Kenko took the tonsure to become a Buddhist monk in his thirties, but never joined a monastery or left urbanity for the life of a recluse, instead maintaining a home in greater Kyoto. “What kind of man will feel depressed at being idle? There is nothing finer than to be alone with nothing to distract you.”
This collection is broken into numbered sections, varying from aphorisms, short tales, court gossip, and life advice. Kenko often warned of wasting ones life, “What happiness to sit in intimate conversation with someone of like mind, warmed by candid discussion of the amusing and fleeting ways of this world . . . but such a friend is hard to find, and instead you sit there doing your best to fit in with whatever the other is saying, feeling deeply alone.”
Kenko warned of being distracted by wealth and worldly desires, “Great wealth will drive you to neglect your own well-being in pursuit of it. It is asking for harm and tempting trouble. Though you leave behind at your death a mountain of gold high enough to prop up the North Star itself, it will only cause problems for those who come after you. Nor is there any point in all those pleasures that delight the eyes of fools. Big carriages, fat horses, glittering gold and jewels – any man of sensibility would view such things as gross stupidity. Toss your gold away in the mountains; hurl your jewels into the deep. Only a complete fool is led astray by avarice…. A dull, stupid person can be born into a good house, attain high status thanks to opportunity, and live in the height of luxury, while many wonderfully wise and saintly men choose to remain in lowly positions, and end their days without ever having met with good fortune. A fierce craving for high status and position is next in folly to the lust for fortune…. Desire for a good reputation is merely revelling in the praise of others. Neither those who praise us nor those who denigrate will remain in the world for long…. There is nothing to be gained from leaving a lasting name…. Knowledge leads to deception; talent and ability only serve to increase earthly desires. Knowledge acquired by listening to others or through study is not true knowledge…. One who is truly wise has no knowledge or virtue, nor honour nor fame…. All things of this phenomenal world are mere illusion. They are worth neither discussing nor desiring.”
An ambivalence and reluctance with knowledge is a recurring theme of this essay, “Sometimes a man can genuinely impress you with how well informed he is, but on the whole such people appear stupidly complacent and self-satisfied…. It is truly impressive to speak only reluctantly about something you thoroughly understand, and not to mention it at all unless asked.” Kenko later continues, “Even people who seem eminently intelligent will judge others yet have no knowledge of themselves. It makes no sense to lack self-knowledge while understanding those around you. He who knows himself must be said to be the man of real knowledge…. People yearn for the unattainable, bewail matters beyond their power, wait for things that will never come, fear others or fawn on them. The shame in all this is not caused by others. You bring it on yourself by your own greed. This insatiable desire is due to a lack of real understanding that the end of life, that tremulous thing, is at this very moment as good as upon us.”
Kenko suggests to concentrate one’s energy on the few things that are truly important in life, “None of the requirements of human interaction and etiquette can be easily avoided. If we insist on being punctilious in all those worldly demands so difficult to ignore, it will only add to desires, shackle our lives and leave no space in our hearts for calm detachment, and we will end up wasting our entire life being driven to distraction by trivial matters.” Furthermore, he states, “The joys, angers, sorrows, and pleasures of adults too are all based on illusion, but who among us is not attached to the seeming reality of this life?”
The impermanence of the world is a major theme of Buddhist teaching, “In this transient phenomenal world with its constant change, what appears to exist in fact does not. What is begun has no end. Aims go unfulfilled, yet desire is endless. The human heart changes ceaselessly. All things are passing illusion. What is there that remains unchanging? The folly of such beliefs springs from people’s inability to understand this.”
Finally, Kenko concludes by reiterating the ephemerality of life, “The way people struggle to get along in the world strikes me as like fashioning a buddha from snow on a spring day…. So many strive in hopes of the future, even as the life still in them is daily dissolving away like snow from beneath the snowman.”
