Waking up to an alarm clock almost seems foreign now...almost. It didn't stop my immediate reaction to hit the snooze button, lie back on the bed and wonder how long it would take for the alarm to ring again. It was five minutes.
I took a quick shower and when I got out, I was yet again surprised by the innovativeness of the bathroom. This time it was not the toilet, but the mirror. Normally, you would run into the problem of having the whole mirror fogged up and be unable to see yourself. No, not here. There was a square cutout that the fog made on the mirror right above the sink. I don't know how they did it, but it's definitely something I haven't seen before. What a handy thing to think of.
All trivial things aside, today was our journey to Koyasan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It took about four transfers to finally get to our destination. First we took a taxi, which I happened to lock Professor Schulz in because apparently you can't open from the inside because the doors are automatic.Oops. Then we changed to the speed rail, took a shuttle bus to the next station, then a light rail all the way to Koyasa. From there took a cable trolley up the mountain. By far the most interesting thing other than the beautiful scenery was this cable trolley. Because it goes up and down the mountain, the trolley is set up diagonally like steps. It took 5 minutes for the trolley to climb to the top of the mountain. And from there we took a taxi to the temple lodgings.
Here, we met a monk who will be giving us lessons on Koyasan meditation techniques. He also allowed time for questions and answers on the techniques and Buddhism as well. His answers were profound, and really enlightened me to what enlightenment is about. I felt that by sitting there listening to his vivid answers, I got a much better sense as to what my families religion is, and what we've been reading about in class thus far. Now I feel like I really need to go back and reread those texts.
The type of medication he taught was very similar to the one I had learned previously before this trip and MBSR. I think he was the only one that told us to put our tongue on the roofs of our mouths right behind the two front teeth. However, this technique does stray a bit from what I learned in that the exhalation of the breathe is to be done from the mouth.
The air here at Koyasan is brisk and fresh any time of the day. It's really nice and different from the musky city air. And it is just amazing. How totally different the culture is between the city, and if you travel out of it for an hour or two.
We are practicing silence once again until 9 in the morning, then we get the day to ourselves tomorrow until 2 pm.
Extremely tired tonight, until tomorrow.
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