The leader of the ceremony, the jikijitsu, strikes the gong three times; according to precept the large drum then sounds too, and in the space of the hondō above the gathering a greater ceremoniousness than before can be felt, leading the less well-informed among them to think, well, at least now they’re finally going to take the brocade off and we can finally get to see the Buddha; but no, they are wrong, the time for that has not yet come, now it is time for the three abbots to pray together; after what is known as the purification of the lotus throne, the emphasis of the ritual in this crucial second part shifts onto the abbots, and there are more offerings made with the incense, then the recitation of the sacred names, and after the three abbots kneel down together, the congregation, under the leadership of the jikijitsu, begins to sing the Amida-kyō, in which the sūtra, with miraculous power and at length, venerates the Amida Buddha and the inconceivable greatness, timelessness, harmony, and fragrances of the Pure Land; then there comes the time to acknowledge defilements, where one must kneel down at the end of every sentence, even the three abbots kneel, and recite with them, and all those taking part in the ceremony kneel down at the end of each sentence as well, we have produced hellish karmas, they all murmur — the mokugyo sharply cracks underneath the thin stick — through desire, through hatred, and through impatience we bring them forth and sustain them in time, the source of what we all are is our mere bodies, our mere words, and our mere minds, and we deplore this greatly now; this is what they murmur, they sing this in a louder, unifying harmony, then everyone rises and now, somehow, the emphasis shifts to where it should be; the three abbots, that is, again take up the direction of the ceremony, so that from this point on they are the ones who grant permission to speak, and they grant it right away: three times in order, the wish is chanted that glory may come to the monastery, to the Three Jewels of Mahāyāna, and now the eldest and most respected monk, having earlier been prepared, is called forward to go to the incense stand to complete the ritual of incense-purification; then when the jikijitsu causes the gong to sound, and during its long reverberation the document called the Announcement of Explication is placed in the monk’s hands, the smoke snakes upward, entwines around the old man and the document as well, and he begins, his head trembling, in a tremulous voice, to read aloud that here and now appears the Body of the Buddha, here illuminates the karma that brings happiness to all living beings, and the magnificent Form, in its own boundlessness, is unmoving, and this place is now the hall of the Exaltation of the Light, that we, within the Eastern Realm, are on the island known as Japan, where this monastery belonging to the Rinzai lineage is located, the old monk reads in his tremulous voice that now here they have sung a few sacred sentences with the gathering, with which the Dharma is protected, and pure faith remains preserved; he then lowers the document, for the next few sentences no paper is needed, and he announces that the monastery has collected every donation it possibly could in order to protect the sacred statue of the Amida Buddha from the harm of centuries, and now the day has come when, this protection ensured, they have received Him back, and He shall be placed back there, from whence He was earlier taken, so He has arrived, murmurs the old monk, behold the auspicious, happy, great day, and they have gathered in this hall, which is the space of contemplation, that is to say of the soul, and they have come here together, because for them both this space and this soul are of the utmost necessity, and he leans once again over the text, and reads out that the return of the Amida was the heart’s desire of the faithful, and the hope of those who await from it the renewal of their faith, to receive, in the barren, ruinous heat, the cool relief of the tree of Dharma, may the garden wreathed in gold again be tended for the prayers to come, for they are now making a vow, he says, looking up from the document, and they make this vow with great joy, and they make this vow precisely today, in the year 2050 on the fourteenth day of the third month in between the morning hours of nine and ten o’clock, they make a vow, and they have set the lotus throne back in its place once again, and once again they survey the entire magnificent Form, truly complete, and they trust that once again they shall see the Precious Light and they supplicate and, bowing their heads, they utter the profound wish that this treasure-laden throne shall be resplendent until the end of time, when the body itself shall vanish, and that the light between the Buddha’s eyebrows may once again issue forth, and that one ray of this light may spread across the entire Realm of Dharma; I, says the old monk showing his hands folded in prayer, and bowing his