"Yama-uba"

[Guest guest]

What follows is dedicated to my 80 year old mother who often refers to herself

in the

third person as "the old lady" (also the name she fondly calls her aged dog).

Love

may often seem fragile and fleeting and we wonder how it can survive in this

crazy

world, but I know it is stronger than all the difficulties and obstacles that

can

ever be put in its way, because I have known my mother. This is a part of D.T.

Suzuki's introduction to the Japanese No play, "Yama-uba," in his words:

 

Yama-uba, literally "the old woman of the mountains," represents the principle

of

love secretly moving in every one of us. Usually we are not conscious of it and

are

abusing it all the time. Most of us imagine that love is something beautiful to

look

at, young, delicate and charming. But in fact she is not, for she works hard,

unnoticed by us and yet ungrudgingly; what we notice is the superficial result

of her

labor, and we think it beautiful - which is natural, for the work of love ought

to be

beautiful. But love herself, like a hard-working peasant woman, looks rather

worn

out; from worrying about others her face is full of wrinkles, her hair is white.

She

has so many knotty problems presented for her solution. Her life is a series of

pains, which, however, she glady suffers. She travels from one end of the world

to

another, knowing no rest, no respite, no interruption. Love in this phase, that

is,

from the point of view of her untiring labor, is fitly represented as Yama-uba,

the

old lady of the mountains.

 

We ordinarily like to talk about such an agency in our philosophy, theology, and

literature, but we do not go beyond mere talk, we hesitate to come before its

actual

presence. We are like the painter who used to paint the dragon, but who lost

consciousness, as he was frightened in the extreme, when the dragon itself

appeared

to him in order to let him paint the mythical creature more faithfully to the

reality. We sing of Yama-uba, but when she makes her personal appearance, and

lets us

see the inner side of her life, we are at a loss and know not what to with

ourselves.

If we want, therefore, to dig deeply into into the remotest recesses of our

consciousness as Zen would advise, we ought not to shrink from taking hold of

actualities with our own hands.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Guest guest]

Great quote Yama-Gloria!

 

--Greg