Word 092
Todai-ji's Nandaimon Gate has stood on this ground for more than eight hundred years, ever since the priest Chogen poured his heart into its reconstruction during the Kamakura period. Rising twenty-one meters, the massive two-story gate has weathered countless seasons, yet still carries the form it held those centuries ago.
Millions of people must have passed beneath it in these eight hundred years. Yet to the gate itself, that immense flow of human footsteps may feel like the passing of a single instant.
Look up, and the thick zelkova pillars reveal layer upon layer of grain, a texture polished smooth by the slow passage of time. It is a quiet accumulation that those hurrying past rarely notice.
In Nara, a place of such ancient history, the time of a single human life can feel like it passes in the blink of an eye.
But there is a way to "stretch" time.
It is to take on something new. And to be grateful for each and every passing moment.
That alone is enough — the brain receives a different kind of stimulation from its everyday habits, and time can be felt to last longer.
Even the wind passing through the Nandaimon Gate, in this very moment, may be something we will never encounter again.