Chapter 2

Kami and people are parent and child.
Because the child is beloved, the hardship of the road was given —
yet you were beaten by that hardship, and how far you have fallen.
Even the rat knows what lies three days ahead;
you cannot see an inch ahead,
so thickly has your sight been clouded.

Yet still you are the divine subjects of the Kami’s land.
The Way of Heaven does not abandon the people.
Even when food fails you shall not die — it is only for a little while.
After the darkness, the dawn comes.
The Kami sees all. Do not fear.

Your merit shall be returned a thousandfold, ten-thousandfold.
But if it be known to others, it is erased from the ledger.
So let it be hidden.
Work for others, and work for the land —
this is what it means to be the true Kami’s people.

A good age is coming, when wine and tobacco may be freely made by any hand.
Yet many have not the patience to endure until then.
Unless you follow swiftly the word of ◎ — the Moto-Kami, the Original Root —
the world must be made a sea of mud.
So return swiftly to the heart of ◎.
The Kami implores you.

The blind lead the blind by the hand — where are they going?
Let those who have awakened become vessels of the true Kami.

The pleasures of evil grow heavier as they go forward, and turn to suffering.
The way of the Kami grows better as it goes forward.
Though the beginning is bitter,
take the future for your joy and endure.

Rationing is rationing, and control is control — these are the ways of men.
The way of the Kami is the light of the sun,
a way in which not only the people, but the grasses and the trees, rejoice.
The light of the sun is the heart of the Kami —
Miitsu, the August Might.

Has human wisdom ever, of itself, accomplished a single thing well?
All is botched, all bound in knots,
and still you do not see.
Ah, the blind, the blind — what trouble, what trouble.

Saved you must be, yet as you stand none can be saved.
To turn the world to a sea of mud is easy;
but to the Moto-Kami, that would not suffice.

This much has been broken apart and made plain.
If you will not hear, still more painful sights must be shown.
What follows winter is not always spring.

There is a plan of evil — to cut the ◎-land into eight and kill it.
In the ◎-land there are subjects of foreign powers,
and in the foreign lands there are children of the Kami.
When the Rock-Door (Iwato) opens, all shall be known at once.