Tag: Zen values (Page 1 of 2)

Japan by Train 30: Ibusuki

April 24, 2023 / John D. / 0 Comments

This is the concluding excerpt from a book to be published by Stone Bridge in Novemer 2023 entitled Off the Beaten Tracks in Japan. It concerns the kamikaze museum at Chiran, on the way between the most southerly manned station at Ibusuki and the most southerly unmanned station at Nishi-Oyama. As well as kamikaze, Chiran is notable for its collection of well-preserved samurai houses and gardens.

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A short taxi ride away from Chiran’s samurai houses lies the Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots. Why is it located in such an out of the way place, one may well wonder? The answer is simple: the site was once a wartime training school for pilots, which in the later stages of the war served as a base for kamikaze missions. The museum is generously funded, and the spacious rooms are able to house a collection of planes, with pride of place going to the Mitsubishi Zero fighter favoured by the kamikaze.

The exhibits are all in Japanese, save for one major exception; the translation of a touching farewell letter written by a teenage pilot to his mother. Despite its name, however, the Peace Museum seemed more like a celebration of self-sacrifice. Never again was the message at Nagasaki. I did not get that feeling here.

The ethos of samurai and kamikaze is rooted in the suppression of self, and the cultural values which stem from that are what make Japan so comfortable a place to live. Donald Richie wrote of the paradox this presents to foreign residents like himself, for the very qualities they find praiseworthy derive from darker elements in a feudalistic past – conformity, repression, obligations. It is a great irony that the Vietnam War draft dodgers who headed for Kyoto in search of liberation took up Zen and found themselves undergoing a taming of the ego similar to that implemented by drill sergeants in the US military.

Outside the museum are the inevitable cherry trees, for the truncated lives of kamikaze youth are seen poetically in terms of falling blossom. There is too a reconstructed barracks where the young men spent their final days. The most poignant element is a sparse wooden dormitory with beds set close to one another. The neatly folded bedding is set out in a row, Zen-like in its precision.

Cherry blossom – kamikaze – samurai – Zen. At journey’s end I was being presented with a stereotype, but it is an image that Japanese themselves have been keen to promote. It is one that sustains the status quo and makes Japan a deeply conservative country. For all the fervid Westernisation of the past 150 years, the inner core of Japaneseness remains intact. The words of Lafcadio Hearn, written over a hundred years ago, still contain a large measure of truth. ‘The nation has moved unitedly in the direction of great ends,’ he wrote, ’submitting the whole volume of its millions to be moulded by the ideas of its rulers.’ And the engine driving this unified force was what Hearn described as ‘the absence of egotistical individualism’. He credited this to the moral power of Shinto on the one hand, and on the other to the mastery of self promoted by Buddhism.

Journey’s end – Japan’s most southerly station, Nishi-Oyama, with departing train and Mt Kaimon in the background

Zen and Shinto 20: Ryokan

May 14, 2017 / John D. / 2 Comments

There are many individuals who exemplify the close ties between Zen and Shinto in Japanese history, particularly in the period before an artificial line was drawn between Buddhism and ‘the indigenous religion’ in Meiji times.

One such person is the poet Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831). His father was village headman, a job which would have included handling local (Shinto) rites. This was in a flourishing port called Izumozaki in Niigata, gateway for the Sado Island gold mines. Ryokan might have succeeded him but dropped out to become a Soto Zen monk. After obtaining his certificate of enlightenment, he wandered for five years before returning to live as a recluse in a hut on a hill near his hometown. Here he wrote poems, did calligraphy, and enjoyed games with the local children. He was a genial ‘big fool’ (Taigu), but a fool inspired by divine wisdom.

In 1826 at the age of 59, Ryokan felt physically incapable of continuing his life on Mt Kugami, and he moved into a Shinto shrine lower down the hill known as Otogo Jinja. He lived in a two-room hut next to the thatch-roofed Sanctuary. One can presume that in return for his lodging he looked after the shrine, sweeping the grounds and perhaps making offerings. A poem he wrote at the time reflects this:

When young, I learned literature but was too lazy to become a scholar.
Still young, I practiced Zen, but I never transmitted the dharma.
Now I live in a hermitage and guard a Shinto shrine.
I feel like half a shrine keeper and half a monk.

