Miles who is a regular blog reader and congregation member was here on Sunday for the Festival Ceremony. He reminded me of a comment he'd left in January with links to a three part series of short films. Here is his comment and links to the films.

Hope you are well and are having a good winter retreat.
I stumbled upon these films whilst browsing the net - a short but rather beautifully filmed three part documentary on Sojiji in 1959, just a few years before Rev. Master Jiyu arrived there.

There's an unusual and probably very much of-its-day shot of all the novice monks sitting around smoking together - and some very impressive ceremonial.

Great stuff!

In gassho,

Miles

Sojiji Part One, Part Two and Part Three

Thanks Miles for the links. And thank you to what ever good fortune and good luck and hard work and patience that has me connected to the internet at Throssel at a brisk 54.0 Mbps.

As a child I'd puzzled at the three wise monkey statue my friend had and the saying which went with it. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Was it about turning a blind eye? I didn't think so. And I was right, there is some actual wisdom involved, according to Wikipedia, in that it was probably adapted from a Confucian phrase and brought to Japan via Tendai Buddhism.

It is said that the monkeys in the tiny statues were modelled after snow monkeys who live in the Japanese Alps. In a BBC TV programme we watched last week we saw one tribe of these monkeys soaking in a hot spring. The story is one monkey stumbled upon, or into, the heated water and others caught onto the idea. Gradually the soaking became part of the tribes practice.

Thanks to Wikipedia entry for Japanese Macaque

Sometimes there is a fourth monkey which depicts do no evil.