Time is really starting to dwindle away fast as my return home is quickly approaching. I am looking forward to returning home, however will miss the beauty that is Japan. My heart cords have indeed been plucked over the last 2 months. The people that live here are so fortunate to have so many sacred sites and so much amazing nature all around. No wonder everyone here is so incredibly friendly. It’s hard not to be in a great mood surrounded by an abundance of beauty. In looking for something to do for my 3rd to last day off, my curiosity was triggered by a small town called Sasaguri. Sasaguri weaves through the mountains about 20 – 30 minutes out of Fukuoka. What caught my attention in part was the nature scene; waterfalls, abundance of trees, and green mossy things, as well as the fact that there are 88 Buddhist temples in Sasaguri and the mountains surrounding it. The temples attract people undergoing a sacred pilgrimage that is supposed to take anywhere from 30 – 90 days on foot, which is what most do, and can be done in much less time by car. Being that I do not have 3 months to spend, or a car, or 3 days either, I decided to do a 1 day pilgrimage and see where fate led me on this day.
When attempting to plan out in advance where to go in Sasaguri, I could not find an online English map and all of the information I found was in Japanese. There were quite a few amazing photos of lush nature areas that spoke to me, however I couldn’t find out where they were no matter how many sources I used to search. So I put the pictures in my mind and heart and knew that beyond that I would need to surrendered mental control over the end result. Regardless of this knowing, I still found myself carried away into the forest, a place I most deeply and eternally dwell. Excited by all of the potential magical places I could find myself wandering through, for a day and a night I dreamed of giant trees, waterfalls, and other wandering souls on sacred journeys. Yet, when I awoke on the morning of my day off, I realized that I had not a clue to where I would go other than the general vicinity of the town and one of three train stops. I expected a grand journey to un-fold, I expected to wander up a mountain, for my heart to explode into a beating drum, to get lost in the forest, and to be wisped away into the secret path. Knowing that the act of surrender requires total release and attachment equals suffering, I chose to sit back and enjoy the ride, for what more could I do. After all, my day off happened to be February 14th, Valentine’s Day, so I decided what was in my control, was to invoke a feeling of wishing love and to make that the focus of my meditative actions for the day. Therefore, I allowed my heart to guide each step and I trusted it to take me to where I needed to be even if it seemed I was running around in circles. After-all, circles complete are full cycles that become spirals in space.
The first thing my heart needed was sleep, so I fell asleep on the train to wake up 2 hours later at the point of transfer. Fortunately the train is quite lush and comfortable with a reclining chair. The train station in Fukuoka is a crazy hub of coming and going. Large groups of fast moving people in black going and people in high heels, and all manners of fashion statements coming. They crossed in intricate little paths and navigated the enormousness that is Hakata City with a smooth elegance. Hakata City is the name for the Fukuoka train station and indeed it is a city of its own, complete with numerous restaurants, stores, shops, and even a grocery store. Once I got on the smaller train that took me out of the city, the scene and the ride calmed down a bit. In about 10 minutes of being on the train, the big grey buildings began to recede into big green hills. The city continued to sprawl out in thinner and thinner forms. I was expecting to see mountains and no buildings, and even though Sasaguri is a small town on the outskirts of Fukuoka, it is still a town indeed with buildings, cars, and stores of different kinds. It is surrounded by beautiful and reachable green tree covered mountains enticing the heartfelt adventurer into the depths.
