3 Dark Places

I wanted to share a brief description of three unusual places we went during our time on Shikoku.

The first was at the temple we slept at the first night on the road. There's a memorial service for the ancestors there every night--quite a few people come through and stay, some foreign travelers, some Japanese Pilgrims. It was the only chance we got to participate in a temple ceremony and it was really unexpected and wild--very different from a Zen Buddhist temple in Chicago.

First we walked though a great hall lit by lanterns, where there were 500 life sized wooden statues of the 500 Arhats, or original followers of the Buddha. They had very expressive lifelike faces, and a carved wooden dragon hung from the ceiling, and there were some bohdisattvas as well. You are supposed to be able to recognize the face of someone you know who has departed in one of their faces. We saw my Dad, as well as his wife, LaVonne. It went on and on and was quite amazing.

After that, we had dinner--then the ceremony. They had us prepare some things ahead of time, then we sat in an audience with our shoes off, in front of an elaborate golden altar. We listened to the striking of the bell, and a young priest in robes chanting, and then an old priest gave a rather lengthy talk in Japanese. Then we were all invited to get up and follow him behind the altar. We walked in single file in front of the large statute of Yakushi, the Medicine Buddha (the buddhas here are many and varied and more like Hindu gods than historical figures). He was large and carved out of wood and we were encouraged to touch his knees or robe and then touch the part of our bodies that needed healing (Dave's swollen calf!)

Then we followed the priest into darkness back behind the altar, across a little bridge, into a very strange room. It was very dark, with a stream of water flowing through it in a channel cut in the floor--we followed the line of people, and were instructed to place a little plastic cup with a lighted candle in it on the small river and float it down. It was lit from underneath with lavender light. Then we followed the floating candles to little sand islands in the stream, where we were told to kneel and plant green sprigs of camphor leaves with paper attached, where we had written the names of our loved ones who had passed. The little islands were covered then with tiny trees surrounded by the floating candles in lavender glowing water. We walked on and the end of the room was lit by fire--the young priest was standing over a stone bowl and burning wooden plaques where we had written our wishes for the departed in a pretty large fire. We gave him our plaques and bowed, then walked over an ornate bridge across the little river and through other dimly lit rooms where we walked three times around a large golden Buddha, and saw all manner of statues, images and gifts to the temples embedded in the walls. At last to our chilly tatami temple rooms for the night.

The second dark place. Very different but also dramatic. We walked up and over a small mountain to approach the second to last temple--very pretty walk along a ridge through cedar forests, with low bamboo brush and views out to the blue hills. Then a very dramatic descent down through cliffs with little stone shrines on each side of the path. We arrived at the temple and did our normal temple stuff, and it had fairly modern buildings but was unusual in its clinging to the side of the cliffs.

Before we left Ben took us into this small cave to the side of the path and told us to bring lots of candles. It was through a little curtain and then a pitch black walkway. We held on to the wall and each lit a candle so we could see. In about 30 steps in opened up into a small small cave, with a number of small to medium buddhas tucked into its walls. There were places for candles in front of them, and we used all the candles we had brought until the little cave was totally illuminated. The light revealed a chaotic mass of Buddhas and offerings and different bodhisattvas and saints sitting around, of all sizes. One could imagine the cave having been a holy place to the first people of the island, way before the Buddha, it always being dark, it always being illuminated, it always being layered over with belief and ritual.

The third dark place. This one was very very dark. At the large temple where Kukai was born (he's the superstar priest that started the esoteric school of Buddhism in Japan, as well as inventing a phonetic alphabet so that common people could recite the sutras, and doing many civil engineering projects . . . He established the 88 temples), there's a huge Buddha. The biggest we've seen. Plus giant giant camphor trees in an enormous plaza. Then, we go into the Daishi Hall (dedicated to Kukai), and take off your shoes, and then follow an underground passageway to the place where he was (legend has it) actually born. This requires walking through a winding underground passage for a good 3 or 4 minutes which is ENTIRELY dark. You keep your left hand on a smooth wall and your right on the shoulder of the person in front of you. You chant a simple little chant and it's a good thing you do or else you might panic. After forever, it opens up into a teeny lit room with a golden Buddha and a sort of subdued sound and light show--hard to describe. You chant the heart sutra and then go out through another winding endless dark passage.

And out into the sunlight at last, where you get to put your shoes back on. And keep walking.