Today was my first day in Kyoto, and I am glad that I woke up on time. I also seem to have no jet lag at all, despite Kyoto being 14 hours ahead of Williamstown.
We left Piece hostel at 10 am today after a nice breakfast. I was very excited because I had only seen Kyoto at night. We spent the morning walking to Kiyomizu-dera. It was interesting how there would be modern buildings in one street, and traditional Japanese style buildings the next. The main event of the day was visiting Tofuku-ji. The first thing we saw was a Buddhist shrine, and it was interesting how the face of the Buddha statue was covered by a curtain. I later learned from priest Isobe that the hand gesture made when in front of the Buddha is supposed to reduce oneself to nothing, and that the Buddha statue is an image of yourself.
The meditation session in Tofuku-ji was my first experience doing zazen. The correct posture was very difficult, so I crossed my legs normally for the first zazen session. My mind drifted to imagining the Earth and gradually zooming into me. By the time I zoomed into my dermis, the session had ended. Then I forced myself into the correct posture for the second session and thought of something completely different. An orchestra played an unknown piece in my mind continuously. I know I was not supposed to control my thoughts during zazen, but I did anyways. However, my thoughts eventually drifted back to the orchestra playing the same piece. This was weird, because I have not played an orchestral instrument since middle school. Is my mind telling me I should start playing the violin again? The koan that he gave us was, “What does it mean to bring your kokoro (mind or consciousness? hard to translate) to someone?” For now, I just think of my kokoro as my brain cells, but it may change by the time we visit Tofuku-ji again at the end of the trip.
side note: Sohum, CJ, and I went to Fushimi Inari-taisha today after visiting Tofuku-ji. It was really cool how every gate looked different due to the differences in the age of the gates. It was night time, so the gates looked different from the photos I saw online, which were taken during the day. I would like to visit Fushimi Inari-taisha again during the day. We only walked up to Kumataka shrine. We did not walk through the whole shrine, as it was very dark, and it looked intimidating.
We went to eat at a tofu restaurant called Tofu Tavern Tougaden today. It was my first time eating at a tofu restaurant, and it was really good. I ate tofu often at home, but there was a type of tofu there that I had never tried before. It was much richer than normal tofu, but still delicious nonetheless.
