I Met God in Kyoto

By: David Krishna Strong Upadhya

First of all, I mistook the conversion rate by ten.

I obnoxiously thought that the hostel would be cheaper because it was an authentic ryokan: a floor, a mat, a pillow. Right in the centre of Kyoto, between the twin temples of Higashi Hongan-ji and Nishi Hongan-ji, cradled by mountains north, west, and east…for $15 a night?! How could we say no?

(Though Akira is based on a nuclear fallout in Tokyo, standing on the roof of Kyoto's train terminal, looking at the bowl of a city, I was struck by a prehistoric sense of awe. Nothing ethereal mind you, but as I squinted out towards where our ryokan would be, in the middle of this ancient city, happily knowing we were getting a bargain, some form of premonition passed through me. A hesitation, a foreboding tremble, a qualm of sorts. Of course, as we walked down the open-air staircase, watched a punk-rock band elicit moshing from a great many teenagers, Sam found $50 on the ground, the feeling soon passed, and even now I wonder if I even felt it at all... These things are as subtle and random as anything else that happens, I suppose…)

… and a presumably well-paid ryokan receptionist. When we arrived, Sam and I were promptly charged $150 for our sole night, in a stark, empty room between thin, paper walls. (For context, we paid around $30-$40 each night up until then.)

Now, this is not a complaint about overpriced tourism. Japan is very affordable. Too affordable. By that point, I had been backpacking long enough to have forgotten why I was there in the first place. No, this opening is a remark on how the decisions we might not have made consciously, often turn out to be the best ones. We cannot choose enlightenment. It finds us. It found me.

Heavy circles rippled out from where droplets met puddles as we trudged through the quiet inner-city streets. Once we got away from the train terminal, it was not crowded. It was clean. Very clean. Cleaner than any Canadian city, and not only because of the increasingly charismatic rain. There was no loud construction, shouting, or harassment. There was no litter, no dark gum stains, no expression of delinquency at all, really. The 17-year-old in me itched, wondering why weed wasn’t legal, how loudly I could hypothetically play trap music out of my bluetooth speaker, and taking pride in my lack of umbrella.

Safe to say I was soaked, tired, and more broke than expected upon arrival. So, after heaving my heavy load from my eternally-aching back onto the hardwood floor, and taking a steaming hot shower, I snuggled into the thick blanket they'd gratefully given us and made an attempt at journaling myself to sleep

Of course, journaling never sufficed. There is always something else. Intangible, invisible, ineffable beyond words. It is why I am, forgive me, not a writer.

Now, if I had known of an English-speaking stranger nearby, I'd have shared a beer. If Sam and I hadn't spent the day together, we might have shared yet another conversation table on the nature of art, writing, culture, or the most interesting of all topics: women. If there had been a lamp  I might have shared a vlog on Instagram of me rambling about late-stage-capitalism leading to decentralized democratic communism. Indeed, had I even a table, I might have drawn a small sketch of the room in which we lay, embellished with psychedelic swirls of angels lusting after me from the rafters above. In a more somber mind, I might have portrayed the thin hallway, the wooden doorframes, the rice-paper walls and sliding doors, the bamboo plants by the entrance where a shoe mat for all the passing vagabonds lay full of mismatched sneakers.

But there was no table. There were no strangers, there was no lamp, and besides, there was nothing unusual to illustrate or write about, except the unusuality you expect when backpacking through Japan,  a calm, orderly sense of natural wonder that has fueled Studio Ghibli, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and countless other artistic ventures with which I dared not to compete.

So, pushing the tea-stained journal where I later took the notes and illustrations that make up this memoir into my beaten-up backpack, I opened my laptop and launched my music software.

Quickly and without headphones, I began. Programming. Chasing. Playing. A synth line, a loop, a sequence of beautiful, good, true emotion.

Sam asked me politely to put on headphones.

I don’t blame him. It was horrible. I kept trying to make it work, but it wouldn't co-operate. The sound was plastic, and dissonance danced around the melody the way a gangly 6’5 wallflower dances at prom. I could have given up there, failing. If I was watching someone else, I might have even said they probably should have.

But that has never been my way. The worse it is, the better it can be, I always say. And so the chase became more intense, manic, frantically imbued with my urge to prove myself. I had begun something that could make me feel at peace, I knew it, if only I could complete it properly! But agh! It was not there! With every wrong note, I grew more and more distraught, clenching my jaw, mashing my keyboard, stopping, starting. When a step was solid, I pushed it forward until it broke again.

