And the last I'm going to read from this collection.
This is Mount-- this is Mount St Helens as it looks now, 1,200
feet lower than it used to be.
You can only climb it from the south side now.
The north side has a little--
not so little-- pool of hot lava going in the middle of it.
This is the way it looked in 1945.
This is a picture that I took of it with my box camera.
Yeah.
"The Kannon of Asakusa, Senso-ji."
Short grass temple, along the Sumida river.
This is in Tokyo.
After having a very dismissive--
youthfully dismissive, arrogant attitude
toward Tokyo for many years--
living in Kyoto, and thinking that I was a high class
cultured person by comparison--
I finally took time out to--
and I had friends I had to go see, its true.
I took time out to actually adapt to Tokyo, and learn
what it was about.
And I came to actually love it, in a curious way,
as probably the only mega-metropolis on Earth
that works.
With public transportation going all
which directions, above ground and below ground,
multi-level freeways snaking everywhere,
homeless people very neatly organized
with their shoes outside their tents, and people
not running around, actually walking slow.
Slower than they walk in Manhattan.
And this is-- I've been watching this for several years now.
I get to Japan about, if not once a year, every other year.
There's only one temple in Tokyo that
actually functions anymore.
And that's this temple, the Asakusa Temple of Senso-ji.
It's huge.
It is surrounded by bars, restaurants, and brothels,
and little shrines, and other small temples that
are connected to it.
It's just a remarkable place.
And it is a great pilgrim destination still,
and will doubtless remain so.
"At the Buddha-hall of Senso-Ji, hundreds
of worshippers surge up the high stone steps, and into the Hall
dropping coins in a box.
Looking into the the black-and-gold chambers,
somewhere a statue of Kannon, Kuan-yin, Goddess of Mercy,
Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattava, peace and compassion for all
in this world-realm this particular time,
old and young people swirl by.
Incense in clouds.
We follow the flow out the south side steps, white gravels,
and back down the pilgrim stone walkway that
leads there lined with street shops and stalls,
packed with babies in strollers, old folks in wheelchairs,
girls in their tanktops back to the gate at the entrance.
The Gold Dragon Mountain, Thunder Gate red tree pillars
and sweeping tile eaves--
back out to the streets--
traffic, police, taxis, the tempura restaurants of Edo.
Cross to the riverside park space, men
cross-legged on cardboard under the shade tree and step
into the long slender riverboat water-bus that
runs down the Sumida river.
I came here unwitting, the right way, ascending the Sumidagawa,
approaching Senso-ji from the sea.
Going under the Thunder Gate, walking the pilgrim path,
climbing the steps to Avalokiteshvara, Bidhisattva
of Compassion, asking--
please guide us through samsara.
'Form, sensation, thought, impulse, consciousness,
are not born, not destroyed, without gain,
without loss no hindrance!
Thus no fear.'
For all beings living or not, beings or not,
inside or outside of time,"
Those are the teachings of the Bodhisattava
of Avalokiteshvara, actually.
[LAUGHS] That's how I ended that collection.