This weekend, I was lucky enough to participate in Chichibu Mandara Koya's yearly pilgrimage to Nara Prefecture's Ōmine-san. Ōmine is where En no Gyōja identified many of the places and began many of the practices we still interact with in Shugendō. Many people have written about the practices of Ōmine and their history with much greater knowledge than I could hope to do, so in the next few posts I'd like to share my internal reactions and reflections on the experiences I had at Ōmine. These are just my honest thoughts as a neophyte to Shugendō, and certainly shouldn't be taken as the "right" way of thinking about it, just as my perspective.
On Saturday I got up early to watch the sunrise at Ise's Meotoiwa before heading to Dorogawa, the Basecamp village of Ōmine-san. I was able to visit the outer and inner shrines of Ise Jingu the day before. My experience there was characterized by a deep sense of gratitude for the Sun and all the other elements and beings that conspire to allow my existence on this planet. As part of my magical practice, I spent several weeks last winter waking up early to greet the rising sun. It felt good to do that again, especially in such a spectacular place.
Nearby Meotoiwa I was a little surprised to find there was a shrine to Hachidai Ryū-Ō, the Dragon Kings, nearby. Ryū-Ō is associated with purification by water, and is one of the deities En no Gyōja interacted with at Ōmine. The village around Meotoiwa is called "Misogi no Machi", "Purification town" because of a festival of purification in the ocean that takes place there every year around the summer solstice.
It was right around then that I started to feel nervous about Ōmine. Hōryū-sensei's harrowing words about the spring of purification we would bathe in later that day came to mind: "The water is only 8 degrees celsius. Of all the practices at Ōmine, that's the one that leaves me feeling a bit sick after." My head became crowded with images of falling to my death from a thousand foot cliff. I pushed them aside to chant the Ryūjin Norito, the Dragon God's prayer, and then packed my stuff and headed out for Dorogawa.
Google Maps took us along a back road that didn't even show up on the car navigation, and at many places was barely wide enough for the car. After an hour gritting my teeth as my partner heroically navigated the narrow switchbacks we finally arrived in Dorogawa. Next time if I come by car I'll definitely be taking the main road, even if it costs a little more time. But after that, I was pretty much ready for anything.
Dorogawa is really a place out of time. The main road is lined with ryokan run by families that have hosted and guided yamabushi into the mountains that surround the town for generations. The air reverberated with the sound of the crystalline river that runs aside the town and the occasional blast of a conch shell. I was the first to arrive at Atarashiya Ryōkan, the incredible inn that hosted our group, so I dropped off my stuff and zipped off to greet the mountains in my own way before our formal training began.
What I've learned from my magical training is that one of the easiest ways to get in touch with the consciousness of nature in general and mountains in particular is through singing. I often visit caves in Chichibu and Okumusashi to sing sweet songs to the mountains. Sometimes I don't notice much, but sometimes it feels like being a mosquito near the ear of some great being I've stirred in its sleep. Hopefully I sing well enough not to get slapped. I was eager to try this near Ōmine, so I went to the nearby Godaimatsu cave.
While most of the caves around Dorogawa were used for ascetic practices from ancient times, Godaimatsu wasn't discovered until the 20th century. I found the idea that the cave wasn't as tuned to human traditions kind of appealing. Mountains, after all, don't practice Shugendō. Shugendō is just a way that humans have developed to interact with these ancient beings. Traditions foster stability of practice, which allows for ritual patterns to build and strengthen over the centuries. However, mountains far predate and will far outlive such traditions. Shugendō is 1300 years old; Ōmine is 145 million.
I hiked up to the cave only to find that the only way into Godaimatsu was on a guided tour, which was a little disappointing. I went in with two couples and the guide, but even so I sang softly and breathed consciously into the cool air of the spectacular caverns, and found the cave extremely responsive. The sensation of being totally enveloped by a being of that age and size is one that never ceases to astound me. I got the sense that the mountain there are very used to humans and not too angry with us for the moment.
After a brief orientation at the ryokan, it was time for mizugyō at Ryūsenji, the Shingon temple that serves as the Headquarters of our school of Shugendō. We chanted prayers at the Hachidai Ryū-Ō sanctuary and at the main hall of the shrine. One of the images that stuck most in my mind from the entire trip was the ceiling of the main hall. The Ryū-Ō sanctuary was relatively recently rebuilt after a fire and it is immaculately clean and beautiful, painted with a large dragon. On the other hand, the main hall is painted orange, but its ceiling is matte black from centuries of fire rituals performed inside. It was one of many reminders that we were walking along well-trodden paths in our practice at Ōmine.
After the prayers the women in our group went off to another area to do waterfall training, while the boys returned to the pond we'd passed on the way through the gate, stripped down to our fundoshis, and stretched and slapped our bodies to get ready for the Mizugyō. The spring from which the waters flow is said to have been discovered by En no Gyōja, and is the source of the temple's name, which means "Dragon Spring Temple."
At first we just got in and stood, so the water only came up to our thighs or so. After a few prayers sensei told us to squat down to get into the water up to our chests. I had gotten so used to the water that I knelt down to get more of my body in. I found the experience really enjoyable, though not easy.
The benefit, I think, is that it totally reduces mental activity to the very basics of body, speech, and mind. These are called the "Three Secrets" in esoteric Buddhism. In water that cold your muscles start to seize up and your breathing speeds at first, so it takes a lot of focus to relax enough get the chants out loudly and clearly and match pace with the chant leader. The body is occupied with the cold, speech is occupied with the chanting, and the mind is occupied with maintaining the balance between the two. It is an amazing exercise in focus and self-control.
I was reminded of a line from the Ryūjin Norito:
"The Dragon God...all at once removes the impurities of sentient beings, purifies all disease and disasters and exorcises them to where they come from...hears and feeds on the origins of people's prayers and wishes."
As with so many things in magic and Shugendō, I can read things, say things, be told things a thousand times, but they're meaningless until I've experienced them for myself. Experience is everything.
We finished and went to towel off in the small changing area. Usually I'm pretty fast at getting changed and getting my stuff together. After Mizugyō, though, there was truly not a thought in my head as I got ready, to the degree that I didn't even notice that I was the last one in the changing area and everyone was waiting for me near the main gate of the temple.
As I ate the delicious dinner provided by the Ryōkan, I noticed that I had entirely left my nervousness about the next day's practices in the Dragon Spring, my fear replaced by a quiet resolve that felt deeper than my normal everyday self.
On mei gyashani ei sowaka
Namu Hachidai Ryū-Ō
Namu Jinpen Daibosatsu