west wall, I have installed an image of Amida. The light of the setting sun shines between its eyebrows.[1] On the doors of the reliquary I have hung pictures of Fugen and Fudō.[2] Above the sliding door that faces north I have built a little shelf on which I keep three or four black leather baskets that contain books of poetry and music and extracts from the sacred writings. Beside them stand a folding koto and a lute.
Along the east wall I have spread long fern fronds and mats of straw which serve as my bed for the night. I have cut open a window in the eastern wall, and beneath it have made a desk. Near my pillow is a square brazier in which I burn brushwood. To the north of the hut I have staked out a small plot of land which I have enclosed with a rough fence and made into a garden. I grow many species of herbs there.
This is what my temporary hut is like. I shall now attempt to describe its surroundings. To the south there is a bamboo pipe which empties water into the rock pool I have laid. The woods come close to my house, and it is thus a simple matter for me to gather brushwood. The mountain is named Toyama. Creeping vines block the trails and the valleys are overgrown, but to the west is a clearing, and my surroundings thus do not leave me without spiritual comfort.[3] In the spring I see waves of wistaria like purple clouds, bright in the west. In the summer I hear the cuckoo call, promising to guide me on the road of death. In the autumn the voice of the evening insects fills my ears with a sound of lamentation for this cracked husk of a world. In winter I look with deep emotion on the snow, piling up and melting away like sins and hindrances to salvation.
When I do not feel like reciting the nembutsu[4] and cannot put
- ↑ The Buddha was said to have emitted light between his eyebrows.
- ↑ Fugen (Sanskrit, Samantabhadra) is the highest of the bodhisattvas. Fudō Myōō (Sanskrit, Acalanātha) is the chief of the Guardian Kings.
- ↑ The west is the direction of Paradise and it was thus auspicious that it should have been clear in that direction. The purple cloud is the one on which Amida Buddha descends to guide the believer to the Western Paradise.
- ↑ The invocation to Amida Buddha practiced particularly by believers in Jōdo Buddhism.
