Prevod

Long ago, there was a monk on Mount Hiei who was very poor. Hoping he might receive a revelation in a dream, he went to worship at Kurama for seven days. But no dream came, so he resolved to stay another seven days. Still none came, and he kept extending his devotions a week at a time until he had worshipped there for a hundred days. On the hundredth night, he dreamed that a voice said, “I can do nothing for you. Go and worship at Kiyomizu.” Beginning the very next day, he worshipped at Kiyomizu for another hundred days, only to be told again in a dream, “I can do nothing for you. Go to Kamo and make your plea there.” So he went to Kamo. He meant to stay for seven days, but, as before, he kept thinking, “Perhaps tonight I shall have a dream,” and continued his devotions until the hundredth night. Then he dreamed that a voice said, “Monk, I pity you for coming to worship so faithfully. I shall certainly grant you at least such things as paper for sacred offerings and rice to scatter before the gods.” He awoke feeling bitterly disappointed and utterly forlorn. “After all my visits to one holy place after another, is this what I am told at last? What use is a mere handful of rice for offerings? Yet I should be ashamed to go back up the mountain and face everyone. Perhaps I should throw myself into the Kamo River.” But even so, he could not bring himself to cast his life away, and he was also curious to see just how the god intended to provide for him. So he returned to his old quarters on the mountain. While he was there, someone arrived, announcing, “I have something for you from someone you know.” When the monk went to see who it was, he found a man carrying a long white chest. The man set it down on the veranda and left. Greatly puzzled, the monk looked for the messenger, but he was nowhere to be found. When he opened the chest, he found it filled with white rice and fine paper. “So it is just as I was told in my dream! I had hoped there might be something more, but this really is all I have been given.” He was deeply disappointed, but there was nothing to be done. Yet when he used the rice for his various needs, the amount remained exactly the same: it never ran out. The paper, too, never diminished, however much he used. Thus, though he never became particularly grand or splendid, he became a very comfortably situated monk. Truly, one should persevere patiently in one’s devotions.