Chiyono's "No bucket, no Moon"

Print artist: Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年)

As part of my Jukai preparation and priesthood training, there is a focus on our lineage ancestors. With a few from the sangha, we are looking at Sallie Tisdale's Women of the Way ISBN-10 0061146595.

In digging about the ancestor's stories and particularly Chiyono's I discovered MANY things about the first Japanese female Zen Master and her influence on medieval Japan. Here I take the broad view of ancestry: not just the people but of the cultural influences too. Sections: Early years, the debate of her Hojo marriage and my reflections on "No water, no moon". Her enlightenment, Moon cake moon, her kesa, her death and memorial services. Her calligraphy, her predecessor, their burial place, the "Five Mountain" temples, Shomyakuin, her portrait statue, her cultural importance, Project Nyodai, Engaku-ji, Tokei-ji, lineage and further family ties, OSHO Transformation Tarot and card number 5. It is surprising once you start researching what comes up and connects to personal interests.

Where I thought it most prominent I have included my reference sources or theirs.

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Born in approximately 1223, she was the daughter of Kamakura-era military commander: Adachi Yasumori. Making her full childhood name 安達 千代野 Adachi Chiyono. Surnames/family names come before personal identification. The Adachi clan (安達氏) is a family of samurai who are said to have been descended from Fujiwara no Yamakage. Their historical significance derives from their successes during the Genpei War and their subsequent affiliation with the Hōjō clan.

She married and had a child (a daughter) at a young age, as was expected for warrior-class Japanese women at the time; she certainly married into the Kanezawa Hojo family, which then governed Echigo, but there is some dispute as to who her husband was.

< The emblem (mon) of the Hōjō clan The Hōjō clan 北条氏, in the history of Japan, was a family that controlled the hereditary title of shikken (regent) of the Kamakura shogunate between 1203 and 1333. Despite the title, in practice, the family wielded actual governmental power during this period compared to both the Kamakura shōguns and the Imperial Court in Kyoto, whose authority was largely symbolic. The Hōjō are known for fostering Zen Buddhism and for leading the successful opposition to the Mongol invasions of Japan. Resentment at Hōjō rule eventually culminated in the overthrow of the clan and the establishment of the Ashikaga shogunate.

At the Kanagawa Prefectural Kanazawa Bunko Museum, where the Hojo family of Kamakura has long been studied, opinion is divided; was Chiroyoro's husband Hojo Sanetoki 北条 実時, < Pictured on the left (1224 – November 30, 1276) or Hojo Akitoki 北条顕時; v Pictured below

(1248 – 7 May 1301) ? They summarize: since it was Akitoki among the Kanazawa Hojo family who showed a strong interest in Zen Buddhism, he is a strong candidate as her husband. However, given that Abbess Mugai was 25 years older than Akitoki, this is a theory, they say, which is hard to support.

This is where the Sanetoki candidacy emerges.

When her daughter had grown up and her husband had died, she decided to become a Buddhist nun. - My thoughts: If her husband died then looking at the dates of death, suggests that it is most likely Sanetoki that she married. Making her approximately 53 when she entered the monastery.

Laywomen did not often join monasteries at the time, but dharma custom guaranteed that any woman who sought Buddhist teachings would receive them. Therefore, Mugai Nyodai shaved her head, gave up all her belongings, and came to the monastery of the Chinese Rinzai Zen monk Wu-hsueh Tsu-yuan.

Chiyoro's enlightenment poem was:

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.

She was, at the time, a servant at the convent. One day she approached an elderly nun saying, “I’m of humble birth. I can’t read or write and must work all the time. Is there any possibility that I could attain the way of Buddha even though I have no skills?” - My thoughts: Her statements may have been factual, though it is recorded that she was highly educated in both Japanese and Chinese; perhaps this came about later at the monastery? and whereas her father has been tracked to the position of military commander there is no way to establish, solidly, whether he had lived and raised Chiyoro in a humble lifestyle.

What I do know is that IF he was samurai he would have been a member of a powerful military caste in feudal Japan. However, they began as provincial warriors before rising to power in the 12th century with the beginning of the country's first military dictatorship, known as the shogunate. It is recorded that the Adachi's and Hojo's were closely associated for a number of years, with marriages between the two. The period from 1086 to 1156 was the age of supremacy of the In-no-chō (院庁 "Office of the Cloistered Emperor") and of the rise of the military class throughout the country. Military might rather than civil authority dominated the government.

