Purification: Religious Transformations of Body and Mind 9780567191410, 9781472551290, 9780567376831

Table of contents :
FC
Half title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword Masahiko Iburi
Preface The Organizing Committee, Tenri University and Marburg University Second Joint Research Project
1 Academic and Cultural Exchanges between Tenri University and Marburg University: Retrospect and Prospect Hiroshi Sugai
2 Purification of the Mind in the History of Religions: On the Basis of the Works of the Second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama Yoshitsugu Sawai
3 The Religious Circle of Impurity/Pollution and Purification–Presented and Reflected by a Historian of Religions Martin Kraatz
4 Purification and Transformation in Comparative Perspective Michael Pye
5 Matter Out of Place as a Window into Purification Saburo Morishita
6 Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises under the Aspect of Purification Gerhard Marcel Martin
7 Penance as a Ritual for Purification: Conceptual Transformation of Christian Sacrament in Early Modern Japan Ikuo Higashibaba
8 Negative Theology as ‘Purification’ of Language: Nicholas of Cusa on Divine Names Katsumi Shimada
9 Mystical Purification of the Mind: Meister Eckhart on Calmness/Gelassenheit Christoph Elsas
10 A Genealogy of Discou rse on Self-cultivation in Modern Japan: New Style for Narrating Buddhism and New Discourse on Religion in Modern Japan Masahiro Okada
11 Healing Rituals in Contemporary Japanese Esoteric Buddhism as Acts of Individual and Collective Purification Katja Triplet
12 Karma-yoga as a Self-purification through Service for Others:The Case of the Ramakrishna Movement Midori Horiuchi
13 Purification and Emotion Jörg Lauster
14 Purification and Salvation: Rethinking Our Way of Thinking Motokiyo Fukaya
15 Fasting – Reflecting on the History and the Contemporary Renewal of a Christian Exercise Ulrike Wagner-Rau
16 From ‘Purifying’ to ‘Having Been Purified’: T he Tenrikyo Practice of Purification Shugo Yamanaka
Index

Citation preview

Purification

Purification Religious Transformations of Body and Mind

Gerhard Marcel Martin and Katja Triplett

Bloomsbury T&T Clark An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA www.bloomsbury.com First published 2013

© Gerhard Marcel Martin, Katja Triplett and contributors, 2013 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Gerhard Marcel Martin, Katja Triplett and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-567-37683-1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents Foreword  Masahiko Iburi Preface  The Organizing Committee, Tenri University and Marburg University Second Joint Research Project 1 2

Academic and Cultural Exchanges between Tenri University and Marburg University: Retrospect and Prospect  Hiroshi Sugai

vii ix 1

Purification of the Mind in the History of Religions: On the Basis of the Works of the Second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama  Yoshitsugu Sawai

13

The Religious Circle of Impurity/Pollution and Purification – Presented and Reflected by a Historian of Religions  Martin Kraatz

25

Purification and Transformation in Comparative Perspective  Michael Pye

35

5

Matter Out of Place as a Window into Purification  Saburo Morishita

49

6

Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises under the Aspect of Purification  Gerhard Marcel Martin

57

Penance as a Ritual for Purification: Conceptual Transformation of Christian Sacrament in Early Modern Japan  Ikuo Higashibaba

65

Negative Theology as ‘Purification’ of Language: Nicholas of Cusa on Divine Names  Katsumi Shimada

73

Mystical Purification of the Mind: Meister Eckhart on Calmness/ Gelassenheit  Christoph Elsas

83

10 A Genealogy of Discourse on Self-cultivation in Modern Japan: New Style for Narrating Buddhism and New Discourse on Religion in Modern Japan  Masahiro Okada

93

3 4

7 8 9

11 Healing Rituals in Contemporary Japanese Esoteric Buddhism as Acts of Individual and Collective Purification  Katja Triplett