It was in this way that I added harmonies, flourishes and flaws to the pattern. The way we add stops, scenes, and sights to our life whenever we want to give this journey meaning.

Thankfully, my minimalist surroundings must have maintained a sense of simplicity in my heart. All I needed, I realized, was for the loop to contain itself, while expressing itself. Wasn’t the best way for that to happen, to let it unfold? Closing my eyes and giving up, I let the loop repeat. And I realized, for better or worse,  it was done.

I grinned at a goofy joke with Sam, yawned, and proceeded to fall promptly asleep.

Now, the floor was flat, the mat was small and tiny, and Sam, for all his yoga and prophetic wisdom, snores like an elephant, bless him. But those were not the reasons I woke up early, to a dark night and a full moon. That real reason evaporated as I woke from the meaninglost howl of a breaking dream. Flashes of blue and red across a crystalline grid, a wyvern weaving through the web of pure, white light…[1] 

Rain dripped on the street outside. Pattered, counted. Fell, countless.

Whatever the reason for being awake was, it would not leave. Try as I might, I could not, for the life of me, fall back to sleep.

I supposed I eventually surrendered to this as well. After all, I had never been to Kyoto before. Gently rising so as not to wake my brother, I left my phone dead in my bag and slipped between the rice-paper walls, into the dim and foggy night-morning street, to wander while wondering.

There's something deeply liberating about not being able to read any street signs. They do not distract you. Your eyes easily fall over the beautiful shapes, as they convey information you are incapable of grasping. A layman might feel this when you see chemical symbols, shorthand representing financial information, or an acronym you cannot unfurl. Here, I was that simple layman: sygaldry marked the asphalt upon which I stepped with names that may as well have been archaic runes, blatant warnings, or curses against my mother. I was none the wiser. These magic scripts beneath my feet coded a society in which I was an alien.

I say this to convey the feeling of magic in the air.  Kyoto is an old city. Shuttered windows, winding lanes, shrines and silhouettes and orb-like lampposts. Husky and thick, the atmosphere felt like air, ripe with rain yet to come (though it was not rain that came for me, as you will soon read).

I got lost, the good kind of lost, taking right turns, left, without knowing the difference between where either would take me. The walk turned into a pensive rumination, upon my novels, my passion for past lovers, and my connection to the future with the one I had chosen. Why had I come here? Where was I going? Who was I to become?

Who am I?

As faint-yellow light tinged the mountains of the east, I found myself facing one of the major temples I had seen upon the roof of the train station. The gates were open, the stone bridge across the moat forever lowered. There were fish in the water, under the algae. Small ripples, not concentric here. I walked across, and in.

The courtyard was vast, long and wide, with pebbles as the ground. It also appeared empty, save a few small birds, and a few truly colossal trees. There was a rusted stone fountain running from a dragon's mouth quietly, underneath the largest tree in the center of the courtyard. Both fountain and tree must have been centuries old. The sound of the eternal water flowing into the earth brought me joy, and peace, and a sense of quavering belonging, though it was flighty and easily frightened.

I tentatively made my way up to the outer boardwalk of the temple, elevated from the pebbles, and sat down. The wood was moist. My laptop was in my bag, and I pulled it out and sat it in my lap, hoping to avoid water damage. I was sheltered there, should it rain again. Safe, thankfully. I could not afford to break it and lose the memories inside.

The first thing that opened of course, was the melody from last night. I looked at it, and might have made a few adjustments before I began to write my book, but probably not, because I did not put on headphones. That much I know. Perhaps it was nervousness, or a sensitive premonition, but I also did not deign to explore, to delve inside the temple behind me. There were many things I did not do, as I sat, writing. I did not leave. I did not anticipate.

As the sky began to warm from blue to pale yellow, I became occupied with a battle scene I was writing, between the Vanguard and the Empire, glancing up occasionally, to see nothing had changed. I forgot about the real world, about changing, about doing, about my questions.

And then.

Breaking the horizon, the sunlight touched my temple, my forehead, my heart and the holy sound began. 

