英語で紹介する日本文化Ⅱ 2009年10月30日
Lesson 5: Selection
from Essays in Idleness 2
(Citation from
Donald Keene “Selection from Essays in Idleness” Kodansha International, 1999)
73 嘘も真実になれば疎かにできない
Is it because the truth
is so boring that most stories one hears are false.
People tend to exaggerate even when relating things they have actually witnessed, but when
months or years have intervened, and the place is remote, they are all the more
prone to invent whatever tales suit their fancies, and, when these
have been written down, fictions are accepted as fact. This holds true of skill
in the various arts; ignorant men who know nothing about these arts praise the
masters indiscriminately, as if they were gods, but the expert gives no credence to such tales. Things known by report always prove quite deferent when
one has actually seen them.
When a man spews forth
whatever nonsense comes to his mind, not caring that he may be exposed on the spot, people soon realize that he is lying. Again, if a
man, though himself doubting the truth of a story, tells it exactly as it was related
to him, with a self-satisfied twitching of the nose, the lie is not his. But it is frightening when a man tells a lie convincingly, deliberately blurring the details in places and pretending not to
remember exactly what happened, but carefully leaving no loose
ends.
Nobody protests very
energetically at a lie which redounds to his own prestige.
If, when everyone
else is listening with pleasure to some lie, you decide that it would be pointless to be the only one to protest, “That wasn’t what happened,” and listen
in silence, you may even be cited as a witness, and the story will seem all the
more authentic.
There's no
escaping it―the world is full of lies. It is safest always to
accept what one hears as if it were utterly commonplace and devoid of interest.
Stories told by
the lower classes are full of startling incidents. The well-bred man does not tell stories about prodigies.
I do not mean to suggest,
however, that one should not believe wholeheartedly in the miracles of the gods
and buddhas, or in the lives of the incarnations. It is foolish to accept popular superstitions uncritically, but to dismiss them as being “most improbable” serves no purpose. In general, the best course is to
treat such matters as if they were true, neither giving one's unqualified belief nor doubting or mocking them.
82 不完全の良さ
Somebody once
remarked that thin silk was not satisfactory as a scroll wrapping because it was so easily torn. Ton’a replied, “It is
only after the silk wrapper has frayed at top and bottom, and the mother-of-pearl
has fallen from the roller that a scroll looks beautiful.” This opinion
demonstrated the excellent taste of the man. People often that a set of books
looks ugly if all volumes are not in the same format, but I was impressed to hear
the Abbot K?y? say, “It is typical of the unintelligent man to insist
on assembling complete sets of everything. Imperfect sets are better.
In everything, no
matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it
interesting, and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth.
Someone once told me, “Even when building the imperial palace, they always
leave one place unfinished. In both Buddhist and Confucian writings of the philosophers of former times, there are
also many missing chapters.
92 懈怠の心への自省
A certain man who
was learning to shoot a bow aimed at the target with two arrows in his hand.
His teacher said “A beginner should not hold two arrows. It will make him rely
on the second arrow and be careless with the first. Each time you shoot you
should think not of hitting or missing the target but of making this one the decisive arrow.” I wonder
if anyone with only two arrows would be careless with one of them in the presence of teacher. But though the pupil is himself unaware of any carelessness,
the teacher will notice it. This caution applies to all things.
A man studying some
branch of learning thinks at night that he has the next day before him, and in the
morning that he will have time that night; he plans in this way always to study
more diligently at some future time. How much harder it is to perceive the laziness of mind that arises in an instant! Why should it be so difficult to do something now,
in the present moment?
150 芸事を極める秘訣
A man who is
trying to learn some art is apt to say, “I won’t rush things and tell people I am practicing while I am
still a beginner. I’ll study by myself, and only when I have mastered the art
will I perform before people. How impressed they’ll be then!”
People who speak
in this fashion will never learn any art. The man who, even while still a novice,
mixes with the experts, not ashamed of their harsh comments or ridicule, and who devotedly persists at his practice, unruffled by criticism, will neither become stultified in his art nor careless with it. Though he may lack
natural gifts, he will with the passage of the years to outstrip the man who coasts on his endowments, and in the end will attain the highest degree of
skill, acquire authority in his art and the recognition of the public, and win an unequaled reputation.
The performers who
now rank as the most skilled in the whole country were at the beginning considered
incompetent, and, indeed, had shocking faults. However, by faithfully
maintaining the principles of their art and holding them in honor,
rather than indulging in their own fancies, they have become paragons of the age and teachers for all. This surely holds
true for every art.
189 予定は未定
You may intend to
do something today only for pressing business to come up unexpectedly and take up all of your
attention the rest of the day. Or a person you have been expecting is prevented
from coming, or someone hadn’t expected comes calling. The thing you have counted
on goes amiss, and the thing you had no hopes for is the only one
to succeed. A matter which promised I to be a nuisance passes off smoothly, and a matter which should have
been easy proves a great hardship. Our daily experiences bear no resemblance to what we had anticipated. This is true throughout the year and
equally true for entire lives.
But if we decide that
everything is bound to go contrary to our anticipations, we discover that
naturally there are also some things which do not contradict expectations. This makes it all the harder to be definite about anything. The one thing you can be certain of the truth that
all is uncertainty.
190 夫婦仲を長続きさせる秘訣
A man should never
marry. I am charmed when I hear a man say, “I am still living alone.” When I
hear someone say, “He has married into so and so’s family”,
or “He has taken such and such a wife and they are living together,” I feel
nothing but contempt for the man. He will be ridiculed by others too, who will say, “No doubt he thought that
commonplace woman was quite a catch, and that’s why he took her off with him.” Or, if the woman happens to be beautiful,
they are sure to feel, “He dotes on her so much that he worships her as his private
Buddha. Yes, that's no doubt the case.”
The woman who
cleverly manages a household is the least agreeable to her husband. It is exasperating to see the pains and affection she lavishes on her children when they are born; and after her
husband has died she will become a nun and look so decrepit that it will positively shocking.
Living day in and
day out with a woman, no matter what she may be like, is bound to be frustrating
and the source of irritation. The woman too is likely to feel insecure. The relationship, however, can last unbroken for many years if the couple
lives apart, and the man only occasionally visits or stays with the woman. If
the man occasionally visits the woman and remains with her just temporarily, a freshness will cling to their romance.
243 言葉に詰まった父
When I turned eight
years old I asked my father, “What sort of thing is a Buddha?” My father said,
“A Buddha is what a man becomes.” I asked then, “How does a man become a Buddha?”
My father replied, “By following the teachings of Buddha.” “Then, who taught
the Buddha to teach?” He again replied, “He followed the teachings of Buddha
before him.”
I asked again, “What
kind of Buddha, was the first Buddha who began to teach?” At this my father
laughed and answered, “I suppose he fell from the sky or else he sprang up out
of the earth.”
My father told
other people, “He drove me into a corner, and I was stuck for an answer.” But
he was amused.