107

vi Contents

12 Karma-yoga as a Self-purification through Service for Others: The Case of the Ramakrishna Movement  Midori Horiuchi

119

13 Purification and Emotion  Jörg Lauster

127

14 Purification and Salvation: Rethinking Our Way of Thinking  Motokiyo Fukaya

137

15 Fasting – Reflecting on the History and the Contemporary Renewal of a Christian Exercise  Ulrike Wagner-Rau

143

16 From ‘Purifying’ to ‘Having Been Purified’: The Tenrikyo Practice of Purification  Shugo Yamanaka

153

Index

163

Foreword It gives me great joy that the papers presented at the second Tenri University and Marburg University Joint Research Project, held from 18 to 20 September 2010 at Tenri University, have been compiled and edited in both paper and digital forms. There is a long history of exchange between Tenri University and Marburg University. The second joint research project was held in 2010, an important juncture in time, since it marked exactly 50 years of academic exchange between the two universities. In September 1960, the founder of Tenri University Shozen Nakayama, the Second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo, attended the Tenth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, held at Marburg University, and presented an academic paper on Tenrikyo theology. Two years earlier, this international meeting was held in Japan for the first time as the Ninth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, and Friedrich Heiler, professor of the history of religions at Marburg University, paid a visit to Tenri during his sojourn for that meeting. The Second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo Shozen Nakayama and Professor F. Heiler were therefore able to meet again two years later in Marburg for the occasion mentioned above, deepening their friendly ties. This personal bond marked the beginning of exchanges between Tenri University and Marburg University and these exchanges have continued to the present through such activities as academic research, music, and sports. Amid such conditions, the first Tenri University and Marburg University Joint Research Project was held in the year of the 120th Anniversary of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo, in September 2006 at Marburg University with Prayer as Interaction as theme. The publication of the presentations delivered during that conference has been compiled in English; moreover, summaries of these same presentations have been translated and edited in Japanese, and published in booklet form. These published formats have received much praise from our academic colleagues. Our second joint research project, this time with Tenri University as its venue, was held as an international symposium with Purification: Religious Transformations of Mind and Body as theme. Emphasis was placed on specific ‘purification’ practices in the religions of the world that

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strive toward the realization of an ultimate goal as salvation or enlightenment and in some way interconnected with the transformation of mind and body. Although the forms and meanings of religious practice are multifarious and diverse, scholars from both Tenri University and Marburg University probed deeply into many different but concrete religious phenomena that converge with the broad theme of ‘purification’. Indeed, the meeting was very enriching with its densely packed content. People today are being swayed ever more by modern rational signs of the times; thus they are vulnerable of losing sight of the primordial way of life without even being aware of it. In this sense, I believe that this volume, which brings together the papers presented at our second joint research project, not only makes a contribution toward the development of the history of religions as a discipline, but also suggests ways to recover what has been lost as well. This has been done primarily by probing deeply and understanding the meaning of what it means to be alive and by reflecting thoroughly upon the impact of ‘purifying’ both mind and body. From this point of view, we may say that the compilation of these papers into this single volume holds substantial contemporary significance. Finally, I hope that future joint research projects will develop as Tenri University and Marburg University continue to carry out their academic exchanges. May I also take this time to thank members from both universities for their relentless effort in working together to see this joint project through from its opening session to the publication of this volume. Masahiko Iburi Tenri University

Preface We are very delighted to present this volume, Purification: Religious Transformations of Mind and Body, which is the fruit of a second joint research project commemorating 50 years of academic exchange between Tenri University and Marburg University. This joint research project was held from 18 to 20 September 2010 at Tenri University with the aim of profoundly dwelling upon ‘purification’ clothed in its religious dimensions, that is, to seek the meaning and structure of purification from the perspective of the history of religions. This joint meeting continues in the spirit of the first joint research project held at Marburg University in 2006 with “Prayer as Interaction” as theme. Contributing to this volume are seven scholars from Marburg University and nine from Tenri University whose papers are based upon their respective areas of interest in the study of religion. A brief outline of those papers will be provided here for the reader. At the public session, and representing Tenri University, Yoshitsugu Sawai presents a lecture entitled Purification of the Mind in the History of Religions: On the Basis of the Works of the Second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama. After this lecture, and representing Marburg University, Martin Kraatz gives a lecture entitled The Religious Circle of Impurity/Pollution and Purification. From the horizon of Tenrikyo’s semantic world, Sawai casts the topic of ‘purification’ in terms of ‘purifying the mind’ and examines the meaning of purifying the mind based upon the works of the Second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo Shozen Nakayama. After this first lecture, Martin Kraatz, upon recalling personal memories of the Second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo Shozen Nakayama, proceeds to clarify the religious circle of impurity and purity through examining Hinduism and Judaism comparatively. Whereas adherents of Judaism must live out their entire personal lives according to the teachings, Hinduism teaches purification of the mind on an individual level. This then leads to his conceptualization of purity/impurity in terms of rules for the entire society. At the pre-session, Hiroshi Sugai not only surveys past academic exchanges between the institutions at Tenri and Marburg but also suggest a few possible ways to further develop them as well. For the first keynote lecture of this

x Preface

joint research project, Michael Pye presents a talk entitled Purification and Transformation in Comparative Perspective. Pye distinguishes between ritual pollution on the one hand and spiritualized ideal perfection on the other, emphasizing that concrete religious phenomena can be placed somewhere along the continuum between these two poles. More concretely, he brings up the Buddhist notion of the non-duality of body and mind and argues that, in Shingon and Shugendo thought, spiritual practices are carried out with emphasis on the ‘purification of the six roots’ thereby stressing the purification of both mind and body. The remainder of the book is based upon the designated three sessions of the meeting. For the first session, which was entitled Theoretical Perspectives, Saburo Morishita attempts to explain ‘purification’ by utilizing social anthropologist Mary Douglas’ conceptualization of ‘matter out of place’. From this standpoint, Morishita endeavours to unveil the meaning of the dichotomy of purification and pollution by discussing both their hygienic and symbolic dimensions. Following this, the practical theologian Gerhard Marcel Martin engages with the ‘Spiritual Exercises’ written by Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit religious order, and analyses the purification process of the mind in the Catholic Church. Moreover, Ikuo Higashibaba, who carries out Kirishitan research, examines the sacrament of penance as a form of a Christian purification ritual in early modern Japan and explains that the act of confessing took on the meaning of a purification ritual when sin was associated with the notion of impurity. For the second session, which was entitled Historical Perspectives, Katsumi Shimada, whose field of expertise is in Christian thought, focuses on the negative theology of Nicholas of Cusa. Shimada asserts that the speculative effort toward ‘learned ignorance’ holds special significance in the ‘purification’ of language. Next, Christoph Elsas, a Christian theologian who is also an Islamicist, draws upon the Christian theologian Meister Eckhart and explains that ‘calmness’ is based upon the mystical purification of the mind. Following this talk, Masahiro Okada, who does research on modern Japanese religious thought, gives an analysis of the genealogy of the discourse on self-cultivation from the perspective of the sociology of religion. For the final presentation of this session, the historian of Japanese religions Katja Triplett focuses on the phenomenon of Japanese esoteric Buddhism and argues that the healing rituals in Japanese esoteric Buddhism can be understood as a cure and/or purification. In the third session, which was entitled Practical Perspectives, five papers are brought together into one session. Midori Horiuchi, who carries out research on

Preface

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modern Hinduism, brings into the fold the Ramakrishna movement in India and discusses how karma yoga plays a prominent role in the purification of the mind since it implies non-attachment to the consequences of action. Jörg Lauster, who specializes in systematic theology and the philosophy of religion, argues that purification means going back to religious feelings and shows how this view is suggested in certain contemporary Christian dogmatic theologies. Following this paper, Motokiyo Fukaya, who focuses his studies on Tenrikyo theology and the philosophy of religion, points out how the foundation of impurity is linked to a system or is based upon a human being’s freedom of choice, and by transcending dualistic thought, emphasizes the importance of creating a system that cuts off the root of impurity. Moreover, and from the perspective of practical theology, Ulrike Wagner-Rau focuses on fasting in religion and points out how it serves as a means for self-reflection in the Christian tradition. Wagner-Rau also discusses how there is new interest in fasting as a contemporary way to seek ‘a life with meaning’. The Tenrikyo theologian Shugo Yamanaka then concludes the session by discussing how purification in Tenrikyo can be understood as purifying the mind and demonstrates how the daily actions based on faith are deeply interconnected with salvation. We believe that the various studies in this volume will enable the reader to acquire a new vantage point on the understanding of religion through the phenomenon of purification. Needless to say, the concept of purification, as with the concept of prayer in the religious traditions of the world, is an indispensible concept for getting a handle on religion. We have also included the concept of impurity as a complementary term to purification or purity so as to imply that a mastery of religion may not take place if the two are treated separately. Ideally, the religious phenomenon of purification is comprised of the inner aspect of the purification of the mind as well as the outer aspect of the purification of the body or its location. In various religious thought, therefore, we discover that both these aspects produce a semantic structure through a meshing of one with the other. For example, the purification of the body or its location through such ritual practices as a purification ritual not only holds external meaning but also suggests a transformative moment pertaining to an internal one through a purification or healing of the mind. Moreover, the meaning of religious language is also closely interrelated with the purification and transformation of mind and body. It has been reconfirmed once again just how important religious language is for the study of religion. The publication of this volume bears the fruit of research carried out for this second joint research project and probes deeply into the meaning and structure of ‘purification’. Nothing would

xii Preface

give us more joy if this volume were to contribute in some way – however little it be – toward a new horizon in the contemporary study of religion. The Organizing Committee Tenri University and Marburg University Second Joint Research Project Gerhard Marcel Martin (Marburg University) Saburo Morishita (Tenri Univeristy) Yoshitsugu Sawai (Tenri Univeristy) Katsumi Shimada (Tenri Univeristy) Katja Triplett (Marburg/Göttingen University)

1

Academic and Cultural Exchanges between Tenri University and Marburg University: Retrospect and Prospect Hiroshi Sugai

The second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo, Shozen Nakayama (1905–67), made his first visit to Marburg in September 1960 in order to attend the Tenth International Congress for the History of Religions. He arrived in Marburg on the afternoon of 10 September and departed shortly before noon on 18 September. Therefore, today, 18 September 2010, exactly marks the passing of 50 full years since then, and we are about to start the second joint symposium between Marburg University and Tenri University. This symposium, therefore, has been organized as an event to commemorate the fiftieth year since the second Shinbashira’s first visit to Marburg. The first symposium, four years ago, was held under the theme of ‘Prayer as Interaction’. In the opening address, the then President Hashimoto introduced the history of Tenri–Marburg exchanges, referring to the two meetings of the second Shinbashira and Dr. Friedrich Heiler – the first in 1958 at Tenri and the second in 1960 at Marburg. Because Dr. Heiler is the author of the famous work Das Gebet (The Prayer), the theme for the first symposium was ‘Prayer’. One of the things I would like to accomplish here is to elucidate the second Shinbashira’s visit to Marburg in 1960 by referring to his own accounts of the Marburg visit found in his work, Hopponankoku. Reading this work, we can see that it was not only Dr. Heiler that the second Shinbashira was reunited with. He also met other scholars such as Dr. Alfred Hoffmann who was a specialist on Chinese Studies, Dr. Wolf Haenisch who was a specialist on Japanese Studies and the director of Marburg University Library, and Dr. Ernst Benz who was a specialist on Church History – all of whom he had met previously in Tenri.

