I caught a night bus from Tokyo last night, ~4 hours of sleep. Nara is cool, but it’s hot today, but the deer are chill, at least when they’re in the shade breathing calmly. The deer live a sedentary lifestyle, they react mildly to sudden close movements and are a bit overweight, but the public is only allowed to feed them “deer biscuits” for 200 yen per pack. I’d say they’re a bit less social than the goats at the beacon hill petting zoo in Victoria, but depends on the mood they’re in; they definitely have moods.
I saw the ~17 meter bronze Buddha in the great Buddha hall. It both serves as a large income for the organization (read: heavy tourism) and an effigy of contemplation and practice, flanked by two other large Arhat statues and other character carvings. The real value I got was staring into the eyes of two of the side Buddhas, borrowed from Hinduism, for about 15-25 minutes each. Many Buddha and bodhisattva statues are designed have a spot their gaze lies on, and when you position yourself in the spot, you gaze at each other. The expressions of them are complex and deeply reflective of the care and intention put into them: I find challenge, compassion, righteousness, even anger (anger generated to free you from your own illusions). I asked many questions and contemplated their positions, reasons for being, reasons for their particular construction and design, symbolism. Many answers intuitively came to me, but stillness and concentration + contemplation were the most important ingredients for this insight to happen. Most tourists seemed to be there to see the objects, but I did see a few Japanese folk do ritual prayer and give donation at the base of the statues; temples and shrines have many of these slitted boxes for such coinage.