Japan!

Disclaimer: I apologize to all my readers for the frequency of these posts. I can only blame my laziness in not writing earlier, for I have had ample time and opportunity, it was just one of those things that was always easy to put off till tomorrow. I guess today is tomorrow, since I'm finally writing this blog! However, I cannot say that nothing has come from it, because distance often creates perspective, and so by being so far removed from my time in Japan I have a removed vantage point. This will allow me to look back on my time with a more detached and therefore more honest view of my time and experiences, and truly some time is needed to integrate and truly understand the lessons learned. 3 months removed, I’ve had some time, but I’m sure were I to write a blog 3 years after the fact I would understand even better what I gained/came to understand/let go of. Of course, with this distance I may loose some of the details, and will be working on memories, which we all know are often hazy, prejudiced or just outright fabricated. And so I will endeavor to make the following blog posts come in a much more timely matter.

When last we left our intrepid hero he was taking a ferry from Busan Korea to Osaka Japan. There was one notable occurrence that happened on the ferry, in terms of my personal and spiritual growth. Being billed as a “cruise” the ship was amply stocked with the convienences that suit the Asian mind, and so there was a sauna and bathroom on board. And the custom is to bathe nude. So one enters the changing room, disrobes, and stores their clothes in a locker. Then one enters the shower room and washes the body thoroughly with soap and shampoo. Generally there are tiny stools that you can sit on, facing the wall, but these stalls are all around the room, so you are in full sight of others during the entire process. And once one is clean you enter the bath. I have never been comfortable with nudity, seeming to have fully inherited the protestant shame of the body. Always as a youth I was able to avoid, or win, those games of strip poker that high school kids play, for instance. So I was daunted, but I was determined. And I found that it was like many things – the idea of the act, the mental preparation and all the fear that accompanies it, is much worse than the actual act. So once I worked up the courage I stripped down and sudded up, and then took a wonderful, cleansing steam and soak in the hot water, with a view from the window of the coastline of Japan at night. Later in my time in Japan I even went with a group of couchsurfers to a bathhouse and was naked not just in front of strangers but in front of friends without a problem. This may not seem like much, and in truth it isn’t, but every fear conquered helps me to remember that fears are unfounded, self created prisons with self created wardens.

The ferry left me off at Osaka which I had a few hours to explore, really doing my best to be open and to soak up the energy of the country, I found my way to an ancient palace, and sitting in the apricot orchard, I did a tarot reading and some journaling, really setting into motion my intention to connect more to the spiritual in Japan. The tarot, as always, was bluntly truthful, and basically stated that I would plant a few seeds of connection in Japan, but that I wouldn’t be truly connecting with the divine. And that is for the most part what happened.

In general though I found Japan to be a welcome change from Korea. Still very much a country based on wealth and capitalism, affluence and abundance are obvious in Japan, and all the trappings that come with that – the same chain of stores that can be found on the beaches of Waikiki, on 5^th Avenue and in Paris and in Milan, and the ever expanding system of shops catering to every whim and desire. But, much more so than in Korea, or the States for that matter, spiritual devotion is hidden all over Japan, if one just keeps half an eye out for it. And in Kyoto, it’s nearly impossible not to run into manifestations of this devotion on every street, in every alley and in between. There are so many shrines and temples in Kyoto, and they are all beautiful. There is the Golden Pavilion at Kinkaku-ji, which is literally covered in gold as an offering to the spirits and built in the middle of a lake which creates a reflection that is even more beautiful than the temple itself. There is the Fushimi-Inari shrine, which is an entire hilltop covered in the orange Tori gates placed so close to each other that they create tunnels leading to the summit, interspersed with altar after altar, shrine after shrine, thousands of statues of the spirit foxes kitsune, of Buddhas wearing red aprons and cloaks, and hundreds of sticks of incense all burning together to create a wondrous smell. And there are the personal shrines – built aside peoples houses, in alleyways or in their window boxes, many of those more infused with spirit than the large complexes. Japan in general, and Kyoto in particular is a wonderful blend of so many traditions – Shinto, Buddhism and Christianity are all followed in great numbers and often blended together without the same contradictions we would have in the west. I did my best to attune myself to the spirit of devotion in Japan, to offer gratitude to the spirits and kamis that inhabited the land. Following local tradition, at every shrine I would clap my hands three times to gain the attention of the spirit, then wave the beautifully colored rope that rung the bell, and offering my gratitude and energy with hands clasped in the prayer position. I must admit that oftentimes I did this out of mere ritual, often I felt hokey and embarrassed by this act, but occasionally felt a glimmer of connection, the energy of the place alive and participatory.

