Introduction
James Joyce (1882-1941) attempted to absorb all kinds of religious and philosophical teachings and parodied many in
his texts. In his early days, he became
interested in Buddhism as a philosophical alternative to Christianity. Joyce learned much about Buddhism through Theosophy and referred to it in Stephen
Hero, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Buddhism and Oriental pacifism were concepts that interested Joyce.
Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) was born to a rich Buddhist family who ran a big pawnshop in Hanamaki, Iwate. Unlike Joyce, who left his city Dublin and became an exile in Europe, Miyazawa spent most of his short
life in the countryside of Iwate. With a strong sympathy for the many poor farmers who frequented his family's pawnshop,
he was ashamed of himself for being a member of the rich classes of the area. So he tried to refuse his father's
financial aid and to become a “hyakusho” which means a “farmer” in Japanese but
originally meant “ordinary people” in Chinese.
My aim is to discuss how Buddhism influenced Joyce's works in comparison with his contemporary, Kenji Miyazawa. Of course we cannot simply compare how Buddhism influenced Joyce with how it did Miyazawa, because Joyce did not
believe in Buddhism as Kenji Miyazawa did. In addition, Joyce's knowledge about Buddhism is far behind Miyazawa's
simply because Joyce lived in Christianity-dominated Europe while Miyazawa lived in
Buddhism-dominated Japan. Both Joyce and Miyazawa tried once to live a religious life; Joyce finally
decided not to be a Jesuit priest, while Miyazawa was rejected by Kokuchu-kai,
a new Nichiren sect of Buddhism at that time.
I. Joyce, Olcott, and Theosophy/Buddhism
When and how did Joyce know Buddhism?
It is very hard to imagine there was an opportunity to learn Buddhism directly in Dublin at Joyce’s time, although his
brother Stanislaus referred to the “Bonzes” as certain Chinese priests in his diary.1
It started in Dublin around 1902 when “Esoteric Buddhism” was a fashionable topic with A.E. (George
Russell) and his circle. One midnight early in August 1902, Joyce waited on A.E.'s doorstep: “they
discussed Theosophy, which Joyce considered a refuge for renegade Protestants
but found intellectually interesting” as L. A. G. Strong reports in “‘A.E.’
- a Practical Mystic” (427-28). According to Powis
Hoult's A Dictionary of Some Theosophical
Terms, the word “Theosophy” is defined: 1) A name given by the Alexandrian
philosophers to the ancient Wisdom-Religion, the Hidden Wisdom, in the third
century A.D.; 2) That eternal revelation of the Divine Spirit which forms the
source of all the religions, arts, and sciences of the world (144). The word is the equivalent of the Sanscrit
word “Brahma-Vidya” which means “Divine Wisdom.” “Theosophy,” especially in the early stage of
the society, is a body of religious doctrine strongly influenced by the “Esoteric
Buddhism,” prehistoric “Budhism” (spelt with one, instead of two d's) or pre-Vedic Brahmanism. In A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus hears his fellow
students' mocking cry, “We want no budding Buddhists” (P 246). The “budding
Buddhists” means Theosophists in this context: the cry expresses the people's
contempt for Theosophy and the occult fascinated many Irish writers including
A.E., W. B. Yeats, etc. To them, Mme
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's Theosophical Society offered an immense and
intricate body of mystical teaching, which purported to be a large segment of
the ancient knowledge underlying all religions but preserved in them only in
fragmentary and distorted form as Henry Summerfield reports in That Myriad Minded Man (1). Theosophical doctrine derived in part from
Buddhist teaching. Stephen in Ulysses alludes to Mme Blavatsky and to Isis Unveiled in the 3rd episode
“Proteus” and in the 9th episode “Scylla and Charybdis.” In addition, A.E. and John Eglinton, who
appear in the Scylla and Charybdis episode, were at one time affiliated with
the Dublin Lodge of the Theosophical Society. But Stephen's attitude is apparently cynical towards Theosophy.
