Something has happened to it, immediately they sense this, as they sit down in their respective places in the Great Hall facing the lotus throne, but of course it doesn’t pass through their minds that this infinitely diffusing gaze is no longer here, they don’t think about that at all, not even because they don’t dare to look at it; their heads are bowed, everyone concentrates solely on not treading on the feet of the monk in front of him, or not bumping into someone else when that monk suddenly comes to a stop in front, or on concluding a movement — albeit in general if moderate confusion — exactly when it must be concluded, the heads always bowed down, every movement as silent as possible; the monastery is used to this already, and already knows especially how to change places without a sound, to rise and to kneel, to step forward and step backward, to stand in a disciplined manner, to sit in a disciplined manner and walk in a disciplined manner when necessary, while their discipline, as always, extends not only to this, but to their not posing questions to themselves, because even if they think about the fact that something has happened, they do not, in any way, ask what, not even in their innermost thoughts; at the very most, the new arrivals, the little novice deshis, ask themselves, for example, if the deepest meaning of the Hakken Kuyo ritual, that is the temporary removal, departure, diversion of the Light radiating from the Buddha’s eyes, has already occurred within the framework of the secret ceremony — as they had been previously instructed, that this, the ceremony enabling the Sacred Statue to be moved at all, would occur as they waited in their quarters; so what then is the ceremony that follows upon it, or more childishly, what is the point of the whole hocus-pocus afterward, to be completed by all of them, the entire Zengen-ji gathered here in the hondō, the temple-apprentices still ask themselves this, but then somehow in the general silence and devotion the question dies out even within them too, for along with the others, it is surely enough for their little souls, they are permeated with the consciousness of how uplifting it is even just to take part in the ceremony, for them to be able to assume their role in the Hakken Kuyo, and this is enough — the ones outside cannot, in the end, experience this, the profane curiosity-seekers up at dawn outside the gates, they only hear the sounds filtering out; one of them loudly and with great pride announcing to the others that this was now the Incense-Lighting Hymn or the Amida-kyō, now the Invocation, now the Triple Vow, now the greeting of the Zengen-ji Bodhisattva, now the Prayer of the Sangharama, come on, that’s enough already, the others hiss him down, we can see that you really know what’s going on in there, they jeer at him, but we’ve heard enough already, so that the speaker retreats into wounded silence; just the sounds of the great drum and the rin, then the keisu, which is the gong and the mokugyo filter out beyond the gates; and morning has not yet come, they still stand around in the darkness, they stand around and try to listen, patiently, however, like people who are waiting for something, but just don’t know what it is they are waiting for; some of them, chiefly those who live nearby, drift away for a while, to drink a cup of hot tea because in mid-March it is still chilly at dawn, it could be warmer, but this year, somehow, it’s taking longer than usual for spring to arrive, only the huge pale pink-tinted flowers of the magnolia have bloomed so far to indicate that winter has definitely come to an end — a sip or two of hot tea, then they come back, those who just now disappeared from the group standing around in front of the gate; they shall not, however, be any the wiser, for from outside only the sounds of sūtras, fading away, filter out through the gates, then not even that, there shall be a great silence inside, a long motionless silence, during which the ones outside wait for a newer sound or movement, but in vain, for absolutely nothing can be heard, as everyone inside the hondō is now turning toward the Amida Buddha, then kneeling once, getting up, kneeling a second time and getting up again, and kneeling a third time and at last getting up, concluding thus the ceremony taking place within, the Hakken Kuyo has achieved its goal, the statue may be moved from the lotus throne, even if it is not moved immediately, for the monks first need to leave the space of the hall, and it is only then, only when the last one reaches the courtyard and all of them, at the signaling of meal-time, direct their steps to the jikidō, when only the abbot, the two rōshi and the jikijitsu remain inside and four strong young jōkei, selected in advance, then the jushoku motions to the youths who, approaching the statue and after bowing three times, lift up Amida with great caution from the lotus throne, taking tiny steps under the enormous weight, they take the statue out from the hondō to the designated spot next to the moving van, and from that point on, everything plays out quickly, the kiri-crate, already tied up, appears, the bottom of it is covered with silicone gel, acid-free paper, and fabric, the body of the statue in turn is tightly wrapped in thick moisture-absorbing cambric, the entire wrapping is carefully fastened, and then the Buddha is lowered into the crate; they begin to fill the empty space between the body of the statue and the walls of the crate with even more deliberation than before, so that — while the monastery is finishing breakfast in the jikidō — the Zengen-ji Amida Buddha is already inside the storage compartment of the moving van, expertly tethered, immobile, and nothing remains but to give the signal to the driver to start now for Kyōto, and then to return to the hondō for a bit, and temporarily cover the vacant space where the Buddha was with an orange-red embroidered silk cloth, that is all; and the abbot can at least say to himself that the Hakken Kuyo has been completed, the Hakken Kuyo proceeded as it should have, and that now one just has to wait, to wait like this for eleven or twelve months for the Buddha to return in renewed form, for the rest is up to the driver, who at this moment is cautiously pulling out through the circle of fortunate curiosity-seekers by the western gate of the Zengen-ji, and turning into the street leading out of the city, so as to quickly reach the highway toward Ichinomiya, and from there to merge onto the Meishin Expressway, because he truly feels confident there, on this highway in the colossal traffic heading toward Kyōto, he feels as if it were not himself driving the van, but as if it were being driven by some kind of higher force, together with the