The Buddha and the Bathwater: Defilement and Enlightenment in the Onsenji engi

Abstract

This article examines origins of Onsenji, a temple at Arima hot springs, together with a set of closely related tales of other sites of curative bathing where religious exemplars encounter Buddhist deities of healing, to explore narrative and doctrinal patterns of engi genre. It suggests how a common literary trope, of deities who appear as lepers to test compassion and perception of their followers, serves institutional priorities of particular local sites and how contents of these tales articulate Buddhist claims about pollution and purity, ignorance and insight, and sickness and salvation. It argues that soteriology of these stories, in which mental defilements are shown to be origin and engine of all human suffering, express in narrative form meaning of term engi as a Buddhist technical term for theory of dependent origination.KEYWORDS: Onsen engi-Gyoki-Yakushi-lepers-bathhouses-healing(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)ON THE SEVENTH day of fourth month of 1452, Zuikei Shuho ... (1392-1473)-literatus, historian, diplomat, confidant of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu ..., and abbot of Zen monastery Shokokuji ...-left his residence in Kyoto and journeyed to Arima Onsen ... The Arima hot springs were but a day's journey from capital and attracted members of capital elite long before and long after Zuikei's mid-fifteenth century visit. The Nihon shoki ... notes that sovereign Jomei ... (593-641) traveled to Arima Onsen in autumn of 631 and again in autumn of 638, spending a period of three months there during each visit (nkbt 68: 229, 232). Although Jomei was first royal pilgrim of record, many other eminent visitors were to follow. Arima's later patrons included such figures as Regent Fujiwara no Yorimichi ... (990-1074), Abdicated Sovereign Horikawa ... (1079-1107), Abdicated Sovereign Go-Shirakawa ... (1127-1192), Toyotomi Hideyoshi ... (1536-1598), and Tokugawa Ieyasu ... (1542-1616), who all traveled to hot springs for healing waters and sacred blessing of Medicine Master Buddha, Yakushi (...; Sk. Bhaisajyaguru). The early fourteenth-century handscroll Zegaibo-e ... describes Arima as the place where Medicine King appears and where Bodhisattva Gyoki ... experienced his blessings. There is a sacred image of Yakushi and medicinal waters of hot springs flow from Buddha's body (Umezu 1978, 100).During his three-week stay at hot springs, Zuikei visited Onsenji ..., temple of hot springs that enshrined sacred image of Yakushi; there he listened to history of temple while viewing a painting (Fujiwara 2007a, 11). The painting, Onsenji engi-e ... (Illustrated origins of Onsenji), still exists. It is a large-format hanging scroll in ink and colors on silk dating from late-thirteenth or early-fourteenth century.1 Accounts of temple's history are also extant in multiple textual sources. The earliest iteration of narrative is in Tachibana no Narisue's ... Kokon chomonju ... (Notable tales old and new) of 1254. It next appears in Onsenyama juso yaku no ki ..., written in 1279 by resident Buddhist monk of Onsen jinja, temple-shrine at hot springs.2 It is found as well in fourteenth- century Onsenji engi ..., account that Zuikei heard (Kato 2010, 251). Although each of these retellings contain essentially same story, they should not be conflated. Engi are neither unitary nor stable entities. They migrate across time, literary format, and media. They constitute a composite and fluid genre, one in which multiple narratives and diverse interests are sutured together to formulate a single and singular history. Zuikei's description of having listened to history of temple while viewing a painting also reminds us that textual and visual modes were often coarticulated and that engi should also be understood as performative: they belonged to repertoire of picture recitation (etoki . …