I had some free time this week, so I decided to walk along another Shugen route mentioned by my teacher at Chichibu Mandara Koya, Hōryū-sensei. This route starts from Mitsumine Shrine. I can hear faithful readers saying "wait, didn't you just climb Mt. Mitsumine during your last training?" You're correct! The first leg of this pilgrimage was exactly the same route as I took during my summer solo training. As I mentioned in that post, though, "Mitsumine," which means, "Three Peaks" actually refers to a chain of three holy mountains: Myōhōgatake, Mt. Shiroiwa, and Mt. Kumotori. Kumotori, at 2,017 meters (6617 feet) is Tōkyō's highest mountain, and is one of the 100 Famous Mountains of Japan. The climb and descent, whether starting from Tōkyō's Okutama, Saitama's Chichibu, or Yamanashi Prefecture, usually requires a night of camping. The original Shugen route descended to the Nippara Limestone Caves, an impressive and important training site in local Shugendō in times past. I'm not sure which current trail is closest to the original route, and due to typhoons in recent years only one trail to Nippara, the Tōda Shindō, is open to hikers, so I descended that way.
The weather at the start of my climb was absolutely beautiful.
As I did last time, I chanted at the Kaniwa Caves before starting my climb.
The mountain veneration platform is pretty spectacular when you can see the view. This time it wasn't crowded, so I blew my Horagai before and after chanting the Rokkon Shōjō Ō-Harae no Kotoba.
The view from the peak of Myōhōgatake, behind the Inner Shrine. The jagged peak in the middle of the photo is Mt. Ryōkami.
Some of the friends I made along the way. A frog very receptive to pets, some lovely moss, an Amanita phalloides, one of the world's deadliest mushrooms, and a Laetiporus sulphureus, one of the world's tastiest mushrooms.
After Myōhōgatake, it's mostly a hard climb up to Mt. Shiroiwa, whose name means "White Boulder." As I got near the top, the beautiful mixed forest was punctuated more and more frequently by limestone boulders.
I was surprised that there was no sign of any religious activity after Myōhōgatake. The paths up Mt Bukō, Mitsumine, and Ryōkami are lined with Buddhist statuary, small shrines, or sites named after deities. If there was any such thing along this path in the past, it's been long since removed and forgotten. I chanted sutras at the peak of the mountain, which is marked only by a sign and two benches, and surrounded by gnarled trees.
My legs were really tired by this point, but after Shiroiwa, the trail wasn't so steep. The forest of this section was absolutely beautiful. I saw several deer hanging out by the trail.
Eventually I made it to Kumotori Lodge and paid ¥500 (5USD, a very reasonable price for a campsite by Japanese standards). As one of the 100 Famous Mountains and due to its proximity to Tokyo, there are apparently times when the lodge and campground fill up with hikers. Since I went on a Monday and arrived a bit early, there were only three other tents set up. I dropped my bag and made my way up the final stretch of beautiful trail lined bamboo grass to chant toward the summit. I prayed at a little shrine, which looked relatively new, a little ways above the lodge.
"Kumotoriyama" means "Cloud Catcher Mountain," and appropriate to its name, the peak was enveloped in mist by the time I arrived. I blew my Horagai and chanted my final sutras of the day on the summit. A huge buck watched me from the forest as I did.
After, I made my way back to the campground, set up my tent, had dinner, and promptly fell fast asleep. It's amazing what a difference having a few other people around makes. I didn't feel any fear at all. In fact, it was the most restful night of sleep I've had in quite a while. At some point I got up to go to the bathroom and found a family of deer hanging out right by my tent. The clouds had thinned a little to reveal a few stars, and I could see the black forms of mountains toward the east, rising out of a gray blanket of low clouds.
In the morning, I packed my stuff and headed back for the summit to meditate and chant sutras. I chanted the mantra of Fudō Myō-Ō 108 times, focusing on the feeling of the mountain beneath me. In Shugen and Esoteric Buddhism, one aspect of Fudō Myō-Ō is as a deity of the Earth, the firm foundation of the land beneath us. His name means "The Unmoved Wisdom King." Though the morning was white with clouds, they occasionally parted for a moment to reveal the mountains to the West of Kumotori, including a distant Mt. Fuji, blue-gray against the ashen sky.
