千手観音

Thousand arm Goddess of Mercy

三十三間堂の千手観音坐像

Thousand arm Goddess of Mercy at Sanjuusangendo in Kyoto.

祈りの炎よ届け

高田松原の松を利用した護摩壇に火がつけられ、犠牲者を追悼した＝１１日午前、岩手県陸前高田市、森井英二郎撮影

Half year after disaster

At the site where the main building of the Kongo Temple was swept away by a tsunami in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, a fire burns in a rite on Sept. 11, 2011, the six-month anniversary of the March 11 quake and tsunami. The ceremony was attended by Buddhist monks from six prefectures of the Tohoku area of northeastern Japan and some 250 other people. The March 11 disaster killed more than 15,700 people, while 4,000 remain missing, mainly in the Tohoku area. (Kyodo)

豊川稲荷/Toyokawa Inari

Prayer Flags, Tibet by MB-FOTOGRAFIA on Flickr.

In the house east of here lives an old woman.
Three or four years ago, she got rich.
In the old days she was poorer than I;
Now she laughs at me for not having a penny.
She laughs at me for being behind;
I laugh at her for getting ahead.
We laugh as though we’d never stop;
She from the east and I from the west!

東家一老婆
富來三五年
昔日貧於我
今笑我無錢
渠笑我在後
我笑渠在前
相笑儻不止
東邊復西邊

Cold Mountain: 100 Poems by the T’ang Poet Han-shan (trans. Burt Watson, 1970)

三十三間堂 ／ Sanjūsangendō
1,001体の千手観音立像 / 1,001 statues of the Bodhisattva Kannon (Guan Yin)