Hidden Jewel Poem by Harley White

Imagine there is an indigent person
who visits the house of an intimate friend,
where drinking wine to excess makes him worsen
until he falls down senseless drunk in the end.

The host sees his guest in this unconscious state,
but he has to leave on some business affairs,
and since he is worried about his friend's fate
he decides to give the poor man unawares

a pearl beyond price, which he carefully sews
into the lining of his clothes while he lies
fast asleep; then off the host silently goes,
having bestowed this invaluable prize.

As he slept off his overindulgence spree,
in his garment with the hidden jewel clad,
so helplessly intoxicated was he
that he never dreamed of the treasure he had.

The inebriated man awoke at length
and discovered that his friend had gone away.
Then after he found he'd regained enough strength,
he set out on a journey without delay

and in a foreign country at last arrived
where he tried to scrape by and find food to eat.
There the man faced great hardship, barely survived,
and desperately struggled to make ends meet.

To cover the simple essentials of life
deficient indeed were his meager earnings.
Though with troublesome worries his days were rife,
he had no higher hopes, wishes, or yearnings.

The impoverished man was oppressed and stressed,
continuously plagued with misfortune's throes,
unknowing of the priceless pearl he possessed—
the jewel sewn into the hem of his clothes.

It happened that the prosperous friend by chance
eventually stumbled across the man.
Seeing how destitute he was at a glance,
the friend looked disgusted and quickly began

to question him and reproach him severely.
He asked how this situation terrible
had come about; said his friend to him, ‘Clearly
your wretched condition seems unbearable.

‘In order to assure your comfort and peace
I endowed you with wealth a long time ago.
A jewel was sewn into your garment's crease,
and the pearl is still there; yet you did not know

‘of the fortune you've been blessed with all the while.'
When he showed the destitute man the treasure,
his face shone with joy and lit up in a smile
once he saw that he had wealth without measure

and could now hereafter his needs satisfy.
This will be also be true in the present age
for those who've awakened and learned by and by
that they'd been content with a minimum stage

of the deepest enlightenment one could know
which all have forever inherently sought
that of reciting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo—
the Utterness jewel that Nichiren taught…

Being drunk means not accepting the Dharma
with faith in sounding Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.
Sobering up denotes changing that karma
so the waters of wisdom will always flow.



< January 15,2015 >