Mitaki Temple
Japan often appears as a society of opposing intensities. For instance, there is the intense busyness of the Japanese street. This is not just the unrelenting march of human traffic, but also the flickering billboard adverts and their concentrated visual fervour. Yet, almost in opposition to this is the absolute solitude provided by Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines, often interspersed throughout the city space.
Mitaki Temple is located on the Western side of the Oota River in a Hiroshima suburb sharing its name. Appearing along the length of a woodland valley, this temple seems set aside for silence, not tourists.
The beauty of Mitaki Temple is not in the grand designs of human hands. There is no dominating central structure. Mitaki is the everyday beauty of nature and the temple’s profundity is in its subtle human alignment to the hillside surroundings.
An approach to the temple begins from the Oota River and the main road running parallel to it. Here you walk up the hillside suburb. Although an urban walk, the streets in effect follow the path of the mountain stream, already connecting you to the temple. Culverted, sometimes buried, the stream is always audible in the city streets. You don’t follow a road to Mitaki temple you follow the water.
On a first visit, the temple itself appears as a labyrinth, a winding and lengthy main path with many diversions into the woodland clearings. However, the stream is the constant that guides you through the temple. Half way up Mitaki the stream cascades off rocks, forming three small waterfalls from which the temple and the area get their name; “mitaki” meaning “three waterfalls”.
The paths are lined with stone Buddhas. A glancing pass could miss the silent carvings on the rock face. Each is still bound to the rock from which they came and it is this earthiness that gives them their depth. Nature always comes first here.
The deep bellow of the temple bell does not interrupt, it compliments. Its echo ascends and descends the sloping valley. Inviting the ear, not to the bell itself, but to what remains. And as the dull ring subsides, the only remainder is a natural silence.
Perhaps then, a metaphor for Buddhism. A path whose first glance is to the physical world. The operations of the material world are at the origins of Buddhist ethics and the operations of the Buddhist ethics are at the origins of the material world. Meditation begins here.
Mitaki Temple is located on the Western side of the Oota River in a Hiroshima suburb sharing its name. Appearing along the length of a woodland valley, this temple seems set aside for silence, not tourists.
The beauty of Mitaki Temple is not in the grand designs of human hands. There is no dominating central structure. Mitaki is the everyday beauty of nature and the temple’s profundity is in its subtle human alignment to the hillside surroundings.
An approach to the temple begins from the Oota River and the main road running parallel to it. Here you walk up the hillside suburb. Although an urban walk, the streets in effect follow the path of the mountain stream, already connecting you to the temple. Culverted, sometimes buried, the stream is always audible in the city streets. You don’t follow a road to Mitaki temple you follow the water.
On a first visit, the temple itself appears as a labyrinth, a winding and lengthy main path with many diversions into the woodland clearings. However, the stream is the constant that guides you through the temple. Half way up Mitaki the stream cascades off rocks, forming three small waterfalls from which the temple and the area get their name; “mitaki” meaning “three waterfalls”.
The paths are lined with stone Buddhas. A glancing pass could miss the silent carvings on the rock face. Each is still bound to the rock from which they came and it is this earthiness that gives them their depth. Nature always comes first here.
The deep bellow of the temple bell does not interrupt, it compliments. Its echo ascends and descends the sloping valley. Inviting the ear, not to the bell itself, but to what remains. And as the dull ring subsides, the only remainder is a natural silence.
Perhaps then, a metaphor for Buddhism. A path whose first glance is to the physical world. The operations of the material world are at the origins of Buddhist ethics and the operations of the Buddhist ethics are at the origins of the material world. Meditation begins here.
posted by Rainey at 3:21 PM
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