Provincial borders often changed until the end of the Nara period (710 to 794), but remained unchanged from the Heian period (794 to 1185) until the Edo period (1603 to 1868). Heian (平安) means "peace" in Japanese. But how peaceful it was in each province will have differed.

- Her opening statements also reflect the stories we tell ourselves, those that stand in our way IF we let them.

- There is no equipment required nor training to sit in meditation. There is no attainment to be had. No goals per se. Dharma gates are, in part, life's lessons that give us transferable skills. Which made me think of the transferable skills those of us who have been householders/keepers/people, have.

The Way of the Buddha is open to all, but perhaps we do need a level of instruction to know that it is there and what the Middle Path is about. With its Noble Eightfold Way, Paramitas, Precepts, Chants and Sutras. Originally there was an oral tradition from Buddha to his disciples onwards for a good thousand years or so. Much of what we study today are rituals that have cascaded and books of other Master's interpretations, instructions and opinions born of their zeitgeist, sometimes rebellious, distillations of those oral traditions; leading to the development of the Soto Zen school of Buddhism. The Master's recorded "teachings" are of their times and each one puts their "spin" on it, yet there IS an element of Truth that strikes at the core of us, somewhere in each. We must also remember that many of them used scribes and interpreters, therefore how much of the text available to us was also interpolated by them?

The nun answered her, “This is wonderful, my dear! In Buddhism, there are no distinctions between people. There is only this: each person must hold fast to the desire to awaken and cultivate a heart of great compassion. People are complete as they are. If you don’t fall into delusive thoughts, there is no Buddha and no sentient being; there is only one complete nature. If you want to know your true nature, you need to turn toward the source of your delusive thoughts. This is called zazen.”

- My thoughts: LISTEN TO THE TRUTH HERE! ^ ^ ^ There are no distinctions between people. NO them or us. NO division. NO masters, NO students. The distinctions we are taught help us to describe this as separate from that, as a way to make sense of the phenomena of the world. We and all things are not the sum total of just one label. Rather we are so much more! NOT SEPARATE. INTERCONNECTED, needing each other and the connection to all things to survive. Don't believe me, start with your family ties - uncle, aunt, sister, brother, daughter, son, cousin, niece, nephew, grandson, granddaughter, and so on. Is this all of you? What about looking at your skills, any qualifications? - pop them on the list. What about your physical characteristics? Do you have blue, brown, hazel or grey eyes? What colour is your hair? The style of your hair, the type of clothes you like to wear, the type of music you like to listen to. Where do you live? What cultures and current events are you influenced by? What are your opinions on the history of those cultures and those current events - where do those opinions come from? What is your ancestry? Your family tree isn't just what makes you; you. Your ancestry is also ALL the interactions you have ever had good and bad, for they taught you something, and what about your habitual responses and hooked emotions? Where are those emotions and responses based? In this way, you are also the food that you consume; the energy exchanged. What did that food need to grow? That is also a part of you. Is any ONE of these listed things you? Or when we look at ONE thing do we fail to see the rest? Consider if you're the you, you were at 5? Are you the you, you will at 50? 80? What is it that changes? Each person must decide for THEMSELVES to examine what they currently holdfast to and with discernment decide if their pre-programming serves them.

- There is no "Woke" and no sentient - there is just being. With just THIS moment guaranteed. How does this change our interactions? - How do we cultivate the heart of compassion? Self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-compassion; it REALLY does start with the self. My oxygen mask first is NOT a selfish notion. If I don't care for myself, I will not have the energy to extend and perish. If I don't have the energy to respect those things that support me - what then? - Impermanence is the only certainty! All things do change. If I can remove then the clinging that causes fear; to self: to some of the pre-programming that hasn't served me well so far, and to how tightly I cling to this life and how much I project onto the future of it and after it; to feel that vastness of interbeing, even if just for a moment or two, might I be better prepared for uncertainty?

The sacred pause and Zazen are my practice ground for a calmer mind that can face the inevitability of uncertainty, and of death. Can I meet both with equanimity? Having nurtured an acceptance of might die today.

