十一 6

Time floats a little, but once I start struggling, I am at once sucked down. Being sucked down hurts, so I immediately start scratching and clawing again. Before long my body grows tired. My mind is frantic, but my legs no longer work as they should. In the end, whether I was clawing at the jar in order to sink, or sinking in order to claw, even I could no longer tell.

Then, amid the suffering, I thought thus: to meet with such torment is, in short, merely the wish to climb up out of the jar. I would dearly love to get out, but that I cannot is perfectly clear. My feet are less than three inches. Even if my body floated to the water's surface, and from there I stretched my front paws to their fullest, they would never reach the jar's rim, more than five inches above, to catch hold. If my claws cannot catch the jar's edge, then no matter how much I claw, no matter how I panic, even if I wore my body to powder over a hundred years, I could never get out. To try to escape what I know perfectly well I cannot escape is futile. It is because I try to force the impossible that I suffer. How pointless. To seek out suffering of my own accord, to delight in subjecting myself to torture, is absurd.

"I shall stop now. Do as you please. I decline any further scratching and clawing," and I let my front paws, hind paws, head, and tail yield to natural force, offering no resistance.

Gradually it grows easier. Whether it is suffering or blessedness, I cannot tell. Whether I am in the water or in the sitting room, I do not know. It makes no difference where or how I am. I am simply at ease. Nay, I cannot even feel ease itself. Sun and moon are cut away, heaven and earth are ground to dust, and I enter a wondrous peace. I am dying. In dying I attain this peace. Peace cannot be attained without dying. Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu. How blessed, how blessed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”