head, I bow my head, and I fold my hands in prayer, and everything good shall like a tree take root, the utterance of the feelings arising in our hearts, the feelings drawn in by the happiness and wisdom emanating from the altar, we supplicate in gratitude and thanks, he continues, movingly, wishing tranquility and peace for the Son of the Sun and the people, we wish for the Dharma once again to be majestic among us, and we wish for the wise and beautiful path to come to the Zengen-ji monastery of Inazawa; today, he says, we have recited sūtras, and the melody, the song of this gathering, is like the brocade upon Him here in the center of the Altarplace; later on, it shall fall away and beneath it the eye shall see what it has been awaiting, and then the old man begins to say, as he lowers the document for the final time, that through the Explication just uttered he supplicates the Three Jewels to create the certainty that this Buddha statue is now perfect and without flaw, for the sacred statue of the Amida Buddha has been rectified and placed back on its base, and all of this has taken place within the framework of the ceremony conducted by jikijitsu Zhushan on the fourteenth day of the third month of the year 2050 according to the Buddhist calendar, in the presence and with the cooperation of the abbots Nanzenji-san and Tōfukuji-san; from the mouth of the monk Shooshin, he says, and he withdraws; and already the assistants have set three small tables in place of the prayer benches in front of the abbots, a piece of yellow silk is placed on each table, and finally in the center of each table a flower-stalk is placed, and already the sacred deities are being invoked in the sūtra recited by the gathering, and the abbots take up the three flower-stalks, they raise them and hold them aloft, as first the Nanzen-ji abbot joins the congregation and sings that the abbot of Nanzen-ji beholds this flower, and he holds it aloft, and supplicates with all of his heart, he calls the Lord of the World, the Master Shakyāmuni Buddha, he supplicates the Lord of Faith of the Eastern Realm, Dainichi Nyorai, who is the Tathāgata of crystal light, he supplicates and calls the Lord of Faith of the Western Realm, Amida Buddha, and the Buddha of the World to Come, Maitreya, Miroku Bosatsu, and every Buddha who can penetrate the Realm of Dharma through the air, he says, and he bows his head, adding softly that he only wishes never to break his own vows, that now, with a humble and full heart, he wishes that He for whom it is fitting should take His place upon the lotus throne, but the entire last part of his words referring to his vows is sung by the gathering as well — each person pronouncing his or her own name — and then something happens which has not happened yet, that is to say silence, and in this silence the three abbots place the three flower-stalks back onto the little tables, the sound of the hand-held gong reverberates, the congregation kneels and prostrates before the Buddha, then the shokei sings out again, everyone rises, and in the sustained silence the jikijitsu asks the participants of the ritual to call forth the Amida Buddha within their own selves, to look at the contours discernable underneath the brocade on the lotus throne, and to let millions of Amidas appear in their imaginations, this is what they must invoke, this is what they must think about, the jikijitsu’s words sound out in the silence, and with this it is the turn of the host-abbot, who lifts the single flower once again into the air and says: may the Amida fill the entire world, and look upon all the living beings, so that he and everyone present here may avoid suffering arising from Origination, and, finally, may the throne on the altar truly become a throne, but at this point the entire gathering, led by the jikijitsu, is singing, so as to invoke, with their individual and their shared strength, the Mañjuśrī Buddha, in all aspects perfected, the Samanthabhadra, the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara of great compassion, in all deeds accomplished, the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva, who realizes every desire, the Bodhisattvas of the ten world-directions, the Mahāsattva Bodhisattva, and their only wish — here the sūtra comes to a close, the unity of the singing enriched by a lower fifth — is never to break their vows, and that the Buddha, compassionate to all sentient beings, may appear and take His place upon the lotus throne, which stands before them covered in brocade, and when, at the last word, the shokei again is struck, everyone kneels, then they arise, for it all to be repeated first by the shikaryo, then the jikijitsu, and finally by the entire gathering, for everything to be repeated, but at the same time, somehow, everything begins to rise in the midst of this repeating, there is something now in the Hall which is difficult to put into words, but everyone present can sense it, a sweet weight in the soul, a sublime devotion in the air,