What is a charitable heart? It is a heart burning with love for the whole creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures. He who has such a heart cannot see or call to mind a creature without his eyes being filled with tears by reason of the immense compassion which seizes his heart; a heart which is softened and can no longer bear to see or learn from others of any suffering, even the smallest pain, being inflicted on a creature. That is why such a man never ceases to pray for the animals, moved by the infinite pity which reigns in the hearts of those who are becoming united with God.
Yukio Tamura knows that it would be more sensible to head further down the mountain, but it is already dark and he has fallen once already and cut the bridge of his nose. Besides, his knees are aching.
There are patches of snow a little higher up but here the slope is clear. His tattered robe is torn at the back, his thin shoulder blade exposed. He wraps himself in his hare-fur blanket and pulls a stout piece of sailcloth around him and scrunches in under a bush.
The quiet night is interrupted by the soft, feathery thump of large birds landing in the dark. The mountain range rears straight up from the coast, and the sea birds – perhaps they are minami-onaga-mizunagidori, definitely some sort of mizunagidori-ka, shearwaters, like small albatrosses – fly to these slopes to breed.
They nest in burrows that are like rabbit holes. It is an extraordinary world, thinks Yukio Tamura.
He feels the vast, pelagic expanse of their souls; lives spent travelling distances that no heavy-footed, earthbound human can conceive; months at sea, sleeping tossed on the ocean’s mountainous swell; soaring on breeze or gale above the tidal surge of a world of water. And each year – back to this mountain to birth and raise a chick in a subterranean burrow!
Another bird thumps down close by with fish for a chick growing underground like a large, white mushroom.
The gentle avian sounds lull Yukio Tamura as he drifts in sleep.
He is alert when he hears larger creatures crashing about. Through the scraggy foliage of his bush he can glimpse large wild pigs in the faint moonlight. He has always been a little afraid of them – has learnt to avoid them in the woods.
He lies still, listening to them snorting and rooting the soft soil. A pig’s nose is a digging machine. It takes little effort to expose a bird’s burrow. The wet crunch and occasional piteous squawk tell the lurking man – suddenly wide-awake – what the pigs seek (and find).
Yukio Tamura can already see in the morning the ploughed dirt, the depressions spattered with blood and down – a single little pink leg with a webbed foot lying in the centre – like some vision of the lowest hell.
It is an extraordinary world.
Yukio Tamura knows that it would be more sensible to head further down the mountain, but it is already dark and he has fallen once already and cut the bridge of his nose. Besides, his knees are aching.
There are patches of snow a little higher up but here the slope is clear. His tattered robe is torn at the back, his thin shoulder blade exposed. He wraps himself in his hare-fur blanket and pulls a stout piece of sailcloth around him and scrunches in under a bush.
The quiet night is interrupted by the soft, feathery thump of large birds landing in the dark. The mountain range rears straight up from the coast, and the sea birds – perhaps they are minami-onaga-mizunagidori, definitely some sort of mizunagidori-ka, shearwaters, like small albatrosses – fly to these slopes to breed.
They nest in burrows that are like rabbit holes. It is an extraordinary world, thinks Yukio Tamura.
He feels the vast, pelagic expanse of their souls; lives spent travelling distances that no heavy-footed, earthbound human can conceive; months at sea, sleeping tossed on the ocean’s mountainous swell; soaring on breeze or gale above the tidal surge of a world of water. And each year – back to this mountain to birth and raise a chick in a subterranean burrow!
Another bird thumps down close by with fish for a chick growing underground like a large, white mushroom.
The gentle avian sounds lull Yukio Tamura as he drifts in sleep.
He is alert when he hears larger creatures crashing about. Through the scraggy foliage of his bush he can glimpse large wild pigs in the faint moonlight. He has always been a little afraid of them – has learnt to avoid them in the woods.
He lies still, listening to them snorting and rooting the soft soil. A pig’s nose is a digging machine. It takes little effort to expose a bird’s burrow. The wet crunch and occasional piteous squawk tell the lurking man – suddenly wide-awake – what the pigs seek (and find).
Yukio Tamura can already see in the morning the ploughed dirt, the depressions spattered with blood and down – a single little pink leg with a webbed foot lying in the centre – like some vision of the lowest hell.
It is an extraordinary world.
Dhiraja
No comments:
Post a Comment