The
Theosophical Society was founded by Mme Blavatsky in 1875 in New York in
cooperation with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and others to investigate
the nature of the universe and humanity's place in it, to promote understanding
of other cultures, and to be a nucleus of universal brotherhood among all human
beings. The three declared objects are: 1) To form a
nucleus of the universal brotherhood of humanity, without distinction of race,
creed, sex, caste, or color, 2) To encourage the comparative study of religion,
philosophy, and science, 3) To investigate unexplained laws of nature and the
powers latent in humanity.2 In
her early days, Mme Blavatsky was much influenced by what they called “Esoteric
Buddhism” which is somewhat close to Theravada (Southern) Buddhism or “The
Teachings of the Elders” which is practiced in South[-East] Asian countries
like Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), Myanmar (Burma), Thailand (Siam), etc. But her teachings and doctrines, often
criticized, are not coherent throughout her life. The
Secret Doctrine, is partially based on The
Book of Dzyan, a mysterious Thibetan(?) Buddhist book many scholars and
critics suspect does not actually exist.
As Michael Patrick Gillespie notes in Inverted Volumes Improperly Arranged, of
the five texts by theosophical authors--Walter Adams, Annie Besant, William
Horton and Henry Olcott--which Ellmann lists in The Consciousness of Joyce, only the two books by Annie Besant were
acquired by Joyce in Trieste: Une
introduction a la theosophie and The
Path of Discipleship (15). Gillespie
suspects that Joyce disposed of the Adam's, Horton's and Olcott's books before
leaving Dublin (14). Joyce, however,
seems to have investigated Theosophy and Buddhism on the Continent, judging
from the two books Joyce got in Trieste. Besant became the second president of the Theosophical Society after Olcott's
death in 1907, two years after Joyce moved to Trieste. The first of two Besant's books Joyce owned is
the French translation of the introductory booklet for prospective believers,
and the second one reveals how to reach a higher
level of awareness with the help of an enlightened teacher: it outlines the
qualifications one must have, the general ideas behind discipleship, and how to
employ these ideas with the help of a qualified teacher or guru.
One major source of Joyce's Buddhist
allusions is Colonel Olcott's The
Buddhist Catechism first published in 1881. As Richard Ellmann checked, Joyce's copy of the book was dated May 7,
1901.3 Olcott was born on August 2, 1832, in Orange, New Jersey. He was titled Colonel after he served during
the Civil War as a military investigator of fraud and corruption. This was followed by a career in law, which
he later combined with journalism, reporting on Spiritualistic phenomena. In 1875, together with Mme Blavatsky and
William Q. Judge, Olcott co-founded The Theosophical Society, and remained
President-Founder for life. As its
president, he accompanied Mme Blavatsky to India, where they played
key roles in reviving interest in Asian philosophical and religious scriptures.
Olcott is especially noted for his work
among the Buddhists of Sri Lanka, Burma, and Japan, helping them realize the
essential value of their own heritage. His
administrative skill and public activities throughout the world were largely
responsible for the Society's growth and organizational success. He died in Adyar, Chennai (Madras), India on February 17, 1907.
The booklet The Buddhist Catechism is divided into five categories: 1) The Life
of the Buddha, 2) The Dharma or Doctrine, 3) The Sangha, or monastic order, 4)
a brief history of Buddhism and 5) some reconciliation of Buddhism with science. It became popular and
authoritative early in the twentieth century even in Japan after the first Japanese
translation by Tosui Imadate was published in 1886. So Olcott seems to have been regarded as the
most famous Buddhist in the Western world by the Shin Shu sect of Japanese
Buddhists who had actually opened missions in many places in America as Olcott noted (93-94). In fact, Olcott, known as a “White Buddhist”among the Japanese Buddhists, was invited to Japan by Fukudo Noguchi and the Shin
Shu sect of Kyoto. He arrived in Japan with Dhammapala Hevavitarana of
the Theosophical Society of Ceylon on February 9, 1889 and gave 76 lectures in 33 places all over Japan, leaving the country on May
28.
