Ikkyuji is one those ever rarer Kyoto temples that is still quiet and unspoiled by mass tourism. It is situated in southern Kyoto, at the border with Osaka and Nara, near the Kizu River in what is now Kyotanabe, far off the beaten tourist path. Although Kyotanabe has grown into a big town, especially around the station, and the rice fields which - as I remember from two decades ago - used to lead to Ikkyuji have now been plastered over with housing, the temple stands way back at the side of the hills, far from any noise. After arriving, I just sit on the veranda, watching the garden and the green hills behind it, and allow the serenity to take hold of me. There are only few other visitors, one or two at a time, who walk past or also sit down quietly for a while.
 [Ikkyuji - the garden]
And sitting there on the veranda of the Hojo from 1650, with its Kano school fusuma paintings, looking at the raked gravel and plantings of the sun-filled classical Zen garden, with the tiled roof of Ikkyu's mortuary building as "borrowed scenery," I think about the man after whom the temple has been named: the Zen priest, poet and calligrapher Ikkyu (1394-1481), whose name "One Rest" points at the shortness of human life.

Who was Ikkyu"

Although he followed a solid program of meditation and study with several strict masters in his youth, Ikkyu (reputedly the out-of-wedlock son of Emperor Gokomatsu - thanks to this imperial connection, Ikkyu was twice invited...