As I walked up the mountain pathway to Koyasan, the only sound I could hear was the crunching of my footsteps. When I stopped to rest, watching the swirling frosty puffs of my breath, it was absolutely silent – a strange muted stillness that comes when it lightly snows and the little winter birds are huddled in the bare trees. There was no one on the path today but the landscape seemed alive with spirits. I paused a moment longer to enjoy this silence that seemed to echo through the landscape and through my mind.
Fudozaka means “Fudo’s slope” and is named for the fiery deity Fudo Myo – the “King of Light” – who represents strength of will and fierce determination. Fudo is the key deity of veneration of the Shugendo tradition of mountain ascetics. Shugendo practitioners are known as “yamabushi”, literally “those who lie down in the mountains”. This spiritual movement is an ancient tradition that combines Esoteric Buddhism, Shinto, animism, and shamanism, and focuses on rigorous ritual practices that take place in the mountains. These practices involve long mountain treks, standing under icy waterfalls, walking on fire, as well as many secret rituals. All the temples on the pilgrimage, although predominantly belonging to the Esoteric Buddhist tradition, also have strong connections to Shugendo.
I have participated in a number of Shugendo rituals at different temples along the pilgrimage, which I shall talk about as we come to those temples. While walking up the Fudo Slope I reminisced about the time that I walked with the yamabushi along this pathway as part of an annual gathering of mountain ascetics one hot summer’s day that culminated in a great fire ritual held in the grounds of one of the temples on the mountain here.
The leader of the group was a very charismatic man who exuded great spiritual power and looked to me like a Japanese Yul Brynner! Although not initiated into this particular Shugendo group, because I was a Shingon Buddhist priest he agreed that I could join them. So I trailed along at the end of the line of yamabushi, chanting the mantras with them, which were very familiar to me because they are all from the Esoteric Buddhist tradition that I am ordained in.
After walking through the mountains for some hours, chanting and blowing the conch shell, the group returned to the temple to light the great saito-goma bonfire in the courtyard. This fire is quite spectacular and is accompanied by complex rituals involving bows and arrows, spears, swords and axes – weapons that represent the spiritual warrior cutting through illusions to achieve enlightenment. The blazing heat of the fire and the dense smoke are quite overwhelming and all the time the yamabushi continued to chant faster and faster to accompaniment of drums and conch shell horns. As I chanted with them, I began to feel quite dizzy and entranced.
Once the blaze had burned down a little, the hot coals were raked out and the yamabushi underwent the ascetic practice of walking through the fire to be purified of all negative karma. I was standing outside the sacred enclosure, a square marked off by a five-colored braided rope, when suddenly “Yul Brynner” came towards me and held up the rope in front of me, gesturing me towards the fire saying, “Now you come!” So I removed my shoes, followed him into the sacred enclosure and then on through the burning coals.
It was amazing! I felt no pain – in fact, no heat at all even though I could see the coals burning red beneath me. It was a very significant act of faith for me to know that this yamabushi wished me no harm and to trust that he could actually see something in me that I couldn’t see in myself – the ability to undergo this intense purification rite. Believe me, I am an ordinary housewife and not the kind of person who lives life on the edge, seeking the next challenge! I certainly would never have imagined myself walking through hot coals! But I did feel tremendously empowered by this experience, which at the end of the ritual is offered up for the relief of suffering of all beings.
So as I walked up Fudozaka that snowy morning at the start of the pilgrimage, I wondered what other adventures and challenges the weeks ahead would present.
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