Olcott was warmly welcomed by the Japanese and fiercely opposed by Christian
missionaries. The Tokyo newspaper
Dandokai reported, “The arrival of
Colonel Olcott has caused great excitement among the Christians in Japan. They say
that he is an adventurer, a man of bad principles, and an advocate of a dying
cause. How mean and cowardly they are!” Another issue of the Dandokai
said:
Since Colonel Olcott’s arrival in Japan, Buddhism has
wonderfully revived. We have already stated that he has
been travelling to all parts of the empire. He has been
everywhere received with remarkable enthusiasm. He has
not been allowed a moment of leisure. He has taught our
people to appreciate Buddhism, and to see our duty to
impart it to all nations. Since his discourses in Tokyo, the
young men of the Imperial University and High Schools
have organized a Young Men's Buddhist Association, after
the model of the Young Men's Christian Association, to
propagate our religion….4
The total
number of the Japanese audience is reported to have been nearly 200,000.5 Olcott was especially welcomed by the people who were tired of the sudden westernization since the Meiji Restoration in
1868. Olcott played his role as the “19th-century
White Bodhisattva,” repeating “Keep your national identity as a Buddhist.” I presume that Miyazawa must also have known
of Olcott because his family members were very pious Buddhists and were
strongly connected to the Shin Shu sect.
In Joyce's young days when he learned Buddhism
through Theosophy, he presumably could not distinguish Theravada Buddhism from
Mahayana because the difference between the two kinds of Buddhism does not seem
to have been important for the Theosophists at that time. But later he seems to have studied Buddhism
much further for composing Finnegans Wake. At the same time, young Kenji Miyazawa
gravitated toward Mahayana Buddhism, especially the Nichiren sect or the
Lotus-Sutra sect.
II. Kenji Miyazawa and Buddhism
The Lotus Sutra or the Saddharma Pundarika
Sutra is one of the most important and influential of all the sutras or sacred
scriptures of Mahayana Buddhism throughout China, Korea, Japan, and other regions of Eastern Asia. “Mahayana”
means the “Great Vehicle.” The Mahayana
group once despised Theravada Buddhism calling it “Hinayana” (“Lesser Vehicle”).6
The Lotus Sutra depicts events that take place
in a cosmic world of vast dimensions, a world in many ways reflecting
traditional Indian views of the structure of the universe. It contains 28 stories that are used
as teaching devices.
He confessed later in his letter to Saichi Mori dated February 9,
1925, “I foolishly thought and claimed in the introduction of Spring and Ashura that I thoroughly
attempted to change the status of history and religion and show to somebody the
various lives based on it” (KM 9.281-82).9
Ashura, derived from a god of Zoroastrianism, was introduced into India
as an evil god. Yet after Buddhism
adopted this god from Hinduism later, Buddhists began to believe he was a
faithful guardian of the Buddha. Miyazawa, or “Ashura” defined himself as the phenomenon of “a single
illumination of a presupposed organic alternating current lamp” or “the single
illumination of karma’s alternating current lamp.”
In January 1921 Miyazawa went to the Kokuchu-kai building, Tokyo to work for the new Nichiren sect (Lotus-Sutra sect) of Buddhism. He met Chiyo Takachio
several times. However, Takachio
rejected his wish for an apprenticeship to practice asceticism because so many
young people were eager to join at that time. Instead Takachio encouraged him to write the “Lotus Sutra Literature”
(620)7 Miyazawa came to
believe that writing it was his true vocation. The “Lotus-Sutra Literature” is, in this sense, a literary work written
by a Lotus-Sutra believer as an irresistible manifestation of his faith
according to Chiyo Takachio (620). So
Miyazawa wrote many poems and stories influenced by Mahayana Buddhist
philosophy, especially the Lotus Sutra. In 1924 he published two books, one poem collection, Spring and Ashura (Haru to Shura)
and one collection of children’s stories, The
Restaurant of Many Orders and Other Stories (Chumon no Oi Ryoriten); he published only those two books during
his lifetime, but left a great number of manuscripts which were published after
his death.
Miyazawa's introduction to Spring
and Ashura, considerably mystical and avant-garde, is an introduction to modern
Lotus Sutra Literature:
The phenomenon called I
Is a single green illumination
Of a presupposed organic alternating current lamp
(a composite body of each and every transparent spectre)
The single
illumination
Of karma's alternating current lamp
Remains alight without fail
Flickering
unceasingly, restlessly
Together with the sights of the land and all else
(the light is
preserved... the lamp itself is lost)
-
- - -
- - -
- - -
- - -
- - -
- - - -
As a result people and
galaxies and Ashura and sea urchins
Will think up new ontological proofs as they see them
Consuming their cosmic dust... and breathing in salt water and air
In the end all of
these make up a landscape of the heart ...
