There’s a great art house film called Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. It is about a Japanese woman who obsessively watches a flaky video of an American thriller. Eventually she snaps and travels to the USA to dig up the money she saw being buried on screen.
I really enjoyed Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter. It reminded me of the fascination I have with an old, degraded quality film about Japan. I first saw it a few years ago on YouTube. It is a 1994 Channel 4 documentary about the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei. It was significant enough for me to install special software, download a copy and then lose. Fortunately it is still available on-line and there is now a better quality, slightly different cut with an American voice over. I prefer my original find.
https://youtu.be/emE-dxCyRz4
Should I, like Kumiko, steal some money, leave my pet on a subway train and head off in search of buried treasure? Probably not. Unlike the film Kumiko watches the one that fascinates me is a documentary. These guys really exist and they do the practice of Kaihōgyō – circling the mountain. You can read about it on Wikipedia. The ascetic practices started about millennium ago but settled down into walking various routes around Mount Hiei five hundred years back.
For the past decade I’ve got up each morning and walked or cycled 2.5 miles across the centre of Edinburgh to my office at the botanic gardens returning by a slightly different route in the evening. Allowing for work trips and illness that is about 200 trips and very roughly 1,000 miles per year. At the same time I have been working to deepen my Buddhist practice. In 2013 I made the commitment to do 20 minutes formal mindful walking in the botanic garden every lunchtime I was there. I’ll have done about 900 by now. Walking has become my main spiritual practice.
Often as I leave the house in the morning and bring my attention to my breath and feet, resolving to be open to but not distracted by the life of the city, I think of the monk in the documentary. I’m a Lay Pedestrian he is a Marathon Monk but we are in the same business.
I’m walking a small fraction of the distances the marathon monks do but it feels like time to looked more closely at what practices these Tendai Buddhists have developed and if any might be useful for me – especially the hat!
Marathon Monk Posts by Date
- Marathon Monk: Back story
- Lay Pedestrian meets Marathon Monk
- Lay Pedestrian resolves to mug Marathon Monk
- Setting Off on Project Marathon Monk
- Marathon Monk Index
- Marathon Monk: June 2017 – 8 days & 48 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk and the Pointless Pole
- Marathon Monk: July 2017 – 22 days & 132 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: August 2017 – 33 days & 198 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: September 2017 – 47 days & 282 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: October 2017 – 62 days & 372 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: November 2017 – 78 days & 468 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: December 2017 – 89 days & 534 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: January 2018 – 97 days & 582 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: February 2018 – 112 days & 672 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: March 2018 – 125 days & 750 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: April 2018 – 137 days & 822 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: May 2018 – 152 days & 912 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: June 2018 – 166 days & 996 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: July 2018 – 182 days & 1,092 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: August 2018 – 199 days & 1,194 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: September 2018 – 217 days & 1,302 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: October 2018 – 233 days & 1,398 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: November 2018 – 248 days & 1,488 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: December 2018 – 258 days & 1,548 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: January to March 2019 – 281 days & 1,686 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: April 2019 – 301 days & 1,806 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: May & June 2019 – 323 days & 1,938 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: July 2019 – 340 days & 2,040 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: August 2019 – 358 days & 2,148 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: September-November 2019 – 399 days & 2,394 mindful miles
- Marathon Monk: To 23rd March 2020 – 441 days & 2,646 mindful miles & into Covid-19 Lockdown