One thing that I find interesting about this sort of place is how the Japanese can can focus on one area to the exclusion of the surround areas. Next to the display I showed you yesterday, you can see a completely dead tree (I guess that is appropriate for a graveyard) and some piled up stones and other construction materials. In Japan you will frequently see something of incredible beauty in the middle of an area that looks like a dump.
I walked up into the area on the ridge line where I had been seeing the grave markers. Notice that there is another ridge line in the distance and it is even higher. Actually that marks the outside edge of the temple grounds. You can see a couple of private houses. They are the beginning of a large housing development that now surrounds the temple grounds.
This is the way a typical Japanese graveyard looks. Remember that there are no bodies here so the individual sites can be quite small.
Progressing a little bit further up the hill and into the depths of the graveyard, I found a very helpful sign. It reminded me of all of the various pictures we get of what happens to people after they die. We might say that the sign has died. It certainly meets the Buddhist criteria of everything arising and they fading away.
No comments:
Post a Comment