Secret pathways
I am now under the oppression of Chinese internet control, so I can’t reach my own wordpress blog. But I really wanted to tell at least the framework of my adventures here in Asia, with some help from good old Germany. So here comes my last episode of the great time with O-shio-san in Japan, before I will get to Wudang in the next article.
I had to get to Kyoto after my time in the temple, cause there I had an appointment with my friend Chieko. So O-shio-san told me he would have to go to Kyoto as well for some official reasons, and one day we toured trough Honshu for 5 hours by car. We were accompanied by his friend the brush maker, who was an exceptional funny escort for that trip. I had no plans for the next day in Kyoto, but was really surprised when O-shio-san offered me to come with him. That next day was really marvellous and too much to assimilate in that short time. In the morning he had to visit his home-monastery in Kyoto where he had been trained, so we had an official reception in the part of the monastery you can’t enter normally. It was indescribable insight this complex, gardens and ponts, open rooms and passageways which directly face them. We three sad in front of one monk in one of these rooms and O-shio-san and he exchanged news and some presents. Everything was handed with great care and the highest concentration, even the way they open the doors they serve you tea and slip off their shoes. I have never seen such a place before, and I saw a lot of temples and shrines in Japan. I’m really happy that I had the opportunity to experience that; but as this wasn’t enough for one day, we then went to the headtemple complex of this whole brand of Rinzai-Zen worldwide. There was some kind of conference for the temple priests of Japan, where O-shio-san spent the rest of the day. But for me, or precisely for his friend, he had organized a meeting with one of the highest monks there to promote his handmade brushes. So I found myself in a sales conversation about traditional brushes, with a famous monk, a funny brushmaker, and in Japanese of course. We sad on one side of a meeting room in a great modern bureau building run by monks, and the priest sad n the other side. I could understand a bit of the conversation, but my friend constantly involved me and asked me about the advantages of his brushes, so I nodded a lot and said some nice words. But most of the time I just wondered how I could have got into this strange situation. After that the priest personally gave us a guiding tour in this citylike monastery complex, and once again lead us into some buildings that are not accessible for the public;In the end of that perfect day, we reunited in a nice restaurant and I finally had to say goodbye to O-shio-san and his friend. After that I had another wonderful day with Chieko and Sattchan, we cycled around the city, which is a great idea in Kyoto and did Shakyo, which means to handcopy the heart-sutra, which consists of really a lot of old Japanese signs. We also visited a wonderful garden, that had been created for one of the leading politicians of the Meiji-period.
Of course it was impossible to take pictures inside of the monastery, so I will have to keep that alive in my mind. But here are some pictures of my time in Kyoto:
