Genji and the Floating Bridge of Dreams

When I first read the English translation of The Tale of Genji, (dated early 11th century), I read it for the wonderful narrative, and what it could teach me about that glittering Kyoto court from long ago.

In January, when I stayed at Kyoto's beautiful Chishakuin Temple in the shadow of the Higashiyama mountains, I began to think about the enormous impact spiritual belief must have had on the story, and I began to wonder how all of Prince Genji's early love affairs could possibly tie into this religious underpinning.

In the early Heian literature, Buddhist faith and rituals are a huge part of the stories. Lives are measured out by the tolling of the temple bells, and many of the characters turn towards the mountain temples as nuns and priests towards the end of their lives.

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Attachment and the Afterlife

I first became intrigued by the gravity of the concept of attachment while reading The Confessions of Lady Nijō (Towazugatari), which is an early 14th century journal written in the style of Murasaki Shikibu's great masterpiece, The Tale of Genji, three hundred years later.

We know that Lady Nijō had the novel, in her journal we read of her being gifted:

a set of fifty-four little books, each made of ten pieces of Chinese twill and ten of purple silk, and labelled with the title of a chapter of The Tale of Genji.

In her journal, Lady Nijō writes:

On the morning of the seventeenth we learned that His Majesty had taken a turn for the worse. Both High Priest Keikai and the head priest of the Oujō Temple came to instruct him and offer prayers: "Through virtue in past lives you have risen to the rank of emperor and are revered by officials throughout the land. Have hope that you will be reborn in paradise. Quickly ascend to the highest place in the highest heaven, and then return to guide those left behind in this world of illusion." They attempted to comfort and instruct His Majesty, but a love of worldly things stayed his heart and blocked the road to repentance.

A little later in the journal, fourteen-year-old Lady Nijō visits her dying father with retired emperor GoFukakusa. Her father says:

"The joy your visit has brought me is more than I deserve, yet I am so concerned for this child, I don't know what to do. Her mother left her behind when she was only two, and knowing that I was all she had, I raised her carefully. Nothing grieves me more than the thought of leaving her in this condition." Father wept as he spoke.

"I am not sure how much I can do, but at least I am willing to help. Don't let these worries block your path to paradise." His Majesty spoke kindly.

The Buddhist concept of attachment ties a mortal to the world and hinders a move into the next paradisal world.

Professor Haruo Shirane describes the fundamental teaching which underpins Buddhist salvation: In his first sermon, shortly after gaining enlightenment, the Buddha enunciated the Four Noble Truths[...]: (1) that life is suffering, (2) that this suffering has a cause, which is attachment, (3) that this suffering can be eliminated only by the cessation of attachment, and (4) that the cessation of attachment can only be accomplished by a course of disciplined spiritual and moral conduct.

What really struck me about the gravity of attachment was the affair between Lady Nijō and the Buddhist priest called Ariake. He loves Lady Nijō catastrophically - it is an immense burden to him that he loves her because he has devoted his life to the Buddha. The countless rituals and sutras that he has chanted make his path clear to reaching the Pure Land, but his devastating attachment to the Lady will cast him away.

Ariake writes:

"Ever since I decided when I was seven to become a monk and follow Buddha, I have diligently lit sacred fires, devoted days to ascetic practises, and prayed for the long life and prosperity of the emperor and his realm and for the general diminution of evil and augmentation of good. Two years ago I was just beginning to think that the multitudinous gods had granted me a sense of enlightenment, when for no reason - perhaps it was the influence of an evil spirit - I fell in love with you. Night after night I wept out of longing for you; every time I faced the holy image to read a sutra your words came to mind; I placed your letters on the altar of sacred fires and made them my private sutra; I opened them by the light of holy candles and let them soothe my heart."

Ariake has spent three years trying to escape from this devastating passion. He says: I loathe my body for its inability to resist being drawn to her again: it is like a cart being dragged about by oxen.

I was shocked at the sincerity of Ariake's grief, and the serious consequences that accompanied the Heian Buddhist teaching regarding attachment.

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Dreams and Illusions

Reality or a dream

What does it matter?

Cherry blossoms bloom but to fall

In this fleeting world.

Underpinning the great novel The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is Buddhism, and the Buddhist beliefs of transience, which are so clearly referenced in the mono no aware rendering of fleeting cherry blossoms and maple leaves.

The novel is delicately wrapped in the ephemeral nature of life in Heian Japan, where even the smoke from a beloved's cremation adds to this transient nature.

Frequently there is a sense of unreality and dreams, which is referenced in some of the poetry: perfectly encapsulated in the exquisite Heian beauty of suffering in love.

The illusory nature of the courtiers' perception of their world is repeatedly referred to. Their lives and loves are as fleeting and transient as the cherry blossoms and maple leaves they admire so much.

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How does Buddhism affect a reading of The Tale of Genji?

The Byōdō-in at Uji was in the process of being built in the years that Murasaki Shikibu was writing her novel. With its magnificent Phoenix Hall reflected in a mirror-like lake, and with the borrowed mountain scenery behind, it was created as an imagining of the Buddhist Pure Land: it brought the next life down from the heavens and rooted it in the present.