- -
- - - - -
- - -
- - -
- - -
- - - -
And just as what is is but what we sense in common
So it is that
documents and history... or the earth's past
As well as these various data
Are nothing but what we have become conscious of
(at the root of the
karmic covenant of space-time)
...
(Trans. Pulvers 14-23)8
As the date
shows, it was published two years after Ulysses. It contains some Buddhist terms like Ashura
and Karma. Miyazawa tried hard to
redefine history and religion merging some Buddhist terms with Western
scientific terms, etc. in his own way. According to him, we recognize whatever we observe through our senses
depending on our mental conditions. How
we understand things depends on the place we are at a given time. The introduction is his manifesto of
scientific Buddhist literature, which is obviously similar to Olcott's Buddhist Catechism and the Theosophical
doctrines.10 Miyazawa's association of Buddhism and science may be indirectly
influenced by Olcott.
Contrastively the
following poem “Strong in the Rain” (“Ame nimo Makezu”) shows that in the
deepest part of Miyazawa's mind that honestly wished he had been healthy. It is free from any literary ambition:
Strong in the
rain
Strong in the wind
Strong against the summer heat and snow
He is healthy and robust
Unselfish
He never loses his temper
Nor the quiet smile on his lips
He eats four go of unpolished
rice
Miso and a few vegetables a day
He does not consider himself
In whatever occurs... his understanding
Comes from observation and experience
And he never loses sight of things
He lives in a little thatched-roof hut
In a field in the shadows of a pine tree grove
If there is a sick child in the east
He goes there to nurse the child
If there's a tired mother in the west
He goes to her and carries her sheaves
If someone is near death in the south
He goes and says, “Don't be afraid”
If there's strife and lawsuits in the north
He demands that the people put an end to their pettiness
He weeps at the time of drought
He plods about at a loss during the cold summer
Everyone calls him “Blockhead”
No one sings his praises
Or takes him to heart...
That is the sort of person
Or takes him to heart...
I want to be (Trans. Pulvers 204-9)
That poem was discovered after his death, written in his
pocket notebook dated November 3, 1931; after the poem he wrote several
lines of the Lotus Sutra (KM 10.52). The poem must have reflected the last part of
Chapter 23 of the Lotus Sutra (LS
288-89)11 The word “Blockhead”
(“Dekunobo”) probably derived from “The Bodhisattva Never Despise” (“Jo-Fugyo
Bosatsu”) who is described in Chapter 20 of the Lotus Sutra. As his name shows, he never despised people
even if they condemned or reviled him: he just bore it all patiently. When he knew “his end was drawing near, he
heard the Lotus Sutra and his organs were clarified by his transcendent power
and again, to all the people, widely preached this sutra”(TLS 293)12 In fact, Miyazawa noted “Never Despise” in
the same pocket notebook (KM 4.291-92;10.68).
“A Grand Vegetarian Festival” (“Bijiterian
Taisai”) is also an important short story. Miyazawa became a vegetarian like Zen priests
in spring 1918, saying “What would a fish feel if it could from behind stare at
me eating it?” (KM 9.90-91). “A Grand Vegetarian Festival” is his unpublished
story which features an imaginary international congress or debate between vegetarian
people (about 10% of them are Buddhists) and anti-vegetarian people. Its main setting is a fictional village in Newfoundland, Canada. In it one Shin Shu Buddhist from a Christian country speaks of Saint
Shinran's and his followers' meat-eating and points out that even the Buddha in
his final days was not a vegetarian: “... Lo and behold, the Buddha received
his last meal offered by Cunda, the smith. The food was mainly made of pork. The Buddha's stomach is said to have been totally uncurable by eating
it. Thus he finally attained Nirvana in
Kushinagar at the age of 81” (KM 6.101). At the end of his speech, the Shin Shu
Buddhist ironically defends eating meat. The Buddhist may have been the type that Olcott scorned when he
criticized the corrupt Japanese Buddhist monks who did not follow the Five
Buddhist Precepts: Not to 1) take life, 2) steal, 3) indulge in sensuality, 4)
lie and 5) become intoxicated by drink. The narrator tells the story as if it were a report from the festival
which ends with “converting all the participants into vegetarianism.” Vegetarianism is strongly connected to
Buddhism for Miyazawa like Stephen Dedalus in Stephen Hero as we will see later.
