Shikoku 88 – Days 23 and 24

What a day. It started with a little drizzle, when I walked up from my sleeping place through the forest up the stairs to temple 71, Iyadaniji. A very mystic atmosphere, and a great mountain temple, with several buildings spread over a few levels on the side of a mountain. At the time I was the only pilgrim there, and could enjoy the sounds of the rain, the birds, the temple bell… but the highlight was, that one could walk into the Daishido hall (shoes off, of course), and sit there when reciting the heart sutra, after hitting a big meditation bell that was sitting there on its cushion and stand.. and then, the monk motioned me to go behind the altar, where there was another room, carved into the mountain like a cave.. with statues of Kukai, a bell, incense holder… so the same ritual there, almost inside the cave. What a magical experience. I did take a photo, but only show below the side view into the room, not into the cave itself… for that you have to go there yourself 😉 When I came out of this temple hall, it started pouring down. What an atmosphere, in that setting…

Then the obligatory kombini breakfast, and onto temples 72 and 73. I walked from temple 72 to 73 and back, as they are quite close together. Oh, what I wanted to tell earlier but forgot… back around temple 60 or so I started reading the English version of the heart sutra instead of the Japanese one… even though I knew the content more or less, it is very different when reciting words again and again that you actually understand! I must say, it is deepening my experience at the temples, for sure.

Okay, then I drove to temple 74… yes, it was a temple day. By now the sun had made its appearance, and it was almost T-Shirt weather, but a little chilly with the increasing wind… When arriving at temple 75, Zentsuji, I knew it was a big complex, as it is Kukai’s birthplace, and the town, Zentsuji, developed around it, so.. consequently, there was a big parking lot, with entrance gate and staff, several buses parked and numerous cars, and when entering the temple grounds, it was clear that this is a huge complex… groups of, I guess, priests came with suitcases, other groups of men in suits and women in costumes walked into a big building for an event… the main hall, Hondo, is a huge wooden hall with a big golden Buddha statue in it…

After some lunch at a simple restaurant next to the temple, I had a Buddhist pilgrimage break, and went to visit Kotohira Shrine. Which itself is also a huge complex – built on the slope of a whole mountain. The Omotesando street lined with shops, restaurants and cafes leads up to it, over several hundred steps of stairs, which then continued inside the actual shrine, with Torii gates, long lines of stone lanterns, huge shrine buildings, and then more stairs up the mountain for the next level with shrine buildings, and further up to the next level… And there were a lot of people there, school groups, company groups, and many other people, young and old, couples, and lots of tourists, also many Chinese ones.. While in the shrine, the rain got heavier, then hail, then the sun came out again, and on the way down again rain, hail, storm and finally lightning and thunder, with storm and hail and rain… so the troops scattered, and somehow disappeared… I went back to the car, and drove to my nightly onsen and sleeping camper car park…

Tomorrow I will continue with temple 76 and on… which makes me realize, that this pilgrimage is slowly but surely coming to an end… As I am one day ahead of my schedule, and that schedule was very relaxed in the end anyway, I am thinking of going for the last few days to Koyasan again (as one should do anyway to properly finish the pilgrimage)… We will see..

During the night it continued with storm, rain and I guess hail… it sounded heavy, I just hoped that the hail bits were not getting bigger to not turn my rental van into a big golf ball.. That luckily did not happen, but the storm and rain did not want to stop.. it was raining diagonally while I was having breakfast. This time I was sitting in the kombini’s sitting area, charging up my laptop and powerbank fully for once. When I drive, I have various things to charge, my phone, for navigation, the wifi-router for internet, and the camera batteries so I can keep taking pictures…

So my day at temple 76 started a little bit later. It was still very windy and chilly, though, and while waiting in the line for the calligraphy in our books, a Japanese Ohenro showed me pictures on her phone from this morning with snow on the street. Temple 77 was a small and simple town temple.

I then went so see Marugame castle, on a hill with a moat and lots of surrounding stone walls.. and a nice (stormy) view from the top level, but I did not see the concrete tower structure from inside. Then came temple 78, where it was so windy that lighting a candle or incense stick was impossible, so I decided to take a sightseeing break… Temple 78 had a nice feature, though, a kind of underground crypt with thousands of little golden buddha and bodhisattva statues, once a a while a bigger one, with lamps and incense… all very dark and mystical… there I could light my incense sticks and put them in the holder bowl…

So, I went to the seaside, to a nice cafe for lunch, overlooking the Seto Inland Sea and the Seto Bridge… and then next door into the Shikoku Aquarium. Very nice, and lots of (young) people, lots of young couples, and families with kids, it is Saturday after all…

Finally I closed the day with the last temple for today, temple 79, but this was a very simple, almost inactive feeling temple. Had it not been for the old ladies and men doing the evening cleanup, I would have thought it was abandoned… there were other Ohenros too, though, so I felt reassured that I was in the right place… Just my feeling… but as the heart sutra suggests… all that is emptiness, so don’t worry be happy… Now I am really happy, after a nice soak in the local onsen, and finally setting up camp for the night…