the monk who ran 1,000 marathons
April 1, 2015 7:36 AM   Subscribe

In their quest for enlightenment the legendary monks of Mount Hiei put themselves through an excruciating endurance challenge: 1,000 days of long-distance running. (SLGuardian)) Runner Adharanand Finn writes: 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. What he discovers is beautiful and true, though at first he's a little nonplussed.

A 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. “When you are nothing, then something, pop, comes up to fill the space.” He mimes a bubble popping.

This from the comments:
No, they run around 30km a day for 100 days a time, each year for the first 3 years.
Gradually it extends out to 40km in year 4, up to 84km (right around Kyoto) for 100 consecutive days in year 6. Year 7 its back to 100 days of 40km or thereabouts. The Imuro valley course is a bit longer.
The Do-iri, the 9 day fast, they absolutely do stay awake the whole time, they have monks making sure they do. No water, no sleep. Just stay in the temple and get up to fetch water for an offering at 2am every night.
There is an excellent youtube video about Genshin Fujinami from Journeyman pictures that goes through the entire challenge. And the guy who trained Genshin, Sakia Yusai - completed the ordeal twice.
posted by glasseyes (13 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Also, apparently Channel 4 made a documentary in the 80s and it's on Youtube.

And, previously.
posted by glasseyes at 7:47 AM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


When I get tired of this account name, I am totally reincarnating as Saintly Master of the Highest Practice.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:50 AM on April 1, 2015


This is a feel-good story for runners, but Buddha taught the middle way i.e. enlightenment is not found through asceticism nor indulgence.

I'll stop raining on your parade now....
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:02 AM on April 1, 2015 [3 favorites]


From the article: These monks are purportedly some of the wisest, most spiritual men on earth, with insight gained through incredible feats of endurance. And yet here is a real-life Daigyoman Ajari telling me that running for 1,000 days was basically some good thinking time, and that really, afterwards, life went on as before.

Rain not awfully wet, I don't think :-)
posted by glasseyes at 8:16 AM on April 1, 2015


Before enlightment: run far, watch trash TV. After enlightenment: run far, watch trash TV.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 8:24 AM on April 1, 2015 [7 favorites]


Welp, our time must certainly be spent.
posted by Theta States at 8:55 AM on April 1, 2015


I met a Chinese guy who had just arrived in the US. He asked me what was the best route to run from Maine to the Golden Gate Bridge. I told him he should take a look at just how big and empty the midwest is, and said that I would look into a perhaps more eventful route North or South of Route 80.

By the time I got back to him, he was plugging along Route 80 in Ohio. He made it all the way.

I guess by these guy's standards, that's still the middle way. Not by mine. Now that he's back, I met his employer and coworkers. I was surprised that he hadn't even told them about this.
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:10 AM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


I am not very pleased with this article.

i would gently suggest that people not try to discredit established religious practices that don't seem to line up with one's abstracted understanding of what a particular religious figure taught, because religion does not really work like that.

also Enryaku-ji is identified as a Zen temple in the article. As previous mefi post says, it's a Tendai temple. Tendai in Japan accepted esoteric and local traditions into its practice, so activities like this are not so strange as they might seem. I get that the author is trying to work RUNNING and SPIRITUAL PRACTICE into a plug for his book but.... eh.....
posted by beefetish at 10:20 AM on April 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm very positive in general about Buddhism but, well, I'm skeptical about this.

How exactly is obsessively doing feats of physical endurance helpful to your non-attachment? Running is well-known to generate endorphins, which give you an intense high. How will getting a runner's high every day for three years really help your mu?

The whole idea behind the Middle Way is to eschew such extremes. In the words of the Buddha, "There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable."
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 10:42 AM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


It would never have occurred to me that this article could be seen to discredit established religious practice(s)

“There is not this one point of understanding where everything else stops and you’ve made it,” he says calmly. “Learning continues. Once you graduate from university, you don’t stop learning. The 1,000-day challenge is not an end point, the challenge is to continue, enjoying life and learning new things.” and “Look,” he says, as though he is reading my thoughts. “Everyone needs to find something that suits them, that works with their body, with what they are doing in this life. I chose to undertake this challenge. But it is just one of many different paths to the same place.”

Strikes me that is really beautiful and simple truth. Seems banal but some things you don't actually know, however much you think you've heard and understood them, until they are in your body and mind as felt knowledge.
posted by glasseyes at 12:11 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


Thanks, I enjoyed reading about this and I'll check out the youtube doc.

How exactly is obsessively doing feats of physical endurance helpful to your non-attachment? Running is well-known to generate endorphins, which give you an intense high

To me this seems incredibly dismissive, especially since there is at least a cursory explanation in the article of the point of running so much. And I think you're overblowing the "high" that can come from running. Not everyone gets it, I also doubt that these monks who are running 30-84km a day are experiencing much of an "intense high".
posted by beau jackson at 12:39 PM on April 1, 2015 [5 favorites]


It's weird hearing about this on both No Such Thing as a Fish and here in the recent past, given that mount Hiei dominates the view from my balcony.

I had been under the impression that the monks walked, though I guess 50km+ per day would be hard to do at walking paces.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:52 PM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's worth noting that the austerities practiced by the Buddha before he introduced the four noble truths were far more extreme than these running practices. He would starve himself to the point where he needed assistance to eat, for instance.

There are lots of stories of the Buddha praising the practice of austerities. E.g. in MN 3, where he praises a hypothetical monk who decides to tolerate ongoing overwhelming hunger and weakness despite the Buddha offering him leftover food.

The Middles of the Middle Way:
The middles of the middle way that lie on a continuum are those related to the practice of moderation. Those that lie off any continuum are related to the practice of appropriate attention. Although these two practices focus on different aspects of the path, they have one important feature in common. They both avoid the extremes of commitment to pain and to sensual pleasure, not by avoiding pain and pleasure, but by using pain and pleasure as tools, whenever appropriate, to help the mind abandon its unskillful qualities.

In other words, neither practice treats pleasure or pain as an evil in and of itself. Instead, they both treat pleasure and pain as means to a higher end. They simply differ in the way they use pleasure and pain as tools. Moderation uses pain, when necessary, as a goad to heedfulness, and pleasure as a support for life and for physical and mental health. Appropriate attention encourages you to develop the pleasure of strong concentration to help wean you away from attachment to sensual pleasures. Then it encourages you to use the mental firmness provided by concentration to look carefully at the experience of pain until you develop dispassion for it. This, in turn, allows you to free the mind from all suffering and stress.

So to develop the discernment that can lead to that freedom, you have to exercise it with both sorts of middles: those involving moderation, and those involving appropriate attention.
posted by fivebells at 5:32 PM on April 3, 2015 [3 favorites]


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