The lovely Shunkai, whose other name was Suzu, was married off against her will when she was still very young. Later, when the marriage ended, she began to attend university, where she studied philosophy.
Seeing Shunkai meant falling in love with her. Moreover, wherever she was, she fell in love with others. Love was with her at the University, and later, when dissatisfied with philosophy, she began to visit the temple to study Zen, the Zen students fell in love with her. Shunkai's whole life was filled with love.
Finally, in Kyoto she became a real Zen student. Her brothers in the small temple of Konnin praised her sincerity. One of them turned out to be close to her in spirit and helped her master Zen.
The abbot of Kennin, Mokugai (Silent Thunder), was very stern. He himself fulfilled the commandments and expected the same from his priests. In modern Japan, priests are allowed to have wives, and therefore they do not serve Buddhism with the same zeal as before.
Mokugai expelled and persecuted women if he found them in any of the temples, but the more women he expelled, the more they seemed to return.
The wife of the main priest of this temple began to envy the beauty and sincerity of Shunkai.
The praise that the students showered on Shunkai's seriousness and her attitude towards Zen made the priest's wife squirm with anger. Finally, she began to spread rumors about Shunkai and her friend. Because of these rumors, the young man was expelled, and Shunkai was removed from the temple.
“Perhaps I am doing wrong because of love,” thought Shunkai, “but the priest’s wife should not remain in the temple either, if my friend was treated so unfairly.”
That same night, Shunkai doused the 500-year-old temple with kerosene and burned it to the ground. In the morning she was captured by the police. The young lawyer became interested in her and tried to commute the sentence.
“Don’t help me,” she told him. “I can decide on something else that will lead me to prison again.”
Finally, the seven-year sentence expired and Shunkai was released from prison, where the 60-year-old prison warden was also fascinated by her. But now everyone looked at her like she was a leper, no one wanted to deal with her. Even Zen people, who should have believed in the enlightenment of her spirit and body, avoided her. Shunkai realized that Zen is one thing, but Zen followers are something completely different. Her relatives did not want to know her. She became thin, pale and weak.
She met the priest Shinshu, who taught her the name of the Buddha of love, and in this Shunkai found peace and tranquility.
She left this world still very beautiful, barely reaching 30 years old. She wrote the story of her life, and partially told it to the writer. This is how it reached the Japanese. Those who rejected her now read this story with tears of shame.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru