From 8/5 to 8/10, I went on a solo pilgrimage, walking from the end of the flatlands of the Kantō Plain to three sacred mountains in Chichibu: Mt Bukō, Mt. Mitsumine, and Mt Ryōkami. These mountains have been important sites of spiritual practice since ancient times, and were of particular importance to Shugendō in the area. The course I took spans about 100 kilometers (62 miles). My teacher at Chichibu Mandara Koya, Hōryū-sensei, first mentioned this course to me last year and I was instantly interested in trying it for myself. Horyū-sensei has written a wonderful overview of my itinerary from a historical perspective with far more background knowledge and eloquence than I could hope to. As such, I would like to share my subjective experience of undertaking this practice
Why did I do it?
I started formally practicing Shugendō about a year ago. I had been interested in Japanese religions since university, but while living in the islands of Ogasawara I had experiences with nature that made it obvious to me that I was interacting with far more than dumb matter. When I visited Chichijima’s mountains and oceans, I began to experience them as living beings with the capacity to communicate and vast wisdom to share, if only I could learn how to talk to them. This was the start of my interest in magic, and soon after I began working with Quareia, a free online course in the Western mysteries written by English Magician Josephine McCarthy.
Not too long after that, I relocated to the mainland and settled in Saitama. Much of the work of Quareia is about learning to communicate with and care for the land and its beings. Magical practice that lacks a connection to the land is built on a very shaky foundation, and good magic makes partners of all sorts of beings and deities, so that a magician works in service as part of a team rather than relying on their own strength to get things done.
As I explored more about my area and about Japanese traditions of working with the land, a mysterious figure continually reappeared in my research; that of the Yamabushi, the mountain ascetic. I slowly pulled back the curtain on an ancient tradition whose main practices were interacting with the land in order to be of use to oneself and one’s community. Over time, I got more and more hints that I, too, would benefit from experience with this tradition.
So it was with that perspective that I began practicing with Chichibu Mandara Koya. Chichibu is dominated by the looming, scarred figure of Mt. Bukō. I quickly realized that in order to benefit from my practice there, I would need to introduce myself to the mountain. Later, as Hōryū-sensei described the roles of Mt. Buko, Mt. Mitsumine, and Mt. Ryokami in Chichibu’s spiritual landscape, I wanted to experience the connection between these three beings for myself on a pilgrimage.
Why do all three mountains at once?
It was important to me on this trip to visit all three mountains as part of a single ritualized journey. I’ve visited Mt. Bukō and Mt. Mitsumine a handful of times outside of this pilgrimage. On their own, they are powerful, special places with their own unique feel and character. I’ve benefited much from my relationships with them.
I think it’s helpful to think of pilgrimage routes like this in terms of a Mandala. The Womb Realm Mandala, for example, shows dozens of beings in a specific pattern. Esoteric practitioners often focus on one or a few of these beings to work with suited to their own needs and disposition. However, when you draw back and look at how individual beings and sections of the mandala interact to form a whole, you get a completely different and much broader perspective.
It’s the same with a city. I can be acquainted with one or two people in my apartment building and understand Tokorozawa at one very limited level. But as I expand my relationships to include more people from different areas and consider their relationships to one another, then I start to get the idea of Tokorozawa as a place.
So on this pilgrimage, I wanted to walk from Kanto into the mountains to experience the shift, and I wanted to walk as much as possible between the three sacred mountains to experience the connections between the three. As I had hoped, doing this gave me a much better perspective on these mountains and their context in the land.
Why go it alone?
I started referring to this pilgrimage as “Hitori Shugyō,” Solo Training, when I talked about it to others. But in reality when a person enters the mountains, they’re not alone at all; the mountain’s creatures are all around, going about their business. It’s this not-aloneness that makes “solo practice” so challenging. Humans are monkeys; we’re strong in troops and weak alone. A group of people in the mountains has a wall of smells, noise, and psychological comfort that creates space between them and the usual workings of the mountain. But as an individual, that security is dramatically reduced. While this definitely increases the danger of the practice, it also means the membrane between nature and oneself is more permeable. The whole point of this practice was to get in closer touch with the mountains, and so I knew I had to go it alone.
This is the image conjured by the word “Yamabushi” itself. “Yama” means mountain, and “fushi,” means “lie down” or “prostrate oneself.” The Yamabushi is literally a person who submits herself to the mountain, in all its terrifying wildness. That’s the kind of experience I wanted, and that is definitely the kind of experience I got on my journey.
