Saijo-ji Temple

As you may have ascertained from my earlier posts, Japan abounds with shrines and temples. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 official shrines altogether, I'm told; there are probably thousands more 'unofficial' shrines not counted in that number. And after having looked around the southern part of the country quite a bit, I can personally testify to the fact that there seems to be some type of shrine dedicated to almost every object, person, place, thing, body part, etc., that you could ever think of. I'm almost certain that there are shrines dedicated to each individual season of the television show "Friends". I think they also tried to build a series of shrines to follow the "E.R" series, but probably ran out of steam after the umpteenth season. (And realistically, what self respecting Buddhist would visit a shrine that was dedicated after Clooney left the show anyway?).

The temples, on the other hand are little fewer and farther in between. They tend to revolve around significant deities and places in the Buddhist culture. With help of a baby-sitter, Charlotte & I were able to shirk our parenting duties and make a quick Saturday get-away to the neighboring Odawara Valley to visit Dai Yu Zan Saijo-ji Temple. (It wasn't so much that Reese wasn't welcome at the temple, but more the fact that the Asahi Brewery tour that immediately followed the temple would have been a real drag for her). The Saijo-ji temple was completed in 1394 and is the third highest temple of the sotozen sect of Buddhism. It was dedicated to Guatama Buddha ...And that about ends the history lesson. We were mainly just happy to get out and experience some of the local country side. It's rainy season here in Japan, and the fact that it was mildly sunny on Saturday made it all that much better.

There are a number of rituals that a typical Buddhist goes through while praying at a shrine or temple. The first of these involves 'bathing' oneself in the smoke of the incense burning outside the temple. The idea here (if not already obvious) is that you're making yourself smell a little better for the deity. Thanks to the advent of modern personal hygiene, not everyone necessarily does this, so it's become kind of 'optional'. The second step is to wash the face and hands, again, to make oneself more presentable before God. All Buddhist shrines and temples feature a fountain or cistern with fresh, running water and a small copper cup mounted on a wooden dowel for exactly this purpose. It's also permissible to take a bit of water into the mouth and cleanse the tongue before speaking to God, but you're not supposed to drink the water. Saijo-ji temple is the one exception to this rule, in that there are several washing cisterns throughout the complex; one of which supposedly contains a special 'healing water'. Patrons are allowed to drink from this one station and enjoy the healing properties both inside and out.

Our tour guide was happy to point out this particular feature of the Saijo-ji temple to our tour group. ..But of course she identified the wrong fountain of 'healing water' at the beginning of the tour, so the whole ritual of putting some healing water from the first cistern onto my burgeoning bald spot probably went unheeded by the Great One. (Anyway, I got my healing drink on when we finally arrived at the appropriate water station).

The next step in the process is to remove your shoes before entering the temple. (Again, the reason doesn't require explanation. Other than the robes, the practicality of the whole thing is pretty amazing). The next part gets weird... This is where you attempt to get God's attention - either through clapping or ringing a gong - and then make your donation before praying. (This kind of reminds me of the whole 'tip jar' bit from the Seinfeld show, where it was important to be seen putting the money in). In some cases where no bell or gong is conveniently located, the large, rectangular money receptacle is actually designed to make a lot of noise as the money falls in, thereby waking up the deity. After all of these steps are complete, ...you then have the floor.

Now obviously, I've made a very casual overview of typical Buddhist pomp & ceremony. There's a lot more to the tenants and sanctity of the religion than I'm really telling here; all for the purposes of keeping the blog brief and entertaining. As far as the concept of picking out piecemeal bits of spirituality from the fray, there's a lot of things about Buddhism that appeal to me, (e.g. all of the politeness, hand washing & shoe shedding really jives with my anal-retentive/OCD nature). The things that really turn me off about Buddhism are the root forms of ambition that it's adherents normally pray for: luck, money, power, & success.

Not being one to debase another persons religious ideology or inherent right to believe in their own way, I still can't see myself banging on a gong and asking God for money. I simply can't imagine the universe working on that principle. In fact, I find that most of my prayers are more or less focused on asking God to deliver me from bad things, vice granting me materialistic advantages. For example, when I'm flying, a prayer would generally involve something like this: "Dear Lord, don't let that noise be my tail rotor falling off!" Or simply, "God, don't let me crash!" (In the case of prayers made while flying, they are generally preceded directly by the words "HOLY SH#T!" I guess that my Catholic upbringing has given me this alternate method to get God's attention. ...It's what I have instead of gongs and hand-clapping, but it genuinely seems to do the trick). Or maybe another example of the Christian "take away the bad stuff" ethic: "Oh Lord, deliver my child from the temptation of fast food. For we all know that the road to hell is paved with Chicken McNuggets. (...They're random chicken parts fused-together, for God's sake!)"

On the theme of fast food, the visit to Saijo-ji afforded us yet another opportunity to persue a favorite Japanese past-time of Charlotte and mine: finding the wierdest ice cream flavor ever created. Residing in a small roadside souvenir stand adjacent to the parking area we found this week's winning freaky flavor: Wasabi. (...And it was actually good!)

...The loser, by the way, was the beer flavored ice cream at the Asahi Beer Brewery. (Nice try guys! Don't bother quittin' your day jobs to become the next 'Ben & Jerry').