Gyatei gyatei hara gyatei

I'm becoming strangely addicted to sûtra chanting. It's one of the most relaxing things one can either do or listen to. Right now I'm listening at a cd with Shingon monks chanting various sûtra (I actually just had a nap with the thing going on in the background - very nice), and started longing for Kôyasan (Mt. Kôya) once again. I probably don't have time anymore to go there before returning to Finland, and I doubt I'll have time the next time I come to Japan, but... It's a place I simply have to go back to at some point. It's also the place that really got me hooked to temples and sûtra chanting. Sitting half-asleep in a hondô and listening to monks chanting Rishukyô at 6.30am just has a certain ... special feeling in it. I like to chant them myself too, like at the zazenkai, but on the other hand listening to a well-trained bunch of monks chanting is a whole another thing. Add sounds of rain, incense, a dimly lighted buddha hall and young monks, and you're pretty close to my image of what paradise might be like (who cares about "green pastures" anyways, besides maybe the sheep?). *g*

In addition to Hannya Shingyô (the Heart of the Wisdom Sûtra), we chant various shorter vows etc., like the "I put my faith in buddha/dharma/sangha", but there is a certain rhytm that sûtra chanting has and the other pieces seem to lack. If that doesn't calm me down nothing does.

I did ask about the sûtras yesterday, since some 2 weeks earlier the Pâli student had mentioned that sûtras chanted in chinese are very similar to the sanskrit originals, sound-wise. So, I was a bit confused, since sûtras, unlike darani and shingon (japanese for "mantra"), can usually be understood, they're not only a random bunch of sounds. For example, the shingon for Yakushi Nyorai goes "On gorogoro sendari matôgi sowaka", which would have a meaning in it's original sanskrit, but is absolutely unintelligible in japanese. On the other hand the most important part of Hannya Shingyô, "Shiki soku ze kû, Kû soku ze shiki" can be understood very easily (from a linguistic point of view - I'm not enlightened yet I'm afraid, and so can't say that I'd really understand what that means) when you see it written - "Form is nothing but emptiness, Emptiness is nothing but form". Anyways, the explanation was that some of the sûtras were translated into classical chinese, and some were just transcribed. And of course all the important terms, like "bodhisattva" or "prajna pâramitâ" were transcribed as such, so that gives us "bodaisatta" (usually shortened to bosatsu) and "hannya haramitta" in japanese. Usually there's a bit of both in most sûtras - after all the chinese text the ending of Hannya Shingyô goes "Gyatei, gyatei, hara gyatei, hara sô gyatei, bodhi sowaka" and it has no meaning as such in japanese (but it's still the part that is the easiest to remember in the whole sûtra).

I'm also starting to get a hang with whom to hang at the post-zen party (and becoming more and more adept at avoiding some other people) - as the topics of the discussion change completely depending with whom you speak. I once again got a haiku lesson - I'm once again being way too descriptive. Maruyama-san (the haikukai organizer) promised that both he and Nakazono-san (Nakazone?) will rewrite my haiku for next week. They're both THE haiku guys in our small circle, and they both tried to defer the honor of being the expert to each other - always funny to watch. (If you want to see something hilarious, try to find 2 grannies having a cup of coffee, and then watch the battle of being the one who pays the bill in the end - and then how the loser of the battle, the one who didn't get to pay, tries to pay her share of the money to the other. I've never seen anything as funny as two grannies fighting over a 100y coin - I think it ended by the other slipping it unnoticed to the pocket of the other, and boy did she look smug after managing this almost impossible task) As far as I'm concerned, I take any hints offered how to make my haiku more haiku-like. Manabe-san is always a good choice for discussions about buddhism and religion. Want to speak about tea? Maru-san and Manabe-san. Want to hear that you're cute? There's people for that too. Budô? Jûshoku. Spiritualism, shamanism and Yi Jing - seek no further than Takahashi-san. Or actually he often seeks you. ;) Want to hear about 50 times in one night how Shakespeare and Nô are absolutely great? ... Well, yes - you might hear this even though you wouldn't care, at least after the first 5 times. But on the whole I absolutely love the place and the discussions, but then again, you might have read that between the lines already. *g*

They should start paying me for always bringing new people there and for all the good PR work I'm doing to them. But then again, they let me practise there, I get great conversation practise and learn to talk about buddhism in japanese. So, in the end I think we're pretty much even.