Japanese Slang (51 page)

•   
Kiku tokoro ni yoru to, kare wa ichinichi ni nikai mo kaku sanmai ni iru.
From what I hear, he enters the state of enlightenment at least twice a day.

•   
J
rakugajo ni wa ki o tsuketa h
ga ii yo.
Careful of that eternal bliss.

Other popular words for clerical self love are
yuiga dokuson
(the feeling of supremacy) and
daietsu,
which modern priests translate to mean “major pleasure.” But Miguchi Sakae in
Ingo K
sei no Y
shiki
(The Structure and Methodology of Clandestine Language) points out that its etymology is much more inspired. According to him, the witty priest who invented
daietsu
noticed that breaking the character
dai
(major) in two left the characters “single” and “person.” (That same priest came up with
tenetsu
“heavenly pleasure,” for sex. Undo the character
ten,
and you end up with “two” and “persons”).

The largest body of priest-slang words for masturbation have to do with study and prayer. The playful notion is that a priest has two methods for reaching divine ecstasy: one is by focusing himself intensely on incanting verses from a sutra or the name of the Buddha, the other is by focusing himself intensely on his organ. In Nichiren circles this illicit shortcut is known as
ryakuhokeiky
(abbreviated Lotus Sutra),
jirikishugy
(“practicing asceticism with one's own power,” as opposed to the power of the Buddha), or
jiriki ek
(chanting sutras with one's own power).

•   
Ichinichi sankai ryakuhokeiky
suru to wa, chotto yarisugi ja nai desu ka ne.
Doing the abbreviated Lotus Sutra three times in one day is a bit much, don't you think?

•   
Ken no yatsu wa heya de jirikishugy
o surun ja nai ka.
I bet you Ken is in his room practicing asceticism using his own power.

•   
Y
! Mezurashii! Jiriki ek
no shita koto ga nain desu ka?
What? You're kidding? You've never chanted sutras with your own power?

Other studious expressions for self-stimulation popular with the priests are
otenarai
(study),
shoshagy
(“copying out a sutra by hand,” a long and arduous task), and
dokuyugy
(solitary pilgrimage). The scholarly joke behind the solitary pilgrimage is that the characters for
dokuyugy
can also be read “to go and play by oneself.”