The World Is Turning Out As It Is Meant To
On a low hill in Koizumi, in Yamatokoriyama, stands a temple called Jiko-in. It was built in 1663 by the tea master Katagiri Sekishu, in memory of his late father. Sekishu was the lord of the small Koizumi domain, and also the founder of his own school of tea. The temple gate was carried here from Ibaraki Castle in Settsu, which had been pulled down under the edict of one castle to a province, and its roof was re-thatched to match the shoin hall.
Sitting in the shoin, you look out onto a bed of white sand, and beyond it a long, clipped bank of azalea shrubs that rises and falls like a gentle ridgeline. It is a line the gardener has trimmed to the same height, year after year. There is almost no stonework; this garden is made of sand, clipped shrubs, and a low hedge, and nothing else. That shape has been kept for more than three hundred and fifty years.
Beyond the hedge, the Yamato plain spreads out — fields, the roofs of houses, the far line of hills. None of it was set there by anyone. The hedge is kept deliberately low, so that it does not stand in front of the view, and the clipped shrubs near at hand and the distant hills are seen as one continuous landscape.
In life, holding up an ideal is very important.
It is because you make an effort toward it, and, as a result, come to grow as well.
But even when there are times that things do not go as your ideal would have them, do not lament, or sink into gloom, or grow angry.
That is nothing other than arrogance.
At such times, what you need is a heart that accepts things as they are.
The world is turning out just as it is meant to.
In the shoin, a serving of matcha is brought to you. Those who visit sit holding it for a while, looking at the garden. The line of the clipped shrubs was drawn by human hands. The plain beyond it was there from the start. As the sun sinks lower, the colour of the far hills shifts, and the surface of the fields catches the light. This garden has never once tried to change that plain.