Once through the Wall of Death, grateful to be alive and moving toward the light—around mile 23 in the New York City marathon—you might be lucky enough to find yourself sailing on a second wind, tapping into mysterious sources of energy and resilience that lie beyond the seeming depletion of the physical body. As a marathon monk though, second wind or not, this is where you really break into supernatural territory. After the “seven hundred days of moving and the nine days of stillness,” followed by a brief respite of three weeks to recover your body weight, you enter the sixth year. You are required to complete one hundred consecutive thirty-seven-and-a-half-mile marathons that take fourteen to fifteen hours to complete. And on the heels of that comes the seventh and final year, the marathon monk's equivalent to that last all-or-nothing dash through Central Park to the finish line. It consists of two one-hundred-day terms. In the first you will face the absolute ultimate in ultramarathons: a daily fifty-two-and-a-half-mile marathon through the city of Kyoto. No, that's not a misprint. That's two New York City marathons a day for one hundred days in a row!

Accompanying you in this death-defying endeavor will be a trusty novice carrying a folding chair. If you are lucky enough to encounter red traffic lights, and other temporarily insurmountable obstructions, the novice will unfold the chair so that you can sit and catch the odd power nap. This is just as well, because you will be getting about two hours of sleep a night at this point. An old saying goes, “Ten minutes of sleep for a marathon monk is worth five hours of ordinary rest,” and although you won't be spending ten minutes at a stoplight, every little bit helps! While doing these double marathons through the streets of Kyoto, you will bless your devotees en route, pausing to touch their bowed heads with your rosary. During this whole period, you will still consume your routine ration of miso soup, tofu, a few rice balls, some veggies, and a glass of milk. According to physiologists, you should lose around fifteen to twenty pounds each month, but miraculously you will maintain your body weight and stamina. Nobody will know how you do this. Including you!

The final one-hundred-day term, back on the slopes of the mountain, tapers off like a soft alpine breeze, consisting of mere eighteen-mile daily marathons. Then, on your last day, as you scale the final set of very steep steps and reach the temple on Mount Hiei, your mortal coil will have traveled roughly 27,000 miles—a distance greater than the circumference of the earth!

Wouldn't you just long to be able to yell out with all your exploding liberated heart and soul, “Hallelujah!” or “Yessssssssss!” or some Zen equivalent like “Kensho!” at this inconceivably glorious moment of victory? Well, if your soul is set on scaling the sunlit summit of Buddhahood, you'll restrain yourself. Not just because it isn't kosher to openly express your emotions in Japan, but because, for the hardiest of the marathon monks, it isn't quite over yet.

If you are one of the rare few whose warrior spirit remains unquenched by the ordeal of the Great Marathon, then you can choose to cap it all, two to three years later, with the trial to end all trials: the daunting and fearsome Fire Ceremony. Indeed, this ritual is so forbidding that only six marathon monks since World War II have undergone it. If you choose to embark upon this final rite of passage, you'll begin by fasting on root vegetables, boiled pine needles, nuts, and water for one hundred days. Why? This fast serves the purpose of drying you out (almost mummifying you in the process) so that you will not “expire of excessive perspiration” during the Fire Ceremony. The ordeal lasts eight days. It will require you to sit before a roaring fire, casting your devotees' prayer sticks into the scorching flames while chanting 100,000 mantras to Fudo Myo-o, who burns up evil passions and illuminates the darkest corners of existence. You are allowed a little sitting-up sleep (in front of the fire). Most monks regard this as the greatest challenge of them all.

Imbibing the phenomenon of the Marathon Monks left me marveling in wonder and disbelief. The more I tried to imagine what it would be like to undertake such an ordeal as the One-Thousand-Day Marathon, the more I felt in awe of their achievement. I also found myself reflecting on the role of ascetic practice in spiritual life. The Buddha, who wandered all over northern India during his long ministry, did fast himself to the door of death before finally rejecting extreme asceticism and proclaiming the Middle Way, the enlightened path between all pairs of opposites. Ascetic practice may not have given him Enlightenment, but as John Stevens points out in his book, there would be no doctrine of the Middle Way if Gautama had not so exhaustively pursued the ascetic path. In this way, it was an essential part of his trajectory toward an absolute transformation, and maybe this is why austere practice has always remained at the heart of Buddhism.

One of the most moving scenes in the documentary film, made in 1993, is where we hear the simple yet profound words of a radiant ninety-six-year-old Tendai abbot: “It is not the pain that matters. Pain is only a symptom of the effort that you put into the task,” he tells us. “When a person sets his mind totally on achieving something, he begins to realize the inner power that he has.” But what is particularly beautiful, and deeply inspiring, in the case of the Marathon Monks, is that this “inner power” is realized for the benefit of all. The first five years are a solitary ordeal. The monk is alone in surmounting the limits of body and mind and in so doing becomes as one with the mountains, the stars and the sky, the stones, the plants and the trees. In the last years however, after traversing the near-death experience of the doiri, the monk's austerities become a practice for bestowing merit, as he glides through the city streets of Kyoto spreading blessings to all.

So what do these intrepid spiritual athletes have to say about their experience? One monk, when asked what he had learned, replied with disarming humility: “Gratitude for the teaching of the enlightened ones, gratitude for the wonders of nature, gratitude for the charity of human beings, gratitude for the opportunity to practice—gratitude, not asceticism, is the principle of the [One-Thousand-Day Marathon].”

Special thanks to Millennium Television for the use of their images of the Marathon Monks of Mount Hiei. www.millennium-tv.com

Epilogue: Sakai the Supermonk

The most remarkable portrait in John Stevens's book is of a monk called Sakai. After a stormy life in the world, Sakai ordains at the late age of forty. He undergoes intense trials under the tutelage of his abbot Hakozaki, who is revered and feared as the harshest taskmaster on Mount Hiei. At one point, Sakai is attacked by a wild boar and as a result suffers from a festering wound that swells his first two toes to twice their normal size. The toenail on his big toe falls off and Sakai screams in pain with every step. Unable to continue, Sakai pulls out his knife and lances the wound. Blood and pus gush out and he almost loses consciousness, but he points the knife at his throat so that if he falls, he will remain faithful to his vow to kill himself if he fails to complete the course. After a while, he recovers and proceeds, albeit slowly, to the temple, where a crowd of devotees await his arrival. Sakai apologizes for the delay saying that he had “overslept.” This experience gives him faith that he is being propelled by a higher force. Despite the fact that his injury never properly heals for the duration of the One-Thousand-Day Marathon, amazingly he completes his term.

This earns him the respect of his master Hakozaki, and the old abbot presents him with a haiku in his honor:

The path of practice:

Where will be

My final resting place?

But even this is not enough to quell the spiritual ardor of Sakai. Not long after finishing his first one-thousand-day term in 1980, he decides, at the age of sixty-one, to go for a second! Yes, that means he does the entire Great Marathon again! He finds it easier than the first and shaves a year off his time—it takes him only six years! Sakai's only gripe is about the increased pollution in Kyoto; “I nearly choked on the smog,” he says. But when asked about the practice, Sakai's spirit shines: “Human life is like a candle,” he says. “If it burns out half-way it does no one any good. I want the flame of my practice to consume my candle completely, letting that light illuminate thousands of places. My practice is to live wholeheartedly, with gratitude and without regret. Practice really has no beginning or end; when practice and daily life are one, that is true Buddhism.”