Author: John D. (Page 40 of 202)

Shinto garden

January 9, 2018 / John D. / 5 Comments

Shinto inspired art in the grounds of Shimogamo Jinja

What would a Shinto garden look like? One might presume there would be a sacred tree, possibly striking in some way such as being ancient, or having an unusual form, or for being a fine example of the life-force. One would expect too on entry a water basin or fountain for purifying hands and heart. Perhaps there would be a place to hang ema (wooden votive plaques), and even some means of having one’s fortune told. Above all, one would expect a small shrine honouring the tutelary guardian, where one could pray in ritual fashion to the spirit of place.

In the piece below Green Shinto reader, Sally Writes, has come up with some ideas of her own about how to create the right atmosphere for a garden of devotion. (Photos by John Dougill)

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Garden shrine and torii

Creating A Shinto Inspired Garden (by Sally Writes)

According to ancient Eastern principles Shinto-inspired Zen gardens represent nature in miniature format, and creating your own outdoor retreat can bring peace and happiness to your life. This is linked to the healing benefits of nature; scientists have found that being around trees reduces stress levels in the human body, helping us to relax.

Here are a few tips to help you create a Shinto inspired garden.

Add A Water Feature

Many people like to add a water feature to the garden to create a serene Zen effect. Water has a positive energy that is well suited to a Zen garden, and water is linked to the most pertinent purifying ritual of the Shinto faith. Studies have also found that the sound of water has a relaxing effect on humans, which is ideal for a Shinto inspired garden.

Include Other Shinto Inspired Features

You can also add stone or Shinto-inspired art to your garden, or you could add piles of rocks to create a Zen-like boulder pile. Stone lamps can also be used to illuminate the beautiful features in your garden – and it will also make it easier for you to appreciate your garden at night time.

Inari hokora, perfect for garden usage

Add Plants And Paths

The most important part of any Shino-inspired garden are the plants and pathways. It is important to add bright flowers for yang energy and dark green plants for yin energy, such as bonsai tree, as this will ensure that your garden has positive energy, rather than negative energy. You can also create a winding path that goes through the garden to imitate ancient Japanese gardens – just make sure that you know how to dig out a path before you start.

Once you have created a path you can also add stones and boulders to the edges to give you garden even more of a vibe.

It is easy to turn your garden into a Shinto-inspired garden without spending too much. This will make your garden more peaceful and relaxing, but that isn’t all; the beauty of the garden will also help you to connect with nature and ancient Japanese culture.

Not every sacred tree needs a shimenawa rice rope to sanctify it. Even the simplest of arrangements will do.

Hatsumode (New Year visit) 2018

January 6, 2018 / John D. / 2 Comments

Every year I like to visit my local shrine, which just happens to be a World Heritage site. Shimogamo Jinja in the north of Kyoto is surrounded by an ancient grove known as Tadasu no mori, and during the more than twenty years that I’ve been attending Hatsumode I’ve seen changes in the way the shrine markets itself. This year, as previously, I noticed small additions and alterations designed to make the shrine more appealing. Here’s my photo report of this year’s visit…

All dressed up for the year of the dog. Notice the hand-paws pose…

Shimogamo’s main ema this year shows a champion Tosa fighting dog, awarded the top sumo rank of Yokozuna with a shimenawa neck decoration. (The Shinto-sanctioned Tosa dog fighting is based on sumo rules: see https://www.dog-breeds-expert.com/Japanese-Tosa.html)

First time I’ve ever seen this intrusive sign at the shrine entrance. A far cry from the friendly and peaceful atmosphere that prevails at Hatsumode. What could have motivated the authorities? A cynic might suspect it is part of the climate of fear exemplified by the anti-terror notices that have appeared not only here in the middle of Kyoto but at remote rural stations. A climate of fear conducive to the election of right-wing politicians…

First time too I’d seen these fragrance bags on sale, much as in a souvenir shop.