Reading about historical practitioners like En no Gyōja, the founder of Shugendō, Kūkai, the progenitor of Esoteric Buddhism in Japan, and Enkū, the Edō-period wandering sculptor, all of them had their most profound experiences when wandering alone through the forests and mountains. It was, very often, these experiences in seclusion that encouraged them to share their gifts with the world, creating stable traditions and works of art that endure even through to this day. These guys would often undertake pilgrimages for years at a time, and certainly didn’t have the luxury of paved roads, water purifiers, and emergency hotels that I do. However, I wanted to get a taste of that experience of solitude and self-sufficiency. Alone, there is no one forcing you or even encouraging you to continue the practice. Your success or failure, an even your survival, rests on your own shoulders.
Day 1-2: Ogose Station to Chichibu
The first leg of my journey, from Ogose to Chichibu, was about 30 kilometers, and between the summer heat and the 15kg pack on my back, I knew that I would need to split it into two days. I carried a hammock and tarp to set up camp for the night somewhere in the forest, and enough dry food to last a week, and set off from Ogose in the morning. In my excitement and nervousness, I forgot to eat breakfast. An incredibly stupid mistake.
My destinations for the first day were Kurayama Santaki, a collection of three waterfalls that had long been used as training sites for Shugenja in the area; Ōhirayama En no Gyōja, a thousand-year-old shrine to the founder of Shugendo; and Takayama Fudō-son, another important shrine in local Shugendo.
At the Kumano Shrine just downhill of Kurayama, I was surprised to find an older man dressed, like me, all in white, praying at the shrine. He looked me over and started laughing and said “Wow, foreigners are doing it too!” He told me he was an exorcist and fortune teller in Tokyo who periodically came to recharge his spiritual batteries at Kurayama. When I told him I was planning to go as far as Mt Ryōkami, he laughed and said, “You’re young, huh!” I was happy to meet someone training in the area. He was the last gyōja I met on my journey, but he still reminded me that I was walking a well-worn path, and wasn’t the only one doing so.
Kurayama is an astounding place. I was most impressed by Tengu-taki, a peculiar waterfall where the waters flow in such a way that they become more a heavy spray than a steady stream. There were lots of tourists around so I didn’t bathe in the falls, but I did sit and meditate for a while. A strong, peaceful place. It felt good to rest. I tried to eat a couple SoyJoy, but for some reason found that I wasn’t hungry at all. Eating made me feel nauseous. I shrugged it off and drank water instead, thinking I’d wait until dinner and then eat a lot all at once.
I made my way on to the En no Gyōja statue, quite a steep climb up from the waterfalls. From here on out, I didn’t meet another soul on the trails. The En no Gyōja shrine is made of several large sculptures exposed to the open air, the stone so weathered and moss-covered that I didn’t notice it at first when I finally arrived. The face of the founder smiled kindly down at me as I chanted sutras and lit incense I’d brought from Ōmine Ryūsenji. I was already dead tired, but chanting there gave me a little burst of energy that sent me on down the mountain toward the trailhead for Takayama Fudō. From that point on, whenever I felt like giving up, that image of En no Gyōja’s kind face appeared in my head. It was as if he was saying “I did this, and you can do it too. Push on a little further.”
I descended a lot more than I thought I would have to to reach the Takayama trailhead. I knew I would have a hard climb ahead of me, and the shadows had already begun to deepen in the valley, the early mountain dusk turning the green of the forest to a dusty blue. An older man carrying a shovel came down the trail, gave me a worried look and said, “You’re starting now?” I smiled and said, “Just until Takayama.” He nodded and said, “Be careful!”
By the time I made it up to the modest temple at Takayama and chanted my final prayers for the day, my legs were screaming, my back aching, my feet blistered and sore, my white shirt and pants drenched in sweat. I filled up my water bottles, dreading carrying the extra seven kilos down to Shirataki, the waterfall where I’d decided to make camp for the night.
I immediately got to work setting up my hammock and tarp before nightfall once I got to Shirataki. Once I got everything set up, I sat down on the root of a great Cryptomeria, and suddenly realized that it would be dark soon, that I was alone, that my phone hadn’t had reception in a couple of hours. I had expected to be afraid while camping by myself, but I wasn’t prepared for how intense that fear was. I put on my headlamp and cooked some noodles as the last light of the evening failed and the forest disappeared into darkness.
