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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
priest who took his own life committed a very great offense. He should have tried to convert those who
tempted him. This he was too weak to do. If he felt it impossible to keep from sinning as a priest, then it
would have been better for him to return to the world, and there try to follow the law for such as do not
belong to the Order."
"According to Buddhism, therefore, he has obtained no merit?" I queried.
"It is not easy to imagine that he has. Only by those ignorant of the Law can his action be commended."
"And by those knowing the Law, what will be thought of the results, the karma of his act?"
My friend mused a little; then he said, thoughtfully: - "The whole truth of that suicide we cannot fully
know. Perhaps it was not the first time."
"Do you mean that in some former life also he may have tried to escape from sin by destroying his own
body?"
"Yes. Or in many former lives."
"What of his future lives?"
"Only a Buddha could answer that with certain knowledge."
"But what is the teaching?"
"You forget that it is not possible for us to know what was in the mind of that man."
"Suppose that he sought death only to escape from sinning?"
"Then he will have to face the like temptation again and again, and all the sorrow of it, and all the pain,
even for a thousand times a thousand times, until he shall have learned to master himself. There is no
escape through death from the supreme necessity of self-conquest."
After parting with my friend, his words continued to haunt me; and they haunt me still. They forced new
thoughts about some theories hazarded in the first part of this paper. I have not yet been able to assure
myself that his weird interpretation of the amatory mystery is any less worthy of consideration than our
Western interpretations. I have been wondering whether the loves that lead to death might not mean
much more than the ghostly hunger of buried passions. Might they not signify also the inevitable penalty
of long-forgotten sins?
X. A CONSERVATIVE
Amazakaru
Hi no iru kuni ni
Kite wa aredo,
Yamato-nishiki no
Iro wa kawaraji.
I
He was born in a city of the interior, the seat of a daimyo of three hundred thousand koku, where no
foreigner had ever been. The yashiki of his father, a samurai of high rank, stood within the outer
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