Koshin's Trip to Kyoto

After dinner Wes, Shiela, and I strolled over to see Kodai-ji - about a three minute walk.  During certain times of years they light this temple up for night viewing, and it's pretty spectacular. I cannot image how much work it must have taken to get all those lights placed. As I write this it's late and so I'm going to run through the photos without a lot of comment.  To tee it off, Kodai-ji is a temple complex founded by the great shogun Hideyoshi's wife Toyotomi Yoshiko, affectionately known by everyone as Nene (hence the name of our home for this week). To the left of this cherry tree is a classic Zen rock garden - beautifully arranged.  When we came we were treated to a light show set to classical music at the garden.  Yeah you heard right, a LIGHT SHOW - projected onto the garden and the wall behind it.  I've got a video of it, but getting the video to this blog is another thing.  It was wild, technically complex, and beautiful...

First, breakfast.  Wes cooked me a traditional Japanese breakfast this morning:  Rice bowl with hot tea in it, three amazing tofus including a black sesame variety, pickles, rolled omelet, and my favorite, cooked eel. OK, onward to the first temple.  The Silver Temple is not silver.  That's because in Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who built it as part of his retirement estate, died before he was able to gild it in silver, to match the Golden Pavilion his grandfather had built on the other side of the Kamo River.  Yoshimasa planned this estate during the worst fighting Kyoto had ever seen, before or since - the bloody Onin War (1467-1477), which was a futile dipute between warloads and reduced Kyoto's population from hundreds of thousands to forty thousand.  Zen Master Ikkyu's skeleton verses came out around this time, and the great Daitoku-ji was burned to the ground.   The temple itself is small and graceful; the grounds are remarkable. Here...

After the Silver Temple at Ginkaku-ji we walked along the Philosopher's Walk, a quaint walk along a winding canal - lined with cherry trees.  Almost all of them were budding but not yet blooming.  But happily we found one glaring exception. Along the walk we found a row of Jizos - we weren't clear who put them there or how long they'd been standing guard.  One nice thing about these Jizo statues is just how worn down many of them are.  They become like modern art loose representations of Jizo bodhisattva.   Looking down a side street you see another type of Kyoto street, of which there are many - not quaint or winding, but a clean and tidy working street.   After a while we took a left and climbed the hill to Honen-in.  I'm not sure what it was that made me fall for this little temple, but fall I did.  Maybe it was the size - the main campus is quite small, with about 5 buildings on I'd say an acre and a half....

After Honen-in we continued down the philosopher's walk right to the end, and Eikando, the first Pure Land temple I've visited.  Pure Land Buddhism is an "other power" path.  In Japan they say there are two kinds of Buddhist ways - tariki , other power; and jiriki , self power.  Pure Land Buddhists do a lot of chanting to Amida Buddha, and believe they are saved by the power of their devotion to Amida, the Infinate Light Buddha.  Some of you will remember the excellent lectures the Pure Land scholar Dr. Mark Unno gave at our place that he called "The Crooked Path." Wes has a special feeling for this temple, since he took his daughter here when she was very young, and was received warmly by the monks he met.  I was greeted warmly by the woman who ran the little gift shop - she told me the fruit on the tree outside the shop was a Buddha's Hand Orange, which is a thing - you can look it up.  She said it's Buddha's hand, reaching out to help me.  I...