I inherited the house of my father's mother and lived there long. Later, my ties to it weakened and my fortunes declined, and in my thirties I built, by my own choice, a hut. Compared with my former dwelling it was a tenth the size. Then, in the spring of my fiftieth year, I left home and renounced the world. Having no wife or children to begin with, I had no ties hard to cut. With no rank or stipend, what was there to cling to?
And now, as my life, like dew, nears its vanishing at sixty, I have once more made a dwelling for my last years. It is like a traveler making a lodging for a single night, or an old silkworm spinning its cocoon. Compared with the dwelling of my middle years, it is not even a hundredth the size.
It is just ten feet square, and less than seven feet high. Since I do not fix on a place, I do not own land to build on. I laid a foundation, put on a simple roof, and fastened each joint with hooks, so that if anything displeases me, I can easily move it elsewhere. How much trouble would moving be? It fills only two carts, and beyond paying the carters there is no cost at all.
Now that I have hidden myself deep on Mount Hino, I have put out eaves more than three feet to the east as a place to break and burn brushwood. On the south I laid a bamboo veranda, and at its west made a shelf for holy water; toward the north, behind a screen, I placed a painting of Amida, hung a picture of the bodhisattva Fugen beside it, and set the Lotus Sutra before them. At the east end I spread dried bracken as my bed at night. In the southwest I made a hanging bamboo shelf and put three black leather boxes on it, holding extracts of poetry, music and works like Essentials of Rebirth in the Pure Land. Beside them stand a koto and a biwa.
In spring I see the wisteria, shining in the west like purple clouds. In summer I hear the cuckoo. In autumn the voices of the evening cicadas fill my ears. In winter I gaze long at the snow.
In the end, the moon of my life is sinking, and what remains is near the mountain's rim. Soon I will set out into the darkness of the three paths. What is there to lament? The Buddha's teaching is to cling to nothing. Even loving this grass hut now is a fault. Clinging to quiet solitude must be a hindrance too. Why should I talk of useless pleasures and waste precious time?