Quietly Reaching Out

Step from Takabatake in Nara into the folds of the hills, and an old stone-paved slope runs on beside the murmur of the Notogawa stream. This road, which runs out to the village of Yagyu, is called the Takisaka Path. Swordsmen, and traders crossing the pass to do business, have trodden these stones for centuries. The afternoon light, slanting in between the trees, shifts its shape slowly across the moss-covered paving.

Partway along the route, a little above eye level on a high face of rock just off the road, a single Buddha is carved. This cliff carving, known to the world as the "Sunset Kannon," is said to have been cut in the middle of the Kamakura period, in an age when devotion to Miroku ran deep in this region. Half sunk into the surface of the granite, the figure has weathered nearly seven hundred years, its outline grown soft and rounded. The name "sunset" comes from this: as the sun sinks westward, the light reaching through a gap in the trees falls just upon the face of this Buddha and lifts it into a golden glow.

Those who hurry along the path keep their eyes on the stones at their feet and pass by in front of it. Only the one who happens to stop, and to look up at the rock, notices the quiet face turned this way from the shade of the trees. The Buddha simply faces toward the valley, and goes on being there.