Japan in 150 words or less

… then you might enjoy my next blogging adventure, Radio Marshall Street.

Only yesterday did I learn how to say thank you in the local dialect of Osaka and Kyoto.  Today was especially fun, for “Oki ni” worked like a magic key that opened  smiles.

This will be my last post from Japan.  Tomorrow is my last day to enjoy my travels and find suitable mementos to take to friends and loved ones waiting at home, and then I have a day to pack and drag all my belongings back to Nagoya and Okazaki and Nagoya again before I fly home early Thursday morning.

I cannot distill the complexity of my brief experience of Japan here, so I will forgo any thoughts of summary or conclusion.  Japan, like life, is just too wild, varied, and colorful.  And I’m really  not ready for my engagement with this   crowded chain of islands  to conclude—as I said to myself at the outset, this was a beginning.

I do, however, want to make space for thanks. So many people and places and institutions have made my stay what it has become. And so, to all of you, Oki Ni.

My departure from Hokyoji was one of many bows. I bade farewell at the altars in the main temple hall and the zendo and at the altar dedicated to Jakuen.  I met again with the abbot, who wished me well and imparted some last wisdom.  And then as quickly as I had arrived, I found myself leaving through the front entry, escorted by two monks in more formal robes.  At the temple gate I bowed one last time to the zendo, to Buddha and to the brothers gathered at the front door.

In twenty-five minutes I was again on a slow train wending its way back to Fukui.

My meeting with the abbot of Hokyoji was a rich and poetic experience.  I entered his small chamber on my knees, lit incense before the altar, and we greeted one another with three sets of prostrations.  “James-san, when you lift your palms, do it as if  the Buddha has one foot on each.”

We would eventually talk about my reasons for seeking out Hokyoji and why he thought I should devote my life to Buddhism, but first there was a gift.  “Hokyoji is not a rich temple; we have no treasure to show you but this mountain,”  he said as his retainers lifted the shades and I literally became wide-eyed.

I had marveled at this beautiful mountainside all week, but not like this. Truly breath-taking and emotional it was,  and  I  noticeably lost my composure for instant.

The mountain, the Abbot retold, was what the temple’s founder, Jakuen, contemplated in meditation for 18 years before reaching enlightenment.  A refugee from war in China, he choose it because it reminded him of home.

In this amazing setting I experienced the traditional Japanese tea ceremony, and I mostly listened as the abbot spoke about seasons and colors,  about war and peace,  about karma, about  pain,  and about compassion.

Growing up, good conversation was always an expression of love.  Ours was a family of talkers, and we gabbed out of joy.  Silence, especially at meal time, meant someone was angry, hurt or sad.

On my second day at Hokyoji, old dysfunctions crowd my mind as I descend into silence:  “I should not be here; they don’t want me here; no one will talk with me; what am I doing wrong?”   I plan my escape several times over in my head —just politely explain that you are ready to go, Jim, and then ask for a ride back to the station.

But I return to the zendo again and again and by the following day, I have resolved to stay.  And a new world opens as  I begin to see the compassion of Buddhism from the inside.   The brothers are such kind people, and the feelings of difference I have worn my entire time in Japan are quietly absent.  This place is familiar,  I start to think.  Have I been here before?

I awake at three strikes to the woodblock.  It’s 4 AM. I wash in the cold. I watch my breath as the sound of rushing mountain streams fills my ears. The venerable halls of Hokyoji sit upon great rock pedestals, alpine water coursing right through them.

Forty minutes later,  I sit in the zendo for an hour.  Just sit. Empty your mind. Nonthinking. But there’s growing pain in my legs.  Wandering mind, pain, numbness. Empty your mind. Just sit.  Bad posture, more pain. When will the gong ring?  Just sit.　More pain. Am I emptying my mind? It rings.

In the main hall, we chant the liturgy, which I come to adore. This lasts an hour.  And then, finally, we heartily speak our first words to one another：　Ohayou Gozaimasu! (Good morning!).  We break our fast in silence.

Later thick snow begins to fall. I return to the zendo to sit again. Just sit.

That is my question. Indeed that is everyone’s question, but since monastic life is mostly silence, I don’t need yet struggle to understand myself or articulate my thoughts either.

At Hokyoji I am assigned a small traditional room adjacent to the main temple hall. Aside from the small kerosene heater and a pile of blankets, I find a futon, a zafu on which to sit at a low pine table, a copy of the Soto sect daily liturgy, an alarm clock and a lamp.

After a  tour and prostrations before various altars and a brief evening service, I wait alone in my room until supper.  The meal is silent with ample vegetarian fare and  stylized ritual, and it will take several days to shed some of  my dinner-time oafishness.

There are but five of us here right now,  and I am the only guest.

In Japan, the country-side or inaka (田舎） is never far.  If you hunger for rural Japan, be aware, for blink and you’ll miss it as your train arrives in another metroplex.  But inaka is more a state of mind, I think, than a location.

After a two-hour express from Kyoto to Fukui, I started to feel the change. Time slowed and fabulous handbags and boot cuffs were absent in the small station waiting room where I sat and read for two hours before I could take a slow, local two-car contraption to the mountain town of Ono.

Narrow boulder-strewn rivers striped the flatlands that squat between magnificent stone peaks and their adjacent conifer hillsides.  Pale blue, white, gray, jags of black and dark green.  Snow, stone, sky. And then Ono.

I warm myself by the kerosene heater in the quaint one-room station and wait for my ride up the mountain to Hokyoji.