Virtual Ika 33 Kannon Pilgrimage #8 Reisui-ji Temple

     At the beginning of the 8th century, Gyoki (668-749) carved an Avalkitesvara statue, built a hut in Une, and founded Uneno-ji Temple.  In the second half of the 9th century, Enchin (814-891) stayed in the temple, changed its name to Anjo-ji, and expanded it into a full scale.  In 1583, Shibata Katsuie (1522-1583) set fire to the temple.  When the villagers saved the statue out of the fire, it was badly damaged, with the hands and half of arms burned out.  The head was too much burnt to say which Avalokitesvara metamorphosis the statue used to embody.  The villagers moved it to the precincts of Kasuga Shrine.  As the spring water was gushing out in front of the temple, they named it Reisui-ji (namely Cold Water Temple).

     In 1702, the villagers made a sheathing statue.  A sheathing statue usually  stores an original statue in itself, but they put it under the new pedestal.  Before the turn of the 20th century, when the movement to abolish Buddhism was raging on, the villagers moved the statue to the present precincts out of the shrine, bought a Bhaisajyaguru hall from Takatsuki, and enshrined the statue in it.  Today, after a series of trials and tribulations, the original one is peacefully kept in the Takatsuki Kannon No Sato Museum of History and Folklore.  For its eyes, for its inner eyes, what have the ups and downs in the outer world looked like?