AWAKENINGS

Kyoto: Fushimi Inari Shrine

Entering it
You enter yourself:
The world connects
And closes like a ring.
---Octavio Paz

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
Where everything shines as it disappears.
---Rainer Maria Rilke

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas

assigned to my brush came closer,

ready now to be described better than they were before.
----Czelsaw Milosz

At Nishiki Market, Kyoto

Torii are gateways at the entrance of Shinto shrines, or "jinja". They are typically made of wood, stone or sometimes, iron. Most wooden torii are painted in red. Torii literally means "where birds reside". It sometimes happens that Buddhist temples have a torii, too. The most amazing place to see torii gates is Kyoto's Fushimi Inari Taisha, where hundreds and hundreds of them are lined up in a tunnel-like fashion. The Inari shrine honors the Kami of rice. There you will also find fox statues as they are the messengers of Inari.
I felt that these torii gates were my first "welcome" to another world. These gates are the division between the physical and spiritual worlds. When I stepped under the gates into the temple grounds, a feeling of renewal come over me.
Odds are you could
Find yourself
Here in this passage between
Moonlight
And dawn,
Seeing change
Move
Through the backwater eddies
And the mainstream flows
Of the world around you---
Thinking through
Choice
And chance,
About things
That have already been
And
Might yet be.
-----Unknown