Main altar with wooden tablet for Koho Zenji. This temple celebrates a memorial each year on November 1st for Koho Zenji.
All posts by Mugo
Enough for One Day!
There are a lot of new posts to-day. In an ideal world I’d write each day and not have this kind of back log to put into the Blogger.
As you will see Iain is responsible for writing the descriptions of the temples, and I am grateful for that, couldn’t have done it without him. Couldn’t have made this trip without the help of both Iain and Edera.
Before we fly to China on the 6th my hope is to record the following visits:
Fukuji-in in Tokyo and the wonderful farewell meal we had with Noguchi Roshi, Prof. Shimizu and Okabe Roshi.
Sempukuji, Koho Zenji’s first temple near the Pacific Ocean where we met such kindness and generosity.
Oh, and there is this mornings nature walk Edera took some of the youngest English students on. There are a few really good photos to show you including the one of two children holding bamboo shoots we were given along the way. The shoots are as thick as an arm. They look nothing like what you get out of a tin! One of the mothers cooked them and delivered them this evening. Thankyou.
Koho Zenji’s Temple, Raigakuji
Raigakuji is a temple about two miles north of Chino in Nagano Prefecture. The site is on a hillside looking westwards towards the higher peaks of central Japan. From the top of the hill, on a clear day, you can see Mt. Fuji far to the south.
Keido Chisan Koho Zenji was the 32nd abbot here, and from many of the things we were told about the temple it was clearly a place he loved very much and which he had strong personal and family ties with (towards the end of her life his mother lived here). When he was first associated with Raigakuji he was responsible for raising funds for a new ceremony hall for the temple to replace one that had been destroyed by fire, and we saw photos of him and people from the local community with this work in progress. In a place of honour on the ceremony hall wall is a big oil painting of him in later life.
The meditation hall at Raigakuji is reached by a staircase leading up the hillside.
By Iain.
Outside of the main hall.
Raigakuji – Koho Zenji Memorial Stone
The marker for Koho Zenji where we did a memorial when we first got to the temple. It had been a long day of traveling…
Rev. Misawa Roshi
Rev. Misawa Roshi viewing the photo album brought from Shasta Abbey of photos Rev. Master Eko took during his 1999 visit.