Patternless. Colorless, yet iridescent. Quietly deafening. I could hear nothing but it, feel nothing, it was, nothing but it. My hair prickled, my face falling loose, my thoughts evaporating like dew in sunlight. Prophetic, ancient, present, powerful and unyielding, the pulse became my heart, my mind, became me.

Allah, God, Panpsyche, Brahman, enlightenment, The Big Bang… none of these words matter here. All I ask is you try, if for a moment, to imagine the sound of the universe beginning. Forceful, giving in, soft, hard, raw, gentle... Harmonious without heeding any rules, dissonant, without despair, complete comprehension, acceptance and understanding why things are ununderstandable. That is what it was like.

Now to explain:

A crowd of locals had already arrived, and were waiting inside the temple. Undoubtedly, meditating, praying in silence while I arrived, I learned later, it was their tradition to wait for daybreak before beginning to sing. In an instant, as the sunlight met the temple, met their temples as it met mine,  their single note chant began.

In an instant, I learned true, effortless music.

In an instant, I met what the west calls God.

The chant continued, moment after moment. Time dilates, I do not know how. It brought tears to my eyes as I succumbed, beginning to sing with them, quiet, failing, loudly with all my strength, all of it perfect. It was not hard, it was not easy, yet I could do no wrong. One note, relentless, eternal. It was not an Ohm, more of an ‘Ahh’. I still do not know the intellectual significance of that, but in truth I do not care so much. It could not explain how I felt. It could not illuminate my experience anymore than it was.

I hope I do not besmirch the zealous population of my hometown when I say that I've never heard so much as a carol inside a building in Toronto at sunrise, let alone from outside. I have attended a few services, and we have sung together, but always lyrical hymns…. the deep, monotonous note… that eludes my hometown the way snow does not.

My eyes must have closed awhile, because I remember opening them to brilliant yellow sunlight. Tear-streaked and gasping for self more than air, I saw people, countless people, streaming in through the gates, chiding, chattering, stepping by me to enter the temple. They paid me no real mind, a few nods, and some small polite words I couldn't possibly understand. Most were old, bald or greyhaired, stooping. Some mothers, holding babies, a few fathers that I recall.

I watched them with the reverence of a father witnessing birth. It was as though the entirety of Kyoto was coming here to exalt the new day together. It felt as though my sanctity had been restored, my vitality replenished, my purpose polished clean, of the perceived pointlessness plaguing the steps that had led me here.

Later, when I went in and bowed, prayed, surrendered fully on the mat before the shrine, my back pain dissipated. Out in the courtyard, I wrote another song that I loved, recording myself singing into the laptop microphone. I wrote more in One, concluding the battle scene with a hero turning martyr, sacrificing himself for the earth. I bought some delightfully aromatic baked goods, and was met with kind words and a smile from an old shopkeep. I returned to find Sam awakening in the ryokan, listening to his psychedelic playlist. Miracles after more miracles, I understood. We continued our journey onwards to Philosopher's Path that day, which I illustrated around noon:

There I filmed a video of me improvising piano next to the stream for around an hour (it lives on Youtube now, for those interested). We met a straw-hatted illustrator there who sat on a plank over the canal, using pencils to create drawings so accurate they might as well have been photographs. I bought one for $10… and onwards we went… to bottom of the canal, where a man sat, giving out flower-wish-boats to send down the river… we made two, before heading onwards to hike the mountains, to find ruins and vine-bridges and monkeys and buildings that defy physics…

All was, is, imbued with the same golden energy that sang on me that morning. I saw it, I see it, refracted a million times in one place: here, wherever here is. I hear it in police sirens, in birds calls, in my love’s moan, in construction droning on and on as Canada grows.

I could end there, though I will add that the synth loop I made the night before I visited that temple turned it into a song named Ryokan that has yet to be released. I like to think it chronicles that part of the cycle, searching through variations of thoughts that want to bring you closer to God. As the song, a mismanagement of bad decisions culminates, it breaks open into simple, thoughtless singing: me and my love, purely present, following the frequency within.

This story isn’t meant to be preachy, or convince you of something you can’t believe in. You do you. That said, if there’s any garbled advice to be taken from this tale... 

Pay a cost you didn’t intend to pay. Forget tomorrow, forget yesterday, let the battle be unwon, give in, give up, go looking and you will find that the answer is already one and done…

Be here now! Sing to the sun! And most of all, love!