Houraisan-Tokugenji Temple on a Windy Day

Bright blue sky but the typhoon season threatens; warmth of the late afternoon sun is blown away; leaves chase across the neat Zen gardens; cold, clear, winter-summer, inoffensive day. Inoffensive, inauspicious, cutting, probing, tells us who we are - and questions what we may; leaves sweep over the well-kept gardens; cold, clear, winter-summer, inoffensive day. The red carpet leading to some sacred place lies bunched at the top of three stone stairs; insects play in the humid air, and pious monks move silent, barefoot, attending to unknown affairs. With shaven heads, in formal cloaks, they shuffle into hidden rooms: hurrying to business cares or meditation - to purify, counsel and consider - they move silent, barefoot, attending to unknown affairs. The monks who tend the pebble gardens disappear, retreat behind wood-and-paper screens, all humility; humbled, too, their home, by engine noise and worse; quiet, tidy temple buildings lost in the too-loud city. Nagoya’s bricks and concrete scrape the sky to house the millions, in dull apartment blocks defying gravity; beyond, the neon lights that blind, the slot machines, but here - quiet, tidy temple buildings lost in the too-loud city.

 

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