A spiritual (?) journey (Part 1)

While browsing some Kyoto-related websites the other day in preparation for my brief stay there in a few weeks, I discovered that the day I arrive in the ancient Japanese capital is the one day in October when To-ji temple holds its famous flea market, dubbed Kobo-san in honour of the priest Kukai (known posthumously as Kobo Daishi), the founder of the Shingon sect, with which the temple is closely associated. I actually paid a visit to To-ji temple with my brother Mark on the same market day in October two years ago, and much as I try to resist the urge to revisit places I've already seen on my travels throughout Japan, I'm tempted to go back to To-ji again this year. One reason is that I was making a video last time, and so I want to experience the place again not through the lens of a camera, but with my own eyes and ears. But another reason is that I've developed a bit of a fascination with Kukai and the esoteric Buddhist sect he founded.

Kukai (774-835) was a gifted scholar, calligrapher, poet, and artist. He was undoubtedly a genius, although claims that he invented the Japanese kana syllabary have always struck me as rather dubious. In 804, despite his reputation as a maverick, Kukai managed to secure a place on a government-sponsored expedition to China. It was an extremely arduous journey. Two of the ships in the fleet of four were lost at sea in a storm, and the vessel Kukai was on drifted for some 34 days before making landfall. The survivors then journeyed by land to the Tang capital of Chang'an, where, after completing in several months a course of study that normally took 20 years, Kukai received his final initiation into the esoteric Buddhist tradition. He returned to Japan in 806 and established the Shingon sect, whose headquarters on Mount Koya Mark and I also visited in October 2005.

I think I was interested in Buddhism long before I started studying Japanese, while I first heard of Kukai during my university days, when his name cropped up from time to time in Japanese language classes. But there's another, less obvious factor fueling my fascination with Kukai, particularly as a practitioner of esoteric Buddhism, and that's my interest in the jazz pianist Keith Jarrett.

(To be continued…)

Distance walked since Saturday: 12km
Total distance walked since blog began: 639.8km
Days left until launch of Kisokaido Project: 33