Zen Temples

Trip Start Sep 25, 2002
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Trip End May 15, 2004

Flag of Japan  ,
Sunday, April 13, 2003

My buddy Mike, from Seattle, and I decided to take a few days and go explore some of the less-traveled areas of Japan within train ride from Osaka. As out first stop we chose Koyasan. Koyasan is a Zen temple located at the peak of a mountain range where travelers can, in essence, see what a day in the life of a Buddhist monk is like by staying in the temples, eating the same meals, and going through morning prayers with the local monks.

Koyasan is one of the most religious places in Japan. It's the headquarters of the Shingon school of Esoteric Buddhism (the belief that the living and the dead occupy the same space, jut different dimensions) and is nestled in the thick forests of eight area peaks. The cool thing about Koyasan is you can actually stay in one of the Buddhist temples and participate with the monks in morning Zen meditation/prayer! So, we stayed in the Rengejoin temple, had a vegetarian dinner and breakfast, participated in the morning rituals, and explored the ancient temples, altars, shrines and beautiful mountains. We also took an adventurous hike the found us lost in the woods, hacking our way through a dense filed of wildgrass taller than we were, and ending with us interrupting a baseball practice by somehow climbing out of the woods and into their outfield!

The next day we awoke at 5 am for the monks prayer, a surreal experience. That day we went to Kukai, the ancient cemetary where the warrior monk, Kukai, is buried. The cemetary is humongous...Mike and I are fast hikers and it took us over two hours to walk throuh the whole thing! There are Japanese-style headstones, ancient tombs, and memroial statues all over. What an amazing place...Koyasan was beautiful and interesting and is highly recommended to anyone who has time in Japan!
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