Echoes of Incense A Pilgrimage in Japan by Don Weiss

Chapter Ten

The End

I had lunch that day in a noodle shop in Mugi Town, a simple meal of udon, rice, and a small plate of vegetables. As I ate, I noticed the only other customer, a rough-looking old man in work clothes. He concentrated on his own udon, ignoring me, I thought.

When he finished eating, he stood up and walked over to my table. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a stack of thousand yen bills three centimeters thick. He handed me two of them and bowed, saying, "Please, o-henro-san. O-settai."I took them, bowed as deeply as I could without sticking my nose in my food, and started to thank him. But he was gone. I heard him laughing as he walked out the door. He gave me three times the cost of my lunch.

That night a tremendous storm blew in, shaking the old inn where I was staying in Hiwasa Town. I could feel the force of the wind as it pressed up against the old walls and tried to lift the massive tile roof. When it blew at just the right angle, it howled and whistled and wailed marvelously in the cracks and gaps of the windows and doors. The rain pounded on the roof and splashed up from the garden, spattering my window. As I lay in bed, I could feel the air pressure in the room as it went up and down from the wind sucking or blowing as it passed.

The next morning was one of the brightest, clearest I've ever seen in Japan. The hills sparkled with clean-washed trees and the road beneath my feet seemed polished by the force of the rain. The pilgrim's route followed the main road for several kilometers, then turned off the highway onto a farm road. Trees closed over my head. Suddenly I heard frogs.

At first, I couldn't locate the source of the sound and I wasn't sure what it was. It sounded like ten thousand creaking boards. Then I looked down the hill. About 100 meters away, I saw a single rice paddy. It was flooded from the rain and last year's rice straw stuck up like hair on an old man's face. I couldn't see them, but the paddy and the nearby grass must have hidden thousands of frogs, awakened by the warm, wet weather.

The road followed a narrow valley up into the mountains. There were other isolated paddies, but none held the same masses of frogs. Now the loudest sound was the eerie creak of the bamboo, swaying in the gentle breeze.

Later, I went through a tunnel. Since the day I had walked to Temple 44, I had been singing "White Christmas"as I walked through tunnels, but today, as I sang, it seemed out of place. The weather was just too warm. I tried "I Left My Heart In San Francisco"and then, because I was feeling energetic, "The Stars and Stripes Forever."Luckily, there was nobody to hear me. I have a poor singing voice but in a tunnel I sing very loudly.

I enjoyed the tunnels. I sang and walked, always steadily. Cars and trucks swooshed by, often less than a meter away. Earlier, I had walked with the image of being hit on the shoulder and bounced off the wall by a careless driver. But now I just walked and sang, feeling the wind passing through the hill.

The wind gradually increased as I walked to Temple 22, Byodoji, The Temple of Equality. After praying, I had lunch at a noodle shop next door, then I headed for the first of a series of ridges that lead up towards the mountain temples, numbers 21 and 20.

The wind had been increasing all morning. During lunch, it swelled until it matched the fury of the previous night's storm. The sky was perfectly clear, but an awesome rushing sound filled the air. The hill behind the temple was covered with bamboo, which rippled like rice during a typhoon.

The route led off the road and followed a dirt track up into the bamboo. Above and around me, the giant stems swayed crazily, some forward, some back. They were each following a wave pattern determined by the length of the stem, the slope of the ground, the force of the air. They heaved and thrashed about me. I could hear the creak of the stems, the mad rustling of the leaves, and now and then a mighty CRACK! as one bent beyond its limit.

I walked up into this vortex at my usual steady pace. Nothing, now, could alter that. But I felt the energy rushing around me and through me as if I were a part of the forest, the mountain and the storm.

My little altimeter was going crazy. All through the trip, I had used it to check on my progress. The walking henro guidebook gave elevations for all the temples. Always, the altimeter had been within a few meters. Now, as I checked, it would show a 10 meter gain, then a 20 meter loss, while the trail went slowly up. When I neared the top, up into the heart of the windstorm, it soared to say I'd climbed 180 meters in 30 seconds. I looked across the way at the tops of the bamboo. A tremendous disturbance moved along, ripping at the leaves like a tornado, yet the air remained perfectly clear.

On the other side of the ridge, the bamboo were replaced by tall, young cedars. There, the windstorm was quieter. The cedars swayed only a little. But still, the wind terrorized the tops of the trees and the trail lay under a carpet of branches newly torn off. I walked on.

Down in the next valley, I found a store, so I stopped for a Cocoteen and some chocolate cake and had my snack sitting on a box out of the wind.

