Reflect in a coffin

I was a little scared... I've never had the experience of getting into a coffin... While I was inside the coffin, I felt my own "death." Then, I began to see what I truly wanted to do. I believe that contemplating death leads to living a better life. I want to recommend getting into a coffin and thinking about your own death to everyone. In the face of the absolute existence of death, all trivial matters are blown away, and what you truly want to accomplish naturally becomes clear. The mortality rate is 100%. Everyone dies without exception. If you can find what is truly important in life, wouldn't that mean you've achieved half of life's purpose? When I lose my sense of purpose in life, when I become lazy, when I fall into despair, I want to get into the coffin again and again, to be aware of my own death, and to give myself a wake-up call.

When I tried to get into the coffin, I felt a slight sense of dissonance. Because I was voluntarily entering a box that, after death, others would place you into. The inside of the coffin felt more spacious than I had imagined (I'm 178 cm tall). Even with the lid closed, the lack of claustrophobia isn't just because of the open window above your face, but because you're free to think about whatever you want. That said, we tend to hold quite rigid views about "death," avoiding and abhorring things associated with it. This applies not only to places like cemeteries and crematoriums, but even to speaking about death itself. Certainly, death has frightening and sorrowful aspects, but life and death are two sides of the same coin and cannot truly be separated. Even if we cannot attain enlightenment or detachment regarding death, we can naturally incorporate death into our consciousness. I believe that by doing so, rather than avoiding death, we can live a better life. "Getting into a coffin (in)" is, in itself, a practice of bringing "death" into "life."

At Kanoke-in, after the experience, guests who wish to participate are optionally given a shikishi card and asked to write a message on the theme "What does 'living' mean to you?" Here are the unfiltered words born from facing "death" inside a coffin.