Shingon, Shugendō, and Japanese Buddhism in general feature relatively brief and intensive periods of practice. In the case of Shingon, the most prominent of these is the Shido Kegyō, the Fourfold Preliminary Practice, which takes place over about 100 days. Most of the Shugendō trainings I have participated in are done over a few days. The Henro, when done on foot, usually takes about 50 days. Training precepts such as vegetarianism as well as restrictions on alcohol and sex are a common feature of such practices.
Physical withdrawal into the dōjō provides a sense of separation from everyday life, and the hard boundaries provided by the precepts gives a sense of stability and direction to the practice. All of this creates a definite "space apart" where it is impossible to avoid coming eye-to-eye with one's attachments and much easier to refrain from indulging them.
While in other Buddhist countries and even in historical Japan such practices may be undertaken in a broader monastic context where precepts are a long-term baseline, in modern Japanese practice the separateness of the dōjō is in direct contrast to "worldly life." My Shingon teacher, for example, was married when he entered his dōjō at Mt. Kōya, and did so with permission from his boss at his company. When he finished training, he went back to work for the next 15 years, becoming a full-time priest when an opening at a temple came up. The vast majority of priests who work in temples are married, and very few keep monastic precepts outside of periods of intensive practice.
While this is a relatively new situation for priests, who were (at least formally) expected to be celibate and live in temples until the 19th century, Shugen practitioners have long taken this approach to training. Regular periods of intensive practice in the mountains give one a spiritual charge to carry back into their daily life in the valley.
Speaking from experience, this descent back into the "real world" is a rocky one. It often seems as though my body and mind want to reject the state of purity they've actualized in practice. I find myself on the brink of uncontrollable libido and hunger, insurmountable laziness, and a tendency toward mindlessness. This all feels downright painful in contrast to the clarity and freedom glimpsed during the peaks of training, and that discomfort in turn drives me toward distraction.
I'm not the only one who experiences this. In fact, this "training crash" was so reliable that red light districts at the foot of sacred mountains and pilgrimage temples made a killing on it. A painting now in the museum at Mt. Konpira shows streams of pilgrims climbing toward the shrine and stopping to talk to sex workers beckoning to them on the way down. Even now, the neon lights of brothels are reflected in the same river that was once used for performing ablutions. A priest I know joked that people had to do austerities every year just to wash off the sins from the previous year's training.
When I first went through this, not knowing it would be something I had to deal with, I just got tossed around by my desires as my everyday habits reasserted themselves. Though letting this happen is a common approach, in my experience it's not the best way to maximize the benefits we can gain from our periods of intensive practice.
While periods of intensive practice can be extremely beneficial, in the end it is our daily commitment to carry, cultivate, and allow our realizations to shape our worldly lives that matters. When we confront our "crash" with this in mind, it becomes an opportunity to confront our desires even more deeply, to grab our habits by the tail and redirect them to more wholesome ends. For me, this is an ongoing process that continues every time I go in and out of practice, and I suspect it will be for many years to come.
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