Riding into the outskirts, off in the distance, something caught my eye buried in the tree tops. Well, something other than the high fashion girls putting on fake eyelashes in stilletos riding the train in and out of Fukuoka that is. The form appeared familiar, like a stupa, yet I couldn’t quite make out what it was. It had something gold on the dome and when the sunlight shined upon it, it beamed like a speckle of glitter in my eye. My first inclination was that it was a stupa… my second thought, was man I have permanent show glitter from 245 shows in my eye, will that ever come out. Whatever it was, it was not listed on the map I eventually got from the tourist office either. Then again, the map was quite hard to read, fully in Japanese, and consisted of line drawings, not to scale, with no street names, not even in Japanese, just a general direction of where to go, and was 6 pages long. Some of the pages were upside down, backwards, not in order, and some of the lines that represented streets did not coincide with real life directions. I found myself wondering how the people walking this path actually made it to all 88 temples in 90 days as it was not always so obvious where to go. Furthermore, once off the train, the golden top was no longer visible, so I sort of lost track of it and decided to begin my journey at the closest temple to the first train station in attempt to get my grounding and sense of direction. With the map being useless, I did end up walking in circles. All the while my curiosity was being pulled toward the mystery stupa as I kept finding myself glance over in that general direction to see if I could catch another glimpse of it. Being diverted partially toward that and by some sheer stroke of luck, I stumbled upon the first temple. It sat back in a small neighborhood of houses and had one person inside who came out to greet me at the entrance but then retreated back inside, leaving me alone to explore. The space was exceptionally bright with a high vibration and being the official starting point of the sacred pilgrimage, it had that kind of giddy pre-adventure feel. In thinking about all of the travelers who had started out on their 3 month walking journey at this point, I was taken back a little to a point before I arrived here in Japan. I recall having the sense run through me that I was about to embark on quite a special journey and sat for a moment taking in that process now from the other side, from the side of almost completion. As cycles have beginnings and endings, both are sacred, and unique to our own individual needs and processes. As I sat, I heard my teacher’s voice, “allow yourself to see one cycle through to its fullest before embarking upon the next”.
As I was walking out of the temple grounds, in the horizon, there was that stupa again. Standing and looking at the map, trying to figure it out once again, I decided I was going to walk toward it, not even knowing if it was accessible by foot, I put the map in my backpack and started walking. I walked up a mountain, past a forest, through a city, into the more trees, by a lake, up another mountain, around a bend, and all the while I had no idea if I was on the right track, what I was actually walking to, or how far it actually was. I walked for well over an hour. I walked so far I cracked my boot. When through the trees, above the lake, there it sat and indeed it was a Buddhist Stupa and it was spectacular. It was white, 3 stories, had large golden statues of different images of Buddha in the four directions on each side, along with a golden Dharma wheel just under the void space. It was nestled back into the trees, there was not a soul around other than the local birds singing and a baby spider engaged in a heroic attempt to circumambulate the 3rd tier of the stupa. I decided to join it and completed 21 rotations (7 on each tier) while engaged in mantra recitation. Considering that my legs are much longer, I managed to cover more ground in less time than my spidey friend. Then again, it has 8 legs, and I only have 2, and I’m not sure how long it had been up to it, for all I know it may have well spent most of its young life circumambulating that stupa. Never the less, by the time I had left, it had made it almost ½ the way around.
After the stupa I decided to venture a little further past the central part of Sasaguri into the more remote area, where the trek took me back to one of the most beautiful places I have been on this trip. There was a waterfall, birds chirping and swooping and getting quite friendly, large, old, bamboo trees, a plentiful amount of green moss covered rocks, yes another temple, along with the smell of hand rolled sandalwood incense, a beating drum off in the distance, yet again not a soul in sight.. it was fabulous. This place was so alive. Even the rocks seemed to breathe with the fresh air and I almost felt like I could feel the moss on the trees growing, reaching out, and saying hello friend. With natural nooks and pathways to follow, candles burning from travelers who had been there and left, it felt like being in the womb of nature. It was so comfortable and nurturing that I had to sit for a while. Taking it all in I was overcome with beauty, then love and found myself reflecting on the kindness of those that made it possible for me to be here. Grateful for the experience, my process moved toward feeling for those who may not have been having such a happy day immersed in love and sending them waves of energy in hopes that their hearts become touched and they do not feel so alone in the world. Life is everywhere if we allow it to touch us. We are never alone. All we have to do is listen to the beat of our heart, listen to its subtle song. When another is near, know that whether we feel connected our not, our hearts resonate with the hearts of others. If take a step out of our thoughts, out of our immediate and limited perceptions, we’ll feel that connection and from that space, together we all dance. It’s right here, in this moment, attainable and reachable to all who are willing to have the capacity to feel.
