The Story of Shunkai
The exquisite Shunkai whose other name was Suzu was compelled to marry against her wishes when she was quite young. Later, after this marriage had ended, she attended the university, where she studied philosophy.
To see Shunkai was to fall in love with her. Moreover, wherever she went, she herself fell in love with others. Love was with her at the university, and afterwards when philosophy did not satisfy her and she visited the temple to learn about Zen, the 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 Kennin, Mokurai, Silent Thunder, was severe. He kept the precepts himself and expected the priests to do so. In modern Japan whatever zeal these priests have lost for Buddhism they seemed to have gained for having wives. Mokurai used to take a broom and chase the women away when he found them in any of his temples, but the more wives he swept out, the more seemed to come back.
In this particular temple the wife of the head priest had become 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 that 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 Shunkai, “but 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 endeavoured to make her sentance lighter. “Do not help me.” she told him. “I might decide to do something else which will only imprison me again.”
At last a sentance of seven years was completed, and Shunkai was released from the prison, where the sixty-year-old warden also had become enamored of her.
But now everyone looked upon her as a “jailbird”. No one would associate with her. Even the Zen people, who are supposed to believe in enlightenment in this life and with this body, shunned her. Zen, Shunkai found, was one thing and the followers of Zen quite another. Her relatives would have nothing to do with her. She grew sick, poor, and weak.
She met a Shinshu priest who taught her the name of the Buddha of Love, and 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 endeavour to support herself and some of it she told to a women writer. So it reached the Japanese people. Those who rejected Shunkai, those who slandered and hated her, now read of her life with tears of remorse.
thank you for your time Brian,
I am not entirely sure if i am posting this as a new entrey or as a comment. it is ment to be a new entry under the theme of Karma.
I am thinking about your discussions about Karma. i would like to contribute my thoughts.
The idea of karma, in my life, serves a profoud function. My interpretation of it is simple, I see it as simply cause and effect. I do not ask weather or not my actions will “bring me back” as a cow or a goat etc but instead look into myself for guidance in the imediate moment (loving kindness). Animals serve me as a contemplation, metaphores for themes that emerge in my life (vengance, hate, indiference, joy) during my meditation practice.
Weather a person is Buddhist or not everyone knows that harming another person is bad (one of the precepts). When I harm someone else i feel bad and I see that the other person (sentient being) feels bad. The consequence of my action (harming someone) is instant, this bad feeling may manifest in a more protracted harmful way or a more subtle way, who cares I know that there will be a consequence. Conversly, when I am good towards someone else there is a more positive outcome within me. Karma happens, like gravity.
Buddhism’s idea of Karma even enters my mind, if I have harmful thoughts (intention) it is the first step to doing bad things; as simple as stepping on a bettle. Thought leads to action. True enlightenment is the absence of intention.
Buddha was looking for deciples they came to him. Things were not written down (warm hand to warm hand). I don’t that he gave a shit if I became enlightened or not. But he did care about my wellbeing through his expression of compassion, kindness, and wisdom. I care about the wellbeing of others. Buddha guides me.