Often times though, it was just a glimmer. I met a fabulous woman while I was in Japan, she was a host of mine on couchsurfing, and we had some incredible talks, and looking back I realize that I missed some opportunities towards the divine with her. She is one of those people that is innately more connected, would be described as psychic or attuned or delusional depending on whom you talk to – she has had conversations with the dead, with angels and with benevolent presences from beyond earth. She opened herself to me and shared many of these experiences during our time and I often just wasn’t receptive. Too much of that rational part of my brain telling me she was imagining things, that these things are impossible, or that they may happen for her but not for me, that the connection she had with the cosmic consciousness was beyond what I could ever achieve. Much too often during our conversations I was spending more time listening to my ego debase her than what she was actually telling me. And though I learned a lot from her, especially her bravery in being so open about something so easy to dismiss and mock but so important, I feel that I missed an opportunity to learn a lot more from her. I wanted to offer her a tarot reading, but felt intimidated, fearing that she would judge me. I could have asked her more about her experiences and perhaps opened my 3^rd eye and 6^th sense a bit more, but I didn’t. Still, I must have made some impression on her, for as I left Kyoto she gifted me a seashell that she carried with her from Spain, a symbolic symbol for my pilgrimage, the same shell that all pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela. Take with them on their journey to act as a touchstone, a constant reminder of the path of the divine in their life. Thank you Lisy. Thank you for being you, for being open, for being a guide and an example in my life.

I have often been told by those close to me that I am overly critical of myself. And I understand why they have this feeling – I tend to highlight my failures more than my successes. This is for a few reasons.

1. I hold myself to a high standard. I am constantly striving to be a better person, to grow, to learn, to transcend. However I forgive myself when I make mistakes, when I slip, when I regress. I believe I come across much more stringent with my life than I actually am.

2. I have a hard time discussing my successes without feeling pride, without the ego praising itself, basking in its glory and asking for adoration from others. Therefore it is easier for me to act humble in the presence of others. I am endeavoring to disassociate from the ego, and to accept praise without a feeling of pride, but I have not yet succeeded. Not that I can always accept criticism with equanimity, but I much better at avoiding the input of the ego when it comes to criticism than with praise.

I say this because I don’t want to give the impression that I live a life devoid of contact with the divine. I do have moments of unity and pure devotion, every once in a while even bliss, or at the least moments of yearning in which my separation from God is so explicit and understood that it’s agonizingly painful. Examples to follow, working from the latter to the former.

I have long felt that discussing religious matters is vitally important, as is journaling, for the reason that I often don’t even know what I actually think, or believe, until I try to express it, to put it into words, to make it clear. To take these unformed, ephemeral, hazy impressions and make them into concrete, living ideas and beliefs. One rainy day in Kyoto I attempted to do this very thing. I asked myself,

