In the world of giants.

This weekend I went on a trip to Tenri and Nara together with my fellow students of Japanese religions. Tenri is a Japanese city named after the religion that has it origin there, Tenri-kyo. And more than 50 percent of the people that live in Tenri are believers of Tenri-kyo and you notice this immediately because they all were clothes on which the name Tenri-kyo is written. Tenri-kyo is the oldest of the so called new religions of Japan.It was founded by a female peasant, Nakayama Miki, who underwent a revelatory experience in 1838. Her followers refer to her as Oyasama (lit. Honoured Parent) from this date onwards. We went to their Head Quarters, which an enormous temple-complex in the middle of the city. The main shrine complex in Tenri centres around the Jiba, which is believed to be the central point from where human life stems from. One of the interesting aspects is that the Jiba can be worshipped from all sides, it literally is the centre of devotion. The whole structure resembled a really great Buddhist temple, it was really massive and it even had a kind of ancient feeling hanging around it, while it actually isn’t that old.
The focus of the Tenri religion is to attain yoki yusan, the 'joyous life', on Earth through charity and abstention from greed, a self-serving life, hatred, anger and arrogance.
One of the other characteristics that stands out is that in Tenri one regards the human body as a thing which is borrowed from God (Oyagami) while our minds are our own. Because of the fact that our body isn’t our own we have certain duties towards the God, namely to live a joyous life and also to bring joy to those around us. We were shown around and later also got a lecture about the history and teachings. There were also students of the Tenri-University and we could ask each other questions about our religious beliefs. Afterwards we went together for dinner and then we bought some beers and shoushu (strong Japanese liquor) to continue our conversation in a more relaxed way. Around 12 o’clock some were getting sleepy while others were getting hungry and although I didn’t fell in one of the categories, I went out with the people who wanted to eat the famous Tenri-ramen. In the Ramen-shop we got the luminous idea to see another side of our Japanese friends by going to karaoke. First, we settled for 1,5 hours of singing but we were enjoying ourselves so much that we went on and on and on. One by one the Japanese left us, the crazy foreigners singing rock songs. At 5 o’clock we got kicked out of our box and after walking back to the dormitory we could enjoy a half hour rest because at 6 o’clock we had to be awake again in order to go to the Tenri morning service. Kind of dazed and still under influence we went into the cold morning and saw that at 6.30 the whole temple was filled with people in order to do the morning service. I tried to follow them in doing their service, which consist of a practice which is called te-odori, the hand dance. It looks like a kind of sign language which they perform, while they at the same time are saying prayers.
After going to their museum, we took the train to Nara, the first real capital of Japan. Autumn had coloured the whole city in various kinds of red an yellow colours. Moving along old-fashioned roof-covered shopping streets we went up to go to Todai-ji, presumably the biggest wooden structure in the world. I have to rely on the same adverbs I have used before to describe it: it’s huge, enormous and massive. You feel so little in the presence of this enormous construction build by the same small humans like you. And than to realize that probably the present building is only 2/3 in size of the original one. The building is so massive because it contains a Buddha of gigantic stature, almost 15 meters tall. It’s not exactly the original figure because in the ninth century an earthquake knocked over his head and both in 1180 as well as in 1567 his right hand was melted in a fire. I have been before to Nara but still I was gripped by the enormousness of both the Buddha and the temple and my lack of sleep only contributed to the feeling as if I was walking in a place build for giants. In this state of being half-awake we went to other temples in the neighbourhood before we arrived at 5 o’clock at an Anglican church, with the appearance of a Buddhist temple. And although you would think that it is strange that a western church has such a Japanese appearance it made absolute sense. Of all the buildings we had been to during the last two days, this definitely had the most religious feel attached to it. Perhaps because this was a human size church, not one for God or for giants.