MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Metanoia
It will be observed that the 'floating world' of the holiday crowd is drifting eastward to visit the Ponto-cho and Gion pleasure quarters with their promise of sake, geisha, and song. Only the two itinerant komuso are walking toward the west, symbolical quarter of the Pure Land, against the flood of pleasure-seekers, who all follow the course of least resistance to Samsara. It is precisely at this point, when caught up in the crowd, I decide to turn back, representing that change of Heart known as metanoia, and meet with an old beggar-woman. In Sanskrit this 'turning about in the deepest seat of one's being' is called paravrtti, or reversal, and is the only miracle recognized by the Buddha. At once a new moving power, Compassion instead of passion, manifests itself spontaneously from the Other Power. As Titus Burckhardt so wisely remarked: 'Compassion alone delivers us from the artfulness of the ego, which in its every action seeks only to mirror itself'. We know from the mythology and folklore of many Traditions that when the gods would appear to men to test and try them, they have often been known to assume the guise of beggars.