Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Ryoanji: An Essay

Wherever a person stands in the garden of Ryoanji, there is always a stone that cannot be seen. It is like the sliver of absence found on the face of a man who has glimpsed in himself a thing until then unknown. Inside the silence, just before he begins to weep. Not because of the thing he has learned---monstrous or saintly, it was always within him---but for the amplitude he hadn't believed was there.

- Jane Hirshfield, "After"

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