Hardest Religious Trekking Practice

Triangular  Neurosis 
Now I have been with an extremely rare disease for some time. It is as rare as to give me a strange confidence that never all through human history has there been a person who experienced my disease. The symptom is as follows. " Oh my God,over there are standing many houses with triangular shaped roofs!"
 " Look, the shape of the
pointer on the Web is triangular!" " On this table
cloth are drawn many triangular shaped forms"
Every time I make this kind of unwanted discovery
, my mind gets upset. In this way my disease makes me abnormally aware of the existence of
any kind of triangular shaped forms whenever they come into my sight. Lately I started to feel it
a scare to even keep my eyes open because of fear
of disturbing objects jumping into my sight anytime. Day by day my mind is getting darker and darker and I feel as if my mind were driven into a dark corner.
Encounter a mind-shaking book
It was in such a state of my mind that I encountered a book. The book is about the extreme Buddhist trekking practice by an ascetic who walked the course of 48 km every day along the mountain path. It was a book written with sweat, blood and tear, confessing his inner battle in his mind. He said as if he were persuading himself, " However bad physical condition I, an ascetic, may fall in, I must walk even in torrential downpour. I experienced  many agonies such as high fever over
39 °C , diarrhea which attacked me every hour ,
an swollen leg due to a blow and so on. It was the time when I must kill myself that I discontinued 
walking." As I read the book telling the record of
tremendous practice, a lonely battle  within himself , I gradually  started to feel ashamed of myself for being worried about my small present
problem and the feeling of shame was followed by
something like the gush of vitality , destructive in
a way, rising from within the depth of my mind beyond human logic and reasoning-power. 
What  makes you stand up again?
High fever, severe headache which kept ringing in
his head and stomachache caused by medicine
taken for reliving unbearable pain in his leg.
Even in such a hopeless condition an ascetic is not
allowed to see a doctor because of the uncompromising rule. When he says, " I had no
other choice but walk 48km every day." the words
of unshakable determination brings a strained air 
to our loosened mind. The name of the ascetic is 
Shionuma Ryojun . He is a priest who challenged 
three kinds of life-or-death Buddhist practice and
accomplished all of them. 
When we are really driven into corner, tender words can't help us stand up thoroughly. Fighting 
instinct which makes us roar in critical situation,
"Forget a well-behaved manner! Damn! Never will
I be defeated!" and ultimate self-dignity to believe " I am not
such a weak person." become the last driving force
to stand up at the very last moment. The book reminded me of it again. Now to begin with , I'd
like to write his first challenge of 100-day spiritual
trekking practice.
     100-Day Spiritual Trekking Practice

The spirit to blow off weakened mind
when our mind gets trapped in a situation with no
way out and stay long there, the weakened mind is
likely to start dominating our whole mind. When it happens, the words uttered from the mouth of an
ascetic gives us courage to blow off darkened mood hanging over deeply in our mind. 
The ascetic walks muttering," I must keep walking
in any kinds of condition. When I can't , I only have to cut my stomach. Right, left, one step by
one." But when he says so, his voice doesn't sound
heavy but light , peaceful and transparent,  because perhaps he was ready to accept for anything to happen. 
Only three days after the start of the practice, he
experienced a pain in his right knee・・・・ Soon
he experienced another pain in the other side of 
his leg due to taking care of the injured knee・・・
Both of his legs became just like a stick unable to

bend (He was forced to walk the stairs down    backward )・・・・Then toothache started (Each footstep sent him an unbearable pain to the top of his head. Once he lost consciousness due to pain) ・・・・Then he experienced stomachache due to overdose of
medicine he took to relieve pain in his teeth. 
Even under such an extreme condition an ascetic keeps walking . The image of the ascetic fighting against his weakness slaps my cheek and shakes my mind with positive energy rising up from only God knows where. 
Details of 100 days' practice
This Buddhist practice aims to keep walking only for the sake of walking in any kind of weather for
100 days, with two parts divided. For the first 50
days an ascetic is supposed to cover only one way
of 24km up to the summit of the mountain as high
as 1355m every day and to return the temple the
next day after staying in the Buddhist related accommodation at the summit . For the next 50 days he returns straight back to the temple , walking the distance of as much as 48 km. The first 50 days is considered to be a warming up period but walking up and down along the mountain path is not an easy job for even an experienced climber. Then let's follow an ascetic's daily life.
An ascetic 's daily life
1.  Get up at 11:25 pm 
    (Being dead tired, his brain gets abnormally 
      sensitive to sound, which wakes him up at
    a  little sound. The average sleeping hours is 4 hours.
2.  Go to a nearby river      and carry out the       waterfall practice , reciting a sutra.
     (The temperature of open air is around 4°C.   
          The cold water splashes from the body of an
       ascetic. This waterfall practice is obligatory 
       even when he has a fever higher than 39°C.)
3.  Eat two small riceballs
4.  Put on the costume of an ascetic
5.  Make a start, holding a paper lantern 
     at midnight
6.  On the way at 118 small shrines he stops and

     recites a sutra
7.   Eat two rice balls at 5:00am
8.   Arrive at the summit at 8:30am and eat 
      breakfast at the accommodation at the summit
9.  Return to the temple at 4:00 pm and do washing as usual 
10. Eat supper
11. Write down what came to his mind on the day
12. Go to bed

This is a rough sketch of an ascetic daily life.  All
day long he is supposed to carry out the practice
with dignity and confidence for two reasons. One
reason is that he voluntarily started himself. The other reason is to get a permit for next more challenging practice, the one thousand days' trekking practice.
No gain should be expected
An ascetic encounters many different kinds of dangerous things such as vipers,bears, wild
boars and so on and sometimes must pass very
dangerous places ,which requires excessive attention and concentration . With all these difficulties to overcome , he should not expect anything concrete in return , which is the essence of this practice. But why?
A fundamental Existential question 
A question over the true meaning of our life asked
with despair that worldly  pleasure can never satisfy our mind entirely overturns the foundation

of our way of thinking. You may have, for instance,
a certain goal to pursue in your life. You may be able to live a spiritually rich life until you reach the
goal. But I wonder if you can live through such a life relying on the goal? The world changes and you get old. With the passing of
time your goal which was once shinning loses its
color just like a toy you used to play with. It is not
your goal but you that change. Then is there anything that never loses its color and which you can rely on for your inner life all through your life?
This is a fundamental question of an ascetic.

A blissful joy experienced in despair

Rev. Shionuma recalls his hardest experience,"
Once up in the mountain I was driven to the verge
of desperation and felt that I was at the end of my life. After remaining in such a state , I suddenly felt a stream of flash of all my memories from my 
birth coming to my brain. Then I experienced an 
inexplicable loving feeling for myself, eating a small rice ball in heavy rain. The next moment I felt overwhelmed with indescribable blissful happiness rising up from within the depth of my inner being. 
I may have stepped into the true world beyond our
reasoning-power." Perhaps what he experienced may be similar to a feeling of being embraced in the big arm of nature beyond time and space.
The state of Satori glanced with blood and sweat
A scholar may call the state he expericed " 空kuh" 
 " mindless" and so on. But when he talks about the inner

experience himself , unlike the scholar, how clearly
and freshly his simple words can reach our mind. 
You may say that the state of his mind he experienced has something to do with the world
grasped without contacting between consciousness and objects , where peaceful and eternal time keeps running. I should think that it is there that we can find an unchangeable true life. 
I'd like to get a step closer to the state .
In my next blog I will write about the center of his practices , the one thousand days' trekking practice.