Temple visit of many layers - Eihei-ji monks, tourists, pilgrims, and townies

 

Rainy Saturday in December for visitors to temple grounds

On the 30-minute bus ride from JR Fukui train station (east gate) to the Zen temple town of Eihei-ji the many people of all ages and gender, including people speaking languages other than Japanese, spurred thoughts of the forthcoming sights and sounds of the temple town. After a few years living and working occasionally in this part of Japan during the decades since 1984, this bus ride would not be the first, nor hopefully last time to see the ancient cedars, imposing buildings, eager shopkeepers making a living, and glimpses of temple personnel resident or visiting.

An extreme case of interpretive lenses would be to use the "Rashomon effect" seen in Kurosawa's movie, itself an interpretation of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and tally up all the individual perspectives of the temple and its town on this day and also in a longer, longitudinal time frame. Countless experiences would fit into that kind of approach since each person's location within their own life shapes their field of view and the frame that they see the place and themselves within it. But taking a more modest layering of experiences, the following come to mind. One is surface impressions; what an observer might learn simply by watching and occasionally asking questions about the temple life and town activity, too. Another is an eye on the visitors - religious or sight-seeing or another other sort (experts of architecture, history, chanting, or traditional arts incorporated into temple lives and cycles of activity. Then below these observable patterns and practices there is a third layer; what the temple residents, staff, and leaders think about - how they use time and talent to carry out the things significant to them. Likewise for the several varieties of visitor, but also town residents; there is the layer of what this group of people understand of the place and the things they see or take part in. Finally, there is the layer involving the author of this blogpost: looking at the place from the time of arrival on the day's first bus at 10:18 to the departure on the 12:30 return, there is the layer for picking apart the previous four layers before making a statement or interpretation on top of all those others; an interpretation about the other interpretations all jostling side by side.

Clearly, there is no single interpretation of the Eihei-ji (永平寺) temple town. Whether it is a simple fact like the arrival of the 10:18 bus from Fukui station, or it is a whole day of Matsuri (annual festival), the several layers described here --and likely others by historian, journalist, novelist, religion researcher, and so on-- all figure into the total experience at hand, no matter if the reference is minutes, days, or decades. So while this short walk through the many points of view intersecting at Eihei-ji town and temple does not lead to a firm conclusion, illuminating cross-cultural comparison, or a crystal clear analysis of interplaying and evolving viewpoints, by identifying some of the moving parts in this picture, the complexity at least can be acknowledged.