KaihÅgyÅ
The Kaihōgyō (Japanese回 峰 行, dt " Gipfelumkreisungs asceticism " ) is a ritual of monks of the Tendai school, which is carried out for a period of 100 days or 1000. Here, the Mount Hiei is surrounded to Kyoto again. The 1000 -day ritual is divided into several stages to seven years passed. Here, the monk covers a distance that supposedly almost a similar orbit (about 23,300 miles ). Therefore, the graduates of the Kaihōgyō are also called " marathon monks ". Thus, similar to the ritual of pilgrimage.
History and environment
The ritual Kaihōgyō probably goes to the monk Soo (相 応; 831-918 ) back. He practiced rituals in an ascetic way. Early in his life, he joined the still small Tendai movement in Enryaku temple on Mount Hiei to the northeast of Kyoto on. It is stated that Soo himself accomplished a thousand- day ascetic ritual after he had met a local god ( Shikobuchi Myojin ) after intense prayer.
Soo founded the ascetic practice that developed in the following centuries to a pilgrimage ritual in which various mountains were controlled. From the 14th century Kaihōgyō was heavily systematized. After the Enryaku -ji was burned in 1571 by Oda Nobunaga, a Kaihōgyō was already a decade later recorded. Since then, probably only about 40 monks have completed the Kaihōgyō successful.
In the late 1980s, a report of the Japanese television station NHK triggered high popularity of the exceptionally extensive ritual. This was followed by TV reports, documentation and articles, which also found its way to Europe via English-language literature.
Expiration
The Kaihōgyō is carried out at night because the monk is released despite his preoccupation with the ritual and the pilgrim status not from his monastic duties of the day ( prayers ). So the ascetic is usually shortly after midnight and completed in the hours until morning a roughly 18 mile trek to Mount Hiei. On the way, he has the task of conducting prayer ceremonies at short intervals. Since the road is long and doubled and tripled in the later stages, the monk has to run.
This sequence, which Kaihōgyō can be completed by the monk for one hundred consecutive days, hyaku - nichi (百日). Then it is called Shingyo (新 行), as a new ascetics.
Decides the monk to perform the thousand -day practice, sen - nichi (千 日), so be completed in seven years, stages 100 and 200 days - each sequentially. Between the stages of the monk is not according to the ritual.
The ascetic practice experiences at the end of the fifth year a turning point in which the dōiri (堂 入り), entering the temple is completed. After 700 days, the monk fasts for nine days. He does not drink, do not eat nor sleep. Only after he takes the last two years of Kaihōgyō, in which the distance to be doubled or tripled if the monk travels 801-900 for a walk around Kyoto and Hiei in the days.
The division of the stages, by year, consecutive days and length of the route in the following table: