"Dogyo Ninin"
This is the last installment of my emails on religion.
Thank you for bearing with me.
When I woke up at the Okada's, the world outside was hazy and white. The moisture from the storm had turned into one of those autumn fogs that clings to the places between mountains until the sun rises high enough to burn it off. Moisture dripped from everything, a combination of the rain, the fog, and dew, making everything wet, although I'd managed to dry out all my clothes. I couldn't wait to start moving again.
The pilgrimage road led straight to the mountain. The mountain is called Unpenji, which means "The place of clouds." I found that fitting, as I entered a dark evergreen forest, it seemed as if clouds originate here before rising into the sky. The earth seemed in the process of making this fog, which then swirled up overhead. There was a deep scent of earthiness. Spiderwebs were covered in moisture, making them stand out silvery against backgrounds of foliage.
Every so often, little tags and plates had been hung from low branches with messages like, "This way," "You can do it," "Don't give up," and "Dogyo Ninin."
At a slow but steady pace up the steep hill, I had plenty of time to think. One of the thoughts that came to mind was - why are so many people afraid of hiking alone in the mountains while I'm not?
Actually, I watched a Ted Talk about ghosts. When people claim to have encountered ghosts, our first reaction might be, "Really? Are you sure? Was it real? Were you drunk?" But the speaker said those questions were irrelevant. The real question is, "What do you think it wanted?" And the answer generally came in two types. "It wanted recognition" or "It wanted me to go away." The first type often came from the feeling that the ghost had unfinished business. A person who died in vain, a victim of racism or genocide, an unsolved murder. The second time tended to be the person's own feeling of, "I don't belong here."
I tried to imagine walking in a dark forest thinking, "I don't belong here." That would be a turn-off, for sure.
Near my house is a mountain where people have claimed both stories. Many people died in battle there. And potential hikers shy away with the feeling that, "This isn't a place for me." There certainly must be many ghosts haunting the place! But I find the graves charming, and I feel that when I pass them by, the ghosts must be grateful for my recognition. I feel like I belong there, it's my neighborhood after all. When I walk through a forest, I never feel like I don't belong. As I walked up Unpenji, I didn't think twice about being there. But I wondered about other pilgrims, like that woman from Tokyo who was scared of snakes, and how they felt about this beautiful mountain from which the clouds rise. Maybe those signs, "You can do it!" were for them.
I stopped at another sign that said, "Dogyo Ninin."
"You are not alone."
Maybe my comfortableness in the forest is that in the forest, I don't feel alone. It's not God or the Kobo Daishi who is with me, but the trees, the birds, the little mushrooms, the lizards peeking up at me between rocks, the flowers that bloom for me. . . But if there was someone who was always with me, I thought, who would it be?
And then I remembered Mr. Yagi.
And then suddenly my whole world fell apart and came back together, I became suddenly broken and healed at once.
Let me tell you about Mr. Yagi.
This is a story from a long time ago, maybe 12 or so years back.
It's an old story, but I haven't told anyone about it until now. When someone is so close to your heart, there aren't words to express that feeling. It just seems useless to try. But I'll try now.
Mr. Yagi used to be just a regular businessman working in a company. He worked hard, very hard, as Japanese men did in the former generation, and didn't think very much of the world outside of the walls of his company and the walls of his home where his wife raised his children. However in his 30s, he developed pain in his knee that wouldn't go away no matter what the doctor said. He must have been somewhat religiously inclined, because he considered meditation as a way to alleviate his pain. Instead of joining a yoga class, he took an extended break from his job and went on a religious retreat to Myanmar.
In Myanmar, Mr. Yagi practiced Theravada Buddhism, which sticks to the more traditional principles in comparison to Buddhism in Japan. It focuses on self-discovery and holds one responsible for their own enlightenment, rather than praying to a deity that will help you along. Mr. Yagi was able to compare the two and find a way to meditate that focused less on religion and more on finding one's own inner peace and connection to the energies of the world. After practicing for months, Mr. Yagi came back to Japan a different person. He could speak English fluently, had found inner peace, his knee was healed, and he decided he wanted to share his experience with others. He began listening to Buddhist talks and recordings and transliterating them, then using them as fodder for writing his own essays about how to be Buddhist without the religious aspect. He wanted to take all his experiences and help others, especially English speakers, to understand what meditation really is.
