I have a temple obsession. They’re really like dictionaries of symbols. There’s a Shingon (Vajrayana Buddhist sect) temple near the office that interests me in particular and I’d like to make a mini-doc on it. The main hall itself is the same as every other temple, maybe even a bit dingier. The real point of interest is the tunnel system below the temple. That’s right. Apparently, sometime in the early half of the 20th century the first abbot of the temple felt religiously compelled to dig a winding, mandalic underground passageway. You drop a hundred yen coin into a box, trade your shoes for sandals, and  descend several meters into complete darkness. You have to feel your way through the tunnel and when the light peaks in through a crack you see the mantras inscribed on the wall you’ve been using to guide yourself. The tunnel is cool and smells damp like some kind of sacred refrigerator. At different points you walk into lit chambers, lined with statues of all the different players in the Buddhist cosmology: the assembly of arhats, the wrathful wisdom kings, and the terminally chill cosmic buddhas. At the very end of the tunnel you ascend out of the darkness and hit a gong to punctuate your trip. Admittedly, the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed. You are walking into literal darkness and walking out into literal light. It’s a symbol that required what was probably several months worth of digging. The experience though, divorcing yourself from your senses and reuniting with them at the end of the tunnel, reemerging into the world of light, is nothing short of spiritual.