“When you are nothing, then something, pop, comes up to fill the space.” “As though he had been floating over the ground.”Ī priest at the temple tells me that the idea behind the constant movement is to exhaust the mind, the body, everything, until nothing is left. “But they were smooth and clean,” she says. She once met one on the last day of his challenge and expected to see his feet all swollen and sore. She tells me that they run in straw sandals. So at a private temple in northern Kyoto I, with my translator friend Max, meet a woman who knows one of the monks. I can’t, however, just walk up the mountain and knock at his door. I have come to Japan, hoping to meet one of them and to find out what they can teach a recreational runner about the path to spiritual wellbeing. In the last 130 years, only 46 men have managed it. It is rare that a monk embarks on the 1,000-day challenge, or kaihogyo, and even rarer that one completes it. Those who succeed become revered, as human Buddhas or living saints. ![]() Legend has it that the monks of Mount Hiei run 1,000 marathons in 1,000 days in their quest to reach enlightenment. S omewhere in the mountains around Kyoto live the marathon monks.
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