An occasional student of mine has a family affiliation with Engakuji Rinzai Zen temple in Kamakura, which entitles her to the annual lunch and behind the scenes tour. All my random comments about Buddhism and Japanese culture finally paid off and I was invited along.
Lunch featured requests to scarf our food down with alacrity. Monks touched their foreheads to the tatami mats after we were served, after they explained the menu, after they offered us tea, and when we finally got our asses up and out the door.
The monks were moving fast when they weren’t bowing. In the kitchen they had their sleeves tied up and they were washing dishes and wiping bowls. My super-deluxe polite Japanese request to take a photo of the kitchen was forwarded up the chain of command to a guy in gray samue. He sucked his teeth, said something about work being done, and bowed. Which meant no.
All the normal tourists got tsk-tsked away from the gate of the Shariden complex, inside of which is the zendo (meditation hall) and the Shariden building. “Shariden” actually refers to the gold reliquary, but the building housing it is also called the Shariden.
The building is a Japanese National Treasure because of its age (around 1563) and the fact that it once held or was supposed to have held a relic of the Buddha. Our tour guide (a monk with an orange bullhorn) told us it was a wisdom tooth, but when you do a Internet search for “Shariden” the sources say there are no relics left. Or the relics are from some venerable Japanese monk.
I wanted photos for my 2008 Hot Young Engakuji Monks calendar. Mr. May, the monk I most wanted a photo of, declined my request with sweetly pursed lips and a gorgeous bow. We got stuck with Bullhorn Fred instead.
Luckily my hostess shares my enjoyment of what is NOT on the tour: we peeled off the main group and poked our heads in the back hall behind the zendo. Buddha’s wisdom tooth, yea, whatever—I can’t get enough of buckets and perfectly aligned sandals.
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May 22, 2008 at 6:01 am
fightingwindmills
Lovely photos. Oh, how I wish you could have gotten Mr. May’s permission. *sigh*
Madam says: Thanks. Mr. May was lovely. I think I liked him all the more for refusing the photo.
May 22, 2008 at 8:04 am
etsuko
Nice pictures, thanks! Do these perfectly aligned sandals have any meanings? They are really perfect and precise.
Madam says: How the Zen student performs the smallest tasks, such as closing a door or lining up sandals, is very important.
From “Encouraging Words” by Robert Aitken (an American Zen teacher):
“This month I would like to suggest Completion as one of our Perfections. One model of Completion is the way Japanese people say good-bye. Suppose you are leaving a home. You say good-bye in the living room, and then you say goodbye at the door. You walk down to the corner and turn around, and there in the distance are your hosts at the gate. You wave good-bye once again at that point. If you fail to turn around at the corner, your hosts will feel that their good-bye process was cut off before its completion and they will be disappointed. [...] Thich Nhat Hanh says, ‘Every act is a rite.’ The rite has a beginning, a middle, and an end. See it through. [...] Notice how you shut the sliding door to the dokusan room. Notice how you make your bows. Do you complete each action? When one action blurs into the next one, and that one into the next, our lives are deprived of definition, and the inspiration that can only come in the interstices has no chance to slip though.”
How you place your sandals is the practice of life. That’s why I wanted to see the back hall and the kitchen. I wanted to see how they complete the smallest rites.