Wednesday night, March 21 - Arrival

The head baggage loader is on the right

Arrived Wednesday night at the Nene House shortly after midnight, to a smiling Wes.   There was snow in Seoul and that delayed my connecting flight enough that I missed the last Huruka (fast train) from the airport to Kyoto by a WHISKER.  I was running, the ticket officer had his bullhorn out for last call and as he shooed me in he said – "Just pay cash on the train."  I didn’t have cash.  First lesson in Japan:  have cash on you.  When I went down a level to buy a bus ticket from the automat it also didn’t take a card – only cash.  Cash for the taxi too.  So now I have cash.

Waiting for the tour bus style bus to Kyoto I watched there were three gentleman whose job it was to load the luggage into the cavern at the bottom of the bus.  Once the bus before mine was loaded and everyone was on, the door closed and the head-man bowed deeply to the just-closed door and driver inside, and then the bus pulled away. 

During a formal meal with servers, when the First Handaikan (food server) sees that everything is finished after the meal, she bows to the Jikijitsu to indicate that all’s well, and the Jiki rings a bell and leads everyone out.  I love those moment of silent communication during Zen ritual.  And here’s someone else speaking that same language. 

My taxi driver was jolly – he’d never heard of Nene House but found it thanks to Google.  Talked to me through Google too.  He spoke some Japanese and Google told me:  “It rained a little earlier.” and “Could you please walk from here – the street is very narrow.”  Indeed.  Nene House is on a lovely little house on a little winding street in the southwest section of Kyoto.  I was asleep the second my head hit the pillow.


My room at Nene House


Scroll and flower arrangement I wake up to


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tuesday: On my Last Day, Meeting Diaun Roshi.

Image
Today Wes, Sheila and I took a train to a suburb of Kyoto to visit Diaun Kitano Roshi.  Diaun is a special guy.  He spent most of his life as a professor of Buddhist philosophy - the only one in his department with any interest in practice.  Then at the ripe old age of 65 he entered the sodo , or monk's quarters, at Kennin-ji - something unheard of at his advanced age.  He did the traditional thing that 20-year olds do to enter - sat on the steps with his head bowed for 2 days, then 3 days inside doing zazen in a room with nothing in it, not even a zafu.  After spending a very difficult year there he returned to his teacher.  Soon after his teacher gave him transmission as a roshi, and Diaun took over from his teacher at Nagaoka Zen Juku. Wes tells me that Nagaoka Zen Juku used to be a school for troubled youth - their parents would send them there to get some Zen discipline while they learned algebra, history, and other subjects.  Sogen Hori, whom some of you will have rememb
Read more

Getting Ready

Image
Well I guess it's about time. After practicing Zen for 28 years and teaching it for 18, I'm going on my first trip to Japan.  Many thanks to the Puget Sound Zen Center for sponsoring my trip, and to Wes and Sheila Borden for providing my room and board, and for guiding me around Kyoto. As Wes pointed out my trip is a little like a Catholic priest visiting Rome - a pilgrimmage of sorts.  I'll stop in on a few of the 100s of temples in Kyoto, and visit the two great Rinzai monasteries, Daitoku-ji and Myoshin-ji.  I'll visit with a monk or two I know, and I might even see some cherry blossoms, though due to some cold weather it looks like I'll be a little early. I leave in a couple of days, on Tuesday, March 20.  I'm only staying a week, I'm spending it all in Kyoto, and I'll be snapping photos and writing a little something each day.   I've never done this travel blogging thing before, but it looks straightforward enough (famous last words...). 
Read more

A Recurring Dream

Image
A few years ago I visited my grandfather in a dream.  He was living in a cabin overlooking a body of water in Japan.  There were the usual dream hijinks surrounding the finding of him - multiple obstructions and misunderstandings - but finally I knocked on the correct door and there he was, and we ate lunch together overlooking the water, watching birds circle.  He was kindly and quiet, as I always remembered him.  Since then I've had a reoccuring dream - my only reoccuring dream in recent years - in which over and over again I miss my plane to Japan.  In one I'm getting a ride down the hill from Mt. Baldy Zen Center and I know I'm going to be late, in another I'm stuck in an airport maze.  And so forth.  I never get there. Here's a photo of my grandfather, E. Mobray Tate with my grandmother Jo, aboard a Japanese steamer on their way to Bankok from Japan via China, where he was to become a teacher at Bankok Christian College.  It's 1932, and they'll
Read more