- With self-compassion, acceptance, discernment and awareness, I trust that wisdom will guide my open-hearted energy exchanges. Asking for nothing in return. The sun, wind, earth, nor crop ask for anything. Dana/Generosity, Sila/Morality, Ksanti/Patience, Virya/Diligence, Dhyana/Meditation, Prajna/Wisdom - our Paramitas guide us in the cultivation of compassion. Similarly, the Precepts guide our "way" of life. - People ARE complete as they are. They will always, near always, to some extent or other, believe that this is the case. Safe in this completeness; we don't like change or uncertainty. We can not change other people, they have to choose. Who are we to judge whether someone is complete or not? Choice is a form of liberation. The Western "free will" perspective is that we humans have free, rational minds with which to make decisions. The Buddha taught that most of us are not free at all but are being perpetually jerked around by attractions and aversions; by our conditioned, conceptual thinking; and most of all by karma (which again does not have all the same connotations as we think in the West.) We all have to choose how and when to deal with change and impermanence. Some changes are born from the desire to change that which can not be changed - when those changes don't work in the face of the situation - this is suffering. Clinging to those conditioned hard-held beliefs, fighting onward with tools that do not work, listening to the stories we tell ourselves. We all have choices to make to become freer of this, bit by bit. Complete wherever we find ourselves on the path until it doesn't work for us against a new obstacle. Being stuck is practice getting unstuck. - “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.” - Eihei Dogen. (1200 -1253.) Where we find, if but for a moment, our True Nature. Interbeing. Interconnectedness. Peaceful acceptance. Turning inwards to connect more outwards!

Whereas we might see this whilst in the posture of Zazen, is it something we can also see reflected in our daily lives? Chop wood, carry water.

Chiyono said, with happiness, “With this practice as my companion, I have only to go about my daily life, practicing day and night.”

After months of wholehearted practice, she went out on a full-moon night to draw some water from the well. The bottom of her old bucket, held together by bamboo strips, suddenly gave way, and the reflection of the moon vanished with the water. When she saw this she attained great realization.

Her enlightenment poem was this:

With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.

- My thoughts; "this and that" - we desperately try different things to keep our lives together.

"bottom fell out" - as it does things go wrong

"water" - feelings, thoughts, impulses, hard-held beliefs "the moon does not dwell" - delusions and/or enlightenment - Can you let the you, you know as yourself fall apart? Falling somewhere between disintegration and un-integration.

Can you nurture for yourself a loving relationship where you can fall apart and be held just long enough to come back together again, over and over; gently? This is where resilience comes from.

- Resilience is often measured as whether something that is broken can be rebuilt. Smartphones aren't designed to be so for example; whereas forests are particularly good at rebuilding themselves (with time): where wildfires though devastating, clear room for new growth. This new growth within us can only happen when we let the bottom drop out of the bucket, and support our-self with compassionate heart and mind.