Reading through Ryokan with my poetry in translation study group, I can often sense a similarity with Shinto in the striving of the poet for Zen enlightenment. This is particularly evident in such matters as sincerity of purpose, identification with nature, and living in the present. It seems in many of his poems that he aspires to a state of complete selflessness, free of the ego which clouds human understanding.

kakubakari ukiyo to shiraba okuyama no kusanimo kinimo naramashi mono o

Had I known of this distressing world
I would like to have been
A blade of grass or a tree
On a remote mountain

Other of his poems are clearly inspired by Zen but have a strong Shinto element in their concern with natural purity versus the ‘pollution’ of human concerns. Zen like Shinto wishes ultimately to look into the soul-mirror and see no distorting ego (which is why both temples and shrines have mirrors on their altars).

Yamakage no iwama o tsutau kokemizu no kasukani ware wa sumiwataru kamo

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.

On his choice of life as a recluse, rather than living in a monkish community, he had this to say:

I don’t tell the murky world
to turn pure.
I purify myself and
check my reflection
in the water of the valley brook.

In old age Ryokan had time for reflection on having ‘idled his life away’, and his conclusion about what he will leave behind is so pure and selfless as to bring a smile to the face…

My legacy —
What will it be?
Flowers in spring,
The cuckoo in summer,
And the crimson maples
Of autumn.

Ryokan’s grave (courtesy Wikicommons)

Zen and Shinto 19: Architecture

April 24, 2017 / John D. / 2 Comments

The following is taken from Wikipedia, indicating how Buddhism and Shinto overlapped architecturally. The similarities are particularly acute in Zen, which lays great emphasis on the kind of exactitude and purity of form found in Shinto. One thinks for instance of dry landscape gardens and the use of plain gravel for shrine entrances, or the use of rocks as spiritual and symbolic features.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_temples_in_Japan

In Japan, Buddhist temples co-exist with Shinto shrines, and both share the basic features of Japanese traditional architecture. Not only can torii, the gates usually associated only with Shinto, be found at both, but the entrance to a shrine can be marked by a rōmon, a gate which is Buddhist in origin and can therefore very often be found also at temples.

Some shrines, for example Iwashimizu Hachiman-gū, have a Buddhist-style main gate called sōmon. Many temples have a temizuya and komainu, like a shrine. Conversely, some shrines make use of incense or have a shōrō belltower. Others – for example, Tanzan Jinja in Nara – may even have a pagoda.

Honden of the Zennyo Ryūō shrine, inside a Shingon temple in Kyoto

Similarities between temples and shrines are also functional. Like a shrine, a Buddhist temple is not primarily a place of worship: its most important buildings are used for the safekeeping of sacred objects (the honzon, equivalent to a shrine’s shintai), and are not accessible to worshipers. Unlike a Christian church, a temple is also a monastery. There are specialized buildings for certain rites, but these are usually open only to a limited number of participants. Religious mass gatherings do not take place with regularity as with Christian religions, and are in any event not held inside the temple. If many people are involved in a ceremony, it will assume a festive character and will be held outdoors.

The reason for the great structural resemblances between the two lies in their common history. It is in fact normal for a temple to have been also a shrine, and in architectural terms, obvious differences between the two are therefore few, so much so that often only a specialist can see them.

Shrines enshrining local kami existed long before the arrival of Buddhism, but they consisted either of demarcated land areas without any building or of temporary shrines, erected when needed. With the arrival of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century, shrines were subjected to its influence and adopted both the concept of permanent structures and the architecture of Buddhist temples.

A Buddhist-style gate (karamon) at Iwashimizu Hachiman-gū

The successive development of shinbutsu-shūgō (syncretism of Buddhism and kami worship) and of the honji suijaku theory brought to the almost complete fusion of kami worship and Buddhism. It became normal for shrines to be accompanied by temples in mixed complexes called jingū-ji (神宮寺 lit. shrine temple) or miyadera (宮寺 lit. shrine temple).The opposite was also common: most temples had at least a small shrine dedicated to its tutelary kami, and were therefore called jisha (寺社 temple shrines^?). The Meiji era’s eliminated most jingūji, but left jisha intact, so much so that even today most temples have at least one, sometimes very large, shrine on their premises and Buddhist goddess Benzaiten is often worshiped at Shinto shrines.

