Empress Shotoku Invents Printing in 770

Smallpox, insurrection. Was her kingdom not ravaged

enough already?

Had the gods of disfigurement not been appeased?

She would not abide, she would not acknowledge

impediment.

The priests' advice to order prayer in all the village

temples

was enough to excite her mind to invention:

She would construct a million tiny pagodas,

commission architects of the written word

to print dharani for each of them

to ward off the demons of disease and war.

Amplified, repeated, the prayers would reach

the ears of Buddha in unison,

so that the loneliness of one priest praying,

the vulnerability of one prayer floating in black ink,

the unpredictability of a scrap of paper against a

universe

of rain and wind and wayward candle flame,

might be channeled into mystical choruses

rising into the air with simultaneous intention.

She would pray for her invention, she would give her

priests the vision

to see multiplicity, to make a stone, a block, a metal

empowered to copy whole prayers in rapid succession

like the singing of the stars, the flutter of bamboo

leaves.

Were a million dharani not a million times more

powerful?

And her private prayer, her wish for immortality,

would it not ascend on a million whispering tongues?