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Adachi Chiyono's dharma name was 無著/無着 如大 Mugai Nyodai (which is how she appears in our lineage list.) Her enlightenment under the moon is recorded as happening on "the eighth lunar month of the following year, on the evening of the fifteenth, the full moon was shining." (following her discussion with the older nun) in The Enlightenment of Chiyono, translated by Anne Dutton - Zen Sourcebook Traditional Documents from China, Korea, and Japan. Edited by Stephen Addiss, 2008, pp. 175-179. - the except I found within https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/mugai.html under that heading. The festival of Tsukimi (月見) or Otsukimi (お月見), meaning, "moon-viewing", also known as Jugoya (十五夜), are Japanese festivals honouring the autumn moon, a variant of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The celebration of the full moon typically takes place on the 15th day of the eighth month of the traditional Japanese calendar; the waxing moon is celebrated on the 13th day of the ninth month. These days normally fall in September and October of the modern solar calendar. The tradition dates to the Heian era and is now so popular in Japan that some people repeat the activities for several evenings following the appearance of the full moon during the eighth lunisolar month. The moon on the 15th day of the eighth month is also known as the Moon cake moon, on this day, the Chinese believe that the Moon is at its brightest and fullest size, coinciding with harvest time in the middle of Autumn. The Chinese influenced Japanese with many aspects of traditional Japanese culture such as Taoism, Buddhism, astronomy and language have been profoundly influenced by China over the course of centuries. Which in turn influence the Soto Zen culture including the Kanji we reference now to provide sources of Dharma names. Where Kanji is the term for adopted Chinese characters used in written Japanese. The reason for these influences is the conflicts caused by Chinese expansion in the later stages of the Jōmon Period, circa 400 BCE, which led to mass migration to Japan. Chinese influence came mostly by sea but also through Korea. Indeed later Dogen went back to China to find "true" Buddhism, where he reconnected with Mahayana Buddhism which originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (Chánzong 禪宗), and later developed into various sub-schools and branches. The new in Japan has always co-existed with the old. - Full Moons are also when we hold Fusatsu, a part of which is remembering the ancestors. Like many Chinese customs, the origins of the mooncake lie in ancient times, in this case, a time of social and political triumph – the overthrowing of the Mongol dynasty. After many attempts to invade China, the Mongols succeeded in the 13th Century, with Kublai Khan establishing the Yuan dynasty. It was an oppressive regime that saw the Chinese people ruled closely with Mongolian guards outside all their homes. Families were even expected to give the guards food and wine. They then went on to try and invade Japan. The monasteries of both cultures had strong ties. Later, we will see a possible Uncle of Nyodai's is the Buddhist militant who was responsible for keeping them out of Japan.

In Women, Rites, and Ritual Objects in Premodern Japan ISBN: 9789004368194, Chapter 8 "Of Surplices and Certificates: Tracing Mugai Nyodai’s Kesa" Monica Bethe presents us with an image of "Nine-panel yellow kesa stored in a box labelled “Mugai Nyodai’s kesa,” 13th or 16thc., Shōkokuji. An excerpt of this Chapter with the image can be found here.

In Japanese Buddhism けさ Kesa, and across Asian cultures, these are the robes of fully ordained Buddhist monks and nuns, named after a brown or saffron dye. (Sanskrit: काषाय, kāṣāya, Pali: kāsāva/kāsāya, Chinese: 袈裟; pinyin: jiāshā;) It is recorded that she died on the 8th day of the 11th month in 1298 at the age of 76. She is buried at Shomyakuin. It will be the 724th-anniversary memorial service/Onki this year for her. In 1998 Buddhist nuns from Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, and Tokyo visited the United States for the first time to conduct a rare Buddhist ceremony in St. Paul's Chapel in New York City in memory of Mugai Nyodai, as it was the 700th anniversary of her death. The nuns conducted Buddhist rituals never before seen outside Japan, and never viewed by the general public even in Japan. The nuns' rituals included a rare performance of the scattering of paper lotus petals in a circumambulation to gagaku music, led by Abbess Shozui Rokujo of Domyoji Convent. Chief Abbot Keido Fukushima of Tofukuji monastery performed a special incense burning and poetic invocation. There was also the world premiere of "Mind in Mirror: Nyodai's Dream", composed by Yuriko Hase Kojima for shakuhachi, pipa, and bass koto, and an offering of songs composed by the medieval German Catholic nun, Hildegard von Bingen, performed by members of Columbia's Collegium Musicum. Dr. Peter Haskel (First Zen Institute of America) chanted The Heart Sutra, and words and poetry were offered by Prof. Barbara Ruch (Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies Director); Dr. George Rupp (Columbia University President); Ambassador Seiichiro Otsuka (Consul General of Japan in New York); Rev. T. Kenjitsu Nakagaki (Buddhist Council of New York); The Very Rev. James Parks Morton (Interfaith Center of New York); and High Priest Shunsho Manabe (Kanagawa Prefectural Kanazawa Bunko Museum). Nyodai is known to have been active in the education of the children of Kamakura period samurai families. Nyodai was also active in calligraphy, and her calligraphy was prized second only to Taira-no-Masako, a matriarch of the Kamakura shogunate.

