The Zen rebels: obscure hermits and existential reformers (part 23). Zen myths: "The Hell Courtesan” (part 2)

 (The Enlightenment of Jigoku-dayu (1890) from the series New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.)

(Hell Courtesan (Jigoku-dayū) Kawanabe Kyōsai Japan 1831 - 1889)

As legend would express in its various descriptions of the iconoclastic and rebellious Zen monk Ikkyū Sōjun, the fable remains in tact of the infamous “Hell Courtesan” which originated as a evolving story within the final years of the Japanese Endo period (1868), reflected in Japanese literature and art.  To which there holds an enthralling description of an encounter with a beautiful, yet dammed, prostitute named Jigoku Dayū, who instilled the persona as the Hell Courtesan.  It becomes more evident, particularly over the many manifestations of the parable that occurred between an apparent meeting with Ikkyū and Jigoku, which was well known through the Japanese Zen lore over the years, that Ikkyū visited brothels during his wanderings, ensuring his anti-establishment and paradoxical Zen characteristics were portrayed, which included eating fish, drinking alcohol and of course sex.  Yet, it also was Ikkyū's unorthodox detachment through the practice of Zen Buddhism, aware that there is only an impermanence to existence in which human beings maintain a dependence in their perpetual suffering, relying on the delusions for guidance – which leads further into, as studied by the Zen schooks, the hell state that is of the mind.  And for all Ikkyu's contradictions, he was considered a definitive Zen Master.

The fable holds a rich and paradoxical focus, particularly when Jigoku and Ikkyū traded poems at their first meeting, but, if you look at the story in its progression as a folk law tale, it was Ikkyū who, in light of the charming seductress, was toying with this high ranking courtesan.  In his keenness to visit this famed woman, Ikkyu knew that she reigned within the 'Floating World' (pleasure district of the city Sakai) where the many were drawn to satisfy a fleeting moment of mortality despite its inscribed suffering that so many of the poor and destitute barely endure; searching for that one moment of bliss.  However, as Ikkyū was aware, remained trapped within the throes of expectations from a material world and as the Zennist would teach, would never satisfy. Jigoku, who used her striking beauty to captivate and be utilized within the pleasure district of Sakai, as a place to draw in the many men that visited her; she, in turn was able to exploit this desire they had for her – thus earning her the title as the Hell Courtesan.  And it was this first impression with Ikkyū, that she quizzed him; Why would a Buddhist Monk want to visit her?  Of which, from their impromptu first meeting, he was able to explain the basis for his reasoning, that he has no attachment to his body and is free to travel from the mountain retreats to the sins of the city.   For this wandering rebel Zen monk, all are the same to him.  Which she replied ? 

"There is none who dies 

Who does not fall into hell"

Ikkyū, standing before the Hell Courtesan, was aware that she represents an idealism of damnation, whilst seeing how she remains attached to the fleetingness of her own power. These are very specific aspects of narcissism, to which the feminine is attuned.  As a Zen monk, Ikkyu devised his own perspective that both the male and female are revealed only as skeletons, once the skin and body breakdown – their bones become unified as a single characteristic.  And this is where the Hell Courtesan story fuses with Ikkyū's famous 'Skeleton' prints (1457) to reinforce that both the male and female should not cling to the body as a center point of material desire.  So, Ikkyū in his heretical ways, infront of this beautiful high ranked courtesan, offers her a challenge which Jigoku accepts allowing him to enter her chamber.  Unaware of the disposition of this particular monk, she offers Ikkyū a vegetarian meal, in which Ikkyū rejects only to request instead fish and sake.  At that point Jigoku realizes something is amiss, as she begins to try and tempt Ikkyu, to see if he would be like the others that have come before her.  She then summons a group of girls to be sent to Ikkyū, Jigoku then kneels begind a rice paper screen, to see if he is tempted and his character swayed towards her expectations.  Instead, Ikkyū drinks more wine, whilst eating the fish meals provided, he then dances with the young woman in his attendance.  Jigoku becomes more curious, then peers to have a closer look at the soiree and sees that Ikkyū is dancing with skeletons, she then quickly enters back into the room – as the dancing girl's return to their normality.

Other parts of the legend, also have Jigoku witness, in the middle of the night, Ikkyū vomit from too much wine, also bringing up the carp he had eaten.  She sees then swim off into the lake below the brothel's veranda.  Perturbed by these visions, in the early morning Jigoku vistits Ikkyu in his room and asks him if she was dreaming of the strange events she had witnessed, he then explains to her the Zen prespective of the body: 

“When are we not in a dream?  When are we not skeletons?  We are all just skeletons wrapped with flesh patterned male and female.  When our breath expires, our skin ruptures, our sex disappears, and superior and inferior are indistinguishable.  Beneath the skin of the person we caress today, there is no more than a skeleton propping up the flesh. Think about it!  High and low, young and old, male and female: it is all the same.  If you awaken to this one basic truth, you understand.”

The story of Ikkyū and the Hell Courtisan concludes when Jigoku renounces her ways to become a  nun, in which Ikkyū appeals for her to remain as a courtisan, but to give her earnings to be a charity for the misfortinate.  She agrees and is frequently visited by Ikkyu to meditate with him until her death.   To which she requested, so profoundly effected by Ikkyū' s skeletons, that her worthless body be left in the fields for the hungry dogs to eat.  Ikkyū has the body cremated.