to eternity.
- ↑ A Confucian maxim.
- ↑ A small towel announces the birth of a girl.
- ↑ Bôdhidharma, the Buddhist Patriarch who went as missionary to China and died there circa A.D. 535.
- ↑ Angels, men, demons, hungry devils, brute beasts, and tortured sinners.
- ↑ By Lin I-ch'ing.