That night I stayed at an unusually fine inn. The rooms were matted with fresh, new tatami that still smelled of the fields where the rushes grew. The bath was beautifully tiled. The dining room would have been quite elegant, but it was rather full of things. There were two picture scrolls, a carved bear from Hokkaido holding a salmon in it's mouth, several flower arrangements, a poster of the current ranking of all sumo wrestlers, some pottery, a couple of travel posters, and the hand-prints of Kin-san and Gin-san. They were two of the most famous people in Japan that year,100 year old twin sisters, the new darlings of the Japanese media.

While I was eating, a car arrived with two old couples dressed in sparkling white henro clothes. As I walked back up the stairs to my room, I heard voices. When I came up onto the landing, the voices stopped. I looked. The two old ladies had bathed quickly. Now their husbands were in the bath, so the old women were dressing in the hallway, in front of my room. They stood there wearing only white drawers. Their mouths hung open in surprise. After I entered my room and slid the shoji closed, I heard raucous laughter.

The next day was long and hard but lovely. I climbed to Temple 21, Tairyuji, Big Dragon Temple, then down into a deep valley, then up to Temple 20, Kakurinji, Temple of the Crane Forest, then down to Temple 19.

The head priest of Temple 19, Tatsueji, Temple of the Rising Bay, and one of his assistants both worked at the Los Angeles Shingon Temple, so they both speak excellent English. The younger priest, Fukushima Choku, is one of my best friends in Japan. Unfortunately, neither he nor the head priest, Rev. Shono, was there the evening I stayed at Tatsueji. I was the only guest. I had a beautiful room decorated with a few superb antiques and provided with a very good electric heater. The toilet and washroom next door were elegantly built out of plain wood with rush mats on the floors. A stone bowl served as the wash basin. A thin pipe let water flow in slowly and a narrow hole in the bottom let the water drain out at the same rate. It was the sort of washroom found, occasionally, in only the very fanciest traditional inns. I paid only 4,200 yen including an elegant dinner and standard breakfast. It's what I usually pay in the U.S. for a motel room with no meals.

The next day I got a little lost because I knew the area so well. Well, not exactly lost, but I followed the route I used to take on my bicycle. I later discovered the true henro path cuts off about two kilometers of this.

I spent that night in Temple 13, another Dainichiji like Temple Four and many others. I was, again, the only guest. The shukubo was closed, so they let me sleep in a room just behind the temple office and the old priest's wife fussed over me as if I were her grandson. When I wrote my name in the temple register, she carefully watched my pen, quietly repeating the half-remembered letters.

I was nearing the end of my pilgrimage. I planned to take five more days. I could have done it in four, but I wanted time to stop at Zenjoji, a small temple across the river from the henro path between temples 12 and 11. I had found Zenjoji one day when I was riding my bike around the hills. The priest and his wife invited me in and I spent an hour talking with them.

The Inuzuka's had two of the most inquiring minds I met in Japan. I once showed them some pictures of a shepherd I met one day in the Takla Makan Desert in China's far northwest. Other people, when they saw the pictures, asked me how hot it was there, or what the people ate. Inuzuka-sensei asked how many sheep the man had, what they were worth, who bought them, how much the shepherd earned, and what the sheep were used for, meat, wool or both.

We had a long discussion one day, with the help of a translator, about the various mudras, the hand gestures used by Buddhists while praying or conducting rituals. What had once been totally mysterious he made clear in just a few minutes, showing the symbolism of the mudras I knew, relating them to familiar ideas.

Then I asked about the others, the hundred or more mudras I knew about, but that I had only seen briefly during ceremonies, or perhaps in photos without an explanation.

"Those are secret. I learned them at Koyasan, when I was studying to be a priest. But you may not learn them. Some are even more secret. They are done underneath a cloth, by a priest who is facing away from any people in the temple who are not priests."

"But I have seen some of these,"I said. "Look, here are pictures in Rev. Yamasaki's book about Shingon."I showed him the pictures, fuzzy black and whites of an elderly priest performing a ceremony at a temple in Kyoto. He looked further until he found another picture.

"You see this? The priest has his back to the camera, to where you would sit if you were there. This is how we priests think the pictures should be taken. There must be a mystery. You should only see a little, a part, not the whole."I shook my head.

"As a Westerner and a photographer, I disagree. For Western people, the picture showing what the priest is doing is better. It shows that something important is happening, even if it is not understood. It makes you want to learn more. When a Japanese sees the picture of the back of the priest, he knows what it sounds like, listening to the ritual, and what it smells like, with the incense. The Westerner doesn't know these things. Someday I would like to take some good pictures of you showing the mudras. Not the secret one, but the ones people could see if they were sitting near you in the temple."