After retirement, Mr. Yagi joined my company as a student and began writing a book. He would do all the research for the book, check with me that he understood it correctly, then go home and write 4 or 5 pages, then spend a couple weeks editing them with me. Basically, he was teaching me Buddhism. I would finish up my previous lessons, then head up the stairs to sit down at the back table with Mr. Yagi and he would teach me. He used my questions to bring up points in his work,and sometimes sent me home with books to read. I joked that our lessons, "in lieu of going to church" or "dates with my Buddhist mentor." This went on for years.
Mr. Yagi spoke so fondly of his teachers in Myanmar, that I became very interested in the country and I thought it would be so great if he could finish his book and go back there to show his teachers his work. I wanted to help him write a book that would appeal to my generation and that I would be happy to recommend to others.
Then Mr. Yagi got pneumonia. He didn't come to school for almost a month and I begged the staff to call him every week just to make sure he was doing okay. When he came back he looked very frail, but had not lost any of his focus on his book. I asked him how his stay in the hospital was. He said, "I was able to give up and be satisfied." I knew what that meant. I knew he was able to find a connection to the energies in the world around him that were far more important than the desires of living and the strings attached to things and people. I knew that he had found satisfaction in the way things are, and would never feel the pain and yearning for a project left unfinished or a word left unsaid.
After a while, though, Mr. Yagi fell ill again and decided to stop coming to lessons. When many students leave, they bring us cookies or something to eat as a parting gift. But Mr. Yagi left only a handwritten note on a piece of stationary that said, "Thanks for everything. Yagi" I wanted that note to be for me personally. I wanted it to say, "Jennifer." I didn't want something that simple to be the end. But I remembered that he was able to give up and be satisfied. I needed to give up and be satisfied. That was 9 or 10 years ago.
During my whole pilgrimage in Shikoku, I had not thought of Mr. Yagi at all. I'd been grateful to the people who sponsored my trip. I contributed my interest in the Kobo Daishi to my yearly visit to the sacred Mount Koya. I was impressed with my own ability to jump into something new. And it wasn't until that moment on Unpenji, under fresh greenery and sunlight filtering lazily through the fog, that Mr. Yagi came to mind. On the little plague hanging from a tree were the words, "Dogyo Ninin" and I thought, "Mr. Yagi is with me." I felt a pain in my heart, because I really wanted so badly for it to be true. And recently when I can't figure out what to do with my emotions, I turn to my "thank you" mantra.
I began shouting into the forest, "Mr. Yagi! Thank you!"
The sunlight came in through the fog like beams from heaven while I shouted and cried. I laughed at myself for shouting and crying. And then I shouted and cried some more. Then I fell into chanting, "Thank you Mr. Yagi" while hiking up in the fog. The beams of sunlight filtered down through the trees before me and behind me, like some magical world of white light. I climbed up the mountain higher than the fog, and through the trees I could see it beneath me like a lake of whipped cream with bits of tree and mountain peeking up from it. (Sorry I could not get a picture of this, there were too many trees in the way. But it was an amazing sight.) Like the bud of a lotus flower rising high above the dirty waters of the world to find light in heaven, I made my way up the mountain to a clearing where all the trees had been cut away. I spread my arms to the blue sky above and thanked everything. I knew then that I couldn't just say I'd been paid money to go hiking in Shikoku. I couldn't just say I'd been playing around at being a pilgrim and getting a taste of Japanese religious culture.
This was real now.
This was Jennifer making a religious pilgrimage and finding God kind of real.
How was I going to explain this to all the people I know who know how un-religious I am?
Dogyo Ninin
Instead of continuing up the mountain, I wandered around the clearing just enjoying being alive. And guess what I found! Bees!
