![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radhardened[How can I resume blogging after a nearly-two-month hiatus and not make some meta-remarks about it? This event may seem like an arbitrary subject to resume with, but I have my reasons. Namely, we Midorikai students are strongly encouraged to write reports about school events like these, and this blog entry can serve as a report. And many more events are coming up soon, so even though this entry is late as a report, at least if I finish it before the next one I can avoid running up a backlog. I still hope to write about the many interesting things I did in August, but I'm not quite sure when I'll have time.]
On the afternoon of Monday, September 12, we went as a class to Nara to attend an event at Tōshōdai-ji, but first we did some sightseeing, starting with perhaps the most visited sight in Nara, Tōdai-ji. I had already visited Nara three times previously this summer, including Tōdai-ji once, but I certainly didn't mind returning. The temple's Great Buddha Hall (大仏殿 Daibutsuden), the largest wooden building in the world, once again impressed me with its immense scale. Amongst the massive statues of Buddha and guardians, one wooden pillar toward the rear of the hall attracts attention with its invitation for visitors to crawl through a hole in its base. I've heard different claims about the rewards for successfully crawling through, from good health to enlightenment. Two of my classmates squeezed through, as did Hamana-sensei, and somewhere there are photos to prove it. Leaving Tōdai-ji, we got matcha soft-serve ice cream cones that made us especially interesting to the ubiquitous Nara deer. It took some maneuvering to keep the ice cream to ourselves, but we managed, and one classmate somehow managed to buy a pack of senbei meant for the deer and escape Nara with it unscathed.
We rode the train to get to another part of Nara, where we entered Yakushi-ji about fifteen minutes before closing, since we still had time to spare before the event we'd come to Nara for. We walked through at a whirlwind pace. For me the most memorable sight in this temple was a set of statues of the Ten Principal Disciples 釈迦十大弟子, which struck me with their realism—unlike many of the Buddhist statues we'd seen earlier that afternoon, these were human-scale, and instead of idealized imagery they depicted tattered robes and emaciated flesh. It was an almost shocking contrast.
Next we proceeded on foot to the event, a hochashiki at Tōshōdai-ji. A hochashiki is a tea offering made by a high-level tea practitioner at a temple or shrine. When these offerings are made by the head of our tea tradition they are called kenchashiki (at a shrine) or kuchashiki (at a temple). We'll attend several of these over the course of our year in Midorikai. So far we'd only attended one at Kennin-ji, a June 5th memorial for the temple's founder where I enjoyed the accompanying gagaku but couldn't see Daisosho's temae at all thanks to our seat placement. At Tōshōdai-ji we had to stand, but since Hamana-sensei saved us a place early in the queue and we hustled in as soon as the doors opened, we got places right in front, with an excellent view of Abe Sosei gyotei's temae. These offering temae are quite different from the kind we practice daily in jitsugi. They employ a daisu, which is a sort of shelf used in procedures that are higher than I'm currently licensed to practice, and the chakin and chasen sit on their own little plate instead of starting in the tea bowl. The practitioner dons a paper face mask during part of the temae to protect the tea offering from his breath. The fukusa he uses is white, which I suppose is extra-pure in contrast to the purple or red we normally use. As the sun set and it grew darker out, the silhouette of the utensils in front of the lighted altar was a beautiful sight. I didn't take any photos, though I'm not sure whether photography was allowed. (I'm surprised at my own protectiveness when it comes to photographing my school and our tea events.) Although I don't think this was a public event (we received invitations from O-iemoto), the behavior of our fellow spectators was less than exemplary, what with the continuous murmur of voices throughout the ceremony and the pushing against us.
With simple, direct movements, Abe-sensei first offered a bowl of tea at the altar, and then he made a second bowl that he offered at a tsukimi setup outside of the temple building where the offered tea sat alongside seasonal flowers, tsukimi dango, and fruit, including a melon with an archetypal T-shaped stem and the sticker still on it(!).
The time was perhaps approaching 7 p.m., and we still had a teichaseki to attend, dinner to eat, and a couple of trains to catch to get home in time for our 10 p.m. curfew. So we were escorted to the head of the queue for the teichaseki (teicha refers to a tea service that accompanies some other event that's not primarily a tea gathering), ahead of many more distinguished people who no doubt resented our special treatment. This took place outdoors (nodate), and while we briskly enjoyed tsukimi dango and shallow bowls of usucha we juggled a set of bento we had generously been provided for dinner, but since we had already made a dinner reservation, we saved them to take home. Moving on to the local noodle shop that had saved a table for us, we ate quickly and left even more quickly, leaving one classmate in the bathroom as we made our way out, and unfortunately the staff "cleared" her train ticket and folding fan along with her dishes, much to her (and my) frustration when she emerged. The moon peeked out from behind some clouds as we hurried to the train station. On the train ride home, exhaustion caught up with me—this despite our taking it easy by wearing Western clothes that day rather than kimono.
