Miroku`s Gesture - Phoebus Media Group

Miroku’s Gesture
James W. Boyd
Colorado State University
Miroku Bosatsu, Kōryū-ji, Kyoto
Low-voiced chants, white camellias set against green-swept moss
invoke stillness throughout the grounds of the oldest Buddhist
temple in Kyoto, Kōryū-ji. Here one of the first art works to be
registered as a National Treasure is preserved: a seventh century
wood carving of Miroku Bosatsu (Bodhisattva of the Present and
Future Buddha). In the quiet light of the Treasure Hall visitors
can contemplate this life-sized statue, the embodiment of mindful
compassion.
Miroku’s Gesture
A gesture sculpts space,
touches something hovering
at the edge of expression
a child wipes away tears
a goodbye wave accents
a deep sadness
the conductor’s hands
make sound visible
the heart lurches
103
104
Japan Studies Association Journal 2014
Boyd / Miroku’s Gesture
Like the wingtips of a crane
Miroku’s delicate fingers
move through the air
discern where we live
open our lives to the
stillness of flight
a stillness that
abides deeply
between each
vanishing thought
on the other side
of desire
a place where the
mind never arrives,
is always leaving
has nothing to explain.*
* The last stanza is an adaptation of a verse in “After T’ao Ch’ien’s ‘Drinking
Wine’” by the Ch’an poet Su Tung-Po, trans. David Hinton, Classical Chinese
Poetry: An Anthology (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 2008, p. 383.
105
106
Japan Studies Association Journal 2014