“What is my world view? What are my beliefs? What are my life goals? What do I hope to accomplish on this pilgrimage and what steps do I need to take to do so? And there’s the rub. I cannot be “all theory and no action”. Once I have enunciated my thoughts I no longer have the excuse – I don’t know. Its then up to me to do my best to bring this about. To hold myself accountable, to not be lazy, cowardly or wasteful, with my time or energy. And that’s scary. Why both Christianity and sects of Buddhism turned from examples to follow, action based philosophies, to religions of blind faith. I feel daunted even to begin. I’m not as intelligent as Thoreau, as well read as Campbell. I fear ridicule from myself and others. I fear failure. I fear to learn that my limitations are so much closer that I imagined. If one only thinks about swimming across wide lakes or powerful rivers its one thing. But to actually swim, though, demonstrates quickly and perhaps lethally exactly how far one can go. Still, it is only by swimming again and again that one gets the strength and fortitude to actually forge those rushing waters. So, feet first hopefully, maybe head first, but probably a belly flop, here I go –

1. I believe that actions are more important that beliefs. All this talk up to now elucidates this point. It’s easy to believe, to imagine, to think, much another to do. Of course I think there is a type of belief or a way of believing and imaging that becomes active but that is not what is commonly referred to, or what I refer to as belief.

2. I do not know if there is a god. If exist in any form angles, spirits, ghosts, kami, faeries, ufos or any of the myriad other ideas out there. I want to say that I am open to believing this but I often find my rational mind gently mocking those ideas. For example, last night, while talking with my host, when she gave me stories about her “master” I couldn’t help but put mental quotation marks around the idea. Some alien being is contacting you in your dreams? And about things as mundane as going to Argentina to see your lover or leaving China to welcome your brother? And yet I’ve had mystical experiences that when I explain to others I know they are doing the same – humoring me while holding me apart in their heads. I think tied together in my skepticism is even my experiences. I pull tarot cards everyday, carry stones on my person at nearly all times. Why? Do I actually believe I can tell the future or even divine (how did I never notice that correlation before?) the present? That citrine will actually bring me good luck and good fortune? I think the answer is; sometimes. Partly. When I can ignore that voice in my head, what Julia Cameron calls the internal censor, the mocking voice so common in the west – show me proof! So, a refinement of #2 is necessary. How about –

2) I do not know what I believe when it comes to the spiritual, the mythic, the mystical, the divine. But I will do my best to learn to listen with my soul and ignore the ego. Cosmos, hear me now. I am open, receptive.

3. Though I'm not entirely accepting of the ideas of reincarnation (see #2) I do not reject them either. However I feel that still the current incarnation of most of us living on the planet today is in a state of suffering. Caused by desire, distance from God, removal from Nature, what have you, this “distraction from distraction” this wasteland is of our own device. Generally created by fear and laziness, compounded by ignorance and practiced deceit from the “elite” we “zigzag our way, through the boredom and pain, occasionally glancing up through the rain”. I pledge here and now to embark on my own grail quest. To heal not just my own, internal wasteland, but to help as many of my fellow humans as possible. How to do this exactly I don’t know, whether they are mutually exclusive goals I hope not. By setting foot on the path I have faith the path will appear. Though I struggle with the question of selfishness I feel I must start by first making some discoveries for myself. Answer, at least partially some of these nagging questions. I will use as clues those who have gone before me. Follow the words and footsteps of prior pilgrims from all parts of the world. And while I may not be actively helping others at this time I’m reminded of a comment of Thick Nhat Hanh’s – I will paraphrase here because I don’t have the text with me – that “to heal the world the activist must first heal the self”. And that brings me to my next tenet.