After breakfast, I started my way down the mountain via the Tōda Shindō. The signs for the trail were marked with signs that warned that the trail was hard to spot in some areas. I soon found myself on a gorgeous, narrow path which, aside from the occasional felled tree and pink tape to mark the trail, looked almost free of human influence. I think this was my favorite trail I've ever walked in Japan. When I found my mind wandering, I sang a song I learned at Ōmine to bring my focus back to the project of Rokkon Shōjō. I felt very far from my normal self, even though I'd only been gone a day. This was what I'd hoped would happen this trip. I needed a refresher.
After I got back from my solo training, I was really lazy for a couple of weeks. I was on my phone too much, eating junk and too much of it, and felt decidedly unstable compared to my time on the mountain. I hadn't set any boundaries or goals to contain the goo of my blurred sense of self. As a result, I fell into reactive habits of comfort. After a couple of weeks I pulled my shit together, got back to exercising and regular magical practice. Now that I'm settling back into a routine, I can notice some of the subtle changes that training brought about. The results show up in disciplined practice.
I reflected on this process a lot as I walked down the mountain. What I don't want to happen in my practice is to enter a cycle where I don't take good care of myself for a while, and then go into the mountains to purify and refresh myself for another round of swimming in the gutter. The distance from my everyday self that I feel in the mountains is something I want to nurture moment to moment, not an experience reserved for infrequent mountain training. I hope that as I gain more experience in this kind of practice that I can find ways to be a vessel for the balance and stability of the mountains, and to carry that into my interactions in the everyday world.
I think the recipe to healthy integration of a training experience is discipline and repetition. After training, it seems even easier to fall into comfortable habits that reinforce one's everyday identity and patterns of thought. For me this comes out as compulsively being on my phone and eating lots of junk food, among other things. After a couple weeks I started to feel depressed and disconnected, a total flip from the oneness and clarity I'd felt during training.
Instead of spiralling in that direction, making a point of taking a day or two after the training to get plenty of sleep, stay off the phone, meditate and reflect further on some of the insights I gained, and to take care of my body, would be make the transition back to everyday life much more fruitful and healthy.
And as for repetition, I mean that I wouldn't have come to understand that dynamic without doing it wrong once. Repetition is what will allow me to implement the lessons I learn from previous training, to avoid past mistakes, and to venture further into the mystery of my relationship to nature. It also allows me to get used to that state of mind, removed in some way from everyday concerns that seem to have so much reality and weight, to become normal. That in turn will make it easier to flow through my daily life with that lighter, less burdened perspective, to live with more balance. I'll always benefit from spending time interacting with and taking care of the mountains near me. It doesn't need to be some big event I do once a year, it should be something regular and normal.
About halfway down the trail, I heard a soft, distant roar that I at first thought was the wind. As I descended, it got louder and louder. It was the voice of the Nippara River gushing blue-green through the gorge it has sliced in the chert over millions of years. Once it crosses the river, the trail leads to a gravel service road which winds down along the river toward the Nippara Caves.
These caves are one of the most incredible places I've been in Japan. Now a popular tourist attraction, the huge cave system is lit up with multicolored lights. However, placards that bear the names of the cave's features reveal the deep ritual significance that the caves had for Gyōja in the past. Moving through the cave simulates moving through the stages of death and rebirth. After you enter the caves, you pass "the Incense Stone," then on to "Kōbō Daishi's Training Spot," a rock shelf where fire rituals were done. Next, you proceed through a portal down to "Hell Valley" where you cross the "River of Three Crossings" a stream that flows out of a crack in the wall. Having passed over the river of judgment, you climb up to a flat area called "The Amida Field," a place of rest before climbing the "Mountain of Emerging from Death." At the top of the mountain is a shrine to "Connection-Weaving Kannon." There are many more interesting place names in the cave's side chambers, but their ritual significance isn't obvious enough for me to catch. It was an incredible privilege to move through this space and to chant sutras and meditate at the top of the mountain-within-the-mountain. Got lots of terrified looks from the tourists walking around, mostly young couples on dates. You have your hobbies, I have mine!
I emerged from the cave feeling very centered and renewed and headed for the bus station down the hill. I was feeling kind of tired and depressed on Sunday night, so I almost considered cancelling this trip. I am so thankful that I went. I took today slow, but tomorrow I'm back to work. I'll try to bring the mountains with me.