First you have to read the fortune slips…

… then tie them up

But wait a minute! This notice says the fortune slip is the voice of the kami and should be carefully preserved for a year. How odd!

Not only the fortune slips, but the offerings of sake are carefully and aesthetically arranged

Rock offering for the new year… kagami mochi with a daidai orange on top. The rice cakes (mochi) are shaped like a mirror, pleasing for the kami, double decked so as to double the good fortune. The daidai fruit promotes longevity, from one generation to the next.

This year was the first time I’ve see the back entrance of the honden opened to the public – for a fee of course.

A warming fire for the midwinter visitors

… and a warming cup of sweet sake too.

Zen rocks (Book review)

January 3, 2018 / John D. / 2 Comments

The famous garden at Ryoanji shows how Zen Buddhism absorbed the native tradition of reverence for rocks

Reading Zen in the Rocks by Francois Bertbier (translated with a philosophical essay by Graham Parkes) Uni of Chicago Press, 2000

Understanding the role of rocks in Japanese culture, and specifically in Shinto, has been something of a quest for Green Shinto. Here is a book which does much to throw light on matters that have long intrigued us. Though the focus is on the dry landscape gardens (karesansui) so beloved of Zen, the book has much to say about the wider subject and its background.

Whereas Green Shinto has previously asserted that the cult of rocks came over with Korean shamanism (the result of southern migration from Altaic shamanism), this book makes no mention of that but looks instead to the Chinese tradition of litholatry. And in the philosophical essay by Graham Parkes, there is the assertion of origins too in the ancient cosmology of China.

For early Chinese, humans lived in a giant cave of which the sky formed the ceiling. That the sky should be made of rock can be seen as a logical conclusion from the way meteorites fell to earth, for they were presumed to be bits of the celestial covering that had fallen off. In similar manner mountains were seen as huge blocks or stalactites that had descended to earth. Their heavenly provenance was not their only distinguishing feature, for in the precipitous fall they had accumulated huge amounts of energy (known as chi or qi). It helps explain why rocks that fell to earth are traditionally treated as divine in Japan.

Another vital point the book makes is that whereas the West has an established dichotomy between animate and inanimate, for the Chinese there was a continuum of existence with chi energy running throughout. The dichotomy such as there was rather between yin and yang. The earth was yin, mountains thrusting upwards were yang. The landscape was thus pulsing with energy, seen graphically in the Japanese word for landscape sansui (mountain – water).

Since rocks constitute the very material of a mountain, they came to be seen as a microcosm of it. They were thus held to possess the same properties and energy as the original mountain. Though the book does not go into this, as it is concerned with Zen, the notion sheds light on Shinto practice. Kami in ancient times descend from heaven into mountains, the nearest point on earth, and Amaterasu’s offspring famously descended on Mt Takachiho in Kyushu. If kami could descend into mountains, they could also descend into the representation of a mountain, i.e. rocks. And here we can understand the possible evolution of iwakura, or sacred rocks.

In this way we can see that in ancient Chinese thought the rock was of a mountain, and the mountain was of heaven. Small wonder that Daoists liked to retreat into caves to seek the ultimate reality. Small wonder too that Bodhidharma spent nine years meditating in front of a rock face. The result was that Buddhists came to incorporate the nature of sacred rock into their philosophy. Zhanran of the Tiantai School for example claimed that even non-sentient beings have Buddhist nature.’ And in Japan Saicho, founder of Tendai, spoke of ‘the Buddha-nature of trees and rocks’.

Garden development
In Shinto it is usual for the area to the south of the main shrine building to be flat and covered with white sand or gravel. It is a place of purity where the kami will be honoured and entertained. Much of Zen in the Rocks is concerned with decoding the famous garden of Ryoan-ji in Kyoto, and it is pointed out that the dry landscape there lies to the south of the main building in Shinto fashion and is on a piece of level land covered with gravel. The Shinto preference for purity, simplicity and naturalness was woven into the Zen tradition.

