[FN#172] See ‘Sacred Books of the East,’ vol. xxi., chap. iv., pp. 98-118.

17.  The Parable of the Monk and the Stupid Woman.

The confused or unenlightened may be compared with a monk and a stupid woman in a Japanese parable which runs as follows:  “One evening a monk (who was used to have his head shaved clean), getting drunk against the moral precepts, visited a woman, known as a blockhead, at her house.  No sooner had he got into her room than the female fell asleep so soundly that the monk could not wake her nap.  Thereupon he made up his mind to use every possible means to arouse her, and searched and searched all over the room for some instrument that would help him in his task of arousing her from death-like slumber.  Fortunately, he found a razor in one of the drawers of her mirror stand.  With it he gave a stroke to her hair, but she did not stir a whit.  Then came another stroke, and she snored like thunder.  The third and fourth strokes came, but with no better result.  And at last her head was shaven clean, yet still she slept on.  The next morning when she awoke, she could not find her visitor, the monk, as he had left the house in the previous night.  ’Where is my visitor, where my dear monk?’ she called aloud, and waking in a state of somnambulation looked for him in vain, repeating the outcry.  When at length her hand accidentally touched her shaven head, she mistook it for that of her visitor, and exclaimed:  ’Here you are, my dear, where am I myself gone then?” A great trouble with the confused is their forgetting of real self or Buddha-nature, and not knowing ’where it is gone.’  Duke Ngai, of the State of Lu, once said to Confucius:  “One of my subjects, Sir, is so much forgetful that he forgot to take his wife when be changed his residence.”  “That is not much, my lord,” said the sage, “the Emperors Kieh[FN#173] and Cheu[FN#174] forgot their own selves."[FN#175]

[FN#173] The last Emperor of the Ha dynasty, notorious for his vices.  His reign was 1818-1767 B.C.

[FN#174] The last Emperor of the Yin dynasty, one of the worst despots.  His reign was 1154-1122 B.C.

[FN#175] Ko-shi-ke-go.

18.  ‘Each Smile a Hymn, each Kindly Word a Prayer.’

The glorious sun of Buddha-nature shines in the zenith of Enlightened Consciousness, but men still dream a dream of illusion.  Bells and clocks of the Universal Church proclaim the dawn of Bodhi, yet men, drunk with the liquors of the Three Poisons[FN#176] Still slumber in the darkness of sin.  Let us pray to Buddha, in whose bosom we live, for the sake of our own salvation.  Let us invoke Buddha, whose boundless mercy ever besets us, for the Sake of joy and peace of all our fellow-beings.  Let us adore Him through our sympathy towards the poor, through our kindness shown to the suffering, through our thought of the sublime and the good.

“O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother;
Where pity dwells, the peace of God is there;
To worship rightly is to love each other,
Each smile a hymn, each kindly word a prayer.” 
—­Whittier.