Mujinbon 無盡本
Journal of the Inexhaustible Source
一始無始一
One begins, yet the beginning has no beginning.
萬往萬來
Ten thousand things depart, ten thousand things arrive.
Events pass, things change, and the forms of speech move on. Names rise and fade, and even the paths our thoughts travel shift. Beneath all that comes and goes, Mujinbon keeps a long watch over what does not run dry.
用變不動本
Function changes; the root does not move.
Mujinbon takes this line as its starting point. To hold, within changing words and forms, the questions that do not exhaust themselves. What is the root? What moves the world? What makes a person see again?
析三極無盡本
Divide it into three, and the root is still not exhausted.
Mujinbon's shelves are divided not by subject, but by the place where a question stands.
Heaven (天) is the place of the root. What, in the end, cannot be reduced?
Earth (地) is the place of the world. As what working does it appear?
Human (人) is the place of the person. In whom does the question stand again?
A single piece closes in one place. Yet the same matter can open again in another. The root is not exhausted in any one place.
人中天地一
In the center of the person, heaven and earth become one.
A piece closes in its own place, but opens again within the one who reads it.
一終無終一
One ends, yet the end has no end.
Ten thousand things depart, ten thousand things arrive.
May these pieces be asked again, in you.