understand your own self is to understand the truth. The voice of truth is the voice of your own hand. I raised my head toward the shoji; through its broken paper I caught sight of a star in the profundity of silence. "Silence is emancipation," I cried. I could not rise at two o'clock next morning, as I had wished; and I felt ashamed to be called by a priest to leave my bed and get up for breakfast. When I made my appearance in the Assembly Chamber, which was a dining-room in turn, all the monks were already seated, silently and even solemnly, as on the previous evening. They muttered a short prayer before they brought out their bowls and chopsticks from under their black robes. (They are their only belongings, beside one or two sacred books.) With them I had the severest breakfast that ever I ate; it consisted only of some gruel, chiefly of barley, with a little rice as an apology, with a few slices of vegetables dipped in salted water. However, I enjoyed it, as they did.

I thought their diet was far beyond simplicity, while I admitted their pride of high thinking. And I wondered if it was true asceticism to abandon every human longing, so as to make the way clear for spiritual exaltation, for flying in the air as a bird, and not

walking like any other animal. It is written, I am told, in the holy book, of the dignity of poverty, that it should be guarded as sacred law. (Oh, to think of the luxuries of the West!) These priests are sent out begging far and near every month. Begging is regarded as divine, a gift as the expression of sacrifice and self-immolation. They live on charity. They do not beg for the sake of begging, but to keep the spirit of the Buddha's law; then there is no begging. Meikei of Toganowo, the Buddhist teacher of Yasutoki Hojo, the Hojo feudal prince, was asked to accept a great piece of land of the Tan ba province for his temple expenses; but he refused with many thanks, saying that there was no greater enemy than luxury for priests, who, under its mockery, might become dissolute and cease to observe the holy law. Mighty Poverty, I pray unto thy dignity to protect Buddhism from spiritual ruin," he exclaimed. Such is the Zen's loftiness. I remember somebody said that he could pray better when he was hungry. I read the following "list of charity receipts" in the office of the fusu or chief secretary:

"Ten yen for the great feast.
yen for Prajña-reading.

Ten

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Eight yen for the general feasting.
Four yen for feasting.

Three yen and a half for lunch-giving.
Three yen for gruel-giving.

Two yen and a half for rice-giving as a

side-dish.

Seventy sen for cake-giving.

Thirty sen for bath-giving.'

No woman is privileged to enter the priesthall; here the monks themselves wash, cook, and sew. The four priests under the Tenzu Ryo take upon themselves the cook's responsibilities; the Densu priests attend to cleaning the dais and images. And there are the two priests at the Jisha Ryo who serve Monju Bosatsu, the holy image enshrined in the Meditation House; here they offer tea and bowls of rice at the proper time. Those who look after the vegetables are called Yenju; and there are three attendant priests on the chief priest. The chief secretary with his two assistants manages the whole business of the priest-hall.

This Enkakuji embraces mountainous ground of some five hundred acres, where, in the olden days when we had more devotion, more than forty small temples used to stand, but to-day only twenty of them survive the

accidental destruction of fire or natural ruin. By the way, the priest-hall belongs to Seizoku An, one of the tachu temples. Enkakuji was founded by Tokimune Hojo, hero of the Hojo feudal government, who cut off the heads of the envoys of Kublai Khan at Tatsunokuchi, and then destroyed the Mogul armies on the Tsukushi seas. He was a great believer in Zen Buddhism, and on its power he nourished his wonderful spirit of conviction and bravery which triumphed in Japan's first battle with the foreign invasion some six hundred years ago. And it was the Chinese priest called Sogen Zenji whom he invited here to this Enkakuji, and to whom he made his student's obeisance. Indeed, here where I walk in the silence under the twittering of birds from the temple-eaves, through the sentinel-straight cedar trees, is the very place. Here he exchanged confidence and faith with mountains and stars. He must have sat, too, in the Meditation House, just as those fifty priests whom we see sitting there to-day. In truth, zazen, or sitting in abstraction, is the way to concentrate and intensify your mind so that it will never be alarmed, even amid the crash of thunder or at the sight of mountains falling before your eyes.

You have to bend your right leg and set