Where Whitman was all about enterprise and the pioneer fervour, in Penguin Little Black Classic number 11 we encounter a 13th-14th century Japanese Buddhist monk who says, “Sit around a while. Why the rush?”

I knew nothing about Kenko before picking up this little book. I discovered that he became a monk late in his life. Historians aren’t sure why, perhaps the death of an emperor, perhaps an unhappy love affair. After reading him, I found myself leaning towards the second explanation.

Who else can write:

“The longer you live, the greater your share of shame. It is most seemly to die before forty at the latest.”

About those who fail to perform this “seemly” act, he says they live until they lose all ability to be moved by life’s pathos and become quite disgraceful.

I’m already past forty. So naturally, I looked him up.

Happily, he lived to sixty-six or sixty-seven.

The book is a collection of thoughts that occurred to Kenko, and he begins by saying that these jottings are hardly worthy of preservation for posterity. There was one thought where I immediately felt a companionship with the monk.

“It is most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.”

It brought a smile to me because I was doing exactly that.

Some of his thoughts are simple observations of life. Others turn those observations into teachings.

At one place he writes:

“Those who feel the impulse to pursue the path of enlightenment should immediately take the step, and not defer it while they attend to all the other things on their mind…

In general, I find that reasonably sensitive and intelligent people will pass their whole life without taking the step they know they should.”

Reading this, I recalled the Hindu idea of Maya. We often know what matters, yet continue postponing it because something else first demands our attention. The “something else” keeps changing, and before we know it, life has quietly passed by.

Kenko’s most famous work is Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness). And this Penguin Little Black Classics is a selection from that work. In this collection he writes:

“What kind of man will feel depressed at being idle? There is nothing finer than to be alone with nothing to distract you…

Even if you do not yet understand the True Way, you can achieve what can be termed temporary happiness at least by removing yourself from outside influences, taking no part in the affairs of the world, calming yourself and stilling the mind.”

Reading him, I realised that Kenko’s idleness is not laziness. It is stillness.

Another thought that felt remarkably relevant today concerns rumours and the excitement surrounding every new marvel.

“I cannot bear the way people will spread excited rumours about the latest marvels. A refined person will not learn of things until the rumours are old and stale.”

While reading this, I found myself wondering what the monk would make of today’s twenty-four-hour news channels and second-by-second updates on social media. I suspect he would have ignored most of it and perhaps been happier for it. In my experience, you can ignore almost ninety percent of the “news” and still remain well informed about the world.

While he begins the collection by suggesting that the seemly age to die is before forty, in a later thought he quietly admits that the cooling of vigour which comes with age is actually helpful in achieving the calmness and peace he values.

“A young man overflows with vigour, things stir in his heart, and he is prone to passions. Like a flung ball, such a youth courts danger and physical harm. Riches are wasted in pursuit of magnificence.

In age, on the other hand, the spirit weakens, we become indifferent and apathetic, and nothing rouses us. The heart grows naturally calm.

Age has more wisdom than youth, just as youth has more beauty than does age.”

And finally, the monk on drinking. This passage made me laugh.

He begins with the sins of drinking and ends by forgiving them all.

“If you drink, in this world it leads to all manner of error, and causes both illness and loss of wealth. As for the next world—having lost the wisdom you were born with, reduced all your good karma to ashes, built up a store of wickedness and broken all Buddhist precepts, you are destined for hell.

Yet loathsome though one finds it, there are situations when a cup of sake is hard to resist. On a moonlit night, a snowy morning, or beneath the flowering cherry trees, it increases all the pleasures of the moment to bring out the sake cups and settle down to talk serenely together over a drink.”

And then he concludes:

“All things considered, a drunkard is so entertaining he can be forgiven his sins.”

You read this and you know here is a man who has known life beyond monkhood.

There are his thoughts on women and companionship. There are his thoughts on drink. All point in the same direction. He doesn’t advocate complete abandonment of worldly pleasures. Rather, he argues for refinement. Fall in love, but don’t become enslaved by it. Drink with friends, but don’t become a blabbering drunkard. Participate in the world, but don’t let the world possess you.

When I looked up Kenko, I discovered that alongside Essays in Idleness, two other works are often spoken of in the same breath: Hōjōki and The Pillow Book. This little Penguin has given me a taste of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Japanese literature, and I intend to follow up on it.