![]() Both of them love and respect her and take her advice to heart. She calls them to her temple when she is on her deathbed, and her final word to them is to live. ![]() Jiko seems to know when Nao and Haruki feel defeated by life and are on the verge of committing suicide. Nao feels loved and blessed when they are together. Jiko talks to Nao about some Zen Buddhist principles that she values, like the importance of the present moment and the impermanence of all things. But before she ends it all, Nao first plans to document the life. In Tokyo, 16-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. Nao and Jiko become very close when Nao stays with Jiko at her temple over her summer vacation. A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be. Jiko tells Nao that her sorrow felt like a “whale” behind her chest, and by becoming a nun, she slowly “learned how to open up her heart so the whale could swim away.” Jiko knows that Nao is hurting, too, from all the troubles in her life-so she teaches Nao zazen (Zen Buddhist meditation) as a coping mechanism. Jiko decided to become a nun after her gentle, philosophical son, Haruki #1, was drafted into the military during World War II and died as a kamikaze pilot. Nao describes her as an anarchist-feminist Buddhist nun. Jiko is Nao’s 104-year-old great-grandmother. Part III, Chapter 7: Haruki #1’s Secret French Diary.Part II, Chapter 13: Haruki #1’s Letters. ![]()
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