I was in Japan for ten days but only spent one day outside of Tokyo. That day we went to Kamakura which has a number of beautiful shrines and temples. It also has the biggest non-lying-down Buddha I have ever seen. There is a much bigger Buddha in Bangkok called the sleeping Buddha, but that is plainly cheating. It's just so much easier to create a statue lying on the ground. Try this yourself next time you've got good snowman weather. What would be really tricky would be to create a giant Buddha balanced on one leg (possibly on the head of a pin, but that might be mixing religious stereotypes).
I fear I might be being disrespectful by judging a Buddha by its size so I'll just say that Kamakura was beautiful and peaceful and I was reminded once again just how much more fun Eastern religions are. You get to write poems and prayers on bits of wood, tie bits of paper to trees, bow, clap, bang drums, and spin huge wooden containers of scripture around.
And the best part about the huge wooden spinney library thing (it's called a sutra and contains a number of Buddhist scriptures) is that it if you turn it you get the equivalent in Karmic merit of having read the entire Buddhist canon. If only I could have taken similar shortcuts while studying Shakespeare in school.
Leave a comment