As
we have seen, Buddhism influenced Miyazawa very deeply. However, he also doubtlessly owed a debt to
Christianity; it is felt just in certain images and attitudes absorbed from the
common Christian tradition in the nineteenth century. Most evidently in the Titanic episode of the story “Night on the Milky Way Train”(“Ginga-Tetsudo no Yoru”) the abandoned people on the deck began to sing Hymn No.306 preparing for death. For him in his later years, universal humanity was more important rather than differences of religions. Raised in a mood after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) which was mentioned in Joyce's Ulysses
many times, his short life ended before World War II.
III. Buddhism in Joyce's Works
In 1903, Joyce wrote a review of H.
Fielding-Hall's The Soul of a People,
which was published in the Daily Express,
Dublin, February 6, 1903.
In the review, Joyce points out that Hall omits some incidents which are
among the most beautiful of the Buddhist legend -- the kindly devas strewing
flowers under the horse, and the story of the meeting of the Buddha and his
wife (CW 93). Probably Joyce already read some of Buddhist
books, at least any of the Buddha's biographies by that time. Joyce continues, “he states at some length
the philosophy (if that be the proper name for it) of Buddhism” (CW 93).13 Joyce's comment may have reflected both Hall
and Olcott's views: “Nothing could be further from the truth than to call...
Buddhism a philosophy” (Hall 24) and “The word ‘religion’ is most inappropriate
to apply to Buddhism, which is not a religion, but a moral philosophy” (Olcott
1n). But Joyce treated Buddhism as a
religion in the review. Hall mentioned
in another passage: “There can never be a war of
Buddhism. No ravished country has ever
borne witness to the prowess of the followers of the Buddha; no murdered men
have poured out their blood on their hearth-stones, killed in his name”
(85). His teaching can never be
misunderstood, because “He was the preacher of the Great Peace, of love, of
charity, of compassion” as Hall argued (85).
In Stephen Hero, Stephen's monologue about
the Buddha also suggests that Joyce read some biographies of the Buddha:
:
The woman in the black straw hat has never heard of the
name of Buddha but Buddha’s character seems to have
been superior to that of Jesus with respect to unaffected
sanctity. I wonder how she would like that story of Yaso
dhara’s kissing Buddha after his illumination and penance.
Renan’s Jesus is a trifle Buddhistic but the fierce eaters
and drinkers of the western world would never worship
such a figure. Blood will have blood. (SH 190) (Italics mine.)
This
passage was omitted when Joyce reconstructed the story for A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but it proves that Joyce
read some books about Buddhism and was influenced by the Buddha when he was
disappointed in Christianity. But the source of “that story of Yasodhara's kissing Buddha after his
illumination and penance” cannot be identified with any of the Buddha's
canonical biographies. Presumably Joyce
read some esoteric Buddhist version.
Joyce might have thought that Buddhism is superior to Christianity
because it is non-violent. In a more recent evaluation of Buddhism and war, Gananath
Obeyesekere argues in “Buddhism, Nationhood, and Cultural Identity” that “in
the Buddhist doctrinal tradition... there is little evidence of intolerance, no
justification for violence, no conception even of ‘just wars’ or ‘holy wars’”
(233). In fact, Obeyesekere reinforces
his claim by maintaining that “one can make an assertion that Buddhist doctrine
is impossible to reconcile logically with an ideology of violence and
intolerance” (233).
In Ulysses,
several allusions to the Buddha can be found, crossing the minds of three main
characters, Bloom, Stephen and Molly.14
In the hallucination episode “Circe,” Stephen
is told by Elijah mystically or theosophycally: “Be a prism.
