Says he, "Forsooth such being my dwelling place at Minobu, even august deities would with benignancy deign to descend from their ethereal abode. Even the hearts of lowly men and women, devoid of elegant taste, would be attracted to it. Towards the close of autumn, the time when the pensive and poetic beauty of all things penetrates one's heart when dew adorns the tangled cobwebs which hang in clusters from the eaves with wreaths of pearly drops; and when ere one knows it, the maple foliage dons its flaming attire of the season, and casts its own image in the water that flows brokenly in the bamhoo-gutter, this spot reminds one that the upper reaches of the celebrated river Tatsuta may of a truth be much like it.
Behind my hut craggy peaks rear themselves aloft. The boughs are laiden with the fruits of the Unique Truth, and cicadas' loud shrillings ring among the trees. There brawls a stream of running water in front of my hermitage and on it floats a bright, silvery moon, a perfect symbol of Reality itself. The moonlight clears the vast Heaven of Entity of its unfathomable ebon Darkness of Delusion, and not a single cloud is suffered to remain.
Such is the place where my dwelling is located. In it we talk on and discuss the truths of the Lotus of the True Law from morn till eve; and after dark till far into the night, no sound save the reciting and intoning of passages from the Unique Sutra is audible. Has not the final abode of Lord Sakya, the Holy Vulture Peak, as it is called, been transferred to this place here in our land?
However dense and heavy a fog may envelop us, and however turbulent a storm may rage, oft do we make our way into the forests to gather firewood and descend into the bottomless chasms through heavily bedewed bushes to pick parsley leaves. The sombre mood that steals o'er us when we wash and cleanse our herbs in the rocky rapids of the mountain stream may, we feel, as wetten our robes, be likened to that of the fisherfolk of Wakanoura who, as the bard Hitomaru sang in ages past, led a woeful life ever clad in brine-dripping vestures.
(Essay at Minobu, translated by M. Ono)
Beautiful ❤️
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