I cannot imagine at all by what strange manner of ingwa
Came I to fall in love with one so unkind as you!

Or she might exclaim:--

Is this the turning of En?--am I caught in the Wheel of Karma?
That, alas! is a wheel not to be moved from the rut![1]

[1.

Meguru en kaya?
Kuruma no watashi
Hiku ni hikarenu
Kono ingwa.

There is a play on words in the original which I have not attempted to render. The idea is of an unhappy match-- either betrothal or marriage--from which the woman wishes to withdraw when too late.]

A more remarkable reference to the Wheel of Karma is the following:--

Father and mother forbade, and so I gave up my lover;--
Yet still, with the whirl of the Wheel, the thought of him comes and goes.[1]

This is a hauta:--

Numberless insects there are that call from dawn to evening,
Crying, "I love! I love!"--but the Firefly's silent passion,
Making its body burn, is deeper than all their longing.
Even such is my love . . . yet I cannot think through what ingwa
I opened my heart--alas!--to a being not sincere![2]

[1.

Oya no iken de
Akirameta no wo
Mata mo rin-ye de
Omoi-dasu.

The Buddhist word Rin-ye, or Rinten, has the meaning of "turning the Wheel,"--another expression for passing from birth to birth. The Wheel here is the great Circle of Illusion,--the whirl of Karma.

2.

Kaai, kaai to
Naku mushi yori mo,
Nakanu hotaru ga
Mi wo kogasu.
Nanno ingwa de
Jitsu naki hito ni
Shin wo akashite,--
Aa kuyashi!

Lit.. "'I-love-I-love'-saying-cry-insects than, better never-cry-firefly, body scorch! What Karma because-of, sincerity-not-is-man to, inmost-mind opened?--ah! regret!, . . . It was formerly believed that the firefly's light really burned its own body.]

If the foregoing seem productions possible only to our psychological antipodes, it is quite otherwise with a group of folk-songs reflecting the doctrine of Impermanency. Concerning the instability of all material things, and the hollowness of all earthly pleasures, Christian and Buddhist thought are very much in accord. The great difference between them appears only when we compare their teaching as to things ghostly,--and especially as to the nature of the Ego. But the Oriental doctrine that the Ego itself is an impermanent compound, and that the Self is not the true Consciousness, rarely finds expression in these popular songs. For the common people the Self exists: it is a real (though multiple) personality that passes from birth to birth. Only the educated Buddhist comprehends the deeper teaching that what we imagine to be Self is wholly illusion,--a darkening veil woven by Karma; and that there is no Self but the Infinite Self, the eternal Absolute.