Hiya,

Sometimes good things happen to bad people, and sometimes the reverse. Check this out.

I’m back on my mountain kick again. I’d been rather nervously looking into the possibilities of climbing Hakusan for a while. It’s the highest and holiest mountain of central Japan. You could probably call it the hub of Japan and in former centuries it was regarded with that sort of veneration. Strangely enough Fuji, despite it’s beauty was never so highly regarded. Mountains play a very particular role in the Japanese consciousness; the terrain is very clearly delineated – flat land, intensively cultivated and built on, and mountains, forested, steep and inaccessible. Even to this day, the bulk of the Japanese landmass, folded into steep slopes and cliffs, sees nothing of humanity. By contrast, some of the most intensively built up land on earth can be just a kilometre or two away. And now, it really is incredibly built-up. From Tokyo in the east to Osaka and Kyoto in the west, when you take the train – perhaps a two hundred and fifty mile journey – the development never stops; it’s effectively one city right the way through. But city development doesn’t get within fifty miles of Hakusan. It’s in it’s own steep and wild national park.

You can get a sense of the power and popularity of Hakusan from the way that almost every town has its Hakusan Jinja – its Hakusan shrine. Zen monks and the Yamabushi, Japan’s mountain ascetics, have a particularly strong association with the mountain. The thing is, modern accounts of climbing the mountain seem to dwell more strongly on the vicious weather conditions and treacherous paths than anything else. The mountain is snow covered most of the year – hence the name, White Mountain (with a strong connotation of purity), and is only officially open in July and August.

So here we are, a bit late in the year, already past mid-September. The daft urge to get up there had been slowly growing, but I’m starting to wonder whether it may have to wait a year. Almost out of the blue I get a day off – I’m not expected in the temple. I hurriedly trawl through the internet – not much information, a couple of rather lugubrious accounts of battling up to the summit and staying in an over-priced and dispiriting mountain hut en route. No maps. Also, the most popular way up the mountain is from Ishikawa ken the other side to me. I’m coming from Gifu-ken. So I’ve effectively got one piece of information – my road atlas shows a tiny road in to the base of the mountain from my side. It ends at a lake. That’s all I know. Either I get up there and follow my nose or I leave it for another year. I won’t get another opportunity around now.

I decide to go for it.

Right now I’m really really tired. The traditions don’t tell you that spiritual practice is mostly carried out in a fog of exhaustion, but I can tell you for a fact that that’s the way it tends to be. So I’m knackered, nervous and without even a map and I’m just about to climb the highest mountain in central Japan? Yup.

I got out of the temple (with a car) and drove about half way there. I was so tired I had to stop and sleep for an hour or so, and shop for some provisions – yoghurt, nuts, raw cabbage and carrots. I was tired but still couldn’t forget the time – it’s dark at six thirty now. If I was even going to have a chance at this, I needed light. As I drove up through little ski towns, some with traditional gassho zukkuri houses – thatched roofs of incredible steepness so the snow can’t settle (gassho zukkuri literally means “hands in prayer), I reckoned up my chances. The weather forecast was good – 20% chance of precipitation, although I know that doesn’t count for much in the mountains. Last night was the beautiful harvest full moon, making today the first day of autumn with, if there was a clear sky some illumination to help the trip. No automatic stop signs yet! I turned off onto the tiny mountain road that led to a lake – the nearest point to the peak on my side. Even for Japan – a country of narrow roads, this one was tight, winding along the base of a cliff with seemingly endless blind corners. I curved past a dam, crossed a bridge the car engine straining as we climbed higher. Then it dropped again down to a small carpark beside the lake. There were a few signboards dotted around, but no obvious trailhead. Guessing, I walked back up the road a little way. There it was, tucked into the trees, a rough and battered Shrine gateway with the Chinese characters for white and mountain carved into it. I stepped through and onto holy ground.

The path climbed steeply up the flank of a heavily wooded slope. It had been heavily washed out by repeated rains. I had no time to waste and within minutes my heart was banging around like a tin drum in the hands of a kid who’s been on the orange squash. I climbed higher, looking out over broad steep valleys. I seemed to have the whole vast landscape to myself. My clothes were soon soaked in sweat and, although I rested a little bit, I wouldn’t allow myself to sit down. An hour and a half or so up the trail I hit a summit with a solidly built mountain hut tucked in behind it. To my surprise it was unlocked. There was nothing inside but a sweeping broom and a 2004 copy of Playboy (Japanese edition). Surprisingly it was mostly about formula one racing and a multi-page survey of the world’s cigarillos. Perhaps the world’s playboys have transcended the desire for pretty girls. It’s an educated guess, but I reckon the vast majority of the world’s monks have transcended the desire for cigarillos.

I pushed on with the possibility forming that I could sleep in the hut on the way back down. The path dipped a little and then started climbing hard. In places it was cut into steps up to a foot high. I was on a ridgeback with long forested views to left and right. “Even if I get no further,” I thought, “It’s been worth it for this.”

