religion

I've started going to Japanese shrines. A few weeks ago I told myself that every time I passed a shrine, I'd stop and spend some time. But it's been a somewhat difficult plan to implement because I know so little about religious custom here; I'm nervous about doing something wrong, interrupting someone's religious experience. There are the famous shrines which attract both foreign and japanese tourists, but the ones I like are tucked away in residential neighborhoods. These specifically are notable in part because they're the only non-western structures around where I find them; houses, roads, apartments, and then suddenly something that looks as though it's landed from another world.
Some of the larger, touristed shrines have instructions as to how to proceed; having walked myself through that with friends a couple times, I've worked up the nerve to start going on my own. There's one in particular that I happened across while out walking last week, and I went back today. Japanese shrines come in many different sizes and aspects; from a shrine that may simply stand in the corner of a room in someone's house, to Meiji-jingu, a collection of huge buildings that occupies a large space in a park in central Tokyo. My shrine sits on the corner of a residential lot. Entry at the gate is preceded by a variety of bows and hand-claps; discreet observation of Japanese patrons has allowed me to feel some latitude in the way I perform these. I passed through into a walled enclosure, in which there were 3 small-to-medium sized buildings amongst tall pine trees and some other shrubbery, and variously located statues. Dogma is not easily identifiable. Japanese religious experience encompasses a wide variety of religious traditions, not so much chameleonic as widely accepting. For example, one piece of statuary is an aspect of the buddha, and at his feet sits a japanese-styled lion.
It's personal, entirely unmediated; you encounter and commune with the gods on your own. I walked through the grounds on the stone paths; contemplating the various alien (to me) figures, trying to allow myself to imagine them, who they might be. And then I entered the smallest of the three buildings. I took my shoes off and left them outside on the stone steps. Within, on both the right and left side were seated four life-sized figures, all with their heads turned towards the door. I knew none of them, but I greeted them all the same; the room was quite small, the open space not more than a few square feet, and more than just intimate; imbued with the stillness of a genuinely holy place. And facing me was the Buddha: golden, seated on a dais and surrounded by various figurines and icons. He seemed to suggest that it made sense for me to kneel, and I agreed. And seated thus, with my legs folded beneath me at the knee, I bowed low and for a long time. I gave up a silent prayer, and with grace he accepted.

In an attitude of worship, different things come into you
and different things go out;
the spirit, what's the spirit?
the faith instructs
the doubt.