You have that something within, the higher
self. You can rub shoulders with a
Jesus, a Gautama [Buddha], an [Robert] Ingersoll” (U 15.2198-99). This alludes
to a Theosophical idea. The Self is used by Theosophists with three different
connotations, the second and third expressing the same idea as the first, but
with greater limitation: 1) Atman, the One Spirit in all, 2) The Higher Ego,
the Thinker, the immortal man, 3) The Lower Ego. The first of these is spoken as “The Self”;
the second, as “The Higher Self”; and the third, as “The Lower Self,” according
to Powis Hoult's Dictionary of Some
Theosophical Terms (125). This also
tunes in Stephen's theosophical idea: “We walk through ourselves, meeting
robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love,
but always meeting ourselves” (U
9.1044-46).
Buddhist or Hindu doctrines of
Reincarnation and Karma, which are the central beliefs for Theosophists are
found everywhere in Ulysses. In the 4th episode “Calypso,” Bloom answers
for Molly's question about metempsychosis. Bloom explains 1) Reincarnation and 2) metempsychosis:
1. Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another
body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincar-
nation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of
years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten
it. Some say they remember their past lives. (U
4.362-65)
2. Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it.
They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or
a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example.
(U 4.375-77)
Reincarnation,
in Theosophy, is the coming back of the soul?the Atma-Buddhi-Manas (the trinity, reflection of the Devine Trinity,
that go to form the soul of man)--to the physical world. That is the teaching derived from Buddhism or
Hinduism and accepted as the truth by Theosophists, that countless rebirths of
the reincarnating ego are a necessity of its revolution. The doctrine of Reincarnation differs from
metempsychosis or transmigration in that, in Reincarnation, the human soul can
but reincarnate in a human body, never in a lower form (Hoult 113). Bloom's explanations seems to be based on
Theosophy.
Bloom often remembers those questions, Molly’s strange phonetic interpretation
of the word (“met him pike hoses”) and her exclamation (“O rocks!”)
throughout the day”:
1. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the
transmigration. O rocks! (U 8.112-13)
2. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a
past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses. (U 8.1147-48)
3. Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de
Kock. (U 11.500)
4. Met him pike hoses.
Philosophy. O rocks! (U 11.1062)
5. Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter
for Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met
him pike hoses went Poldy on. (U 11.1187-98)
6. I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind
but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then
recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book
about. Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must
have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic
chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.(U 16.1470-75)
7. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted
phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis
(met him pike hoses), alias (a mendacious person mentioned
in sacred scripture). (U 17.685-87)
In Bloom's mind, the word “metempsychosis”
is transformed “met him pike hoses” following Molly’s phonetic mix-up, which
connotes her adultery with Blazes Boylan that day, and bedevils him throughout
the day, although he pretends to be unaware of it before her. “Met him pike hoses,” after losing its
Theosophical meaning, psychoanalytically implies “Met her penis-envy” which
dreamboats in the masculine metamorphosis of Bella Cohen in the 15th episode “Circe.”
In the above quotation no.2, Bloom
soliloquizes, “Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past
life the reincarnation met him pike hoses.”
Stephen’s thoughts also turn to the subject: “The life esoteric is not
for ordinary person. O.P. must work off
bad Karma first” (U 9.69-70). As Olcotts explains, “Karma is defined as the
sum total of a man’s actions. The law of
Cause and Effect is called the Paticca
Samuppada Dhamma” (46n). As the
result of deeds of peculiar merit, a man may attain certain advantages of
place, body, environment and teaching in his next stage of progress, which ward
off the effects of bad Karma and help his higher evolution (BC 35).
The being having done that for which he must be rewarded or punished in
future, and having Tanha, will have a
re-birth through the influence of Karma (BC
63).
Joyce seems to have remembered Olcott's Buddhist Catechism until he wrote Finnegans Wake, because, as James S.
Atherton points in The Books at the Wake,
it is noticeable that the spellings seem to be based on those adopted by Olcott
with Joycean deviations (225). Among
early references, “Sid Arthur” (FW 59.7)--“Maha's
pranjapansies” (FW 59.14) and “the
sisterhood” (FW 59.18): this is about
Buddha’s stepmother, Maha-pajapati, who was the first woman to be admitted to a
Buddhist order, but she is described as a Japanese--“pran-Japanese.”
