as if someone were here, and it is most evident on the faces of the non-believers, the merely curious, the tourists, in a word the faces of those who are indifferent, it can be seen that they are genuinely surprised, because it can be felt that something is happening, or has happened, or is going to happen, the expectation is nearly tangible, although everyone knows exactly what it is that is happening, or is going to happen, no one has any doubt at all that perhaps there will be another, and then still another, and then still yet another sūtra, another supplication, another prayer, another vow, and they will yank the covering off the statue, and everyone will finally see the Amida, but that is precisely the curious thing: everyone knows what will follow, and of course when it will follow, still everyone stands dumbfounded, and looks, looks until it ensues that the host-abbot arises, holding aloft a stick of incense, kneels, rises, the gong is heard, and the abbot recites: Revered One of the Returning World, of whom there is none higher, today, according to the teachings, I venerate your throne, I only wish that you might kindly receive it, that every Buddha and Bodhisattva now present here in this room may see and feel that there are no more obstacles, this place has been blessed through the tranquility of an unnameable peace; the abbot speaks and speaks without error and everyone hears precisely what is being said, but from here on the general attentiveness becomes somehow so diffused in expectation that the individual components of the ceremony fall apart, the gathering at one point pays attention to the abbot’s words, as he is just now stating that Amida’s body is golden, His eyes illuminating the four seas, the light streaming forth from them circling Mount Sumeru five times, and at another point the jikijitsu strikes the gong; here, a few people on the left-hand side of the hall bow down, then a few voices are raised again, and then those standing on the right-hand side bow down; then the eloquent voice of the Nanzen-ji abbot can be heard, as he speaks of his wish to be reborn in the Pure Land of the Western Realm, for nine different kinds of lotus flowers to be his mother and his father, that as these flowers open may he glimpse the Buddha, and that he may awaken to the great truth of non-birth, words that nearly dissolve into the ones spoken by the Tōfuku-ji abbot to the right of the host-abbot, saying, namely, may every single Buddha appear in the world, because of one single great thing, and may the entire consciousness of the thus enlightened Buddha, he supplicates, be present here, and may all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have mercy upon all living beings, may their causes be perceived and may they be led to the Dharma, may they receive enlightenment as to the non-self-evidence of knowledge, for knowledge lies within the baneful obscuration of the cause of suffering, and that is why we are here, who, upon this day, in the year 2050 on the eleventh day of the third month, have come here to consecrate the statue of the Amida Buddha, for him to make us understand, says the abbot of Tōfuku-ji, that this statue before us is knowledge given form, but it is not knowledge itself; at that point, however, a kind of disorder begins to arise in the hondō, some kind of confusion in the devotion, or more precisely it is the confusion of the devotion itself, as the strength begins to seep out of the words, they blur into each other, no longer is each word built upon the next, but the words begin to mean the same thing one after the other, this confusion is significant, as is obvious, significant, as it, so to speak, indicates the path upon which the gathering has been lead by the words, to that point where only the consummation of the final moment is necessary, and then truly everything is taking place in this spirit; it could not be stated that the gathering is really concentrating on the most essential elements of the ceremony; they do not notice, for example — or it may be that in the crowd of people they cannot see — that the abbots, before their words just uttered, have each taken up a mirror from the tables placed before them, wiping it with a fine cloth, and then all three have turned the mirrors toward the Buddha; the gathering — at least most of them — are gaping here and there, most of them can only hear what the host-abbot is saying, for right at this moment he is saying that we who consecrate the Buddha are in no way identical with the consecration, we only now do, in the name of the Buddha, what is required, it is not we who can approach Him, but rather that He penetrates us completely with His wisdom, He, the Buddha, who is present here, the imperceptible and supreme Form in its own infinite radiance, that if we speak, the abbot’s veiled, weary voice is heard, if we recite sūtras, through these utterances the light of the Buddha illuminates billions and billions of worlds; that much is heard, then their attention is led by the gong and the great drum, so that they no longer can make out the words of the abbot of the monastery as he says that the wisdom of the Buddha, at the same time, finds a means within us, having taken physical form, returns back to each one of us — that already goes unheard, only the clanging of the gong, and the deep thumping of the drum, but by now it is so hard to pay attention to anything at all, the gathering has by now been here for hours, legs, backs, heads ache; and the scene is swimming before their eyes, nonetheless, at such times, who can say what is essential and what isn’t — one thing is certain: whether there is tiredness here or there, no one wants to miss out on the essence, so that the great majority of them shift their heads back and forth, now trying to listen attentively, now trying to see what is going on, the boundary, in a word, between the important and the less important begins to blur; this has not been, up until now, a cause for concern, but from this point on the monks themselves are not even certain that they are taking in the most essential elements of what is happening in the hondō; all, however, monks and visitors alike, are certain that the ceremony is moving forward, intensely, in strained expectation, where then, in this strained expectation, in this intensity, the abbot of Tōfuku-ji slowly, very slowly, circumambulates with the mirror held aloft, yet in such a way that the light from the mirror illuminates, with a flickering, trembling beam, around the entire hall, and then he places the mirror back onto the table, then taking up from it a paintbrush (with his right hand) and a tiny jar (with his left hand), he dips the brush into the jar, in which there is paint of a vermilion hue, then he raises the brush full of paint toward the presumed direction of the eyes of the Buddha statue, searching with the tip of the brush the height of the eyes, and then two young monks, who had been positioned on either side of the altar quite a while ago, step toward the statue, cautiously remove the brocade covering, step to one side with it, and the crowd holds its breath and just stares to see what has become of the Amida Buddha in far-off Kyōto, the abbot locates the proper height, and the brush is at the same height as the Buddha’s eyes, with utmost exactitude, it is held there for a bit, motionless, the silence is complete, then he shouts out in the silence to OPEN, at which point of course the gathering can no longer restrain itself and, breaching the ritual’s ceremonial rigor, then cry out, the gong sounds, the drum sounds, the shokei and all of the instruments on either side of the main entrance sound out, but by that point the jikijitsu has begun to recite the sūtra of the Opening of the Light, the gathering, mesmerized, joins in and they recite, sing, and murmur the words of the sūtra, but they cannot bear to look away from Amida, for most of the believers remember very well how the statue looked across the decades, a dark shadow on the altar, with almost no contour, almost no light, yet now it is truly resplendent, resplendent in the wondrous face the wondrous eyes, but this pair of eyes, if even touching lightly upon them, does not see them but looks onto a further place, onto a distance that no one here is able to conceive, everyone senses that, and the tension is extinguished in one blow, on every face great joy can be seen, no matter the tiredness, no matter the exhaustion, now it is as if their gaze were reflecting something of that radiance that comes from the altar, they recite, happy and relieved, after the jikijitsu that they now are making a vow to the Buddha, wishing for every being to find the path, that this unsurpassable wish may be fulfilled, and they make a vow to the Dharma, they recite, and they wish that all living beings may penetrate into the wisdom of the sūtras like the ocean, and they make a vow to the Sangha, they announce last of all together, and ask that every being in the gathering may be protected, and all misfortunes averted, and that they may reach that redoubtably distant, beautiful pure land onto which the returned Amida Buddha now gazes.