'It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met...' Moonligh

The Buddhist priest Kenko clung to tradition, Buddhism, and the pleasures of solitude, and the themes he treats in his "Essays, " written sometime between 1330

These two works on life's fleeting pleasures are by Buddhist monks from medieval Japan, but each shows a different world-view. In the short memoir Hôjôki, Ch�

There were eggs in every bird’s nest, the air buzzed with honeybees, and cherry trees blossomed all at once. The poor villagers forgot their cares and gathere