As a consequence, for centuries shrines and temples had a symbiotic relationship where each influenced the other. Shrines took from Buddhism its gates (Mon), the use of a hall for lay worshipers, the use of vermilion-colored wood and more, while Chinese Buddhist architecture was adapted to Japanese tastes with more asymmetrical layouts, greater use of natural materials, and an adaptation of the monastery to the pre-existing natural environment.

The clear separation between Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, which today is the norm, emerges only as a result of the shinbutsu bunri (“separation of kami and Buddhas”) law of 1868. This separation was mandated by law, and many shrine-temples were forced to become just shrines, among them famous ones like Usa Hachiman-gū and Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū.

Because mixing the two religions was now forbidden, jingūji had to give away some of their properties or dismantle some of their buildings, thus damaging the integrity of their cultural heritage and decreasing the historical and economic value of their properties. For example, Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū’s giant Niō (the two wooden wardens usually found at the sides of a temple’s entrance), being objects of Buddhist worship and therefore illegal where they were, were sold to Jufuku-ji, where they still are. The shrine-temple also had to destroy Buddhism-related buildings.

Zen and Shinto 18: Values

December 4, 2016 / John D. / 0 Comments

Sincerity, loyalty, self-sacrifice. Zen or Shinto values?

Mindfulness is a key concept in both Zen and Shinto. Purification and egolessness too.
Harae (purification) and kegare (impurity) in Shinto resemble Delusion and Attachment in Buddhism. The goal in both religions is similar, though the means are different.

A Shinto poster promoting patriotism

In Shinto people look to restore their kami nature by visiting shrines and praying to the mirror (the pure soul of Amaterasu). In Buddhism they look to restore their original Buddha nature and look to the mirror as a symbol of egolessness. Both strive for a spotless mirror that reflects without the distortions of the ego. In one case the mirror is a gift from the kami; in the other it is a product of one’s own endeavour.

Consider the following quotation. It’s written by D.T. Suzuki, but it seems to me it could equally apply to Shinto as much as to Zen.

The sword has thus a double office to perform: the one is to destroy anything that opposes the will of its owner, and the other is to sacrifice all of the impulses that arise from the instinct of self-preservation. The former relates itself with the spirit of patriotism or militarism, while the other has a religious connotation of loyalty and self-sacrifice. In the case of the former very frequently the sword may mean destruction pure and simple, it is then the symbol of force, sometimes perhaps devilish. It must therefore be controlled and consecrated by the second function. Its conscientious owner has been always mindful of this truth. For then destruction is turned against the evil spirit. The sword comes to be identified with the annihilation of things which lie in the way of peace, justice, progress, and humanity. It stands for all that is desirable for the spiritual welfare of the world at large.
– Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture, pp. 66-67.

One thing Suzuki is at pains to emphasise is that acts of war are objectionable when carried out for egoistical ends. However, a sincere and selfless sacrifice is to be regarded as virtuous. He praised the Zen connection with Bushido as promoting a sense of selflessness. Submitting to a higher authority thereby becomes an absolution for the act of killing.

Read through Shinto writings and you will find much the same kind of thinking. Patriotism is fiercely upheld. Since the good of the nation is equated with the figure of the emperor, its heroes are those who sacrificed themselves for the imperial institution while its enemies are those who stood in opposition. Yasukuni’s cult of the kamikaze pilots is an obvious example of self-sacrifice being exalted as a supreme virtue.

At Ise Jingu, the country’s premier shrine, the tradition is that you never pray for things for yourself. That would be a sign of selfishness. By contrast you should express gratitude – gratitude to the kami and the imperial descendant. In the great communal enterprise of pilgrimage to the national shrine, self is subjugated in the larger entity of the nation, symbolised in the person of the emperor. Subjugation of self thus lies at the core of Shinto, just as it is in Zen.

Sincerity, loyalty, self-sacrifice. These are very much common to Shinto and Zen. Perhaps they offer an example of the way in which the indigenous culture helped shape the transformation of Chinese Chan into Japanese Zen.

A demonstration of Kendo at Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto, put on to please the kami

A celebration of Samurai virtues at a Shinto festival in Tohoku

Zen and Shinto 16: Syncretism

June 4, 2016 / John D. / 4 Comments

Spanning the divide between the seen and unseen worlds

I happened to come across a short piece today that was a stark reminder of just how intertwined Shinto once was with Zen and other forms of Buddhism. It’s been nearly 150 years since the Meiji-era split between the religions, and we’re used to thinking of them as completely different. We talk of temples and shrines, of buddhas and kami, of foreign and indigenous, constantly reinforcing the division between them. Yet for so much of Japanese history this was far from the case, and in most people’s minds they were inextricably linked and indivisible. For some Japanese they still are.