Sand cones at Kamigamo Jinja. The Zen temple of Daisen-in has a similar pair in its front dry landscape garden.

Buddhism incorporated other aspects of Shinto too. One example is the use of sand cones at Kyoto’s Daisen-in, which is located in the Zen monastery of Daitoku-ji. Its rock garden contains two sand cones which mirror those at Kamigamo Shrine. These may have originally served a purpose similar to the use of red carpets today, in other words prior to the visit of an important dignitary or to the holding of a ritual event the sand from the cones would be spread over the forecourt as a form of purification and renewal. In other words, the cones were a means of storing spare sand, and over time they came to be seen as agents of purification in themselves. Something similar happened at the Zen temple of Ginkaku-ji, where the famous tall cone of sand, said to represent Mt Fuji, was originally just a garden device to keep extra sand when needed.

Zen in the Rocks is relatively short and though it focusses on the rock garden, it offers a range of unexpected insights in the role of rock in Japanese culture. It shows for instance how the Heian garden of pond and vegetation transmuted into the bare rocks and pebbles of Muromachi times. This was part of the Zen concern with pointing to the root of things and stripping away the inessential. In this way the Buddhist emphasis on perpetual change and the transience of life, given emphasis in the Heian garden, was replaced in the Zen garden with symbols of permanence and the eternal.

‘Brother rock’ may seem an odd concept to Westerners, but if you think in terms of the Big Bang, we all share common origins. In considering the changing attitudes to nature in the Sino-Japanese tradition, this book helps us to look at rock anew. Not as something dead, sterile or alien. But as fundamental to our place in the universe. Fundamental to ourselves. As Alan Watts pointed out, the giant rock on which we travel through space is ultimately the source of our existence. The spirit in the rock is ourselves.

For more on rocks, please see the list of categories in the righthand column and browse through the relevant section. For Alan Watts on rock, see this entry here.

New Year zodiac animals

December 30, 2017 / John D. / 0 Comments

In Japan the Chinese Zodiac calendar was officially adopted in 604 AD. The lunar-solar calendar lasted for some 1200 years until 1873, with the New Year being celebrated on the second new moon after the winter solstice. Each year was associated with one of the twelve Zodiac animals and one of the five elements: Metal (Gold), Wood, Water, Fire or Earth. So each animal appears in five different guises: 2017 for instance was the Fire Rooster. The full cycle of the traditional calendar is therefore 60 years, which is why the 60th birthday is celebrated in a special way.

Since 1873 the adoption of the Gregorian calendar means that the new Zodiac animal is celebrated on January 1st. The Chinese however still continue to celebrate according to the old lunar calendar, meaning that it usually falls sometime in February. Fireworks, lion dances, food and family get-togethers take place in Chinese communities around the world.

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2018 will be the Year of the Dog. For followers of the Five Elements, it is presided over by the Earth Dog, and for Yin Yang followers it is a Yang year. Three, four and nine are auspicious numbers; green, red and purple auspicious colours.

For those into fortune-telling, Dog is a symbol of loyalty and honesty. People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best of human nature. They are honest, friendly, faithful, loyal, smart, straightforward, venerable and have a strong sense of responsibility. On the negative side, they are likely to be self-righteous, cold, terribly stubborn, slippery, critical of others and not good at social activities.

A happy new year to all Green Shinto readers, and a big thank you for the feedback and helping sustain this site over the years.

Happy New Year to all Green Shinto readers!

December 29, 2017 / John D. / 9 Comments

New Year traditions

Renewal, refreshment, return to purity – these are central to Shinto and are deeply woven into the fabric of Japanese New Year traditions. It’s a time to start the year with freshly cleaned houses, with personal and professional matters finished off, and with open heart and hopes for the year ahead. The first shrine visit of the year (hatsumode) is in a sense to participate in the rebirth of the nation.