billowing tide of innumerable cars on the Meishin Expressway, he feels confident indeed, here in this crazily dense traffic heading in one direction; he knows his precious consignment to be utterly safe, though there is hardly any cause for concern anyway, it’s not the first time that he’s transporting something like this, this is his job, he’s no beginner, he’s made trips with items said to be of extraordinary national value in the enclosed platform perhaps hundreds of times before, yet still despite that, this time, as always, he feels a little excitement as he passes the distance markers, or rather a kind of pleasurable tension, which will only come to an end — as he already knows from experience — when the consignment will be taken from him in Kyōto; up till then, well, there was just still the Sekigahara exit, then Maibara and Hikone, the entire route of 170 kilometers until Otsu, because in Otsu he feels like he’s home already, from that point on everything is familiar, to drive into the city, taking a short cut, and after Fujinomori, through the Fukakusa district right up to the Takeda intersection, because there he has to turn right, at exactly a 90-degree angle, onto the Takeda Kaido, from which it usually takes a mere half-hour — for at this hour the traffic is moving — to reach the large gate beside the National Museum by the Sanjūsangen-dō, and wave to the gatekeeper, who is already leaping up and opening the gate; he can come to a stop already in front of the Bijutsu-in delivery entrance, because from there on it’s no longer any of his business, he has the papers signed, hands it over, and the rest is for the workers of the Bijutsu-in, with that his work here is done, he can pick up the next consignment, the workers are taking down the crate, then put it into the elevator and take it up to the mezzanine where later on, the unpacking of the crate will take place, but not today, there is no time for that today, the Bijutsu-in has so much work that the Inazawa material, as it is called from this day on, remains unopened for days; there it sits in the enormous space of the Bijutsu-in with its open galleries running along each floor, put aside in a corner, and for the time being only the statue itself knows that it is one meter, thirty-seven centimeters, and two millimeters tall, made of hinoki cyprus, known as jōseki-zukuri — that is, assembled from many parts, structured with a hollow interior, held together by small iron nails and reinforced by pieces of lacquer-soaked fabric — the statue presumably dates from the beginning of the Kamakura era, and one could enumerate where the diadems are individually placed into the head, where they can also be accordingly individually removed from the head, as well as both the ears and the chest, all of that; and the harmonious body sits in the lotus position, covered by folds of fabric, carved with miraculous sensitivity, although of course the most precious thing of all in the statue are the eyes, and this is also what makes it so celebrated in the opinion of experts — the half-lowered eyelids or, put another way, the only half-opened eyes, miraculous, astounding; they give the statue and every Amida statue, as its essence, the infinite suggestion of one immortal gaze, the influence of which one cannot avoid; it is a question all in all, of that one single gaze; so that the sculptor, sometime around the year 1367, wished to depict, to capture with his own unfathomable genius of artistic technique that
one single gaze, and this depiction and this capturing, even in the most restrained sense of the word, was successful — there it sits in the corner, and it is the dreaded master of the restorers of the Bijutsu-in — the forever ill-tempered, forever irritable and dissatisfied and grumbling and gloomy and dry and humorless, Fujimori Seiichi — who will decide, which means no peeking out of curiosity; the statue will remain wrapped up in the cambric until he gives an explicit instruction; no one can mess with it, that is no one can look at it; later if the time will come, Master Fujimori wrinkles his thick eyebrows, just keep yourselves busy with the work that is in front of you now, there are deadlines to be met here, he paces up and down among the various component parts of Fugan-ji, Manjushri, and Shakyamuni statues piled up on the floor and on the tables, as well as among the restorers, their faces masks of discipline, they appear to be slightly amused — but there are urgent deadlines all the same; he stares fixedly at the craftsmen from beneath his thick eyebrows, and the deadlines must be met and your work completed, and there should not be any messing around with that Zengen-ji statue, no matter how famous, how tempting, it stays in the corner, he repeats again, so that after this no one in this spacious lofty hall of the workshop has any desire to break the prohibition, in any event the time really will come, the restorers note among themselves quietly, as it does come in actuality, for in less than two weeks, as they are all finishing their own portion of work, one day, after breakfast, the master of the workshop, his expression even more gloomy than usual, nervously fixing the side part in his thinning hair, says, well, let’s take off the cambric now, and everyone knows that he’s thinking of the Zengen-ji Amida Buddha, let’s take it down, Master Fujimori repeats and that means — that let’s take it down — that they should take it down, his subordinates should take off the cambric, because Fujimori Seiichi always speaks in the first-person plural, but thinks in the imperative mood; so they take it off, carefully, almost thread by thread, warp by woof, lest a scrap of pigmentation or fragment of wood clinging to the surface, if there is any such thing, should fall off, here every individual piece counts, here nothing can be lost, not even a tiny speck of dust, for — as the workshop-master never tires of repeating during the dreaded and dreadfully boring weekly meeting sessions — even that speck of dust may date from the Heian period, and a speck of dust from the Heian period is worth more — the master at this point, during the meeting sessions, raises his voice — than you yourselves, that is to say the restorers in this workshop taken all together, and so, well, of course they know that he observes them in this spirit too, so the level of caution is particularly high, a caution that is sustained even in his absence, for all of the restorers in this workshop are blessed with a special quality of conscience, all are from the nation’s most important workshops for restoration of ancient statuary, craftsmen with specific talents and specific training, who know full well, without any prompting, the significance of a speck of Heian dust.