I had eaten nothing but two SoyJoys all day, but I didn’t feel hungry at all. My body was in panic mode...each snap of a twig, each unusual bubbling of the waterfall behind me set me further on edge. Inevitably, there was nothing there. I tried to breathe slowly to calm myself down, to remind myself that the chances of being attacked by anything were very small. Even so, I couldn’t swallow a bite of my noodles without feeling like throwing up. I put them in a ziploc bag for the next morning and crawled into my hammock, hoping that I could just fall asleep and wake up to the sun. I talked to the mountain before I shut my eyes. I told it my name, where I’m from, that I was there to learn and be useful, and I asked it to let me survive the night.
I hardly slept at all. Many times, just as I was about to fall asleep, a strange sound or funny feeling would send me bolt upright, wildly shining my headlamp around the forest before closing my eyes again. Finally I saw the sky behind the trees start to turn a pale blue, and I got up, feeling more tired than I had when I got in the hammock.
This night was one of the most terrifying experiences I’ve had in my life. Obviously, people do this kind of stuff all the time and accidents are really rare. Bears are not that common in Japan, and bear attacks usually happen when a bear is surprised by a hiker, not when they come across a silently sleeping human.Statistically, city life is probably way more dangerous than camping in the woods. Hell, hiking in the woods is probably more dangerous than sleeping in them. None of that could switch my brain off “survival mode.” Maybe it will be less terrifying the second time, if there ever is a second time.
As the light grew stronger and I set about tearing down camp and preparing to continue my journey, I felt like something had changed in me. I had consciously decided to make myself vulnerable to the mountain, and I had had an experience that showed me a new aspect of what the mountain is like. It is not a Disney realm full of kindly birds and cuddly bears...the mountains have a different set of rules than humans do, rules where the death of a lanky foreigner just means fuller bellies for bears and crows.
I had made it through the night, at the mountain’s mercy. It had demanded a total disconnect from the safety of my daily life, the thousands of taken-for-granted things that comprise “me” as I usually conceive of myself. The person that unzipped the hammock wasn’t the same as the one who’d gotten into it.
I did Takigyō under the waterfall, washing the previous day’s sweat and terror from my skin while shaking my Shakujo and chanting forcefully into the cool morning air. Then I ate my cold noodles, shouldered my pack, and set off for Chichibu.
My first stop of the day was at the Inner Temple of Takayama Fudō, a small shrine surrounded by stunning 360 degree views of the surrounding mountains. After the long previous day's walk, the view of Mt. Bukō in the distance was a welcome sight. Even so, I had a long way to go. On the opposite side of the peak, the path I'd walked stretched out before me, its gentle slopes eventually giving way to the flat lands where I live. Whenever I visit Okumusashi, I'm reminded that the mountains are what allow Tōkyō to be the thriving metropolis that it is. The waters that flood the rice paddies and flow through our taps and hoses all flow from these quiet mountains.
I blew my Horagai toward Tōkyō from Takayama. The horagai's original function was to convey messages over long distances. I use it for that purpose as well, but more to convey messages to the land, the mountains, and other beings far greater than me. Holding the thought of, "thank you" I listened to the gentle tone of the trumpet echo across the valleys before I moved on from Takayama. I wondered how far the sound traveled, whether someone listening all the way back in Ogose could hear it.
My course took me along the Okumusashi Green Line, a paved road open to motor vehicles with walking trails beside it. My legs and mind were so tired that I rarely ventured off the pavement, which is lined with beautiful forest. My thoughts spiraled toward the negative...if my legs were this tired after just one day, how could I continue to the end? The blisters on my feet certainly wouldn't get any less painful, my back wouldn't ache less the more I walked. If I slept as poorly as I had the previous night, I wondered if I would be able to walk at all in the next few days. The journey suddenly began to seem impossible.
My original plan was to walk all the way to Mt Ryōkami, free camping along the way. It was obvious as I trudged along the Green Line that I had not trained hard enough or planned carefully enough to accept that challenge. I either needed to change my plan or give it up entirely. As soon as I got a bit of cell reception, I booked a cheap hotel in Chichibu for the next couple of nights.
The thought of a soft bed inside four strong walls was very comforting. I still didn't know whether I'd make it to Ryōkami, but I would at least make it to Chichibu. The smiling face of En no Gyōja appeared in my mind and urged me gently, "one step at a time."
I finally came to the trailhead for Maruyama, a mountain just outside of Chichibu. I took a short nap in the shade that left me feeling bright and refreshed, and then sat and listened to the wind and watched the ants crawling around the benches of the rest house for a little while. Then I took up my Kongōzue and started my final climb of the day. A little way up there is another amazing view of Tōkyō, and there I came across another hiker. He was the first person I'd talked with since I started climbing Takayama the day before. After my night alone, I was so thankful to just talk and laugh with someone. We talked for several minutes before he asked why I was dressed all in white. "Are you a monk or something?"