Just down the mountain from this location, I ended up in small restaurant that hand makes meals for travelers on foot where I was offered tea and Japanese chocolate. Yum! In fact, it seems to be the custom to make offerings to people who are walking to the temples. While I sat there taking in their kind offerings, all 3 of them sat watching me with big smiles on their face. The further I venture out in Japan, the fewer people know any English making communication quite interesting. Sometimes it means that we sit there in each other’s company with no conversation which I find soothing. They did attempt to talk to me in Japanese. It’s possible that they thought I had walked from Huis Ten Bosch to Sasaguri, which is crazy as that is a 3 hour train ride, but clued me in to how often they come across people who are willing to walk and bike those types of distances. Even more cool, is that Japan is that walkable. No wonder people are in such great shape here. The conversation turned into a belly laughing session. I’m not sure what we were laughing about, but whatever it was, was hilariously funny. Following the belly laugh session were intervals of bowing and prostrating continuously while I sat in the restaurant. When I left, they saw me to the door, walked outside, and kept waving, bowing, and smiling until I was out of site.
After walking another 5 miles or so in broken boots I came across an interesting site at Nanzoin. Nanzoin is a temple that houses a 150’ long, 300 ton bronze reclining Buddha which is claimed to be the biggest of its type in the world. Supposedly it houses the ashes of Guatama Buddha and is considered a very sacred site to visit. The way it is set up though, is as a major tourist attraction giving it a Jekyl and Hyde feel. It was late afternoon and there were not too many people around fortunately. There was another small group on a tour and a few individual people wandering around. The grounds surrounding this Buddha are huge. There are caves with low entrances that require crouching and going through a tunnel to get in. Once inside they are homes to shrines with wrathful deities, dragons, water, incense, and fire. There are waterfalls, bamboo hiking trails, the sound of bells and gongs, as well as mossy stairs that climb up mountain sides to more shrines and rocks that make for nice meditation spots. It also seemed to be a melting pot of different Buddhist sects from Jodo, to Tantric Shingon, Tibetan, Zen, and Chinese. The touristy feel made it hard to actually stop and sit as I felt like I’d become a spectacle in someone’s photo. Whereas the other places I had visited that day were completely conducive for practice, this spot was, well as one of the merchants I got into conversation with leading up the pathway to the Buddha, called it more like BuddDisneyLand. The grounds were tended to by Nuns wearing pink, and I saw one Monk in Blue and White. I was offered to sit and enjoy Japanese tea with two different merchants in Nanzoin. One was a spicy plum and chili pepper tea which warmed me from the inside out, and the other a green tea of some sort. On my way out, I came across a line of business men in black suits and brief cases heading toward the large Buddha and in a fleeting moment wondered what type of business they were going to conduct. Behind the Buddha there was some type of cement building with circular windows that looked like a place for business and behind that a mountain full of green trees and bamboo all dancing in a light wind against a dramatic sky. When the time neared for me to begin my journey back, my cracked boot began sending messages through a now sore foot from walking so far. Instead of going further, I wanted to sit and decided that my journey back would be on the train rather than by foot. If I was to take on the bigger adventure, it seems that Keen boots are not so keen on long walking excursions. The train ride home gave way to a meditative contemplation about this day. Having had worked up in my mind ahead of time a visual of what I thought I would expect in my day, I came to the conclusion that appearances are deceptive and rarely do things exist the way they initially appear. Eternally grateful for the opportunity to spend a day at these sacred and blessed locations focusing my mind and heart on wishing love, amongst kind people, creatures, insects, and earth. Fire energy pacified with abundance of earth and water + heart touched = successful day off!
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