New Year beginnings
The way Shinto and Buddhism complement each other is never more clearly seen than on the night of Dec. 31. Buddhism is other-worldly, concerned with individual salvation. Shinto is this-worldly, concerned with rites of passage and social well-being. At New Year the two religions come together like yin and yang, either side of midnight. Buddhism sees out the death of the old; Shinto celebrates the birth of the new.

In the dying minutes of the year, people line up at a Buddhist temple to hear the bell riing, or to ring it themselves. By tradition it is rung 108 times, once for every attachment that plagues the human condition. The atmosphere is solemn, and in the darkness the booming of the large bell carries with it a mournful feel that is carried for miles in all directions.

Once midnight strikes, by way of contrast, it’s time to head for a shrine to pick up arrow and amulets for protection through the coming year. The contemplative pre-midnight atmosphere is now replaced by a celebratory mood. Suddenly there are laughing voices, bright kimono, and gaudy lights. Stalls with wannabe yakuza sell candy floss and goldfish. Here all is jollity and smiles.

Arrows in red and white, celebratory colours of vitality, to ward off evil spirits throughout the coming year

‘Akemashite omedeto’ (Congratulations on the New Year) is heard on every side, as people toss coins into offertory boxes over the heads of those in front. Hot saké is served spiced with ginger, while young women in kimono stand huddled over their fortune slips. With the blessing of the kami, the Year of the Rooster will surely be a good one.

Traditions and customs
New Year is a time of special food – osechi ryori – beautifully displayed in lunch boxes as only the Japanese can do. The custom originated with the Heian aristocracy, for whom New Year’s Day was one of the five seasonal festivals. Since it was taboo to cook during the three day event, food was prepared beforehand.

The New Year food is a feast for the eyes as much as the stomach, full of symbols and auspicious elements. There’s tai fish to signify ‘medetai’ (congratulations), and black beans as a wish for good health (mame can mean bean and health). Broiled fish cake (kamaboko) is laid out in red and white layers, traditional colours of celebration and suggestive of the rising sun.

Although the first shrine visit of the year (hatsumode) is supposed to be done within three days, people continue to pay respects for several days afterwards. Each year has its own auspicious direction, calculated by Chinese astrology, and the custom was to visit a shrine that lies in that direction (though few follow that these days). According to statistics, it seems the vast majority of Japanese visit a shrine at some point, though the percentage is skewed by the number of people who visit two or more shrines (for example their closest, their favourite shrine, and their ujigami).

Numbers are published and scanned with great interest, as if like GDP they reflect the well-being of the nation. Meiji Jingu invariably tops the rankings, with just over three million visitors (though one wonders who counts them). In the Kansai region Fushimi Inari comes top with over two and a half million – one reason why I’ve never dared visit it at New Year, though it’s a personal favourite.

From now on the New Year is all about firstness and freshness. There’s the first dream of the year, which if it is about Mt Fuji, a hawk or an aubergine (!) is held to be particularly auspicious. There’s the first snowfall, the first sign of spring, and the year’s first haiku…

A new year dawning:
First snow upon the mountains
Forming a fresh sheet

One interesting custom is the giving of money to children, known as toshidama. Toshi is the year, and dama is its soul or spirit – so it’s as if one is renewing the spirit of the year through the gift. No doubt the money helps give extra vigour to the young!

Decorations
The traditional New Year decoration is a length of shimenawa (sacred rice rope), festooned with ferns and the stem of a bitter orange, which is hung on the door (see pic at top). For Lafcadio Hearn, the shimenawa was the true ancient symbol of Shinto, other elements such as the ofuda and the torii having come in later. The fern is an evergreen and a symbol of the lifeforce, while the bitter orange is called daidai, which can also mean ‘generation to generation’. It indicates awareness of the ancestral continuity of the household.

