Rengejoin Monastery

Long post alert!

I stayed for three days & nights at the Rengejoin buddhist monastery in the town of Kyosan, perched in the mountains outside of Osaka.

Kyosan is a buddhist monastery town (and where I did my temple walk), so most of the places have a similar look – they’re compounds built right into the woods. Rengejoin seemed especially nice, and I bet it’s even more beautiful in spring & fall. Here’s the view of it from the road – that’s a frozen pond in the front:

There’s a giant sand garden upon walking through the entry gate:

The main courtyard was an insanely beautiful Japanese garden embedded into a hill, included a carp pond, and was surrounded by traditional buildings:

Rooms are behind sliding doors along a long hallway:

Looking down into the courtyard from the hallway:

The monastery is a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. That means the sliding doors, woven-straw tatami floors, and almost no furniture. The bed is a futon pad on the floor with sheets & a comforter on top, and you sit at a low table in a chair with no legs (the setting for my Super Bowl party):

The very-modern bathroom (home of the best toilet ever) is at the far end of the room, and bumped out right into another gorgeous Japanese garden:

Rengejoin is an active Buddhist monastery & all guests there are expected to participate in the daily monastery activities that occur every single day, exactly the same way each day.

Each day had two ceremonies, and both start with a monk chiming a bell to summon you to the meditation hall – 5:55am for the morning ceremony, 5:55pm for the afternoon ceremony:

The ceremony room looked like it was built by a Hollywood set team, and exactly how you’d picture a mountain buddhist monastery hall should look, including incense burning throughout:

All the guests sit facing into the main ceremony room, on small pads on the ground. It was freezing, so they did us a solid and had two heaters blazing away (no heaters in the monk room in front of us, though):

We sat crossed-legged the entire time. They had stools if you couldn’t handle it, but I wanted to monk-it-up, so always sat that way. This was extremely painful after about 20 min & especially detrimental to my tender, inflexible hips.

The ceremony begins with the head monk entering and sitting facing us. He then spent about 15 minutes explaining the history of Kyosan & the monastery, and then provided some guidance on how to meditate. He did this all first in Japanese, then in English. It was very, very hard to understand his English, but since I was there for three days/nights, I was able to cobble together some new bits & pieces each time to build an idea of the narrative.

Related story: Most people only stay there one day & night, so on day three, prior to giving his speech, the head monk upon seeing me yet again said “You’ve been here three days! There’s nothing more to say!” to which I replied “My hips have something to say!” The monk didn’t laugh, but the German to my right did, so I’m counting it as my first successful monastery joke.

After instruction time, the head monk went back into the monk room and perched himself on a pillow throne. He then hit some chimes & gongs, and all the monks began chanting. For the morning ceremony, the chanting stopped after about 10 min, and meditation time began, lasting around 40 minutes. In the evening ceremony, they just kept chanting for 40 minutes. It was mesmerizing.

Anyway, we weren’t allowed to take pics during the ceremonies (I kind snuck the one above), but here’s a pic from the walls of the monastery that show what the head monk looks like when he’s rollin’ with his full posse:

After the ceremony ended, they escorted us to the dining room. You’ll see here that my backpack packing worked out well for me, as I was able to wear my cool-ass Crocs around the compound, instead of the ill-fitting temple slippers:

All the guests eat in the same room, but you sit under your room number, and we each have our own little sitting pad, table, and setup:

You’ll see I’m sitting cross-legged again, which is why my smile looks like the the facade that it is, covering up deep, dark pain:

The meals were all vegetarian, but as with all other things in the monastery, gorgeous. Here’s a breakfast:

And here’s a dinner (sure would hate to be the person who had to do the dishes):

The food was very bland, but delicious. I think. I don’t know, most of the time I just thought about finishing it quickly so I could stand up and free my hips.

But, I’m so glad I went there, and am even happy I stayed for such a long time – it was definitely an experience.