Today, we visited the training hall in Ikoma City, Nara Prefecture, where En no Gyoja’s Shugendo is preached.

The theme of Shiozawa’s latest work centers on En no Gyoja, though little information is readily available about him. Upon hearing from an acquaintance that the soul of En no Gyoja had been transferred to a living master of Shugendo, we decided to visit her dojo.

Shugendo is a religion of mountain worship, in which people use mountains as their sanctuaries and practice asceticism to attain mystical powers.

This religion was formed by the fusion of foreign religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism with Shinto, Yin-Yang, and even folk beliefs that already existed in Japan.

The master teacher we met that day was a 95-year-old woman. Upon learning that Shiozawa was a painter, she guided him to another room, where a painting of En no Gyōja by the long-ago artist Kawanaka Shinya was displayed, along with a portrait of master teacher as a young woman, also by the same painter.

After that, the master began to tell a series of fable-like stories incessantly.

After seven or eight fables, she concluded with the following words:

“Prayer doesn’t have to be a distant waterfall practice; it is important to pray there, whether it is to the family altar nearby or to the local deity. Everyone tends to think that God and Buddha are far away, but in fact they are close at hand.  These words left a strong impression on us.

Master teacher has visited more than 4,000 places that En no Gyoja visited around the 7th century.

Next she instructed the caretaker to “make three small pieces of rice into a salted musubi,” which was given to Shiozawa.

Apparently, this act meant that En no gyojya had entered Shiozawa’s belly. We were in a very mysterious time. But it was a very satisfying and pleasant time.