On a visit to Kauai in 1989, a good friend of mine took me to see an old, ruined Buddhist temple with smallcreate a new figure for Shrine #18, symbolizing Yakushi Nyorai, “The Healer,” and I pondered how to represent the spirit of the deity. Years before, I had pulled a granite stone from a California river. For years aSerward, it held some kind of presence despite my neglect and incomprehension. For this project, the unaltered stone became my way to convey a feeling that sDll endures from my first glimpse of that temple in the forest.