4. We are, if not one being, at least one people, one earth, one planet, one family. And the sickness that is present in many of us is reflected in the state of the planet – our mother, Gaia. Call it global warming, the fifth age, the return of Quetzalcoatl, or by any other name we are at a pivotal point in Earthling history. And yes I understand millennialism, how people throughout time have always felt they are in a “special time” a “sacred crossroads”, the “apocalypse”, the “return” – and that’s because they were! And we are now! Time is an illusion, a construct. We continually have the opportunity for salvation, for enlightenment, and so every age rightfully understands theirs to be a time of power. I need to find where I read it so I can cite the source but, it’s like the Japanese proverb, “The master of a house inquires of his gardener – when is the best time to plant a tree? The gardener responds – a hundred years ago, but the second best time is now”. Now is the only time we have. Every now is an apocalypse, a crisis. Crisis in Chinese is made of two characters – disaster and opportunity. Still I am not so enlightened that I can see past this specific incarnation of life, and so I want to do my best to alleviate the suffering of all life on Earth and to heal the Earth itself. And the unique challenge we have is that the world is so much bigger today than it has ever been – through technology we are becoming a human culture, and it is only through a combined human effort that we will heal the Earth. (Will the next stage of evolution be an Earthling culture, where we once again recognize the “four – legged people” and the “standing people”? where the issues of the day are no longer women’s rights, racism and classism etc [hopefully we will have solved those] but speciesism? Animal rights and plants rights? And not as pets but as empowered beings?) So I believe it is necessary, for me at least, to help on both a personal and a planetary scale. How do I do that if I’m not involved with Greenpeace or some similar organization? I hope, I trust, that an answer will present itself.

That’s all I can think of at this moment for my guiding principles, my mission statement. I’m sure these will change again and again as I follow this pilgrimage, as I spiral towards the center.

The most powerful spiritual experience that I had in Japan though came very near the end. I was in the town of Kamakura, an hour south of Tokyo on the coast. It’s famous for having the largest statue of the Buddha in Japan, so large in fact that they sell entrance to the inside of the statue. I was on the way to visit this temple, walking down the street, when my attention was caught by an alleyway. I’m not sure why, there was nothing significantly different about this alley from where I could see, but I decided to walk up it. After a minute walk I could see that the alley lead to a large staircase, leading up to a hillside shrine. As I climbed the steps I nodded at a man walking down them, and he returned the gesture. I got to the shrine, a simple, beautiful building, and made the customary gestures to the altar. Then I saw that there was another, smaller shrine a bit farther up the hill and felt a rush of exhilaration. I climbed to that shrine too and made an offering to the kami, to the divine. And yet… I felt a bit disappointed … I realized that I had a sense that this was going to be something different, and now the experience, just like so many others I had had, felt empty, lacking. I walked back down to the first shrine, to the tree I had leant my walking stick against when I saw a small path leading in another direction on the hillside. And crouched there, half hidden in the bushes and half visible on the path, was a pure white cat. I knew from my sister that cats are considered lucky in Japan and that feeling came back, tentatively. I began walking towards it. The cat waited until I got about halfway, then ran farther up the path. Then stopped. Turned. Looking directly at me. Not crouched in that way that felines can where it’s obvious that all of its muscles are ready to spring away at the direction of its mind, but rather casually, expectantly. Feeling like Huma following the white stag I followed the cat for a few more minutes, crossed through a hole in a barbed wire fence and started climbing down the other side of the hill. At some point the cat went on its own way, but I no longer needed its guidance. I could see a small cave, really just an indentation in the very steep face of the hillside and traveled towards it. As I got close I realized that there were stone markers inside of the cave, all lined up against the back wall. A small staircase lead down into it. Obviously another shrine, much different from any other I had seen in Japan but imbued with a sense of power. I was slightly afraid as I entered, not of the power of the place but that I was breaking human conventions. But entered I did, and immediately I felt a connection with Tina. The Japanese are one of those cultures that, in ages past at least, worshiped the dead. Had I been more open maybe I could have communicated with her, but still it was overwhelming to me to even get this glimpse. It could have been just a powerful presence that was similar to Tina’s energy, and so I projected my own impressions on it, but I there was more energy in that little cave than in most of the shrines I had been to in Japan. The disclaimer is becoming even more important now because this experience, more so than any other in my time in Japan, is both not yet fully integrated and already starting to become very hazy… its almost as if, for me at least, these liminal experiences, so hard to grasp by the conscious, rational mind, are earmarked for early memory erosion. The conscious doesn’t know what to do with it so would rather forget it…

All in all my time in Japan was a good for my spiritual development. I learned quite a bit and held true to my intention to be open to possibilities, for the most part. In Tokyo especially I lost sight of my goal for a bit, so easy to do in cities I feel.