Joyce transformed even Saint Patrick (patron
saint of Ireland into a Japanese monk“Patriki San Saki” (FW 317.02), and the Norwegian captain
Pukkelsen tosses a curse word “fouyoufoukou” (Fuck you! + Jap. fuyufuku = winter suit) on
“shitateyar,” a Japanese tailor (FW
319.23-20.17). “Patriki” is a
Japanese way of pronouncing “Patrick,” and “San Saki” is Joyce’s unique
Japanese translation of “saint”: “san” [さん: Mr.,
Miss, Mrs, etc.] + “saki”[先: in front of > ahead/above
> high/holy]. Patriki San Saki
reappears in the final chapter of the novel, to discuss religious problems with
the Archdruid (FW 611-13). Joyce seems to have learned Japanese
Buddhism.
Numerous allusions to the Buddha's biography can be found in Finnegans Wake, especially to his mother
Maya (Mahamaya) who is not separated from the Virgin Mary (FW 59.14, 80.24, etc). In
Theosophy, “maya” (Sanskrit: illusion) is the principle of form or limitation,
may be said to include all manifestation, and so we have to go beyond
manifestation to escape from it (Hoult 83). In the passage “(be mercy, Mara!
A he whence Rahoulas!)” (FW
62.5), Mara and Rahoulas are connected to the Buddha’s life: Mara (Sanskrit:
death), appearing on is an evil spirit who tempted the Buddha with the kingdoms
of the earth; but by means of which, also men attain strength for a higher
spiritual life (Hoult 82). Rahoulas
(Sanskrit: a fetter) was the Buddha’s beloved baby son when he fled home to
seek enlightenment: he entered the Sangha
at the age of 15 and became one of the Twelve Elders. The following “Indian” passage features the
Buddha's legend:
… How he stud theirs with himselfs mookst kevinly, and
that anterevolitionary, the churchman childfather from tonsor's
tuft to almonder's toes, a haggiography in duotrigesumy, son
soptimost of sire sixtusks, of Mayaqueenies sign osure, hevnly
buddhy time, inwreathed of his near cissies, a mickly dazzly eely
oily with looiscurrals, a soulnetzer by zvesdals priestessd, their
trail the tractive, and dem dandypanies knows de play of de eye-
lids, with his gamecox spurts and his smile likequid glue (the
suessiest sourir ever weanling wore), whiles his host of spritties,
lusspillerindernees, they went peahenning a ripidarapidarpad
around him, pilgrim prinkips, kerilour kevinour, in neuchoristic
congressulations, quite purringly excited,rpdrpd, allauding to
him by all the licknames in the litany with the terms in which
no little dulsy nayer ever thinks about implying except to her
future's year and sending him perfume most praypuffs to setis-
fire more then to teasim (shllwe help, now you've massmuled,
you t'rigolect a bit? yismik? yimissy?) that he, the finehued, the
fairhailed, the farahead, might bouchesave unto each but every-
one, asfar as safras durst assune, the havemercyonhurs of his
kissier licence. (FW 234.10-29) (Italics mine.)
The
passage was intricate crossing many elements including St. Kevin, Lewis Caroll,
Bygmester Solness, etc. in the context of a sexualized children's charade “Angels
and Devils or colours”: the Buddha, together with Irish St. Kevin, is the one
of the cold-to-women sainted youths played by Chuff/Shaun/Stanislaus. Joyce could have added Miyazawa’s name here
if he had known him, for Miyazawa was also considered to be a “cold-to-women
sainted” man because he died young, virgin and unmarried. When Queen Maya dreamed of a white elephant with 6 tusks she conceived
Gautama Siddhartha or the future “7th Buddha.” (FW 234.12-14). Dandapani's
daughter Yasodhara was chosen by Siddhartha after overcoming five hundred competitors
in games and exercises of skill and prowess in the ancient Kshattriya or warrior fashion (FW
234.16-19).15
As Adaline Glasheen notes, the Buddha, a
vital, physical being who renounces women, pleading a higher morality, is
described as the viable but non-productive penis?reflecting the Irish word “bod,”
pronounced “bud”: “At the start of FW
(25.25) he is quiescent, at the end he is urged by female nature to ‘stand up
tall… looking fine… Blooming in the very lotust and second to nill, Budd! (620.2-3)”
(43). In the 5th episode “Lotus Eaters”
of Ulysses, Bloom's penis is
quiescent and floats on the Turkish Bath in the last scene. The “nill Budd” is an inversion of “Dublin,” so Dublin is asked to rise to physical fertility, as Glasheen notes (43).