"That would not be possible."

Two days later, he phoned me. He said I could come out anytime and take pictures of all the mudras except the truly secret ones. I did. We spent an hour one day as he patiently went through several dozen mudras and I photographed them. When I showed him the pictures later, he said, "I look like my father. Old."His wife said, "But distinguished."

Tony and Phyllis drove to meet me at Zenjoji. It was only 15 minutes by car from our house. We had lunch together and talked for several hours. I told Inuzuka-sensei that I thought Kobo Daishi had chosen the priestly name Kukai from the view he had, meditating in the cave at Muroto, a view of the sea and the sky. He replied, "Yes, but remember, he chose to meditate there."

Phyllis and I had almost no chance to talk alone. As I was getting ready to leave, she said, "Do you really think you'll want to do the whole thing again, so soon after finishing?"

"Do you want to do it?"I asked.

"Yes. That's why I came to Japan."

"Okay. I'll finish Monday. That will give me three and a half weeks to rest, eat, and speak English. If I have a few parties, I'll be ready to start again. After all, I'm in pretty good shape now, and the weather's getting warmer."She nodded and I left.

Two days later was my last day. I spent the final night at the same inn where I spent the first, Okada Ya. They remembered me, of course, and asked about my pilgrimage, but I answered briefly. I didn't feel like talking. I had slipped into a world of my own. The world outside was just passing by without affecting me. I ate dinner. Slept. Got up. Ate breakfast. Paid. Then I walked up the long staircase to Temple Ten.

It was like unwinding the last piece of string that had been rolled around a stick. It went on one way. Now it comes off the other way. I walked back, from Ten to Nine to Eight to Seven to Six. Then on to Five, then Four then Three then Two. It was after four o'clock by the time I reached Temple One. I recited the Heart Sutra at the Hon-do and Daishi-do, breathing the incense that rose curling about me. Then I went into the office to get my book stamped. The priest turned to the first page, saw that the whole thing was full and looked up at me.

"You have completed the pilgrimage?"

"Yes."I thought briefly, the whole route flashed through my mind like a map of the island with pictures inserted, the temples, the mountains, the meals, me, o-settai, Cocoteen, rain, wind . . .

"Walking?"

"Yes."I didn't try to explain about my one ride in a car on Day Nine. Nothing is pure, nothing is defiled.

He held his hand over my stamp book, made a mudra and softly said something. It might have been "Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo."Then he opened to an extra page near the end. He again entered the stamps of Ryozenji, three vermilion stamps plus the calligraphy. Finally he added the Chinese character maru. It can be written in two basic ways. He did it the simpler way, he drew a circle. It means full or complete.

Surprisingly, I felt little emotion at completing a six-and-a-half- week, 1,100 kilometers pilgrimage. But this was only the first half of my walking. After three week's rest I would go again, this time with Phyllis.

I signed the walking henro register, then walked 600 meters to the Bando train station to wait for the next train home. A rather tattered-looking priest sat in the waiting room, feeding bread to a dog that looked on the edge of starvation. The man had a nice-looking backpack a little larger than mine. He saw me, smiled and waved me over.

"O-henro-san. Welcome. Please sit down. Would you like some bread? How about Japanese o-manju?."I accepted a manju. I asked if he had walked the pilgrimage.

"Yes. We have just finished."He included the dog in that we. "Were you walking also?"

"Yes. I also have just finished. Right now, I am going home. And you, where do you live? Where is your temple?"

"I live at Eiheiji. You know it?"I nodded. Eiheiji is the main temple of Soto Zen. For a Japanese or for a foreigner studying Soto Zen in Japan, it's one of the most important temples in the country, though foreign tourists never go there. Tony went there for a weekend to practice meditation. His father-in-law is a Soto Zen priest.

"I have never met a foreign henro before. Perhaps you are the first."

"No, there have been many. Every year maybe five or ten do the pilgrimage. Most walk. Possibly I am the first to walk in reverse order, I don't know. Was this your first time?"

"No. I have gone about 30 times, sometimes by bus, leading a group, but now usually walking. This was your first time?"

"Yes, but I will go again this spring."

"Good,"he said, smiling broadly. "It is good to walk again and again."Then my train came and I left. An hour later I was home.

Published by Don Weiss (henrodon@gmail.com) -- All rights reserved. You may read this electronic copy on the web or print it out for private reading but no part may be sold or included in any work for sale except for short excerpts used for review purposes.All photographs and maps are likewise copyrighted and may not be reproduced without permission except for private, non-commercial use. Updated February 2, 1999.