It’s customary at this time of year to have steamed rice cake (mochi). This was traditionally done by pounding it by hand and eating fresh, but nowadays supermarkets are filled with plastic packages containing two circular rice cakes on top of each other surmounted by a bitter orange.

A pair of kagami mochi with daidai bitter orange and urajiro leaves

Rice is a symbol of fertility, and the mochicakes symbolise renewal of vitality through the eating of rice. Circular cakes are known as kagami mochi (mirror rice cakes). According to tradition, the sun-goddess Amaterasu presented her grandson with a circular mirror and told him to treat it as if it were her very self. It’s why mirrors are often used in shrines as the sacred ‘spirit-body’ of the kami. In this sense partaking of the round mochi is a kind of sacrament, the Japanese equivalent of communion.

The prime symbol of the New Year are the kadomatsu decorations seen in front of stores and large buildings. These can be grandiose affairs, consisting of three upright pieces of bamboo of differing length to represent the Taoist triad of heaven, earth and human.

Pine and plum branches complete the arrangement – pine not only as a symbol of constancy and vitality, but because the needles ward off evil spirits. The plum symbolises the promise of spring (before cherry blossom, the plum was Japan’s favourite tree for its early flowering amidst the austerity of winter.) Bamboo stands for persistence, a much admired trait among Japanese.

Kadomatsu in traditional style. Bamboo (for perseverance), pine (for evergreen), with nanten berries (red vitality), habotan (bad things become good) and plum (promise of spring) are the basic materials

Who’d have thought so much symbolism could be packed into a simple New Year decoration of natural elements? It’s indicative of just how important a role the New Year plays in Japan, and how much renewal, reinvigoration and revitalisation are written into the culture.

Shinto poetry

December 21, 2017 / John D. / 2 Comments

One of the leading arbiters of poetry in early times was Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241), a giant of Japanese verse who also compiled Hyakunin Isshu – 100 Poems by !00 Poets. Like others of his time, he saw divine purpose in poetry and was careful to distinguish between Buddhist and Shinto verse.

For Teika and his contemporaries, Japanese poetry had its origins in the Age of the Gods, with the first waka (Japanese poem) being composed by Susanoo no Mikoto. Thereafter it was held that poetry had the power to move the kami and it was closely tied to matters of ritual, proper conduct and even affairs of state. The divine power of words became codified in something called kotodana (word spirit). It’s no coincidence that the ancient word for government was matsurigoto, synonymous with religious ritual.

In Robert Huey’s The Making of Shinkokinshu (2002), the author shows that the Poetry Ministry in Heian times, known as Wakadokoro, divided poems into Buddhist and Shinto despite the syncretism of the age. The latter were given a greater sense of awe than their Buddhist equivalent, because the Japanese kami held power over life and death. This is illustrated in an anecdote about Ki no Tsurayuki, whose inspirational preface about the divine nature of poetry is discussed in an earlier Green Shinto posting here.

Once when riding through Izumi province, Tsurayuki passed by the shrine of the god Aridoshi. As it was dark he did not notice the shrine, and while passing by suddenly his horse dropped dead. Only then did he notice a torii and enquired as to which kami lived there. “Aridoshi Myojin” he was told, “who is easily offended. Perhaps you rode past mounted on your horse?”

Tsurayuki was at a loss and summoned the shrine attendant to ask for advice. However, the attendant appeared to speak with the voice of the kami. ‘Since you did not realise there was a shrine, I should forgive you. But you are highly skilled in the way of poetry, so if you can display those skills as you pass in front of me I shall revive your horse. Thus speaks the god Aridoshi Myojin.’