Professor Haruo Shirane, in his book The Bridge of Dreams: A Poetics of The Tale of Genji, introduces us to the Oujō yōshuu (The Essentials of Salvation dated 985) and writes:

In the Joudo [Pure Land] text that had the deepest impact on Murasaki Shikibu's contemporaries, the priest Genshin argues that one's religious life begins with an aversion for this world and for hell, the perpetual battleground of human greed, lust, desire, and other harmful attachments. As one shrinks from these attachments, one is drawn to the Pure Land, an eternal and pure realm made blissful by the light, life, and love of the Amida Buddha.

This creates a very different reading of The Tale of Genji, one in which his youthful love affairs, and his profound attachment to his wife the Lady Murasaki create extraordinary ties to the mundane world, and could hinder this dazzling man from crossing the floating bridge of dreams into the next world.

Haruo Shirane enables the viewing of Murasaki's novel as a many-layered masterpiece:

in depicting the ways of love, she dramatically reveals the effects and perils of excessive attachment, particularly with regard to individual salvation.

Shining Genji's death is famously indicated in the novel by a chapter heading, kumogakure, Vanished Into Clouds, but no text.

But in the preceding chapter we see Genji grieving over the death of his beloved Murasaki, and in his grief reflecting on how much of his youth was spent not listening to the teachings of the Buddha:

"Last night was lonelier than ever!" he said. "I should have seen through it all by now, but no, this life still holds me captive." He stared absently into space, then glanced at them and imagined sadly how much more forlorn they would be if he abandoned them, too. His voice at his devotions, quietly chanting a sutra, could move anyone to weep, and those who were with him day and night and whose sleeves could not stay the flood of their tears of course felt boundless sorrow.

Murasaki's novel teaches her contemporary courtly audience how to learn from hikaru Genji, Shining Genji - a man from the imperial line believed to be descended from the goddess Amaterasu, whose name describes an otherworldly holy light - and live a better life:

He lingered there quietly to talk over the past. "I grasped long ago that it is not at all a good idea to set one's heart too fondly on anyone," he said, "and on the whole I have done what I could to avoid attachment to anything in this world, in fact, thinking things over during those years when people assumed that I was destined for oblivion made me realize that nothing really prevented me from giving my life to wander the farthest mountains and plains. In the end, though, even now when my own time is coming, I am still caught up in ties that I should properly shun. It is maddening to be so fainthearted!"

Again, the Buddhist teaching of transience underpins Genji's last words:

"Very little in this life has really satisfied me, and despite my high birth I always think how much less fortunate my destiny has been than other people's. The Buddha must have wanted me to know that the world slips away from us and plays us false. I who long set to ignore this truth have suffered in the twilight of my life so awful and so final a blow that I have at last seen the extent of my failings, but while no attachment binds me any longer, it will be a fresh sorrow to leave you both behind, when I now know you so much better than before. Ties like ours are fragile. Oh, I know that I should not feel this way!"

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In the 18th century, Motoori Norinaga argued against the idea of Genji Monogatari as a moral parable. He argues that the novel should be understood in terms of mono no aware, to respond emotionally to the beauty and sorrow of human existence.

I think there is an argument for both mono no aware and a didactic text. Relationships and circumstances in the novel mirror each other but have different outcomes. While at the same time, the poetry and the narrative is haunted by the beauty of sorrow and the transience of life.

Murasaki's final chapter of The Tale of Genji is called 'The Floating Bridge of Dreams'.

Ivan Morris concludes:

The title of Murasaki's final book, 'The Floating Bridge of Dreams' (Yume no Ukihashi) was for many centuries regarded as a clue to the entire work. This was disputed by later commentators, like Motoori, who wished to minimize the Buddhist influence. Yet the idea that our life is a dream-like bridge over which we cross from one state of existence to another appears to have been central to Murasaki's conception, and emerges particularly in the last part of the novel, where the Buddhist influence is the greatest. The 'bridge of dreams' image is not, however, original with Murasaki. It is taken from an earlier poem:

As I walk across the bridge

that spans the ford of Yume

I see that this world of ours too

is like a floating bridge of dreams.

Buddhism permeates the thinking of the characters in the story, and past lives and future lives are a key part of their understanding of the world. There is much to be learned about Heian writing by understanding the religious teachings of the time.

Chishakuin Temple, Kyoto

Sources

Ivan Morris, The World of the Shining Prince, (Kodansha), Chapter IV Religions.

Murasaki Shikibu, (translated by Royall Tyler), The Tale of Genji, (Penguin Classics), Chapter 41, The Seer.

Haruo Shirane, The Bridge of Dreams, (Stanford University Press), Chapter 12 Karmic Destiny: Genji.

Translated by Karen Brazell, The Confessions of Lady Nijō, (Stanford University Press, 1973), p.17; p.23, p.77, p.90, p.132; p.142.

Photo of Byōdō-in, by 663highland - Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6801917

Byōdō-in Website

All woodblock prints by Masao Ebina. You can find more of his gorgeous Genji art in our Zusetsu store!