Prevod

Long ago, on Mount Atago, there lived a holy man who had devoted himself to religious practice for many years. All that time he had never once left his hermitage. To the west lived a hunter who held him in reverence and often visited him, bringing offerings of food and other necessities. One day, after a long absence, the hunter put some dried rice and other provisions in his game bag and went to see him. The holy man greeted him joyfully, saying how he had wondered about him all this while. Then he drew closer and said, “Something most wondrous has happened of late. Perhaps it is a sign of the merit I have gained through all these years of single-minded devotion to the sutra: these past few nights, the Bodhisattva Fugen has appeared to me riding an elephant. Stay here tonight and behold him for yourself.” “A wondrous thing indeed,” the hunter replied. “Then I shall stay and pay him homage.” And so he remained. There was a boy who served the holy man, and the hunter asked him, “What is this your master speaks of? Have you too beheld this Buddha?” “I have seen him five or six times,” the boy answered. Hoping that he too might see the apparition, the hunter sat behind the holy man and kept awake. It was the twentieth day of the ninth month, and the night was long. He waited and waited, wondering when it would appear. At what seemed to be sometime after midnight, a light like the rising moon appeared above the ridge of the eastern mountain. Though the wind swept fiercely over the peaks, radiance seemed to stream into the hermitage, filling it with light. Looking out, he saw the Bodhisattva Fugen riding a white elephant, slowly approaching until he stood before the hermitage. The holy man worshipped with tears streaming down his face. “Well, my good sir,” he asked, “do you behold him?” “Indeed I do. Even this boy beholds him. Ah, how wondrous and holy!” the hunter said. But inwardly he thought, “The holy man has spent years reciting and keeping the sutra, so it would be understandable if the apparition were visible to his eyes alone. But this boy and I do not know so much as which way a sutra should face. That we should see it too is beyond understanding. I shall put it to the test. Surely there can be no sin in that.” He fitted a sharp-pointed arrow to his bow, reached past the holy man, who was absorbed in worship, drew the bow with all his strength, and let fly. The arrow seemed to strike the apparition in the chest. At once the light vanished, as though a flame had been snuffed out, and a great crashing sound was heard as something fled down into the valley. “What have you done?” cried the holy man, beside himself with grief. The hunter replied, “It would be natural for him to reveal himself to your eyes. But when he appeared before the eyes of a sinful man like me, I thought I would put him to the test, and so I shot. If he were truly a Buddha, surely no arrow could pierce him. It must therefore be some strange creature.” When daylight came, they followed the trail of blood. After going about a hundred yards, they found a large tanuki lying dead at the bottom of the valley, the sharp-pointed arrow driven through its chest. Holy man though he was, his lack of understanding had left him open to such deception. Hunter though the other was, he had the wit to shoot the tanuki dead and expose its disguise.