The trees got smaller and finally dwindled down to scrub and grass. The sky was pretty clear and, although I was pretty high now, there wasn’t much wind. I was really hurting and running with sweat but it just didn’t feel safe to sit down. The most I allowed myself was a few quick halts to allow my heart rate to drop down to somewhere near normal. It’s hard to explain but within all this I was really re-charging on a spiritual level. Hakusan is a special place.

I reached a broad alpine meadow and caught sight of the infamous Murato mountain hut – over-priced and uninspiring seemed to be the general verdict. I skirted round and hit the steepness again for the final kilometre.

My legs were shaking and I couldn’t move without groaning, but I made my bows at the shrine on the summit just as the sun sank into an incredible ocean of cloud pierced by other mountain peaks. Oh, and you might find that there’s a sudden surge in your levels of health, happiness and all round success. Prayers made at the mountain shrine are reputed to be very effective and, of course, you were included.

Matane Daizan

Hiya,

and greetings again from Gyokuryuji Zen Temple in the mountains of central Japan. A few days ago we had a sixty second birthday party for Morimoto-san, the temple carpenter. Japanese carpenters have the reputation of being the best in the world, and temple carpenters are among the best of those. I’m sure he’d be the first to say he’s nothing much to look at – short, bandy-legged, with a face like a frog. Just an ordinary simple man. At the party he made a little speech saying how he’d come here two years ago with his eyesight so bad he couldn’t see a tv picture and his whole state depressed and despondant. He’d already worked in other temples and actually built a completely new one for the Pure Land School about fifty miles south of here. But there was little thought of any of that when he arrived at Yokuryuji.

But I want you to imagine this man talking, only just holding back the tears of gratitude as he described how the training here gradually brought back his eyesight, and more than that, how his spritual eye opened too. Now he goes to bed at midnight, gets up at four and works with the energy of a toddler. I work with him every day and yesterday he was literally dancing on the exposed roof beams of the temple – a sixty-two year old man.

We’ve got a kind of common language now, part Japanese, part English, part babytalk. For example an electric screwdriver is a “bzzzt”, imitating the noise it makes. His only sentance in English is “I am homeless.” To which I always reply, “Watashi wa rompen desu,” the same thing in Japanese, which gets him going in gales of laughter. Yes it’s true we are both homeless. But more than that, in Zen when you abandon any clinging to fixed views and ideas – the things that so often imprison us – you’re said to enter the world of homelessness. When The roshi in his morning lecture, talked about Morimo-san, he compared him to the great sixth patriarch of Zen, who came to the fifth patriarch’s monastery as an illiterate wood-cutter and worked as the temple riceman, completely unnoticed by the monastic hierarchy. Yet, one midnight the fifth patriarch named him as his successor, and later, after a period in the mountains, he became a phenomenally successful teacher.

The next morning, Morimo-san gave the Dharma talk. There was a lot I didn’t understand in his words, but again and again came the phrase, “Domo arigato gozaimasu”- thank you very much. He thanked his parents, the roshi, his fellow trainees, the Buddhas, everyone and everything. He’d just completely woken up to the miracle of life – how so much, in fact the entire universe, comes together in such a way that we can exist and marvel at it. So you can imagine it feels a great privilige to work everyday with such an unpretentious and yet extrordinary man. It’s like he’s become completely himself and in doing so, the cosmos can flow freely through his stubby fingers. Sometimes I call him “Daiku Sensei” – carpenter teacher. That really gets him laughing like a drain.

Here’s wishing we all find our true place and enjoy the wonder and glory of it. More later.

Hiya,

Is it a troop of monkeys or a tribe of monkeys? I can’t remember. Anyway we have a pretty active gang living in the trees on our mountain. About four hundred years ago there was an earthquake here and a piece of land within the mountain was flattened. That’s where our temple is. So we’re surrounded by slopes on pretty much all sides. The monkeys pay us a visit about once a month and usually stay around for four or five days. Then they’re off to fresh foliage elsewhere.

The most recent visit today was with this spring’s babies in tow. It’s hard to count but I would guess the whole big happy family has about fifty members with maybe ten or so babies. they look so cute with their brown fur and little pink faces, and they’re fantastic thieves. Anything fresh and green and succulent is fair game. Well, of course there’s a lot of fresh growth in the trees this time of year and also many new bamboos. A couple of the babies must have ventured onto something to small for them and I heard a snap and one of them fell out onto the gravel from perhaps thirty or forty feet. “Oh my God he’s dead,” I thought as he lay face down on the gravel, small as a kid’s teddy bear. “Poor little thing, probably just a few weeks old.” I felt gutted. I was just about to go over and pick him up when an adult monkey, Mum, I guess climbed down to him. She lolloped over, looked at him a moment and touched his back. He gave a little screech and leaped into the trees as if he was on springs. No sign of the slightest injury.

And I went back to trying to find ways to cover over the okkra and watermelons so they don’t all get eaten.

Hope all’s very well with you.

Cheers Daizan