If You Meet the Buddha on the Road
Introduction
Back when I first inhaled the bardic arts, I began telling stories as Fujimoto, a Japanese who came to the far west to study the ways of Catholicism. The base story is from Royall Tyler's Japanese Tales, and dates back to the 13th century Uji Shui Monogatari.
The Story
Sumimasen, I would like to tell story of my homeland Nihon. I am, as you can tell, visitor to these lands, brought here by your Pope to study the ways of the Christ, which are very different form those of my homeland, the land of a thousand gods (though the priests do not like us to say that).
For example, you have story of how your Saul was on Damascus-do when he was blinded by great light and he heard a voice saying it was the voice of your Christ. The voice told him to go to Damascus and take up the ways of the Christ, changing his name to Paul. But in Nihon, every child knows the following story.
In a time long past, there was a priest who lived in seclusion in the forest studying the sutras, and he made friends with a hunter, who would come by from time to time to visit and make conversation. One day, when the hunter arrived, he found the priest in a most excited state.
“My friend,” said the priest, “the most wonderful thing has happened to me. For the past three nights, on top of that hill, the bodhisattva Fugen (ah, you would call him, what is name, ah, spiritus sanctum) appeared to me, riding on his white elephant and bestowing his blessings upon me.“
The hunter was quite pleased for his friend, for his many years of studying the sutras had helped him earn a visit from Fugen. The priest went on, and said “You must stay tonight, so that you may see Fugen as well and receive his blessings.” The hunter agreed.
That night, just as the priest had described, Fugen appeared on the ridge. The hunter was suspicious: he could understand why his friend the priest should receive a visit, for he had surely attained enlightenment after many years of study. But why should he, whose occupation depended on the taking of lives, be able to see Fugen? Carefully, he drew his bow and nocked an arrow, and shot it into the heart of the apparition. There was a scream, and the light went out.
The priest was horrified: “What have you done?!” he said in anguish. The hunter explained: “If that had truly been Fugen, the arrow would not have harmed him; let us see what it was in the morning.” And the next day they went out and instead of Fugen, they found the body of an enormous kitsune (I do not know this word, but it is an animal, like a dog, red fur...), practicing kitsune magic. Who knows what might have befallen the priest if the hunter had not acted as he did.
Thus we in Nihon have a saying: If you meet the Buddha on the road, strike him down, so that you may find his true nature. So I wonder what would have happened on the Damascus-do that day, if Saul had been a Nihonjin...
Notes
I wanted to tell this story in persona, particularly that of a Japanese who had studied Catholicism, but was still Japanese. I even tried to get in a slight Japanese accent. Accents are dangerous, since they can be offensive if done in the wrong way; I can get away with it because I am ethnically Japanese.
My take on accents in general is this: you can get better results with less likelihood of failing if you work on syntax, then emphasis, and lastly on sounds. What I mean by this is the following: the sounds of a language are, by and large, easier to master than the syntax and syllabic patterns. For example, if at the end of every clause the verbs you put, then a German accent you will be making even if your pronunciation is spot on.
My concession to the “Japanese accent” was to struggle over the consonant blends. For example, priest (which became a somewhat labored poo-riest), study (soo-ta-dee), Christ (koo-ra-ee-ss-ta), and so on. This is a fairly common accent among non-native speakers.
For the rest of it, some observations. Japanese has no articles, definite or otherwise. Thus it is common for a speaker of Japanese to omit articles when speaking English. In addition, the words of the Japanese language are broken down into distinct syllables, and all the syllables of a word have the same length. To English adjusted ears, this gives the English spoken by a Japanese speaker a sing-song quality; it isn't, since if you listen carefully, it's the result of giving each syllable of a word equal air time.
Finally, I threw in a few foreignisms and on one occasion asked the audience for the appropriate word. There's a wonderful line in a Charles Sheffield short story: “I use my native language for three things: counting, praying, and cursing.” It seems a good start, though this story has none of these things. I improvised: the introductory words and a few others throughout are in Japanese.
Roughly translated, “Excuse me for interrupting...”
No, that's not a misprint: that's how I presented it. My take on accents is that it's more effective to get the syntax than the sounds. Many times when someone of Japanese descent speaks English, they drop a lot of the articles; hence I've done the same (except in the few cases where I emphasized the articles, as if struggling to remember to put them in).
The -do suffix indicates a road. Thus it seemed natural for Fujimoto to refer to the road to Damascus as the Damascus-do.
I wanted to emphasize that Fujimoto was a foreigner who studied Catholicism. Having him translate bodhisattva as Holy Spirit (spiritus sanctum, the term that he would have used) was one way to do this.
This is called high stakes gambling. I used the Japanese word (kitsune), and prompted the audience for the translation by describing the animal. Be prepared for some joker to give you the wrong translation; you can either go with it or continue fishing. But don't fish for too long.
