Birds at a Shrine

#shiki wrote a #haiku depicting #birds at a #shinto #shrine that can be read two ways

mi+yashiro ya
niwa hi ni tooki
ukine dori

depending on whether you read niwa and hi as one word or two
this reads

 prefix honorable shrine shinto

garden/yard/enclosed space light / fire being at distance tooki is a verb! toku !
floating - sleeping implied birds ukine = sleeping in a ship or floating object or uneasy sleep

Why are the birds sleeping in the shadows so far away from the light?

They should be safe on the grounds of a shrine?

I thought they were simply avoiding being disturbed and that Shiki was creating a word picture of birds barely visible but recently I found niwahi can also mean bonfire so there's a note of anxiety and sympathy ... the birds have perhaps moved as far as they can across a pond away from the noise of humans celebrating some kind of fire ritual?

Poor birds!

Ancestral Shrine Cc

copyright Julie Vaux 2013 

Shrine Shi

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TIEN TEMPLE

Copyright Julie Vaux 2013 

Just as Houses were sometimes donated to religious orders in Europe or part of them made over into a chapel  as early castles were rebuilt into more comfortable mansions and palaces or chateau in Asia parts of palaces or buildings therein within a compound might become shrines or meditation halls or small temples.

Another European parallel might well be the basilica originally a building for holding court sessions which became the model for the first large Christian churches and cathedrals.

MIAO TEMPLE

Copyright Julie Vaux 2013 

As far as  I can make out from conflicting definitions in the references I have access to Miao is a word originally used to describe audience halls for officials and royalty and  now used for shrines tutelary temples and and Confucian temples. However Confucian "Temples" are usually compounds including study halls and shrines for deified scholars and ancestors of  local clans and sometimes shrines for local deities. I suspect it depends given the on and off hostility between some Taoists and Confucianists on how strict an interpretation of Confucianism is followed and taught at the particular shrine.

Possibly the best place to see Confucian shrines is now Taiwan or South Korea?

I've read but not seen of Indonesian  and Malaysian Shrines being called LI TANG which means something like Ritual Halls.