We are on our current virtual pilgrimage of 88 temples on Shikoku Island in Japan (linked below at Carpe Diem Haiku). Today we visit the Iwamoto-ji Temple in Shimanto. This temple is devoted to the Five Great Buddhas of Wisdom.

A hand has five fingers. Not all fingers are the same, as my Bedouin brothers would say, but five remains a natural number, all the more so since a haiku haijin recently told me the number five associated with me means we are to share a lifelong friendship.

There are ostensibly five syllables in a haiku, five points in a star, five senses and five oceans, and five petals on honeysuckle and geranium flowers.

Five oaths of wisdom are the right number to grasp in the hand and spread like seeds on a trail. My five have been mentioned before here in some haibun, or at least one or two have, but they are worth saying again, so I will, following the Five Wisdom Buddhas in the table above.

The wisdom of purifying form means something to me personally, and was a message in my last haibun, Memories are Tribal. The alarm which diverse cultures in North America and Asia view nudity is a symptom of a drift away from the importance of being at one with nature. This is a doctrinarian view of world order, and plastifying our existence brings with it great mental stress and physical harm. I am not being glib or provocative when I advise each and every person to spend one summer on the nudist coastline of Croatia or other country. Some from the most sraight-laced of our societies will balk at this. But you already know I have a point.

The wisdom of purifying consciousness and perception is vital in today’s culture of the one, of the feeling of entitlement and vindictiveness that besets our world and all those who aspire to it. Empathy and awareness — and the total lack of interest in both, are the roots of all issues causing misery today, from war to poverty.

The wisdom of purifying feeling — as society pulls further and further apart, like skyscrapers, stretching up ever higher in search of dollars, we need to step sideways in other, more peaceful and fulfilling directions. The spiritual void that the gang of formalised religion will leave behind upon its permanent ebbing away needs to be filled, and it is hard to see ways that are more fulfilling than a deeper understanding and connection with nature and its rhythm, that some native American tribes well understood, as did the concepts of Tengriism and Shintoism.

The wisdom of purifying mental formation is found naturally through the steps before, through the shedding of layers of civilisation in the clothes we hide ourselves with to gain acceptance, and instead release confidence and a feeling of well-being. This is key to better awareness and empathy, which by its very nature leads to the purifying of a mental disposition and formation.

five trees in blossom
reaching for the sky
five fruits to be plucked