Calligraphy by Mugai Nyodai, dated October 17th, 1265

Hanging scroll, ink on paper. Height, 26.8cm; width, 39.0cm

Miho Museum

Nyodai received Chinese priest Wu-hsüeh Tsu-yüan's teachings shortly before his death in 1286. At this time he conferred upon her the character "mu", meaning nothingness, from his own name, which is also written as Wuxue Zuyuan. He was known in Japan either as Mugaku Sogen 無学祖元 or Bukkō Kokushi 仏光国師,1226–1286. He named Nyodai as his successor, and despite resistance from the monks, she became the first abbot of Engakuji, in her middle age. - Apparently, according to some, she showed her knife to reveal her mind in "the ceremony" (which?), though there seems to be no given reason why. Is it connected to the resistance she faced?

She became the first female Zen master in Japan, and eventually founded Keiaiji, which became the head temple of the female Five Mountains system of Rinzai Zen. The Five Mountains and Ten Monasteries System, more commonly called simply Five Mountain System, was a network of state-sponsored Chan (Zen) Buddhist temples created in China during the Southern Song (1127–1279). The term "mountain" in this context means "temple" or "monastery", and was adopted because many monasteries were built on isolated mountains. The system originated in India and was later adopted also in Japan during the late Kamakura period (1185–1333).

In Japan, the ten existing "Five Mountain" temples (five in Kyoto and five in Kamakura, Kanagawa) were both protected and controlled by the shogunate. In time, they became a sort of government bureaucracy that helped the Ashikaga shogunate stabilize the country during the turbulent Nanboku-chō period. Introduced to Japan by the Hōjō regency, after an initial hostility from older and established Buddhist sects, it prospered thanks to the support of the country's military rulers in Kamakura first and Kyoto later. In the final version of the system, Kamakura's Five Mountains were, from the first-ranked to the last, Kenchō-ji, Engaku-ji, Jufuku-ji, Jōchi-ji and Jōmyō-ji. Kyoto's Five Mountains, created later by the Ashikaga shogunate after the collapse of the Kamakura regime, were Tenryū-ji, Shōkoku-ji, Kennin-ji, Tōfuku-ji and Manju-ji. Above them, was the huge Nanzen-ji temple. Below the top tier, there was a nationwide capillary network of smaller temples that allowed its influence to be felt everywhere The Rinzai monks and nuns created much for Japanese cultural arts such as calligraphy, painting, literature, tea ceremony, garden design, architecture and martial arts. 5 is a recurring theme in Eastern traditional science and spirituality, as in the 5 Elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), the 5 cardinal directions (East, South, West, North & Center), and the System of 5 Phases. These are used to explain relationships in nature and the universe.

Shomyakuin: was built as the funerary monument to Bukko (commissioned by her and paid for by the Hojo family?) and Keiaiji became the focal point in Kyoto for the Bukko school. She is also buried at Shomyakuin. She is still honoured today in the imperial convents.

Takejouyama Shogakuin Temple today, after 2 fires

Portrait sculpture of Mugai Nyodai. 真如寺 Shinnyōji, Kyoto

'As was customary for all monastic leaders at the time, a portrait statue was made of Nyodai with shaved head and monk's robes. This statue was carved toward the end of her life, around 1298; it is now enshrined in Hojiin convent in Kyoto. A hasty glimpse may give you the impression that it is a statue of a male; but further perusal reveals a slightly plump, gentle woman with her hands resting in proper Zen contemplative form. The discovery of the magnificent life-size thirteenth-century chinso portrait sculpture of Abbess Mugai Nyodai was one of the initial revelatory events that drew scholarly attention to the wholly ignored female side of Buddhist institutional history and, more broadly, to the role of women in Japanese religious history. In many ways, she has been the Institute's 'patron saint'. 'https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/mugai.html - is well worth a read.

With The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 3 Pg. 505-7 also gives us:

Project Mugai Nyodai focuses on the renowned Rinzai Zen nun, the goal is to produce a bilingual publication (Japanese and English) that can serve as the definitive sourcebook on Mugai Nyodai, with scholarly articles, transcriptions/translations of biographical texts, letters, and poetry, and high-quality photographs of the extant portraits of her and material objects associated with her. They intend to have this book ready by 2023, the year of Nyodai’s eight hundredth birth anniversary when the Kyoto convents and Shōkenji and Shinnyoji plan to hold a large-scale commemorative service in her honour. To highlight this important research, the Chūsei Nihon Kenkyūjo is also planning a symposium. - I look forward to reading it.

