Proverb 14: Frog in a well

Here is today's proverb:

井の中の蛙大海を知らず

And in romaji:

i no naka no kawazu tai kai wo shira-zu

And English: "The frog in the middle of the well doesn't know the big ocean."

This proverb is sometimes told as a parable too, so I'll have to include the parable version here at the blog too! It's a notion that fits in all kinds of religious traditions, whether the "great ocean" is God or the ground of being or what have you — something bigger than the well in which we frogs find ourselves.

painting of the proverb

My vocabulary for today:

海
かい
"ocean, sea"

Parable 14: The Wise Jackal

The Buddha was once born as a jackal, and he made his home in the cremation fields amidst the corpses.
A wicked man who wanted to kill the jackal had gone there and lay on the ground, club in hand, pretending to be dead.
The jackal approached, but he suspected this man was not really dead, so he grabbed the club in his teeth and tugged. The man tightened his grip, and the jackal let go.“Human, if you were dead, you wouldn’t have tightened your grip.”
The man then sprang up, but he was too late: the Buddha had escaped. 

~ ~ ~

This is yet another one of the Buddha's past-birth stories, a "jataka" tale; this one is known as the Sigala-Jataka (sigala means "jackal" in Pali). I like the fact that the Buddha would be reborn as a jackal, a creature who does not get a lot of respect, and as a jackal he dwells in the cremation grounds, the most lowly place a creature could be. And I guess you could say that the man pretending to be dead was still "grasping" ... he had not learned to pretend to be a good Buddhist even in death! Meanwhile, the deceitful man was the wicked Devadatta in a past life; more about Devadatta at Wikipedia.

Indian painting of a jackal and peacocks

Parable 13: The Grieving Fortune-Teller

There was once a village wise man who claimed to know the future.
So when the villagers saw him weeping bitterly, they asked, "What's wrong?"
"Alas," the man groaned, "I weep because my son will die in seven days."
"But perhaps he won't!" the people replied, offering comfort. "Why weep in advance?"
"Because I know that he will die," the man insisted, "and I am never wrong."
When the boy was still alive after seven days, his father killed him.
At the funeral, the villagers murmured to one another, full of admiration, "Our wise man really can foresee the future!"

~ ~ ~

This story is another "fool's tale" from the Baiyu Jing 百喻經 Sutra of a Hundred Parables. 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. In this story, the main character is not the fool (he is something even worse!); this time, the fools are the people who go on believing in the wicked fortune-teller. 

Although we might make fun of fortune-tellers and of the people who believe in them, we are all trying to do "fortune-telling" when we think about the future, making plans, and even acting wrongly in the present because of the expectations we had about the future and our willful insistence to make things go as we planned them. So, while this story is obviously fantastical, I think there is a warning here for all of us to ponder whenever we are tempted to live out our futures in advance and to even make our dreams (or fears) come true.

art by Su Hanchen

Proverb 13: Futon on a tombstone

Here is today's proverb:

石に布団は着せられず

And in romaji:

ishi ni futon wa kiserare-zu

And English: "You can’t put a comforter on a tombstone."

I thought this was a brilliant proverb, and it was also fun to see a Japanese word that many English speakers now know — futon — used here: 布団, ふとん, futon. The proverb just says "stone," 石, but the idea is "stone in a graveyard, " i.e. a tombstone, specifically the tombstone of your mother or father. Be kind to them now while you still can... otherwise, it will be too late. So it can be specifically a saying about filial duty and filial love, but also a more general admonition to do good deeds, any good deeds you can, now, before it is too late.

1902 drawing: Japanese cemetery

My vocabulary for today:

石
いし
"stone"

Haiku 13: Mountain doves

Here is today's haiku:

山鳩が泣事をいふしぐれ哉

And in romaji:

yama-bato ga nakigoto wo iu shigure kana

And English: "Mountain doves utter weeping words; winter rain (kana)."

This is another haiku by Issa, and again the focus is on the animals and how they experience the world. It's a cold, wintry, rainy day for me here today, but I cannot hear the birds weeping. I am guessing that Issa really did. I've seen this translated with "grumble" for the pigeon's words, but I went with "weeping words" for 泣事 nakigoto when I saw that one of the metaphorical uses of しぐれ shigure, winter rain, is "shedding tears." I like the sound-play of the compound yama-bato / hato (mountain-dove, i.e. turtle-dove) and naki-goto / koto (weeping words).

(Japanese doves)

My vocabulary for today:

鳩
hato (bato)
"dove, pigeon"