Spendor of Okinawa Bonus: A story from the Ryukyu Kingdom (Sunday: 19no23)

Demon Island

 

 A long time ago, there was a small temple on a little hill overlooking the sea. There were two novices at the temple being taught the strict teachings of Buddha.

(Kin Kanonji Buddhist Temple in Kin Village: photo by John Ellis)

The older of the two novices was bright, but, although first at learning the sutras, he was totally lazy at doing anything else. The younger novice was exceptionally diligent about following the priest’s orders and set himself firmly to learn Buddhism’s precious beliefs. Thus, it was a given that the older novice bore the brunt of the priest’s scoldings.

It happened one day that the priest was away from the temple. “Ah, but I’m bored, really bored,” murmured the older novice as he gazed at the movements of a mountain pigeon. Then, as if he had hit on an idea, he set off briskly down to the village at the foot of the hill. 

A little while later, the older novice came back with a chicken, its wings still flapping, and disappeared into the kitchen.

The younger novice sitting in the hall of the main temple reading the sutras turned to look when he heard the sound of footsteps. There was the older novice smiling from ear to ear, holding a pot of soup and beckoning to him with his hand, “Hey, your belly must be pretty empty. How about joining me in eating this.

“No kidding?” the young novice replied. “What a really delicious smell! What kind of soup is it, anyway?”

“Well, I tried putting a bit of chicken in it,” answered the older novice.

 “Ch..ch..chicken!” the younger novice stammered, stunned off balance with shock. And not without reason. For at this temple, it was taught that those, especially those who were becoming monks, who ate living things would end up falling into hell.

“Well, let’s eat our fill. It’s really tasty,” said the older novice, intending to get the younger novice to eat it as well.

“That, that’s going to cause trouble,” said the younger novice, his face strained almost to the point of tears. “The priest will be furious. You know it’s a sin against Buddha.”

But the older one glared at him and threatened, “ Look, if you stick up your nose at my cooking, I’ll pee all over that statue of Buddha over there.”

With that, the younger novice reluctantly stuck his chopsticks into the soup bowl. Unfortunately, just then the priest came back home. The priest, his body trembling with incredible anger, shouted at the two of them, “Wh..what do you think you’re doing! You promised to serve Buddha, falsely it seems, and here you are eating meat. It’s unforgivable.” Extreme in his anger, he put the two trembling novices, just as they were, into a wooden box and set them out to sea.

 

Unfortunately the two boxes drifted together and washed up on an island just off Okinawa inhabited by demons. Just as the boxes washed ashore, some demons, who lived on this island, were out sumo wrestling on the beach. Just then they spied the wooden box floating up to shore.

“Hey, what’s that box?” the demons exclaimed and pried open its cover. Seeing the two novices, the demons somehow took them for statues of Buddha. “Oh, what splendid statues of Buddha!” said one. “What a surprise. Look, there are even two of them in it,” said another.

With the demons taking turns looking at them, the two novices lost all courage and were stiff with fright. But under the circumstances, there was no way that they could escape. The only thing they could do was act like statues of Buddha. 

The demons put the two novices on their shoulders and took them back to their village. Then they devoutly enshrined them at the very front of their cave fBefore the two of them, the demons laid out lots of delicious food as offerings. The demon village was brimming with joy to welcome the Buddhas. But as the day wore on and it got late, the demons began passing out from the festive sake and soon were all snoring away, sound asleep.

“Ah, we’re saved,” whispered the older novice. “It’s lucky we’re monks. Otherwise we’d have been eaten in no time.”

“Right! I thought it was all over for us,” whispered the other.

The two novices looked each other in the face and sighed with relief. But then one of them did something stupid. With the delicious food right before his eyes, the older novice began gobbling it up.

“St...stop that,” said the younger novice. “If they figure out that we’re human, we’ll end up getting eaten.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said the older one. “I’ll just eat a bit and they’ll never notice.” But, as it was his habit to eat whatever was set before him, the older novice ate up all the food, leaving not even a crumb.

Well, that was a big problem. It was getting toward dawn and the demons all started getting up. “Hey, look! The offerings we put there are gone,” cried one demon. Another shouted in wonder, “Wow! They’re all clean gone.”

The demons cocked their heads and set their noses to sniffing around. One demon noticed, “Something’s strange here. I can smell food around this big Buddha’s mouth.” “Hey, I can smell it too?” said another. Third suggested, “Well then, let’s test him with a burn.”

The demons all let out a cheer and set a small moxa (a ball of burning moss) on the belly-button of the older novice and began blowing on it to stoke the flame.

 

The older novice began screaming in tears, “Ah, ah, it’s hot!” and tried to escape. But he was soon caught and ended up stuffed into a big cooking pot.

The younger novice was still alive but not at all out of danger.

“How about the little Buddha?” said one demon. “He couldn’t be a human too, could he?” “Who knows,” said another. “We’d better check.”

The demons once again set their noses to sniffing, but there was no smell at all from the mouth of the younger novice.

“Great, great!” said one demon. “This one is a real Buddha.” “Ah, that’s a relief,” said the others.

The demons rejoiced and moreover once again set all sorts of offerings before the younger novice to worship Buddha. Then, after a delicious breakfast around the cooking pot, the demons, leaving no one behind, set off to hunt wild pigs, since the taste of the older novice had whetted their appetites for something more.

While the demons were gone, the younger novice loaded up his arms with the treasures of the demons and ran to the beach. On reaching the shore, he quickly jumped into a boat and, rowing with all his might, left Demon Island behind.

The young novice fled home to his temple, told the priest all that had happened, and was forgiven. Later, after getting his hard-earned diploma, they say he became an excellent monk. It is further said that, in time, with the treasures brought from  Demon Island, he turned the little temple into Okinawa’s most splendid.  

 Note on pronunciation: Okinawan consonants sound much the same as their alphabetical counterparts in English. Vowels follow the sounds of the a,e,i,o,u of Italian or Spanish. Doubling means that the vowel is lengthened, not repeated.

 Story: compiled and written in Japanese by Kyoko Ishikawa. English translation by William A. O’Donnell (odomnail@rocketmail.com), edited by Thomas Marsh.