A path to paradise in the lush moss garden of Saiho-ji

The item that prompted my thoughts concerns the World Heritage Site of Saiho-ji, a Zen temple more popularly known as Kokedera (Moss Temple). The temple was founded in the eighth century by a monk called Gyogi. By the fourteenth century it had fallen into disrepair and abandoned. This was a matter of concern to Fujiwara Chikahide, chief priest of nearby Matsuo Taisha. In 1338 he confined himself in prayer in the inner room of the temple, where he had a revelation that he should invite Muso Soseki, a monk at Rinsen-ji, to preside over Saiho-ji and lead its restoration. (Muso later became the founder of Tenryu-ji.)

Muso consented to the invitation and took up residence in Saiho-ji, and he constructed a garden based on two levels: a lower pond garden with path to stroll around, and an upper area with a dry landscape and place for meditation. Muso’s lower garden was apparently spread with sand; only in the nineteenth century, after flooding, did the moss grow for which the garden is now famous.

The collaboration of Fujiwara Chikahide and Muso Soseki shows just how tight were the ties of Shinto and Zen in those days. For us post-Meiji folk, it seems odd for two men of ‘different faiths’ to collaborate in such manner. But no doubt for the two men involved nothing could have been more natural, since the idea of ‘separate religions’ would have seemed quite absurd to them. [John Nelson, professor of Japanese Religion at San Francisco University, suggests that it might be equivalent to music, where what we would term as just music today might be divided tomorrow into quite distinct genres with their own peculiarities. Or to extend the analogy, perhaps it’s like thinking Country and Western is a genre, and then having the two parts split apart and the differences between them emphasised and enforced.]

Shinto shrine in the grounds of the Zen temple of Saiho-ji

A Zen rock garden – at Matsuo Taisha! (Created by famed designer, Shigemori Mirei)

Zen and Shinto 15: Japaneseness

May 31, 2016 / John D. / 2 Comments

DSCN7100 On Sunday I took an out of town visitor to a combination of Tofuku-ji Zen temple and the popular Fushimi Inari shrine. They are both in the south-east of Kyoto, a mere twenty minutes walk apart, and the Zen-Shinto combination makes a wonderful introduction to the world of Japanese religion. The large solemn buildings of Zen provide a contrast with the colourful bustling crowds at Fushimi, and yet the similarities are striking.

Pulitzer finalist, Sukuta Mehta, admires a garden… but are those clean lines, raked gravel and simple wooden buildings Zen or Shinto?

There are clean austere lines in the architecture. Meticulously raked grounds. A cleaving to tradition. An emphasis on male heritage in the priesthood. Symbolism in the statuary. Mythological underpinnings whose origins lie in China and beyond.

One common point of Zen and Shinto is that they both treasure closeness to nature as a means of enhancing spirituality. In Zen one comes closer to one’s Buddha nature, in Shinto one comes closer to the realm of the kami. Tofuku-ji boasts a wonderful gorge of maples, Fushimi Inari is famous for its torii-covered hillside. ‘People must respect nature as they cannot live without nature,’ says a noticeboard at Tofuku-ji. ‘The spirit of Zen tells people of samsara (concept of a cycle of birth) and suggests people to tame their ego.’

Zen used to be number one in terms of Western interest in Japan. Now Fushimi Inari is no. 1 on the tourist trail in Kyoto and proudly advertises its status. Whereas Tofukuji has to charge to see its wonderful modern Zen gardens, Fushimi Inari relies on the constant stream of visitors tossing coins into its offering box and the queues to buy amulets and fortune slips as its office. In both cases the religious institution is supported by a team of priests, many of whom are hereditary. In both cases belief in the deities is not a requirement, but upholding the lifestyle of ritual and discipline is.

Did the water basin of Zen and the tea ceremony borrow from that of Shinto….

Rock worship… Zen or Shinto? A combination of both, in fact.

Dosoujin, usually associated with Shinto but here in the Zen temple of Tofukuji

Coming up soon at Fushimi Inari is the rice-planting ritual.

