Word 108
Beside the path leading to Nigatsu-do at Todai-ji, a solitary cedar spreads its branches in quiet stillness. Known as Roben Sugi, this tree carries a legend: as an infant, the monk Roben was said to have been carried off by a great eagle and left beneath its branches.
Yet the cedar standing there today is, in truth, a tree that has passed the torch. The original great cedar fell in a typhoon, and a young cedar planted in its place has slowly thickened its trunk over the passing decades.
To those who walk this path every day, the change is almost impossible to notice. Today, as always, the cedar seems to stand exactly where it stood yesterday.
In the midst of daily life, do you ever worry whether you're truly growing?
Have you ever had an experience like this?
Someone you haven't seen in a while tells you, "You've changed!"
Yet you yourself don't feel much sense of it.
In other words, it's hard to notice the daily changes in yourself, or in those close to you.
Yes — you are growing, every single day, without fail.
Yet someone returning after a long absence pauses along the path. The trunk is a little thicker than they remembered, the branches reaching a little higher. Unnoticed by anyone, the cedar grows just a little more, today as it did yesterday.