Page:Anthology of Japanese Literature.pdf/270

266 :::In the shadows of the trees
 * None challenge so wretched a pilgrim as this
 * To Love’s Tomb
 * The autumn hills
 * The River Katsura
 * Boats in the moonlight rowed by whom?
 * I cannot see….
 * But rowed by whom!
 * Oh, too, too painful….
 * Here on this withered stump of tree
 * Let me sit and collect my senses.

Come on. The sun is down. We must hurry on our way. But look! that old beggar woman sitting there on a sacred stupa. We should warn her to come away.

Yes, of course.

Excuse me, old lady, but don’t you know that’s a stupa there you’re sitting on? the holy image of the Buddha’s incarnation. You’d better come away and rest some other place.

The holy image of the Buddha you say? But I saw no words or carvings on it. I took it for a tree stump only.

“Withered stumps
 * Are known as pine or cherry still
 * On the loneliest mountain.”

I, too, am a fallen tree.
 * But still the flowers of my heart
 * Might make some offering to the Buddha.
 * But this you call the Buddha’s body. Why?

The stupa represents the body of Kongosatta Buddha, the Diamond Lord, when he assumed the temporary form of each of his manifestations.

In what forms then is he manifested?

In Earth and Water and Wind and Fire and Space.

The same five elements as man. What was the difference then?

The form was the same but not the power.

And what is a stupa’s power?