"No no, I practice Shugendō in Chichibu so I wanted to try some training by myself around this area."
"You really look like a monk dressed that way! Do you always dress like that when you go hiking?"
"Oh no, I usually just wear normal hiking clothes."
The conversation made me think about why we wear white clothes for training. As I said in my post about climbing Sanjō-gatake, one reason is symbolic. White is the color the dead wear, so we wear it to show that we're like the dead, entering the Otherworld of the mountains.
Another use of it is to include other people in the training by alerting them that the practitioner is entering the mountains for a different reason than usual. In places of pilgrimage like Shikoku, pilgrims are easily identified by their clothing and people may offer them directions, food, and other help.
This worked out a little differently during my pilgrimage. I must have cut a strange figure as a tall foreigner dressed in white clothes and carrying a staff, and I drew a lot of puzzled looks when I rode the train or walked through more crowded places like Mitsumine Jinja. Interestingly, when I listened to what people whispered to each other about me as I passed, they commented more on my clothes than on my foreignness. People seemed to recognize my outfit as connected to Shugendō or mountain spirituality in some way. One of my hopes for this trip was to re-empower some of the old patterns of pilgrimage that had criss-crossed this land in the past. I hadn't considered that this was not merely an individual thing. By wearing white clothes, I hope I reminded other people of the sacredness and power of the mountains and the traditions that interact with them. Shugyō is primarily something that happens within one's own heart and mind, but by wearing the outer symbols of the process, others are invited to reflect on their own place in the sacred patterns of the land and its people in a different way. It was a humbling realization, and reminded me to act with integrity throughout my trip.
After a hot climb, I finally made it to the top of Maruyama. The three sacred mountains I was planning to climb were all visible in front of me, Bukō-san looming much nearer than it had that morning, Mitsumine somewhere in the middle, and Ryōkami a small lump on the horizon in the distance. I blew my Horagai to let the mountains know I had arrived and planned to visit them.
The final hike down to Kinshōji passed through a beautiful mixed forest that was full of cicadas and spiderwebs. More than once, cicadas flew straight into my mouth. I took my spiderwebs to the face than I can count. This happened a couple times on the first day, and it made me jump and squeal. That second day, though, I just brushed them off, making sure not to hurt them, apologized to the spiders, and continued walking. I’d left my fear by the waterfall.
I arrived at Kinshoji, chanted the day’s final prayers of thanksgiving, and then headed for the bus stop to go to my hotel. I didn't know if I would be able to climb Bukō-san the next day, but it didn't seem to matter anymore. I'd come halfway through my journey and felt the effects of the training already. Whatever I accomplished from here on out would only deepen the taste of connectedness and openness I had gotten during those first two days.
Day 3- Bukō-san
When i checked the weather forecast in the morning, it said there was a chance of thunder on Mt Bukō until 11, which gave me time to stretch out my body with some yoga and do some meditation at the hotel. To my surprise, even though my feet were blistered, my muscles felt strong and limber. I got dressed, wrapped my feet in a strong layer of duct tape, and took all the unnecessary things out of my backpack, which left it mercifully light. On my way out the door, a hotel staff member asked if he could take a picture of me to post on Instagram. Once the sun broke through the angry clouds, I set off for Bukō-san via the Kotohira Hiking Course, which follows an old Shugen trail along the ridge that separates Chichibu city from neighboring Yokoze.
I have walked the Kotohira trail perhaps a half dozen times, and this was my third time climbing to the summit of Mt Bukō. While the city side of the mountain has been badly scarred by limestone extraction, the backside is carpeted in beautiful forest through which immaculate streams run before they join the Arakawa and eventually flow through Tokyo to the ocean. I had assumed that the mountain would be full of pissed off spirits, but when I first visited I found its spiritual landscape well in-tact, and it has become a favorite place of refuge and renewal. I always feel privileged to partake in ancient practices of venerating this amazing being.
Before her summit was removed for limestone, Buko-san’s summit was home to stone monuments from the Jomon Period, as far back as 10,000 years ago. Jōmon people also lived in the caves at her base, now called the Hashidate Limestone Caves. Jōmon monuments on mountaintops are so rare that scholars speculate that the Japanese belief in mountain-as-otherworld probably has its roots in the Jōmon period. The mountains were largely a no-go zone. The fact that Bukō-san presented a welcoming atmosphere to people who may have held such beliefs says a lot about the generosity of the mountain toward us humans. That the mountain retains this quality even after a hundred years of sacrificing its body for concrete says even more. As I walked along the ridge toward the mountain, at exactly 12:30, the rumble of dynamite from the quarries resounded through the valleys.
