This is the last installment of my emails on religion.
Thank you for bearing with me.


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The Okada Guest House is the only place to stay between Sankakuji and Unpenji temples. It's a cozy little place and only accommodates 10 people. The Okada couple have two houses on their property: their house and the guest house with an awning in between where you can hang your rain-soaked clothes out to dry. I arrived there around 3pm, although it ( Read more... )

「寂しい」はどんな時に感じますか。
「一人」と「寂しい」は違いますね。
よく感じますか。あまり感じないですか。

「神様」を信じる人にうらやましいです。どこでも行っても、「一人」ではありません。なにもしても、誰かが見ているので無駄がないでしょう。

私はあまり寂しくなりません。でも、自然にそうなったと思いません。その気持ちは何年間育ていて、今の自分になりました。

一番寂しいことは「会いたい人に会えない」ことかなと考えています。

この間、伊予三島でビジネスホテルに泊まって、寂くなりました。
だって、ベッドは北向きでした。
主人は絶対に北向きに寝てはいけないといつも言います。北には天国があるからです。寝たら、死ぬよと注意されます。
でも一人で主人がいなくて、文句を言えませんでした。

そして、次の日、山に登る日 ( Read more... )

How often do you feel lonely?

There's a difference between being alone and lonely. I know some people feel those together, and some people can spend days being alone without getting lonely. I used to define "lonely" as being, "The person you expected or wanted to be there wasn't" as I often used to feel lonely even among friends.

I think not ( Read more... )

国分寺から始まりました。
優しい松の影で歩いていました。
今日の予定は国分寺から山に登って、根香寺に着く、根香寺から降り得て、町の中の一宮寺に着く、電車で帰ることです。


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This is my second route on my spiritual journey. It's not as enlightening as the first route, but it created the basis for everything that happened afterward. If my journey is boring, then just check out some nice pictures of Japan instead.
The route I had to follow went something like this:
Start at Kokubuji temple, climb a mountain from there, ( Read more... )

The walk to the next temple took a couple of hours, which gave me a lot of time to think. One of the things I thought about was when I'd taken some friends to Kyoto and visited Kiyomizu Temple. That place is always packed with a hundred tourists, maybe half will be Japanese and half foreigners, and after praying people are taking selfies or eating ( Read more... )

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Hello.

I'm gonna get religious on y'all.

Starting with a question - what makes a religion a religion?
I think we had to answer that on some essay in high school, and I sat there really thinking about it until my mind hurt. These days, as an adult, someone asks me a question like that and I just pass it off, "Nice question. Who knows." End of story.

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