Parable 17: Storing the Milk

A foolish man was planning a party. "The party is in a month, and I'll need a lot of milk for my guests," he thought. "But I don't have enough pots, and it would go sour anyway."
Then he noticed his best cow. "Aha! She can store the milk!" 

So he led the cow's calf away. "Nurse somewhere else!" he told the calf. "Your mother is busy holding my party milk!"

The day of the party arrived. "There will be so much milk!" the man said. 

But the cow had gone dry; there was no milk there for his guests.

~ ~ ~

This another one of the stories from the Buddhist "Garland of Fools" collection; you can see more fool stories here. You can find an English translation of this story online at the Internet Archive in Li Rongxi's A Garland for the Fool. You can also find the Chinese text and another English translation online.

The sermon attached to the story offers a very ingenious lesson that we can all learn from the foolish man and the milk: "This is like stupid people who want to give alms all at once and say that they will wait until they possess great wealth. Usually, before they can accumulate enough money, it is seized by the government, lost in a fire or flood, or taken by robbers. Or else they may even die before they get around to giving. They are just like that stupid man who tried to store up milk."

So, don't try to hoard the "milk," including the milk of human kindness. Let it flow! Now!

Here is an Indian sculpture of a cow and her calf:

Haiku 17: First snow

Here is today's haiku:

はつ雪やもの書けば消え書けば消え

And in romaji:

hatsu yuki ya mono kakeba kie kakeba kie

And English: "First snow: I write something, it disappears; I write, it disappears."

This is a haiku by Chiyo-Ni, a remarkable woman haiku poet who lived in the 18th century. You can read more about her at Wikipedia. This poem is included in the recent book by Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi, The Poetry of Chiyo-Ni, and in their note to this poem, they explain that this poem belongs to her later life, and the idea of the writing disappearing is a comment on the fragility of her writing and of her life, as quick to melt as snow. I've seen some translations of this poem with the word "melt" instead of "disappear," but I stuck with disappearing: the snow melts, but it also makes things disappear when the snow covers them... and then those things return.

My vocabulary for today:

雪
ゆき
"snow"

Proverb 17: One day, one step

Here is today's proverb:

一日一歩

And in romaji:

ichi-nichi ip-po

And English: "One day, one step."

This is one of my favorite Japanese sayings! We say in English "one step at a time," which is good advice, but "One day, one step" is even better advice I think — and yes, I'm trying to blog every day here. One day, one post.

Note the euphonic change, called rendaku in Japanese, that takes place in the compound: ほ (ho) becomes ぽ (po).

from lovepik

My vocabulary for today:

歩
ほ
"step"

Parable 16: The Two Otters

There were once two otters who caught a fish, and then they quarreled about how to divide it.

“The middle is mine," one otter said. "You can have the head and the tail."

“No!” said the other otter. “I want the middle! I'll give you the head and the tail.”

A greedy jackal came by. "I'll be glad to judge between you," he said.

The otters explained what had happened.

"Oh, that's easy!" the jackal exclaimed. "You take the head... and you take the tail..." and then the jackal ran away with the middle part of the fish for himself.

~ ~ ~

This is another one of the Buddhist Jataka stories, the tales of the Buddha's previous births; this is known as the Dabbhapuppha Jataka. The Buddha was prompted to tell this story because of a greedy monk; you can read about the greedy monk here in the first part of the jataka. And who was the Buddha in this story? As in many of the jatakas which do not contain a noble, wise character, the Buddha was a "tree spirit" who witnessed the dispute of the jackal and the otters.

One lesson learned: don't trust jackals! But the better lesson learned is that it is good to share. If the otters had shared instead of being greedy, they would have had some nice fish to eat.

Here are two Indian otters:

Haiku 16: First dream

Here is today's haiku:

初夢や秘めて語らず一人笑む

And in romaji:

hatsuyume ya himete katarazu hitori emu

And English: "First dream: a secret not told, smiling to myself."

This is a haiku by Ito Shou (you can use Google to translate Shou's Wikipedia article to English). The new year is coming soon, and so too are our first dreams of the new year. English Wikipedia has an article about this dream tradition, called Hatsuyume. Apparently, dreaming of an eggplant is a good sign:

from Leiden University Library

My vocabulary for today:

夢
ゆめ
"dream"