#shigisan engi
Go granny, go granny, go granny go! To find your long-lost little brother.
But first, some context:
As noted in Byakuren’s UFO profile, her younger brother Myouren was a legendary monk (白蓮の弟、命蓮は伝説の僧侶であった). His legends consist primarily of the three stories depicted in the Shigisan-engi picture scrolls (also found in the Uji Shui Monogatari and the Kohon Setsuwashu).
Shigisan (Mount Shigi) is where Myouren did all his stuff. More specifically, he was at the Chogosonshi Temple, which supposedly got its name after Myouren faith-healed the emperor in one of the three stories. Incidentally, the first story involves a flying storehouse. Sound familiar?
Here’s a good English translation of the Uji Shui Monogatari version. Yes, the flying storehouse is the one in UFO. Yes, Byakuren’s “Flying Bowl”, “Purple Cloud”/”Cloudy Way in Purple”, and “Star Sword Apologetics” spellcards are all further references to the stories. (More on Star Sword in another post.)
And yes, Byakuren is our little old unnamed nun from Shinano. She mentions this to Kanako in SoPM Part 1.
So Byakuren traveled from Shinano to Shigisan. How far is that?
To be fair, medieval Shinano Province covered pretty much all of today’s Nagano Prefecture, but that’s still a minimum of ~300 km using modern routes, and could easily have been 100 km longer a thousand years ago.
Why is this significant? Well, Byakuren’s UFO profile says she didn’t start learning Buddhist magic from Myouren until she was old (白蓮は、年老いてからその弟に法力を学んだ), and didn’t get her physical buffs until after he died. The Uji Shui Monogatari version doesn’t specify how long she waited in Shinano, but the scroll version has the text 廿余年 = over 20 years. So she left Shinano as an old hag with nothing but medieval medical care and the occasional hired hand to protect her on a 400 km journey over unpaved mountainous terrain. A Kanagawa University analysis of the scrolls also says that “her attire can be regarded as very common attire for women unused to long journeys.“
In short, Byakuren was going to either find her brother or quite literally die trying.
She clearly wasn’t afraid of death at this point, so why did she suddenly become terrified of it after her brother passed away?
Perhaps this was the first time she had ever watched a younger family member die? But average early Heian life expectancy was 30 years, and she spent 20 just waiting for Myouren back in their tiny Shinano backwater, so it’s nearly impossible for her to have not already watched younger relatives die.
A better explanation requires us to consider the nature of her relationship with Myouren:
Although Myouren abandoned his sister without a second thought, she kept him in her heart for over 20 years and eventually gambled her life on the insanely unlikely odds of ever finding him again. All she gets for her trouble is “wtf I wasnt expecting you, how’d you even get here,” which you’d think would bother her just a little, but no, her only concern is how cold Myouren must be on the mountain. Here, have the painstakingly handmade fukutai I traveled 400 km to give you!
It’s a classic case of codependency: her brother barely cares about her, but her entire world revolves around him. So when her UFO profile says that the grieving Byakuren became terrified of death, this strikes me as not so much fear of dying as fear of going into an afterlife and/or next life without Myouren. Pure Land Buddhism wasn’t a thing yet so they couldn’t just pray to Amitabha to be reunited in Sukhavati, and it was generally believed that women couldn’t be reborn there anyway. As long as she’s alive, her brother can at least live on in her memories. Does that sound like clinging? Maybe even attachment?
As the Buddha might say, Byakuren’s attachment to her brother is the root of all her suffering.
