My choice for visiting today combined my love of Japanese poetry, zen gardens, and the recent addition of Soto zen buddhism to my spiritual life. It was wonderfully cold and clear, the first truly cold day since I’ve been in Japan. Before today, most days I’ve walked around in a t-shirt, soaked, since the humidity is very high. My coat, gloves and hat, that I’ve been lugging all over Japan, finally got a workout!
This is Shizen-do, founded in 1641, situated in northeast Kyoto. It began life as a retreat home for a former warrior and landscape architect. It gradually made it’s way into the ownership of a Soto zen monk (not sure how that worked!?) and finally into the official keeping of the Soto lineage of Japanese zen buddhism. While a very small temple, it is a beautiful place!
The nine seated images are said to represent poets of China, those who greatly influenced Japanese poetry and writing. There are thirty-six such images on the four walls of this, the poet’s room. The founder, Ishikawa Jozen, wrote his own poems on each of the images. For near four-hundred years they have been in their places.
The zen garden at Shizen-do is a lovely example of the form.
The moon image is, to my minds eye, lovely. There is also a “moon viewing room” at Shizen-do. Great idea! My moon viewing “room” is my small south facing balcony which I am very grateful to have to watch the segments of the moon pass during the year.
There is a feature of the garden that is enjoyable and everyone should have one to ward off boars, bears, and those rascally deer. It is called a “shishi odoshi,” a bamboo see-saw device which gradually fills with water at one end and makes a sharp sound on the other end as it empties itself.
Autumn In Japan 