A temple that reach a foreign heart

by Ilse Santillan (Mexico)

Making a local connection Japan

Japan is far known for having beautiful temples all around the country, we have seen so many awesome pictures of them, but there is something special on them, that cannot be told by the pictures we see online or in books. Japan temples can't compare to churches, don't get me wrong both are spiritual places, but sometimes churches and cathedrals are flooded with people that you can't feel this connection with the place. In Japan, it so much different, most of the temples are quite and they always surrounded by a marvelous garden where you can just sit and connect with yourself, nature, and if you want maybe talk with your higher being. I remember when I went to Kyoto, I was walking and searching for my hostel when I saw across the street a beautiful and the oldest pagoda I have seen, or at least that's what I thought. I decided to go in and visit Toji Temple, it was built at the Heian period and it turned out to be one of the UNESCO world heritage sites. But the beauty of this place hit me, when I entered the Kondo Hall, and I sit down and admired this wooden statue of the Yakushi Buddha, and the Nikko and Gakko Bodhisattvas, and as I started to breathe in this Japanese peaceful devotion for their religions, I felt water in my eyes and cried a little. I may not know much about Buddhism, but that didn't refrain me to feel my heart burst with joy and gratefulness, something that no church has done before, I feel like the temples in Japan had been visited with so much respect, love, gratefulness, that somehow when you enter one you feel that in your bones.