great gyō which endless prayers, mechanical finger-charms, and careful breathing help accentuate.
But besides the regular stock austerities, there are several supererogatory ones. There is, for example, the gyō called tsumadachi which consists in walking on the tips of one's toes wherever one has occasion to go. A species of pious ballet-dancing this.
Then there is the austerity of never looking upon a woman's face. This martyrdom the ascetic who had practiced it spoke of as a very severe self-infliction indeed. But in view of the vast subjective disturbance wrought even unconsciously by the sex, I should judge it to be one of the most essential austerities of all. For no man who is a man can take that absorbing interest in nothing at all which the rules require while a pair of piquant eyes and a petticoat lead his imagination their irresistible dance. To be insensible to such charm were to have attained to complete insensibility already.
Compared with this renunciation, the next gyō must be a positive pleasure. It consists in letting unlimited mosquitoes bite one to satiety for seven consecutive nights.