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Engaku-ji: is situated in the city of Kamakura, in Kanagawa Prefecture to the south of Tokyo.

Founded in 1282 at the request of the then ruler of Japan, the regent Hōjō Tokimune after he had repelled a Mongolian invasion in the period 1274 to 1281. Tokimune had a long-standing commitment to Zen and the temple was intended to honour those of both sides who died in the war, as well as serving as a centre from which the influence of Zen could be spread.

The temple maintains the classical Japanese Zen monastic design and both the Sheridan (it is reputed to store one of Buddha's teeth) and the Great Bell (大鐘, Ogane) are designated National Treasures. Engaku-ji is one of the twenty-two historic sites included in Kamakura's proposal for inclusion in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. According to the records of the time, when building work started a copy of the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment (in Japanese, engaku-kyō 円覚経) was dug out of the hillside in a stone chest during the initial building works, giving its name to the temple.

The Sanmon (main gate)

and

Engaku-ji's Ogane (great bell)

Tokeiji: Shōkozan Tōkei-ji (松岡山東慶寺), also known as Kakekomi-dera (駆け込み寺) or Enkiri-dera (縁切り寺), is a Buddhist temple and a former nunnery, the only survivor of a network of five nunneries called Amagozan (尼五山), in the city of Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Amagozan was a parallel "Five Mountain System" to the one mentioned above and it's history does shine a little more light on possibilities relating to Nyodai.

Tōkei-ji's main hall

It is part of the Rinzai school of Zen's Engaku-ji branch, and was opened by Hōjō Sadatoki in 1285. He is the successor of the shikken Hōjō Tokimune, who went to Mugaku Sogen (his Zen master) for advice when the Mongol invasion of 1281, had been stopped by a typhoon (Kamikaze, "divine wind"), and the resistance of the new warrior class known as samurai. Tokimune planned and led the defence. He wanted to defeat cowardice, so he as a student of Mugaku Sogen went to him for advice. Mugaku replied: he had to sit in meditation to find the source of his cowardice in himself. The temple is best known as a historic refuge for women who were abused by their husbands. It is for this reason sometimes referred to as the "Divorce Temple". In the beginning, the women who arrived were clan wars victims. However, when peace came to the country at the beginning of the Tokugawa (or Edo) period in 1600s, the women who arrived at the gates were mostly townsfolk who desired shelter from abusive husbands and in-laws. In an age when men could easily divorce their wives but wives had great difficulty divorcing their husbands, Tōkei-ji allowed women to become officially divorced after staying there for two years. Temple records show that, during the Tokugawa period alone, an estimated 2,000 women sought shelter there. The temple lost its right to concede divorce in 1873, when a new law was approved and the Court of Justice started to handle the cases.

Lady Horiuchi, of the Adachi clan, took vows as a nun right before Hojo Tokimune died; she became Abbess Kakusan Shido/ Kakusan-ni. (Not of our lineage) Tokimune was ten and Lady Horiuchi was only nine when the two were married in 1261.By the customs of the time they were neither too young nor too closely related. "Like Kakusan, Nyodai was a disciple of the Chinese master at Kamakura’s Engakuji, Wu-hsüeh Tsü-yuan (Mugaku Sogen, 1226–1286; see Dumoulin 1990, 31ff., 454). It is probable that Nyodai was the daughter of Kakusan’s brother, Yasumori, and thus, her niece. Some sources state that she was married to the scholarly Kanazawa (Hojo) Sanetoki and that she took the tonsure after his death; others suggest that she married Sanetoki’s son, Kanazawa (Taira) Akitoki." - Source: Zen Sanctuary of Purple Robes Japan’s Tokeiji Convent Since 1285, Sachiko Kaneko Morrell and Robert E. Morrell. - "If Nyodai began her Zen practice after Sanetoki’s death, and under the direction of Mugaku, we might speculate that this would have been around 1279. Kakusan’s encounter with Mugaku seems to have been a bit later, but it is reasonable to assume that Nyodai and Kakusan were acquainted during the few years before Mugaku’s death." (In the same book they indicate that Nyodai is a heir/disciple of Enni Ben’en (1201–1280; Sho\ichi Kokushi)

