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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: distances,-- in order that I might repeat over them the holy service. But I
repeated the service and performed the rites only as a matter of business;
-- I thought only of the food and the clothes that my sacred profession
enabled me to gain. And because of this selfish impiety I was reborn,
immediately after my death, into the state of a jikininki. Since then I
have been obliged to feed upon the corpses of the people who die in this
district: every one of them I must devour in the way that you saw last
night... Now, reverend Sir, let me beseech you to perform a Segaki-service
[2] for me: help me by your prayers, I entreat you, so that I may be soon
able to escape from this horrible state of existence"...
No sooner had the hermit uttered this petition than he disappeared; and
Kwaidan |