Conclusion
Joyce's review of Fielding-Hall's The Soul of a People indicates how
sympathetically he regarded Buddhism which put war aside as irrelevant. Joyce's own hatred of force emerges in Exiles and Ulysses, and Stephen Dedalus in Portrait
remains non violent, with his weapons of “silence, exile, and cunning,” as
Richard Ellmann noted.16 Influenced by Buddhism, or what Joyce called “a suave philosophy,” in Ulysses, Joyce enriched Bloom's
character with elements of Buddhist pacifism and Stephen's character with
elements of Buddhist enlightenment, by using the two Buddhist (or Hindu)
doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma. Joyce probably knew the reclining Buddha statue Bloom and Molly remember
(U 5.328 & 18.1201) was made in Burma, the main setting for Fielding-Hall's
The Soul of a People.17
Miyazawa's attitude toward religion was
seemingly different from Joyce who refused to become a priest. But the two writers were similar. Each of them seriously considered the meaning
of religion as pacifists in almost the same period of wars in the early
twentieth century. The flower “lotus”
in the Lotus Sutra and the “Lotus Eaters” episode of Ulysses is a common concept or image both for Joyce owing to Olcott
and Miyazawa, although Miyazawa probably did not know about Theosophy very
well. Both Joyce's and Miyazawa's
inclination to Buddhism reflects the new age of religion in that era, “crossing
borders.”
They lived far apart without knowledge of
each other, but both of them tried to find a “path” in Buddhism at the
beginning of the age of world war through the direct or indirect influence of
Olcott's Buddhist movement. Although
Miyazawa did not clearly write anything against war, he left many short stories
and poems written in a very unwarlike mood. In this sense, he was the Buddhist pacifist Joyce longed for.
Notes
*This is a revised version of the paper presented at the 19th International
IASIL Japan Conference, Hiroshima City University, Oct. 20, 2002.
Special thanks to Prof. Toshio Akai for valuable advices.
1 The Complete Dublin Diary of Stanislaus
Joyce, p.89. Stanislaus also
mentioned Renan's Vie de Jesus (91).
2 Cf. “Theosophical Society in America.”
3 Ellmann, James
Joyce, pp.75-76. Ellmann drew for titles to supplement
his list from John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon's A Bibliography of
James Joyce, 1882-1941, in which they published the titles and present
locations of thirteen books that Joyce had owned in Ireland in 1904
(Gillespie 14).
4 Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, p.140.
5 Cf. Tetsuro Sato, “Action Drama of the Great
Asian Thought.”
6 Cf. Burton Watson, trans. The
Lotus Sutra, p.xii.
7 Chiyo Takachio, “Kenji Miyazawa and Lotus
Literature,” Kenji Miyazawa's
Religious World, pp.617-21. But Takachio later confessed he did not
remember if he really told that to Miyazawa (620).
8 Roger Pulvers,
trans. Kenji Miyazawa Poems, pp.14-23.
9 The Complete Works of Kenji Miyazawa, vol. 9 (Letters),
pp.281-82. All
citations from The Complete Works are referred to in the following style:
KM x.y (x=volume number; y=page
number). All English
translations by
Eishiro Ito.
10 Cf. The
Buddhist Catechism, chapter 5.
11 Watson, pp.288-89.
12 Kato Bunno, et al, trans, Threefold Lotus Sutra, p.293.
13 The
Critical Writings of James Joyce, p.93.
14 See Eishiro Ito, “Mediterranean
Joyce Meditates on Buddha.”
15 Cf. Olcott, The Buddhist Catechism, p.7.
16 The Critical Writings of James Joyce, p.93.
17 See Eishiro Ito, “Mediterranean Joyce Meditates on Buddha.”
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