The seamless stupa dedicated to Rankei Doryo, the founder of Kencho-ji,
and the one dedicated to Mugaku Sogen make beautiful gravestones. There
is a profundity and an elegance in the egg-shaped bodies of these stupas,
which are supposed to be formless, to contain all things in heaven and
earth. When I see calligraphy by Rankei or by Mugaku at a tea ceremony,
the shape of the seamless stupa—of their gravestones—sometimes drifts
into my mind. There is a row of seamless stupas in Kakuen-ji, too, carved
for successive generations of priests, their egg-shaped heads lined up. I like
seamless stupas, I G.nd that they make nice gravestones, but then it seems
that all seamless stupas mark graves. If possible I’d prefer to avoid having
an object that has been used as a gravestone already, for some other person,
marking my grave. Of course, if I had a seamless stupa carved for me now,
in this world, there’s no doubt that it’d end up being ugly, having a form
unpleasant to look at. Once again, the most beautiful seamless stupas were
produced in the Kamakura Period.
Now that I think of it, I’m really quite lucky to be living in Kamakura,
where I’m able to see al these works of stone art on my walks. Stone
architecture didn’t exist in ancient Japan, and no large works of art were
executed in stone. It has been said that this is an indication of the fragility
of Japanese culture, and it’s certainly true that the seamless stupas, the
treasure-box-seal stupas, the fi.ve-ring stupas, and the
stone Buddhas I saw in the old temples of Kamakura looked every bit as
old as they were, that they had about them an air of loneliness and poverty.
They were old stones of the sort one might find hidden away in the
shadowed recesses of a mountain, possessing none of that beauty which
causes one to stand gazing up in awe. And yet the longer I looked at those
stones the more I was struck by a sense of the powerful beauty that filled
them. I felt an indescribable affinity with Japan’s past.
Then, walking home from my trip to see the seamless stupas, stepping
through the fallen autumn leaves, I was suddenly reminded of the rock in
