Churches, churches, churches

The zen temple near Hanapepe. Photo by David Lansing.

Driving from one end of Kauai to the other (several times), I’ve noticed three things: One, there is a lot of road construction going on, which makes driving particularly miserable; two, there are lots of honor-system fruit and flower stands along the highways (more on that later), which is kind of cool; and, three, there are a shitload of churches on the island.

If you Google “churches Kauai,” as I just did, you’ll discover that there are anywhere from 82 to 101 churches on the islands (either some people can’t count or they simply don’t count certain types of churches; for instance, none of the lists I looked at included the temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery where I got in so much trouble last week).

A couple of things about the lists of churches that interested me: There is only one Mormon church (and aren’t they supposed to be the fastest growing religion in the world?) but there are ten Catholic churches (aren’t they declining?). There’s a Bahai church, two Charismatic churches, and nine Buddhist temples or missions. So I guess the Buddhists are kicking the Mormons asses. At least on Kauai.

One of the most intriguing churches to me is the Soto Zen Temple near the turnoff to Hanapepe. I keep driving by it so yesterday, after hanging out at the nearby salt ponds, I stopped by. It’s a very intimidating place. For one thing, you never see anyone on the grounds. It’s like a ghost temple. For another, there are all these signs and chains and traffic cones warning you not to go on the property. I mean, they don’t want you getting within a hundred yards of the place. Which just seems so un-Zen-like, don’t you think? Of course, despite all the signs advising me to stay away, I crawled over the chain guarding the driveway to take a picture of the temple. I hope this doesn’t get me into trouble with Buddha or his pals.