Page 38 - Seniorstoday August-2023 Issue
P. 38
We stay in a temple, The Ekoin. With its
history of over 1,200 years, it is one of the
fifty-three that offers shukubo, or temple
lodgings. Shoes are left outside, and we
wear socks or getas and tour our lodgings
with a monk who explains the different
aspects of Shingon monastic life. Staying
here is nothing like staying in a ryokan –
there are customs to follow, and the feeling
The gorgeous Torodo Hall has ten of reverence imbues everything we do. The
thousand lamps, their flames flickering rooms are minimalistic but beautiful in a
eternally, which we were gently asked way only a Japanese aesthetic can achieve.
not to photograph. We watched the robed Tatami flooring and futons furnish the
monks carry breakfast and lunch, as rooms and a tokonoma displays a scroll.
they do every day, to Kobo Dashi, who is Fragrant incense wafts around us.
believed to be sitting in eternal meditation
for 1,172 years.
Here you become one with nature and
connect more deeply with yourself. Tall
glass windows look out on a courtyard
filled with green shrubs and old trees
gently tap on the windows with their
branches. A shoji screen opens into a
veranda where one feels as if cocooned in a
forest. When we checked in, I was asked if
36
