Sometimes, the Courage to Turn Back
As September draws to an end, across the wide grassland of the Heijo Palace Site in Nara, Japanese pampas grass and silver grass have begun to put out their silver plumes. They are said to shine brightest from mid- to late October. Looking north from the Suzaku Gate, beyond the grass, stands the First Imperial Audience Hall, the Daigokuden, with its vermilion pillars. It is about forty-four meters wide at the front and about twenty-seven meters tall, rebuilt in 2010, the year marking thirteen hundred years since Nara became the capital. Yet the original hall stood on this spot for only some thirty years after the capital was established here.
At the end of 740, Emperor Shomu moved the capital from Heijo-kyo to Kuni-kyo in Yamashiro Province. The audience hall, too, was taken apart, carried to the Kuni Palace, and put up again over some four years. The capital then moved on to the Naniwa Palace, and further to the Shigaraki Palace in Omi. At Koka-ji Temple, near Shigaraki, work began on a great statue of the Rushana Buddha, and in the eleventh month of 744, the pillar for its inner frame was raised. It is said the emperor himself took hold of the rope.
In the fourth month of 745, fires broke out again and again in the hills around the Shigaraki Palace. At the end of that month a great earthquake struck, and the shaking went on for three days and nights; even into the fifth month, the aftershocks did not stop. On the second day of the fifth month, the emperor gathered his officials and asked where the capital ought to be. Every one of them answered: Heijo. Two days later, he put the same question to the monks of the four great temples of Heijo-kyo: Yakushi-ji, Daian-ji, Gango-ji and Kofuku-ji. Their answer, too, was Heijo.
Life is not as simple as 'All you need is to try your very hardest.'
Even if you are trying your very hardest, if what you are doing is self-righteous, or is not something society is asking for, it will not go well.
We must not deify the idea of 'Just try your very hardest, no matter what.'
Each time, think things through with your own mind before you choose, at times stop where you stand, and keep the courage to turn back, and so, let us go on living.
On the tenth day of the fifth month, the people of the markets set out for Heijo-kyo. From early morning until late at night, it is said, the line of travelers never broke. The emperor returned to Heijo-kyo the following day. The making of the Rushana Buddha began anew here in Nara, and in time it became the Great Buddha of Todai-ji. The hall that had been rebuilt at Kuni, however, never came back to Nara; the next year it was given to the provincial temple of Yamashiro and became its main hall. At Heijo Palace, a new audience hall was built to the east of the original one. Today only its stone platform remains, in the middle of the grass. At dusk, standing on that platform, you can see Mount Wakakusa to the east and the Ikoma hills to the west. From now into October, the plumes of the grass will deepen in color day by day.