Versione ebook di Readme.it powered by Softwarehouse.it The Story of Shunkai
The exquisite Shunkai whose other name was Suzu was compelled to marry against her wishes when she was quite young. Laterafter this marriage had endedshe attended the universitywhere she studied philosophy.
To see Shunkai was to fall in love with her. Moreoverwherever she wentshe herself fell in love with others. Love was with her at the universityand afterwardswhen philosophy did not satisfy her and she visited a temple to learn about Zenthe Zen students fell in love with her. Shunkai's whole life was saturated with love.
At last in Kyoto she became a real student of Zen. Her brothers in the sub-temple of Kennin praised her sincerity. One of them proved to be a congenial spirit and assisted her in the mastery of Zen.
The abbot of KenninMokuraiSilent Thunderwas severe. He kept the precepts himself and expected his priests to do so. In modern Japan whatever zeal these priests have lost of Buddhism they seem to have gained for their wives. Mokurai used to take a broom and chase the women away when he found them in any of his templesbut the more wives he swept outthe more seemed to come back.
In this particular temple the wife of the head priest became jealous of Shunkai's earnestness and beauty. Hearing the students praise her serious Zen made this wife squirm and itch. Finally she spread a rumor about Shunkai and the young man who was her friend. As a consequence he was expelled and Shunkai was removed from the temple.
I may have made the mistake of love,thought Shunkaibut the priest's wife shall not remain in the temple either if my friend is to be treated so unjustly.
Shunkai the same night with a can of kerosene set fire to the five-hundred-year-old temple and burned it to the ground. In the morning she found herself in the hands of the police.
A young lawyer became interested in her and endeavored to make her sentence lighter. "Do not help me she told him. I might decide to do something else which would only imprison me again."
At last a sentence of seven years was completedand Shunkai was released from the prisonwhere the sixty-year-old warden had become enamored of her.
But now everyone looked upon her as a "jailbird." No one would associate with her. Even the Zen peoplewho are supposed to believe in enlightenment in this life and with this bodyshunned her. ZenShunkai foundwas one thing and the followers of Zen quite another. Her relatives would have nothing to do with her. She grew sickpoorand weak.
She met a Shinshu priest who taught her the name of the Buddha of Loveand in this Shunkai found some solace and peace of mind. She passed away when she was still exquisitely beautiful and hardly thirty years old.
She wrote her own story in a futile endeavor to support herself and some of it she told to a woman writer. So it reached the Japanese people. Those who rejected Shunkaithose who slandered and hated hernow read of her live with tears of remorse.
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