New Residence
2011年11月29日
From the end of November I moved my residence near Tofuku-ji, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto.
Until then I had lived near the neiborhood of Gion, some kilometers north of my new residence.
In my days of Gion, I used to hear a Buddhist bell struck at Kodai-ji, which is a famous temple near Gion, on every evening of 5 o’clock PM.
Almost at the same moment, monks’ voices of reciting Buddhist sutras used to start to be popped in my room. Voices were heard from another temple just next to my apartment, Juhon-ji, whose sect is Nichiren Shoshu (日蓮正宗).
Their voices of reciting sutras are accompanied by the rhythm of beating a Buddhist drum, that sounds low-pitched, regular, and simple.
Now I live just next to the large complex of Tofuku-ji, which consists of many branch temples around the head temple.
In the start of the evening, we can also hear sound of a Buddhist drum from there.
But its sound is interestingly different than that of Juhon-ji.
The drum of Tofuku-ji has an elaborate rhythm, with distinct accent and changeable speed. That is almost artistic. I had the impression of that way when I first heard it.
Tofuku-ji belongs to the sect of Zen (禅).
In the history of Japanese Zen its followers had pursued to set their minds free from any conventions and fixed ideas of human, that they thought the essence of the enlightenment of Buddha.
Zen followers saw artistic activities important with a free mind. Its achievements were, for example, Sho-do (書道: calligraphy), Sa-do (茶道: way of tea), and many kinds of drawings.
I can feel the tradition of Zen activity going on even nowadays when I hear Tofuku-ji’s artistic sound of drum.
Nichiren, on the other hand, was a monk who started his own sect in the same age of the beginning of Japanese Zen.
He tried to spread his interpretation of Buddhism into ordinary people with simple doctrine, that was sharply different than the way of Zen, that could only be shared by sophisticated persons.
Nichiren Shoshu is one of the downstream sects that see their founder Nichiren. I think that the simple sound heard from Juhon-ji fits well its founder’s religious policy.
(Oda Mitsuo, YouAT GK)
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