I had a surprise today. I visited Ishiyamadera temple outside Kyoto for the 5th time. There weren't many visitors so I stayed inside the main hall for a while because it's an old and unusual one. I noticed some very old images I hadn't seen before and people walking behind the railing in front of the main Kannon image. So after some communication problems I found out you can go in there for 300 yen.

When I got inside where the image of Kannon was I noticed many other old images to the side. I was looking at one which I knew was the deity Kichijoten dressed as a Tang Dynasty noblewoman when a tall priest materialised beside me. He reminded me of Aj Sumedho. He told me he had been a monk 25 years. I asked him about the images because he spoke some English. When I told him I lived in Thailand he called a junior monk who was able to speak Thai. He had ordained in Phitsanuloke, then studied Tibetan Buddhism in Nepal, then moved to Ishiyamadera. So now he practises Shingon as well as Tibetan meditation. His Tibetan guru is in Nepal.

They showed me a photograph of the famous principal image of Kannon which is 900 years old and by imperial decree only shown once every 33 years. But they said it would also be shown to the public if there was any royal birth, which they said might be soon. It is made of 'din' - which I assume must mean 'clay' in Thai, rather than 'earth'.

We talked for some time (in a mixture of Thai and English) about Buddhist images and the history of the temple (founded after a monk in a hermitage at that spot had a prophetic dream that gold would be discovered in Japan, which enabled the Great Buddha at Nara to be completed). All in all a very pleasant afternoon and an unexpected surprise to find a Thai-speaking Shingon monk in the mountains.

Interesting story. I always wondered if there was much modern-day exchange between the Shingon sect in Japan and Tibetan Buddhism, their being very similar in basic concept.