The verse is often known by its first four lines, but in its original form it has eight. What it most wants to say lies in the latter half.

The fifteenth day of the seventh month, the day the rains retreat (ango) ends. For the three months of the rainy season, the monks shut themselves away in one place to practice. On its final day, they point out one another's faults and examine their own conduct. This is called pravarana, the invitation ceremony (jusai, or jishi). It was a once-a-year, solemn day.

Shakyamuni had a seat prepared on open ground beneath no roof, and told Ananda, 'On the open ground, strike the gaṇḍī at once.' Ananda went up into the lecture hall, took the gaṇḍī in hand, and after making this declaration, expounded the verse given above.

What was struck was no mere sounding instrument. Ananda called it the 'Tathagata's drum of faith' (nyorai shinku), the drum of the faith of the Tathagata. A drum that proclaims the Buddha's words and calls people near. The heart that receives the sound of the bell as 'a voice that proclaims the Dharma' begins with this single phrase.

We read the first four lines, one by one.

These are the well-known first four lines. But the verse goes on: 'You who long to hear the Dharma, you who would cross the sea of birth-and-death: when you hear this resonance, all of you, come here.' The bell is not a sound that merely tells the hour. It is an invitation to the ferry that crosses the sea.

Gaṇḍī (kenchi) is a word that transcribes the Sanskrit gaṇḍī. It is also written with the variant characters 揵槌 and 犍稚. Originally it was a board carved from wood. Avoiding poisonous woods such as the lacquer tree, one chose a wood that rings well.

In time, ones of bronze and iron were also made, and anything that sounded to gather the monks came to be called a gaṇḍī. In China and Japan, this gradually merged with the bell. Here we can trace the origin of the sound of the temple bell (bonshō) that we hear.

It was struck on many occasions: to announce an assembly, at the recitation of the precepts, at mealtimes, and to invite people to the seat where the Dharma was expounded. Each was a signal that ordered the monks' day. Just as Ananda called it the 'Tathagata's drum of faith,' one hears the voice of the Buddha in the sound that gathers people. That is what the gaṇḍī was.

Open ground (roji) originally meant a roofless, open piece of land. Within the scriptures it took on another meaning as well.

The 'Parable' chapter of the Lotus Sutra tells the parable of the burning house. The children flee a house wrapped in flames and sit down on open ground. The burning house is the world of delusion and suffering; the open ground is the place of peace where those who have left it come to rest.

A piece of ground with no roof, and a state of mind with no covering of the passions. The same word 'roji' carries two seemingly separate matters, yet at a deep level they meet as one, for both are open ground laid bare, with nothing over it. On the open ground where the gaṇḍī is struck, the sound of one who has untied the fetters resounds. And the place to which that sound invites us is, again, open ground.

It is said that the garden set beside a tea room is also called roji because it derives from this open ground of the Lotus Sutra. The sense of a place where one leaves coverings behind and purifies the mind lives on there too.

Following this verse, we may say it this way. The bell carries, here and now, the voice of one who has subdued Māra and untied the fetters. Its sound spreads out in every direction from the open ground, inviting all who can hear it. To those who long to hear the Dharma, to those who would cross the sea of birth-and-death, it calls out, 'Come this way.'

The next time you hear a bell, try, just for a moment, to picture beyond its sound the figure of Ananda standing on open ground and striking it. The drum of the faith of the Tathagata is sounding even now. When you hear it and rise, the crossing has already begun.