June 10: the ritual is held to ensure a good rice harvest; Women dressed in traditional Heian period costumes perform an elegant dance from 13:00; From around 14:00, about 30 women dressed in traditional farm worker clothing plant rice seedlings in the shrine’s sacred rice field.

A Zen-Shinto shrine. Actually it's not counted as Shinto as it's a kami shrine maintained by Zen monks. An anomaly not included in the post-Meiji artificial split.

A Zen-Shinto shrine at Tofuku-ji. Actually it’s not counted as Shinto as it’s a kami shrine maintained by Zen monks. An anomaly not included in the post-Meiji artificial split between the religions.

Dragon waterbasin at a Shinto shrine

Dragon ceiling at a Zen temple

Fushimi boasting of being number 1 tourist spot in the whole of Japan! No wonder the sheaf of rice the fox is holding looks plentiful…

Japaneseness – whether Shinto or Zen, it’s a remarkable heritage!

Zen and Shinto 14: this world

May 16, 2016 / John D. / 0 Comments

Zen or Shinto? The gardens and aesthetics are similar..

It’s often said that while Shinto is concerned with affairs of this world, Buddhism looks to salvation in the next. Hence the emphasis in Shinto on rites of passage, such as birth, 7-5-3, weddings, yakudoshi ages of transition, etc. Buddhism by contrast is concerned with death, so much so that the term ‘funeral Buddhism’ is widespread and temples are said to derive their income largely from services for the departed. In this way Shinto and Buddhism complement each other.

However, I came across this passage recently, which made me rethink the relationship, at least in terms of Zen. It suggests a surprising commonality of worldview.

Zen tries to help man live fully in this world. This is called the expression of full function. Zen stresses present rather than future, this place rather than heaven. It aims at making actuality the Pure Land.

Religion, of course, transcends the world of science, but it should not conflict with science. Buddhism is a world religion that envelops science. Any religion that hopes to appeal to modern man must embrace science and as well as transcend it. Zen does this.

In conclusion, Zen….
* Frees man from enslavement to machines and reestablishes his humanity;
* Eases mental tension and bring peace of mind; and
* Enables man to use his full potentialities in daily life.

From this grow the Zen characteristics of simplicity, profundity, creativity, and vitality that have attracted so many Westerners. (S. Hisamatsu in ‘Zen and Art’ p.24, states that the 7 characteristics of Zen art are asymmetry, simplicity, austerity, naturalness, profundity, detachment, and tranquility.)

If Zen is truly concerned with this world, then what are we to say about the differences? Particularly since the characteristics overlap so closely with Shinto – simplicity, austerity, naturalness, asymmetry…
DSCN6571 In this respect one has to wonder if Zen is not a more sophisticated view of the notion that humans are the children of kami. In other words, we all have ‘kami nature’ which is pure in spirit, just as in Zen we all have buddha-nature. It’s why we need the ‘magic cleansing’ of the oharai from time to time, to clean us of the dust of this world. No wonder that both Shinto and Buddhism use mirrors on their altars.

There are however two striking differences that come to mind. One has to do with individualism. Zen aims for personal salvation; Shinto looks to the well-being of the group (family, community, nation). The other striking difference is in perspective. Zen seeks truth within, whereas Shinto looks for harmony on the outside. In other words, Zen is inward looking and Shinto outward.

Zen’s search for inner truth centres around the meditation hall (zendo)

The fundamental concern of Zen is to uncover one’s true self, the self that lies beneath the rational thinking ego. It’s the self that functions unconsciously, breathing and digesting and making a myriad ‘decisions’ that maintain life. It’s often referred to as one’s Buddha nature, and is an intrinsic part of the wider universe. The ego likes to think of itself as an independent being; the Buddha self is inextricably linked with the environment on which it is dependent.

Whereas Zen finds expression in sitting silently, Shinto finds expression in matsuri (festivals) when the kami is paraded around its parish. Both religions disdain logic and reason in favour of non-verbal truth. Both have fed off and fed into the Japanese trait for emotional response and wordless communication. Here then may be the mutual complementary nature that has sustained the two religions over the centuries. One is yin and the other yang, both being part of a larger whole. It’s an idea I’d like to explore further in the next post about the role of the sun and the moon in Japanese religion.

The grounds of Ise resemble the dry landscape of Zen gardens. Both seek to symbolically strip away embellishments and externals to arrive at a state of purity.