Almost Zenned

Hello. The climate on this little group of islands is truly intense. It's ridiculously hot and humid right now; replacing lost fluids is more or less a continual process. And I've been badly sunburned, especially today. Meanwhile, the newspapers are warning that a typhoon is headed for Kanto (the eastern part of Honshu island, which includes Tokyo). So at any moment, things could go from "Pass me your parasol, I'm beginning to resemble a sun-dried tomato" to "All flights to Moscow cancelled due to extreme weather". Scary.

But to progress to the actual point of this ramble: I've mentioned to a few people that I'd read about a town south of Tokyo called Kamakura, which is reputedly the birthplace of Zen Buddhism. The travel guides said you could go there for a day and take instruction from Zen Masters. Well, I got up at 5am today (presuming, for some reason, that monks would rise early) and I went.

Let’s see ... how can I best convey the results of this to you, gentle reader? Hmmm. I guess what it boils down to is this: I got less Zen instruction than, oh say, any at all!

That’s right. The travel guides failed to mention a few things (surprise!). Like the fact that Engaku-ji Temple (one of two places where it's theoretically possible to do what the guides claim) commences its sessions at 5:30pm, and they continue until 10:30am the next day. That isn't a succession of times, by the way ... it’s a single 17-hour session. And it’s in Japanese only. The Lonely Planet didn't mention that part, either.

Needless to say, after such a build-up I'm a little disappointed about the lack of enlightenment.

That said, I had a brilliant day, nirvana-related issues notwithstanding. For a start, Kamakura proved to be quite a charming town, with numerous poky little streets to explore and some eye-opening sights (although not all of these were good – the pet shop I visited where a macaw was tethered to the counter was a worry). The township is wedged in between a low mountain range and the shore of the Pacific Ocean. I’d never seen a Japanese surfing beach before, so I figured “Why not?” and, after schlepping round the town for a little while, I wandered down to the sandy shores. As a bonus, it was kind of intriguing to see the ‘other side of the ocean’, so to speak.
[Warning: duration of novelty value <15 seconds.]

But much better than this was the fact that, by a series of dumb coincidences, I did get to meet someone who seems to qualify as a celebrity in the world of Zen – possibly even the celebrity. More specifically, by getting lost and accidentally ending up in his backyard, I briefly met the abbot (for want of a better word) of Engaku-ji. This is a big deal as I understand it. From what I could gather, he's more or less the Steven Hawking of Zen monks.

I then scored a private behind-the-scenes tour of Engaku-ji, conducted impromptu by an Austrian guy called Mannfred who's the Zen guru's brother-in-law. I met Mannfred at the house he’d been staying in, and he gave me a tour of that as well. Said house formerly belonged to a famous Nihonga painter who was declared a 'living national treasure' by the Emperor while he was alive. There are plans to turn it into a museum (it's more or less Japan's equivalent of Shakespeare's birthplace or the Goethehaus in Weimar, Mannfred said), but I'm the first member of the public to have seen it. It was absolutely incredible – a sublime little corner of Old World Japan, untouched by modern hands (except those of a few plumbers ... which can only be a good thing!)

In the main temple complex, I bowed to the buddha, threw money into his Holy Trough and asked him to grant me a wish before being shown around various meditation rooms and other places of interest. At the abbott’s insistence, Mannfred then dragged me up an extremely long and winding staircase set into the side of a small cliff, to look at … wait for it … a bell.

Yep, a bell. Big metal thing that rings. Not ordinarily the kind of thing I’d fly for nine hours to see.

Fortunately, this particular big metal thing shared its elevated corner of the Engaku-ji complex with a great view and a beautiful Shinto shrine, where I clapped my hands to summon the kami (divine nature/ancestral spirits) and was once again allowed to make a wish.

I’m not too clear on why it is that the buddha charges for wish-granting while the kami offer their services for free, but I do like the fact that both are here. I noticed the harmonious relationship between Buddhism and Shinto the first time I visited Japan, and it impressed me then as it does now. (Let’s see ... I wonder are there are any other ‘multi-faith’ regions of the world where the people could draw a lesson from this kind of mature co-habitation. Hmmmm …)

Anyway, Mannfred took me to an adjacent gift shop where teenagers sat eating shaved ice with green tea syrup, and where I discovered there are numerous ways to improve your chances of finding favour with the kami. I particularly liked oma-mori, rather attractive little belt-hanging things that increase your fortune in different areas of life, depending on which kind you wear. You can go for the usual stuff like career advancement, finding love etc., but there are also some charmingly offbeat oma-mori as well ... like the one which asks the kami to keep you safe in heavy traffic.

Also thanks to my Austrian guide, I got to witness something I’d never even heard about before: Zen archery. I’m told that relatively few Westerners have had the chance to see it, so this was evidently quite a privilege. It required some negotiation between my guide and the master archer, but after a minute or two of rapid talk and hand-gesturing, I was in.

The archers stood inside a wooden temple house that opened out at one end like a barn. They fired across a range that was ringed with dense greenery – though the “firing” part didn’t seem to be a big feature of what was going on. The impression I got was that, in Zen archery, you had more or less the principles of Tai Chi applied to bowmanship. The real point was not to score a hit on the target, but (as Mannfred explained) to meditate deeply on the long and rigorously precise series of movements that prepared the bow and its holder for a strike.

I watched a girl of about 12 or 13 years go through the archer’s motions a few times. The tiny movements of her head, the slow extension and folding of her limbs, were fluid and balletic. She knelt, bowed, stood, sighted the target and so on, while keeping her rather sizeable apparatus from touching the ground by manipulating it at different angles around her body. As she performed this meditative dance, the bow-string began to tighten very, very slowly. And throughout this, her facial expression suggested such a degree of single-minded concentration that I thought “Wow, if that look was directed at me right now, I’d probably run.” It was all rather majestic.

Anyway, once I’d done the rounds of Engaku-ji, I farewelled Mannfred and moved on to Kensho-ji temple complex. This place, I have to say, is possibly the most evocative and beautiful 'spiritual' location I've ever visited.

Zen instruction was meant to be available here too, but again it was only in Japanese and not until the evening, when I had to be back in Tokyo. But it didn’t matter, really; just walking around Kensho-ji and seeing the temples and their surrounds made the trip out to Kamakura worthwhile. There was definitely a satisfying air of harmony and a numinous spiritual quality to this space; I so wanted to get down on the tatami mats, enjoy the silence, and just drink in as much of the energy here as I could. It was amazing.

Conclusion: I think I may have a further date with Zen Buddhism in the future. I’ll see if I can work on some mono-dextrous applause techniques in the meantime :-)