Zojo-ji Temple

I said that the day before I was tired of temples and shrines. So what was I thinking about going to another one today? Well, for one thing, it was very close to where we already were, and I was feeling a little more receptive than I was before.

The large gate entrance to the complex is actually down the street, about a block away from the grounds. Seeing cars drive through was neat because it seemed like the shrine was a living part of the city, rather than something out of the way, and isolated from everything else.

The main entrance gate to the grounds was similar to all of the other ones that we had sen before. After passing through the main gate, there was a large shrine ahead of us. Again, I felt like I had already seen so many, so although it was quite impressive, I didn’t feel much about it. Walking around, though, we could see many things that were different from other shrines. For one thing, I really liked the statues that were scattered around the grounds. Of course, as I have said before, there are statues of the Buddha around all of the shrines that we have been to, but something, I don’t know what, struck me about these ones.

Another unique feature about the Zojo-ji Temple is that, along the side of the grounds, there is a row of small statues of what look like little babies. Each of them wear red hoods, and have little fan wheel toys or flowers that they are holding. I thought that it was an interesting feature of this temple, and I could only hazard a guess as to what they were there for (perhaps peace, or protecting the buried dead)

Another thing that was very different from the rest of the places that we had been to was that at Zojo-ji, we were able to actually walk into the buildings. Perhaps that is one difference between a shrine and a temple. At most of the other places that we had been to, they only allow people to stand at the front of the shrine, covered by the roof, and pray to their gods through a fence that looked into a room. Instead, at Zojo-ji, we walked through the doors of the temple, and were welcomed into a large room with a Buddha altar at the front; there were even chairs to sit down and relax, or pray. Because the room was so large, it was clear to me that there must be other uses for the room besides merely sitting and praying. (Perhaps that is another idfference between temples and shrines.) Indeed, when we walked through the offices, we could see that elaborate productions of traditional events and dancing are performed here. It was a much more involved experience than at some of the other places where we have been.