Professor Ruch notes: “As of this writing no published accounts concerning Mugai’s family should be taken as reliable. Even the most recent contain inherent inconsistencies and errors, and many remain to be solved” (Ruch 1990, 504, n5). We also caution the reader to view the dating and relationships in the charts throughout this book with some scepticism. While the dating of prominent individuals, such as the Hojo regents, can usually be conclusively established, those on the periphery of power often present problems. For further recent details and references about Nyodai, the reader is referred to Maribeth Graybill’s “The Legacy of Mugai Nyodai (1223?–1298),” 1998, pp. 8–9 in Institute for Medieval Japanese Studies 1998, and Ruch 1990.

- My thoughts: If the two women were related and/or connected by the Renzai school and the temple network of the Kanagawa Prefecture. Then perhaps, without intentionally taking anything away from any of the other nuns involved, temples divided the numbers that had come to Tōkei-ji once the divorces were granted. Which in part might account for the statement "Nyodai is known to have been active in the education of the children of Kamakura period samurai families." above?

The Cambridge History of Japan also refers to Myodai and the socioreligious institution of the convent(s) and of nunhood itself.

Map of modern-day Kamakura where we can see the proximity of Engaku-ji' to Tokei-ji

Tokeiji’s convent lasted almost 700 years, men could not enter until 1902, not long after it changed into a monastery; under the supervision of Engaku-ji. One of the reasons Kakusan built Tokeij’s supported by the Hojo's and (most likely Myodai as head monk of the head temple) and used the convent as a sanctuary was that during infighting between the Hojo clan and the Adachi clan, part of her family was killed. The person responsible was her own son, Regent Hojo Sadatoki. It was a gruelling aspect of the medieval period to experience the sudden break up of clans with families killed and women taken hostage. Women were also taken as hostages for political marriages. It was within this environment that Kakusan decided to use her convent as a sanctuary for women.

45 Tokeiji: Kamakura's "Divorce Temple" in Edo Popular Verse written by Sachiko Kaneko and Robert E from Religions of Japan in Practice by George J. Tanabe _________________________________________________________________________

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Divination has been a part of the Chinese and Japanese culture for aeons. Onmyōdō is a system of natural science, astronomy, almanack, divination and magic that developed independently in Japan based on the Chinese philosophies of yin and yang and wuxing (five elements).[1] The philosophy of yin and yang and wu xing was introduced to Japan at the beginning of the 6th century and influenced by Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, evolved into the earliest system of Onmyōdō around the late 7th century.

Oshō became an honorific title for Zen masters", meaning "harmonious respect". The Osho here refers to Rajneesh Osho an Indian godman, mystic, and founder of the Rajneesh movement. He is a master storyteller of our times, who has an uncommon knack for bringing the timeless wisdom of ancient parables right into the 21st century, making them relevant for contemporary life. The Osho Transformation Tarot contains parables and teaching stories from the world's greatest wisdom traditions -- including Zen, Buddhism, Sufism, Tantra, Tao, Christian and Jewish mysticism

Osho's message was to remain playful and lighthearted about all aspects of your search, both inner and outer. He says, “Take life joyfully, take life easily, take life relaxedly, don't create unnecessary problems. Ninety-nine per cent of your problems are created by you because you take life seriously. Seriousness is the root cause of problems. Be playful… be alive, be abundantly alive. Live each moment as if this is the last moment. Live it intensely; let your torch burn from both sides together. Even if it is only for one moment, that is enough. One moment of intense totality is enough to give you the taste of eternity.” In the OSHO Transformation Tarot we can find the image:

5. The Ultimate Accident - Chiyono and her Bucket of Water Enlightenment is always like an accident because it is unpredictable – because you cannot manage it, you cannot cause it to happen. But don't misunderstand me, because when I say enlightenment is just like an accident, I am not saying don't do anything for it. The accident happens only to those who have been doing much for it – but it never happens because

of their doing. The doing is just a cause which creates the situation in them so they become accident-prone, that's all. That is the meaning of this beautiful happening.

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I appreciate that this is a deep delve into Chiyono, with lots of background culture-based information. If you made it here to the end: deep bows, gassho.

- Shinjin 🙏