InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Damit thats where I eat dinner"

kondo kozue | 近藤梢 (anthesphoria) wrote in disappear_rpg,
@ 2009-12-23 21:56:00

Entry tags:

kozue, renju

Who: Kozue and Renju
What: Temple-going.
Where: The Buddhist temple near the dorm. I say there is one, so, there is one.
When: A few days after Renju's dungeon - screw you, specificity.
Why: Crisis (crises?) of faith. What is the plural of crisis anyway?

The attendants at the Buddhist temple nearest the Nanakamado dorms had started getting familiar with this short, blond, obviously part-foreign girl. After all, she'd come in every afternoon for the last… what, two or three days? Had it been more? They couldn't quite agree when she'd started coming, but certainly she had been here more than twice. She stood out mostly because high school students tended to come in before exams, not after them. The place wasn't exactly crowded. Still, she'd come in and go through all the motions outside, before stepping into the hall, kneeling, and contemplating. Then someone would see her leaving, maybe half an hour later—maybe an hour later—looking very tired and worried.

Today was the same. Kozue found that walking in the summer heat was actually kind of nice, when she thought about how cold it had been, in Renju's place; being too hot was suddenly much less unpleasant. She washed her hands and face, and left an offering, and stepped into the hall full of Buddha statues, without actually thinking much about any of the actions. (Which. Weren't you supposed to be mindful? But she had always been bad at mindful.) Even though she hadn't been to temple on her own practically since she started living away from her grandmother's house (festivals didn't count), she was still so used to the entire production. It was nice not to have Fumiko breathing down her neck, of course, and staring when she fidgeted. People were staring at her, of course; between her hair and her age, she was a bit unusual. People always stared in temples. But at least this time there was no grandmother accompanying her—she didn't have to watch Fumiko's glowers get worse and worse and her insults sourer and more pointed with each questioning glance. Each glance that pointed out the different thing that Fumiko had attached to her side.

Kozue took a breath. Why was she thinking about grandmother, anyway? She was supposed to be… hell, when she'd learned to pray and meditate at temple she'd always been thinking about her grandmother anyway. Why was now any different?

She sat in front of the low wooden railing that separated the buddha from everyone else—all the lay worshipers, at least— and pondered and failed at meditating for longer than she'd done on the last few visits. When she remembered, she went through the Daimoku in her head; it kept slipping into other thoughts, though. I'm really not very good at this at all.

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lotus_beyond
2009-12-24 06:04 pm UTC (link)

Renju's mother had been a practicing Buddhist--Pure Land, if she recalled correctly, which she wasn't entirely certain she did. That had been the origin of her name (lotus jewel, something she couldn't think about without a wince now), which was something she'd never quite understood, since her father had never had the patience or mindfulness needed for any form of religion. Even her mother had stopped practicing early in Renju's life, for some reason she'd never explained and that Renju had never inquired after.

Renju had never liked Pure Land, anyway. It seemed far too easy.

That aside, she'd always had a passing interest in the subject, but her interest had become far more intense and far more personal in the last month or so, with all that had happened with the team in general and Tom in particular. As she'd read, she'd found much that resonated with her, and much to justify her views on life; the idea of attachments and desire leading to suffering seemed particularly fitting after everything that had happened with the confession. But the thing that had caught her attention most was the concept of sunyata, the essential non-identity of phenomena. All things arose from a complex web of cause and effect; independent existence was nothing but an illusion. Though even her conscious mind had noted the significance of the idea (how could it not? It was so obvious), apparently her subconscious had taken it and run with it far beyond anything she'd thought she believed.

Still, ever since coming back from that place, she'd started to wonder if perhaps she'd gotten some of it wrong.

She'd been using the Butterfly Room to think for a little while, but there were far too many associations with that place that tainted all her thoughts--Paradise, her own place in it, and now that near miss with Maeko. That was how she'd ended up, for the first time in longer than she cared to think about, somewhere that wasn't her room, or Nanakamado, or even school-related at all.

There was quite enough here to keep her mind occupied, but the activity kept it from being so quiet that it reminded her of that emptiness she'd sat in for so long. At least the nature of the place forced her mind into more productive channels.

She was not, however, expecting Kozue to be a part of that activity. Not wanting to disturb her contemplation, she sat nearby (not too close, not too far), worked her legs into the lotus position (feeling discomfitingly like her Shadow), and lost herself in thought.

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anthesphoria
2009-12-24 06:43 pm UTC (link)

Kozue was deep enough in that contemplation that it took her a few minutes to realize that she knew the person who had taken a seat near her—she'd noticed someone sitting down, of course, but had managed to succesfully overcome her urge to peer over and see who it was. She'd been proud of that, of course. She was focusing and that was a feat.

Then, of course, she spent the next few minutes chastising herself for focusing on how she was focusing, instead of on what she should have been focusing on. And that turned out to be a distraction, too. This was about the level of achievement that her meditation usually reached. So, it was several minutes later when she finally glanced over sidelong at her new neighbor-in-contemplation.

Renju?

Kozue blinked. Although at first blush she was shocked, the more that she thought about it, the more she realized that seeing Renju here was really quite sensible. Apparently, she was something of a devout Buddhist, judging from her place in Paradise. And certainly, she had things to think about. More things than Kozue.

She spent the next stretch of time sparing a peek every now and again over at her upperclassman, but otherwise, she wasn't much disturbed. Renju—specifically, the other Renju—had been in her thoughts anyway. Still, it wasn't all that long before she'd formulated a plan. When the feeling in her legs really started to go, she stood up, bowed, and left; she didn't go far, however. She remained a just-respectable distance away from the temple door, waiting for Renju to emerge.