There were a bunch of bee hives that someone had laid out carefully for the winter. Bees are often brought in wooden boxes to pollinate crops, especially fruiting trees. The boxes are then placed somewhere in nature for the winter. And I ran across that spot! It was nice hearing the hum of bees along with my beating heart in the still world. Birds sang, adding melody to the beat, and a wild boar came lumbering along, nosing the ground in search of earthworms that had come up after the rain. When the boar saw me, it scampered back into the forest and I decided it was time to move on.
All the way up the mountain, I didn't encounter a single other human. There had only been four of us at the Okada's, and Miwako was going the opposite way, the man from Kasaoka was taking a different route, and the man from Niigata had left a half hour before me and probably hadn't stopped like I had to take pictures and have moments of revelation. I didn't know if I'd see him again, but I did actually run into him when I arrived finally at Unpenji temple. He was leaving as I was arriving.
"Did you run into many spiderwebs on your way up?" he asked.
"Not so many."
"That't because I cleared them all out before you!" he laughed.
The temple was really nice. Not only were there the two main halls, but there was a garden of statues, Buddhist lore from all over the world, and a little garden full of trees just starting to change into their fall colors. I found a signboard next to a statue of the Boddhisatva Kannon with the following story.
Once there was a hunter named Yonari who made his living hunting on Unpenji. Every morning he would visit the shrine and pray to the Bodhisattva Kannon that he would be able to shoot a lot of game that day. Kannon thought to put a stop to the killing of animals. She hid her head under a temple bell and went into the forest to wait for him. Yonari came to the forest as usual and saw the dark shape of the temple bell. Thinking it was an unusual animal, he hid himself. Kannon lifted the bell, wondering where he had gone to. When her golden eye became visible to him, he took a shot. The dark, large thing went off so he followed the trail of its blood. He followed it all the way to the statue of Kannon that he had always prayed before. He found the eye of the stone statue gushing blood. Yonari swore of hunting and killing forever and became a pious Buddhist.
I wandered up to the mountain summit and found a large statue of Vaisravana (Bishamonten in Japanese). He is supposed to be some kind of god who protects places of worship and believers of Buddha. This Indian god has also merged with Japanese folklore and is sometimes portrayed as the lucky god of war. The statue on Unpenji is so large on top of a tower so tall that it's hard to look up at him. I climbed up the tower, hoping that Unpenji would give me a 360 degree view of Shikoku.
At the top, I found myself at Vaisravana's feet and looking over the mountains. The clouds and fog which had been resting low in the valleys had now risen and were making their way into the sky. I stood there a long time, watching their ever-moving dance over the peaks. The world was so real in front of me.
Moving around to the other side of the statue, I saw that the clouds there had gone up high enough to be the puffy white forms we usually see in the sky. They still were about eye level, but rising slowly. Below them, the entire way to the sea spread out in front of me. I could see over the foothills, down to the flat lands where people cultivated rice, and over to the cities where towers sent up smoke, and finally the expanse of blue beyond that, dotted with islands.
My breath caught in my throat as I saw something familiar. It was little hill where a river meets the sea, and a cliff face behind it that I remember seeing from ground level. There! Kannonji. That was where my pilgrimage started. That was where the woman at the hotel said, "Well of course you're a pilgrim!" even though I hadn't known it myself. I went to Kannonji twice before building up enough courage to get my first Goshuin. The Jennifer back then, although it was only a month before, seemed so different from the Jennifer who stood on top of the world at Unpenji. And the clouds moved up, giving me a clear but distant view of the path I took that first day. My feeling of satisfaction overwhelmed me and I thought I'd never be able to get my feet to bring me down from the mountain.
Since that moment, I've visited another 8 temples, plus a few other religious sites, and each time I learn more and get a new perspective of my own pilgrimage. I know I've rambled on about temples enough, though. I'm not sure if anyone still wants to hear my stories. But I'm willing to tell them if you are. Anyway, I think I'll give the topic of religion a rest for a while and take a break from super-crazy-long posts for a few weeks. Thanks for listening, anyway. And please keep in touch.
Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year,
Jennifer