Lightning River

Last dinner. It was like a dream. 

We hiked up a mountain to the Tengu Penis Shrine. Japan. 

Shinboku in Nikko. 

We met Kei and Yasuchika outside a hookah bar in Tokyo. 
Yoshi took us to see Taro Okamoto's mural "Myth of Tomorrow" installed at Shibuya station.  This was a huge highlight of my trip. 

Yoshi

Satoru with Misa and her beautifully androgynous friends in front of the entrance to Meiji Jingu shrine. 

Nikko. This World Heritage site (because the woodwork and paintwork is un-fucking-believable) was packed with people (and thus, packed with angels). ridiculous. Golden Week is like that. 
Amazing woodwork, with shide hanging from a doorway. I am growing very fond of these symbols. and can you see the tiny shrine within of the big one?  "It's shrines all the way down." 
The circular mirror on the alter at Tengu Shrine. Man I love the symbolism in Japanese Shinto shrines. You climb up a mountain or a thousand stairs to finally reach the shrine at the top.  You peer inside the sacred room and see sitting on the alter a mirror. Which is to say, you see yourself.  Ah.  But you also can't really see yourself because it's dark and the mirror is dirty, so you see a circular disc representing a mirror.  Are you offering God a mirror? "Here you are, God. Look at yourself!"  Is it the mirror Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, used to look at herself in the Shinto story? Is the circular mirror a symbol for the sun goddess herself? Altars are not just where offerings are made; they are also sometimes where the symbolic God sits, like in Christianity and Buddhism. By putting a mirror on the altar in that context, it is pointing yet again to the God-presence Within, looking out through your very own eyes. Or at least the mirror is pointing to one important source of your world...You. Needless to say, circular mirrors contain many meanings and symbolic powers, and discovering one in a secret room on top of a holy mountain can rapidly unravel higher and deeper levels of mind, meaning, and symbolism, making the mirror a great object to have on the alter! (And it's also a core symbol used in the Tibetan Dzogchen tradition (of which Dream Yoga is a part). In Buddhism, circular mirrors may be warn around the neck as well, so that when another person looks at your heart they see their own.  

 (Furthermore, the mirror-mind is also an analogy (along with the crystal ball) for how the nature of mind is always looking me right in the face but is missed.  I miss it by focusing on the objects arising within it.  How often are you conscious of the surface of the mirror--that unchanging reflecting pool of clear silver light allowing the objects to be seen in the first place? When you look the mirror, how often are you aware of the mirror surface, really?  And why would you be? The amazing, unending diversity of forms arising and passing within the mirror-mind is so hypnotizing, so breathtaking, and rightly so...it's a miracle anything is happening at all.   

Nikko.  
Meiji Jingu. This is a very important shine right next to Yoyogi park. We were lucky enough to get to see Kyogen and Noh theater there for free. People took pictures even though they were asked nicely not to. (Not me, though. I took these before the performance started.) During the Noh, which is a very intense kind of theater, a happy, beautiful wedding party walked by, attracting everyone's attention. It was a bit KY, but also a profound juxtaposition. 

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Satoru Kikuchi I got David Titterington. He is sleeping in my room!!!!

Satoru Kikuchi David Titterington is on the way to his home. I miss him already! And I had to catch up Emily in Shinagawa station

Golden week, golden eyes, golden sunshine streaming in through the Shiokaze "salt wind" train windows and soul windows, golden pink sunlight making the blue silver mountains purple for my way back from Ibaraki Sunday evening. I clutched my iphone and sunk deep into my chair of missingness, with dazzlingly beautiful Japanese people sleeping all around me.  

Sad sad sad is leaving a place so full of love and light and pineapples!!!! Satoru must have remembered what my favorite foods are from when he was in America, and told his family because I had pineapple everyday and spinach salad... and Satoru has 3 cute, big,  funny dogs, and an awesome, beautiful sister, a hilarious, handsome older brother, and of course two glowing parents with a lightning river, belligerently blissed-out  grandmother living next door.  His parents reminded me of so many amazing parents I know, but they were most like the Johnsons, if you can imagine. Those of you who met Satoru might like to imagine what his family must have been like, and his best friend Yoshi...a lot like Eli. Yoshi and I drummed together for an hour under the hot sun at Yoyogi park, and were both happily sunburned for days afterward. hippies.  I thank their my type. 

But Satoru is not a hippy. He is not anything.  His name means "Enlightenment Itself." Traditionally we could start there for some sort of interpretation.   Whatever he is, Satoru is my teacher in Happiness, Playfulness, and Truthfulness. He told me one night that his religion is Honesty, and I believe him.   

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