On the afternoon of Monday, September 12, we went as a class to Nara to attend an event at Tōshōdai-ji, but first we did some sightseeing, starting with perhaps the most visited sight in Nara, Tōdai-ji. I had already visited Nara three times previously this summer, including Tōdai-ji once, but I certainly didn't mind returning. The temple's Great Buddha Hall (大仏殿 Daibutsuden), the largest wooden building in the world, once again impressed me with its immense scale. Amongst the massive statues of Buddha and guardians, one wooden pillar toward the rear of the hall attracts attention with its invitation for visitors to crawl through a hole in its base. I've heard different claims about the rewards for successfully crawling through, from good health to enlightenment. Two of my classmates squeezed through, as did Hamana-sensei, and somewhere there are photos to prove it. Leaving Tōdai-ji, we got matcha soft-serve ice cream cones that made us especially interesting to the ubiquitous Nara deer. It took some maneuvering to keep the ice cream to ourselves, but we managed, and one classmate somehow managed to buy a pack of senbei meant for the deer and escape Nara with it unscathed.
We rode the train to get to another part of Nara, where we entered Yakushi-ji about fifteen minutes before closing, since we still had time to spare before the event we'd come to Nara for. We walked through at a whirlwind pace. For me the most memorable sight in this temple was a set of statues of the Ten Principal Disciples 釈迦十大弟子, which struck me with their realism—unlike many of the Buddhist statues we'd seen earlier that afternoon, these were human-scale, and instead of idealized imagery they depicted tattered robes and emaciated flesh. It was an almost shocking contrast.
Next we proceeded on foot to the event, a hochashiki at Tōshōdai-ji. A hochashiki is a tea offering made by a high-level tea practitioner at a temple or shrine. When these offerings are made by the head of our tea tradition they are called kenchashiki (at a shrine) or kuchashiki (at a temple). We'll attend several of these over the course of our year in Midorikai. So far we'd only attended one at Kennin-ji, a June 5th memorial for the temple's founder where I enjoyed the accompanying gagaku but couldn't see Daisosho's temae at all thanks to our seat placement. At Tōshōdai-ji we had to stand, but since Hamana-sensei saved us a place early in the queue and we hustled in as soon as the doors opened, we got places right in front, with an excellent view of Abe Sosei gyotei's temae. These offering temae are quite different from the kind we practice daily in jitsugi. They employ a daisu, which is a sort of shelf used in procedures that are higher than I'm currently licensed to practice, and the chakin and chasen sit on their own little plate instead of starting in the tea bowl. The practitioner dons a paper face mask during part of the temae to protect the tea offering from his breath. The fukusa he uses is white, which I suppose is extra-pure in contrast to the purple or red we normally use. As the sun set and it grew darker out, the silhouette of the utensils in front of the lighted altar was a beautiful sight. I didn't take any photos, though I'm not sure whether photography was allowed. (I'm surprised at my own protectiveness when it comes to photographing my school and our tea events.) Although I don't think this was a public event (we received invitations from O-iemoto), the behavior of our fellow spectators was less than exemplary, what with the continuous murmur of voices throughout the ceremony and the pushing against us.
With simple, direct movements, Abe-sensei first offered a bowl of tea at the altar, and then he made a second bowl that he offered at a tsukimi setup outside of the temple building where the offered tea sat alongside seasonal flowers, tsukimi dango, and fruit, including a melon with an archetypal T-shaped stem and the sticker still on it(!).
The time was perhaps approaching 7 p.m., and we still had a teichaseki to attend, dinner to eat, and a couple of trains to catch to get home in time for our 10 p.m. curfew. So we were escorted to the head of the queue for the teichaseki (teicha refers to a tea service that accompanies some other event that's not primarily a tea gathering), ahead of many more distinguished people who no doubt resented our special treatment. This took place outdoors (nodate), and while we briskly enjoyed tsukimi dango and shallow bowls of usucha we juggled a set of bento we had generously been provided for dinner, but since we had already made a dinner reservation, we saved them to take home. Moving on to the local noodle shop that had saved a table for us, we ate quickly and left even more quickly, leaving one classmate in the bathroom as we made our way out, and unfortunately the staff "cleared" her train ticket and folding fan along with her dishes, much to her (and my) frustration when she emerged. The moon peeked out from behind some clouds as we hurried to the train station. On the train ride home, exhaustion caught up with me—this despite our taking it easy by wearing Western clothes that day rather than kimono.