Later, the mountain was used as a training site for Shugendō, and its main trail which winds up from Yokoze still begins at "Ichi no Torii", a stone gate guarded by two wolves, vestiges of the Wolf Veneration characteristic of Chichibu and Okutama. My path took me along the mountain’s Ura Sando, or back road.
Since I'd gotten a late start, I had to do a bit of a speed run to beat nightfall down the mountain. My familiarity with the paths makes it a lot easier to tap into the atmosphere of the trail's shrines and temples, and with sites along the mountain. My body felt fantastic and I found it very easy to let my mind merge with the sounds and colors of the forest. The course feels like an old friend at this point. Above the 27th temple of the Kannon Pilgrimage, I ran across a small troop of monkeys, which I took as a good sign.
Eventually I made it to the trailhead behind the Bato Kannon-dō, near the caves and started my climb. Because of the late hour I only saw a couple people coming down the mountain, and no one going up. The ura sando is a tough climb through steep switchbacks. Normally it takes three hours, but I made it to the top in two.
Toward the top, the uniform Cryptomeria forest gives way to a beautiful stretch of tall grass and mixed trees, including some regal old red pines. Each time I climb to the top, this area makes me feel slightly nervous. If I was an animal, this is where I would hang out. I started noticing bear dung, full of the seeds of summer berries, along the trail. One turd was fresh enough that it didn’t even have flies on it yet. I gradually began to feel that I wasn’t alone.
Sure enough, to my right I suddenly heard the noise of something heavy moving through the grass, climbing up the hill toward the trail. I didn’t see the animal, but I knew something was there. To my surprise, I didn’t feel afraid at all. I remembered what I’d read online about encounters with bears. I actually smiled as I calmly said, “Hello! Hope I’m not bothering you up here, I don’t mean you any harm.” The animal stopped moving through the grass. I took a few steps away from it and gave my shakujo a few shakes. I heard it moving off the way it had come, and I continued walking toward the summit, checking behind me to make sure I hadn’t been followed.
I was astonished by the fact that I hadn’t felt any fear during this process. I had been scared shitless two nights before, so why was I suddenly so brave? I remembered a line from the Heart Sutra that I reflected over constantly for the next few days as I walked.
"Bodhisattvas depend on the Great Perfection of Wisdom and their mind is no hindrance. Without any hindrance, no fears exist. Far removed from every false perception, they dwell in Nirvana.”
The antidote to fear is the power of wisdom to remove hindrance, which is synonymous with false perceptions. Incorrect ways of perceiving reality catch us like nets catch fish, and we become afraid. Our fear is not that of being caught in the net, but rather the terrifying prospect of being released back into the flow of the river. We get so tangled in the nets that we think they are part of us, that if we let them go we ourselves will unravel and disappear. But in reality, making the choice to leave the nets behind, to abandon ourselves to the flow of the river, allows us to move and live with greater freedom, in greater communion with both the river of Divinity that flows through all things, and the simple grounding of our conscious experience as embodied human beings. We can even learn to navigate the nets themselves with grace and fluidity, returning to the everyday with a new, less burdened perspective.
In the mountains, the normal nets that catch my mind seemed a million miles away. At some point in my first night camping, my fears of losing the things that define me gradually dissolved into a stressful, but simpler state of watchfulness and wakefulness, one concerned with the simple fact of survival. I was much less attached to the knot of social influences that comprises my everyday identity. I loosened my grip on myself, and I felt much more of the mountain than I was of the everyday world. It was this sense that most struck me as I continued my journey up Bukō-san and on to the other mountains. Accepting the fact that I could die on the mountain enabled me to truly feel alive, to respond to my environment with calmness, kindness, and joy. In the case of the animal I heard in the brush, this calmness served me much better than frantic fear would have.
When I got to the shrine at the top, the mountain had misted over, shrouding the summit in a white fog that obscured the limestone quarries below from view. I chanted at the shrine and blew my Horagai into the mist. When I chanted Fudō Myō-Ō's mantra, I felt the presence of the entire mountain beneath my feet, vast and unmoving like the deity himself. I made my way back down the mountain, and at its foot I bathed and chanted in the pool below Batō Kannon Falls before making my way back toward Urayamaguchi Station at the last light of the day.
