Wednesday Photo: “This heart, this body, this life — 88 year-old man, Tenko”, an Ittōen tengai hanging next to a traditional British corn dolly in my Cambridge study

Taken with an Fujifilm X100V
(click on the photo to enlarge) 

My wife, Susanna, bought me this corn dolly many years ago from the Corn Craft Gift Shop & Tea Room that was right next door to us when we were living in the village of Monks Eleigh, Suffolk, UK. 

And the tengai (headscarf) was given to me last summer by my friend, and dharma friend, Miki Nakura. The tengai is worn both in worship and at work at Ittōen, the Garden of the One Light, and the hard to read handwritten variant kana characters reproduced on it were done by the community’s founder, Tenkō-san. They read, top to bottom: このこころ 　この身　このくらし (“This heart, this body, this life”) followed by Tenkō-san’s signature/monogram, “88 year-old man, Tenko”.