May 28th, 2019
Somewhere in Yoshino
The rain comes in the middle of the night; a light pitter patter on the roof stirs me from the futon, and it soon becomes a roaring sound that covers up all individual drops. After six days of cloudless skies and record high temperatures, it is pouring. I open the windows wide.
Morning’s light reveals a landscape that is saturated; with water obviously, but also colour and sound. Somehow, the forest’s green is greener and the bird calls ring crisper.
Throwing on a raincoat, I dash across the open corridor to the temple entrance for the 9am service. Trading my boots for slippers, I slide open the doors and slip inside for sanctuary.
There are three rows of seating neatly lined up facing the altar, with ten chairs to a row and an open corridor up the middle. I take a seat in the second row next to the aisle. Priest Father, who has been preparing the space with incense, claps his hands in welcome and indicates it is time to begin.
Looking around, I realize I am the only one here.
The Japanese mantra book is indecipherable to me, so I am taught orally. In the Jodo-shu sect of Buddhism, emphasis is put on repeating the Buddha’s name. This is the object of meditation to return to when other distractions arise. Instruments (in our case a large singing bowl, a bell, and a choir of wooden drums) keep the beat and provide form for the chant to be repeated in the same way, each and every day.
I’m handed a wooden drum shaped like a fish head. “Fish never sleep and it reminds us to be awake,” he explains. Taking a second glance at the wooden drums in front of him, I now see a school of fish looking back.
The rain picks up again and lays a base rhythm with its persistent beats on the roof, and we join in.
Afterwards, we offer incense to all beings - bowing to all, sprinkling the offering, bowing to all again.
I step out of the temple to a shift in the greyness above. Raindrops give way to a mist, fed by the sky as much as steam from the ground’s warm surface. Somewhere betwixt, I walk.
Behind the Buddhist temple is a path to an even older Shinto shrine. It is paved, though covered in deadfall; a narrow strip that looks out of place as it undulates over several kilometres of mountainside. There are no houses along it or cracks within it, like an image out of a fairy tale.
At first, this forest feels eerily quiet. Orderly lines of cypress reach for the sky; their barcode likeness a tell-tale sign that this area has been logged and replanted.
As I walk, I begin to notice life here too. Spiderwebs first; threads across my way that hint at time between the last footsteps here. Then a trickle down a gully, and a croak along the trickle. Canopy shadows flutter with the wind, and birds flutter with the light in the canopy.
Silence is illusory. Sounds of wind / ventilation, creatures / vehicles, thunder / voices exist everywhere in the natural world if you tune in and listen. No arrival in deep wilderness or a yoga studio is exempt of this - even in a sensory deprivation tank, the sounds of your heart beating, blood flowing, and lungs breathing become deafening.
To seek quietude is not to pursue the absence of sound. Instead it is the desire to dwell in a place of peace and calm.
As if crossing an invisible line, the trees suddenly become much older and wilder, an island amidst the otherwise second-growth. Cresting the hill, the shrine comes into view on the other side as the rain starts to return with force - though not quite interrupting my reverie.
Ducking under the shrine’s shelter, I listen to the rain falling on its roof.
After a time, a window of lightness opens up and I scurry back to my room to dry out.
Somewhere unseen behind the clouds, the sun sets. The pitter patter picks up once again, heavy yet comforting, as I unfold my futon on the tatami and take rest. Tomorrow begins the long journey home.
D