One calm dawning, as I thought over the reasons for this weakness of mine, I told myself that I had fled the world to live in a mountain forest in order to discipline my mind and practice the Way. “And yet, in spite of your monk’s appearance, your heart is stained with impurity. Your hut may take after Jōmyō’s,[1] but you preserve the Law even worse than Handoku. If your low estate is a retribution for the sins of a previous existence, is it right that you afflict yourself over it? Or should you permit delusion to come and disturb you?” To these questions my mind could offer no reply. All I could do was to use my tongue to recite two or three times the nembutsu, however inacceptable from a defiled heart.
It is now the end of the third moon of 1212, and I am writing this at the hut on Toyama.
- ↑ Jōmyō (Vimalakirti) was a priest of Sakyamuni’s time who built himself a stone hut much like Chōmei’s. Handoku (Panthaka) was the most foolish of Sakyamuni’s disciples.
