On this morning bleak midwinter of '44 in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, heartland of America, Nyogen Senzaki Sensei performed to his makeshift congregation of interned Japanese and Japanese-Americans the duties of a priest. He chanted sonorously mindful of the dark outside the mirror-like windows of the barracks. "Wonder of all Wonders. All beings are Buddha, endowed from the start with wisdom and virtue."
What can be added, what taken away, we will never leave this place, it lives in us like a mother's embrace. They thought with one mind quietly and not without sadness.
When it was all over they had tea and went there separate ways.
On this morning.
Heart Mountain Relocation Center, in Wyoming, was an internment camp for Japanese-Americans during WWII. Nyogen Senzaki (1876-1958) was a zen master who, from 1905 until his death, lived in the US. December 8th is, in Japan, traditionally celebrated as Buddha's enlightenment day.