in the midst of life and death the snow falls without end

'Life-and-death' (shōji) is a Buddhist term for the world of delusion itself. Into the very midst of it, the snow simply falls without cease. The line from the Shushōgi quoted in the headnote — that to clarify life and to clarify death is the one great matter for those of the Buddha's house — becomes, just so, a landscape of snow.