Buddhist Priests Pray For End Of Pandemic
Buddhist priests and their followers have prayed for an end to the coronavirus pandemic while participating in a purification rite, in which they bathed in cold water at Koyasan, or Mount Koya.
A World Heritage site in Japan's Wakayama Prefecture, Koyasan has numerous temples and is the center of Shingon Buddhism.
On Sunday, eight people in their 20s to 60s performed a cold-water ablution in a clear stream at the Okunoin temple. Okunoin is known for its large cemetery.
Clad in white clothes, they took a dip in water in frigid, rainy weather. They maintained a distance from one another as a precaution against infection. The temperature of the air and the water were both 4 degrees Celsius at 10 a.m.
They chanted sutras to the sounds of clapping wooden blocks for about 10 minutes.
A senior priest at Hojuin temple, Tsujita Shinkai, said after the ablution that they had prayed for an end to the epidemic and for world peace during this difficult year.