Agon-shu Monastery

Travel Reports by Chashitsu

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October 31, 2014 - Agon-shu Monastery

I visited the head temple of the Agon-shu Buddhist with a group of friends by private arrangement. Agon-shu is a new sect only a few decades old with a mountain top eyrie to the south east of Kyoto. The building is fabulous and exudes wealth. It is the training centre and head quarters with only a few resident staff. The sect appears to believe in fire walking as part of it's meditation.... We were welcomed with a short presentation and tea/sweet in the traditional way and escorted around the extensive gardens.

The tour takes you down a hundred steep steps to the bottom of the cascading stream, which ends in a large pond with bridge. The maples and enkianthus were showing a fiery red. The other side of the staircase is a dry landscape garden on the hillside with many large rocks and ancient trees. The colour of the maples here at higher altitudes were superb. Returning up through the stream garden to the temple we were ushered back inside (shoes off) and out onto the balcony with it's elevated view of another landscape garden. The path then winds up through the dry landscape garden and onto the hillside following the stream to the statue of the Buddha at the summit. A truly awesome garden. Note this garden is not open to the public and not much information can be found about it on the Internet.