I’m currently struggling to stay awake, even though as I’m starting this post it’s only almost 9 PM. Going to bed late last night and hiking a mountain this afternoon have made me exhausted. I was able to wake up with enough energy to get up, shower and eat before we returned to Tofuku-ji to see Kei-san one last time. The zazen seemed long today, and we gave our answers to his koan.
The historical answer to the question of “What would you bring if asked to bring your kokoro?” is that the very action is impossible. That is, to think that the kokoro is something that you can hand off to someone else is to have lost sight of it entirely.
The answer I gave Kei-san is that I would bring my smile. At first, this may seem like a reference to the story of Shakyamuni picking his successor – giving the “dharma talk” by holding up a flower and choosing his one student in the audience who smiled as his successor. My reason for choosing this answer was similar, but not entirely the same.
If I smile at you, you’ll probably smile back. Biologists may have a technical explanation for this based on evolution, but I think there’s more to this phenomenon than can be explained by science. When you smile at someone and they smile back, there is a connection occurring, a mutual understanding of your heart-minds, your kokoro. That’s why I would bring my smile. If people are receptive to your smile, they can feel your kokoro through their own.
After we said goodbye to Kei-san, we then said goodbye to Sachi-san and Mitsue-san and thanked them for helping us during the program. They gave each of us hugs and told us to come back and visit and we took group photos. It was all very sweet.
All of us then walked around Tofuku-ji garden for a short while. Some of us went to see the main garden, which is known for its section with stone tiles and moss. I prefered the main part of the garden with the sharp islands of rocks and large swatch of moss-covered rocks that looked like mountains. The group of us then went to the base of the Fushimi Inari shrine, where we stopped for ramen. After eating, all of us went to the base of the shrine, but only four of us were able to climb the whole mountain and reach the summit.
Red gates and shrines decorated the whole mountain. At first we went up some of the side paths to visit smaller shrines, but then we went up the main path with all of the gates lined up. There were many tourists on the main path, but that didn’t detract from the feeling of walking up the steps flanked by the gates. I also saw a few cats on the way up. Their presence was very appropriate given the abundance of fox statues at the shrines. You can actually see Osaka from the peak. I liked all of the foxes. Kagaya-sensei was worried when we told her we went back down the mountain as the sun was setting, but it wasn’t scary and we got some good drinks out of a vending machine. I was glad to see the gates lit by sunlight and by incandescent light along the paths at night.
Despite everything we did after ten days, there is so much we haven’t even touched in Kyoto, let alone the rest of Japan. And tomorrow is our free day. I’ll be spending some time tonight planning out what I want to do, but I don’t feel strongly that I have to see one thing or another. I’m just going to have fun, see something new, and enjoy my last full day here.
