Tonight’s story repeats some common themes — namely, a problem caused by attachment to material wealth, and snakes being used to represent that attachment. This story is interesting in that the people involved have the chance to make their sin right. At first they try to “outwit” their own karma, which I find very interesting, because it’s such a human, believable thing to try. I love that they halfway doubt the fortune teller at first. And when that fails they ultimately make a sensible, rational decision and choose the lesser of two evils. It’s about as close to a happy ending as kaidan often get.

How a Man From Gojō, Kyōto Was Punished For Scraping the Gold Foil Off of a Buddha
There was a poor oil seller who lived near Aburanokōji Gojō in Kyōto. Somebody told him that there was a golden buddha among the buddha statues at Sanjūsangendō. The oil seller was delighted to hear such good news. He went to Sanjūsangendō, broke off the buddha’s hands and feet, and burnt them to ashes so that the foil on them hardened into lumps of gold. He sold these lumps here and there, and soon he made thirty gold coins. His family became rich, and lived in affluence from morning to evening.

One time, when the oil seller and his wife were sleeping side by side, they felt a strange sensation like something cold touch their bodies. They lit a lamp and saw there were two small snakes. The couple were so startled that they beat the snakes to death, but two more snakes crawled out, and night and day the two snakes refused to leave the couple’s side. They prayed and prayed, but they did not receive any sign.

The couple grew more and more uneasy, so they asked a diviner to tell them their fortune. The diviner consulted his reading, and he asked, “Have you ever made money off of a buddha?” Then the couple confessed everything that they had done, saying that yes, indeed, they had made money off of a buddha. Hearing this, the diviner said, “In that case, if you use the money that you made to create a buddha and donate it to the temple, your curse will end.”

And so, they used half of the money that they had earned to make a buddha and they donated it to the temple. When they did this, one of the snakes went away, but the other one coiled its body around them and would not leave. The couple decided that being alive was the most important thing, and so they used the remainder of their money to make another buddha and donated it, after which the other snake left them. Then they returned to their old life as poor oil sellers.