Tsurayuki immediately purified himself with water, composed a poem, wrote it on a slip of paper and attached it to a pillar of the shrine. He then began to pray, at which his horse revived and the attendant told him he had been forgiven. Here is the poem he wrote:

Since it was midnight. Amagumo no
With heavy rain clouds tatikasanareru
Layered thick, yofa nareba
How was I to know as I passed kami Aritohoshi
That the kami Aridoshi was there? omofubeki kafa

In this way it can be seen that poetry in the Shinto tradition could well be a matter of life and death. Pleasing the kami would bring well-being; violating the Way of Poetry could spell death or disaster. Retired Emperor Hanazono, for instance, who became a Zen monk, wrote in the fourteenth century of a poet who had strayed from the ancient path of poetry and therefore died an unfortunate early death.

Not long afterwards Zeami Motokyo, founder of Noh, wrote that ‘All living creatures and even non-sentient beings have poetry residing within them. The sound of trees, the moving grass, the earth and sand, wind, and ever-flowing water – all of these things embody the soul of poetry. In the spring, a wind from the east makes the forest sing. The wind from the north in the fall blends with the call of insects. All of these sounds are poems in and of themselves.’ (from Takasago)

Exactly!

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For more Shinto poems from the Heian period, please see here.

Ghostly ancestors

December 16, 2017 / John D. / 0 Comments

My attention was caught recently by a book review of Ghosts of the Tsunami in the TLS by Times correspondent, Richard Lloyd Parry. The book is an account of the Fukushima disaster and its terrible tsunami aftermath, and the review called to mind the words of Lafcadio Hearn on ancestor worship (misnomer for honouring the dead). (For Hearn’s writing on the subject, see here or here.)

Green Shinto has posted several items about the important cultural role ancestor worship plays in the Japanese tradition, helping preserve the sense of collective continuity that gives the people a deep-rooted sense of belonging. For centuries now Western visitors to Japan have been struck by the lack of alienation among the populace (manifest in the West in such social phenomena as graffiti, misfits, riots and drug addiction). Like Lafcadio Hearn, Green Shinto sees ancestor worship as central to Japaneseness.

In the passage below reviewer Gavin Jacobson writes of the way the Japanese of the Tohoku region have dealt with the tragedy that inflicted them…

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One of the book’s central themes is the status of spirituality in Japan. Buddhism and Shinto may have little bearing on private and national life there. ‘But over the centuries,’ Parry explains, ‘both have been pressed into the service of the true faith of Japan: the cult of the ancestors.’ The religious scholar Herman Ooms has argued that, ‘It has always made perfect sense in Japan as far back as history goes to treat the dead as more alive than we do.’ Parry describes how, in households that had lost children in the wave, he would be asked if he should like to ‘meet’ the dead sons and daughters:

I would be led to a shrine covered with framed photographs, with toys, favourite drinks and snacks, letters, drawings and school exercise books. One mother commissioned carefully Photoshopped portraits of her children, showing them as they would have been had they lived – a boy who died in primary school smiling proudly in high-school uniform, an eighteen-year-old girl as she should have looked in kimono at her coming-of-age ceremony… every morning, they began the day by talking to their dead children, weeping love and apology, as unselfconsciously as if they were speaking over a long-distance telephone line.

If there is something comforting about this communion with the dead, the idea, as Ooms contends, that death becomes a variant of life, not a negation of it, there is a more unsettling side of this spiritualism. Towards the end of 2011, reports of ghosts began to emerge from the areas affected by the tsunami. These ranged from sightings of lost friends and relatives, uncanny dreams and feelings of unease, to chilling ‘episodes’ of total possession. One of the most interesting characters in Parry’s book is Kaneta, a Buddhist priest from Kurihara, who performed exorcisms on the possessed, such as Takeshi Ono, a local builder who one night began crawling on all fours, snarling at his wife, ‘You must die. You must die. Everyone must die. Everything must die and be lost.’ The wild, menacing nature of these possessions was explained by the concept of gaki: when people die violently suddenly, or in anger, they become ‘hungry ghosts’, trapped in a netherworld of pain, unable to communicate with the living except through terrorising their bodies and souls.

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Small wonder then that Lafcadio Hearn, such a devotee of ghost stories, became enamoured of the Japanese folk tradition!