2 Purification

Another thing I would like to mention is how the second Shinbashira came to know these scholars – especially, Dr. Haenisch, Dr. Benz, and Dr. Heiler – and how it led to their reunion in Marburg in 1960. I would also like to touch on how it led to their future relationships with the second Shinbashira as well as with Tenrikyo. Firstly, however, as I find it important for scholars from Marburg to know about the second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo, Shozen Nakayama, I would like to spend some time talking about him. The second Shinbashira, with his strong leadership, laid the foundations of all aspects of Tenrikyo as we see today. These include: establishment of the church organization; construction surrounding the Jiba, Tenrikyo’s sacred spot – the Main Sanctuary, the Foundress’ Sanctuary, and the Oyasato-yakata Building-complex; institution of the doctrinal research system; publication of the Scriptures; compilation of the Doctrine and other doctrinal texts; founding of the publicity-related business system – building of publishing and printing offices to promote public relations through newspapers, periodicals, and books; founding of various educational institutions to promote overseas mission – Tenri Foreign Language School (currently Tenri University), Tenri Central Library, Tenri University Sankokan Museum; founding of medical institutions – Tenri Ikoi-no-Ie Hospital, etc. Furthermore, as a scholar of Tenrikyo theology, he associated widely with a variety of scholars and researchers outside Tenrikyo. Thus he belonged to various scholarly associations and participated in their conferences and congresses. Also, as a lover of sports, he contributed to the development and promotion of various sports activities. Especially, judo became an Olympic event largely because of his great contribution. He had strong connections in government, business, and officialdom, as well. The second Shinbashira also had close personal relationships with Prince Mikasa and Prince Takamatsu. For instance, starting in 1960, he invited Prince Mikasa as a guest lecturer for special intensive lectures at Tenri University. These special lectures continued, even after the second Shinbashira’s passing, until 1990. Thus the second Shinbashira has left great marks of achievements in and outside Tenrikyo. Here, following his life history, I would like to elaborate on his encounters and personal exchanges with Japanese scholars of religion and then with German scholars and intellectuals, for the accumulation of such exchanges over the years has led directly and indirectly to this Tenri–Marburg relation. I would also like to mention briefly his many travels – missionary visits – to various parts of the world and his antiquarian collection. Shozen Nakayama was born in what is now the city of Tenri in 1905. He was



Exchange between Tenri and Marburg

3

the first son of Shinnosuke Nakayama, the first Shinbashira of Tenrikyo, and a great-grandson of Miki Nakayama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo. In 1915, at the age of 11, he was installed as superintendent of Tenrikyo. Since he was still too young for the post, Tamenobu Yamazawa assumed the duties of the superintendent as administrator of the office. In 1923 he entered Osaka High School and met Dr. Robert Schinzinger who was teaching German there and whose personal exchanges with Shozen would last for their lifetimes. Previously a lecturer at Heidelberg University, Dr. Schinzinger came to Japan with his wife in 1923 to serve as a German language teacher at Osaka High School and spent the rest of his life in Japan. Allow me to digress a little by talking about Dr. Schinzinger and the second Shinbashira. After living in Osaka for approximately 18 years, Dr. Schinzinger moved to Tokyo in 1941 to serve as a professor at Tokyo University and Gakushuin Senior High School. Despite the physical distance separating Tokyo and Tenri, their relationships became increasingly strong after the Second World War. Dr. Schinzinger visited Tenri nearly every year to see the second Shinbashira, who always stopped by at Dr. Schinzinger’s house during his New Year’s greeting visit to Tokyo. It is said that drinking Moselle wine, still a rarity in Japan then, together at Dr. Schinzinger’s house became their New Year’s custom. Dr. Schinzinger later published a German–Japanese dictionary in 1972 and a Japanese–German dictionary in 1980 from Sanshusha Publishing Company. The Japanese–German dictionary actually has ‘Shinbashira’ as an entry word. Considering that Japanese dictionaries usually do not contain this word as an entry word, I imagine this was Dr. Schinzinger’s secret message to express his friendship with the deceased second Shinbashira. This has been introduced as an episode to illustrate the relationships of the second Shinbashira and Dr. Schinzinger. Incidentally, the compilation of this Japanese–German dictionary involved several people from Marburg. For instance, Dr. Wolf Haenisch’s name appears in its foreword. Further, Prof. Minoru Nambara – a co-editor of this dictionary as well as a student of Dr. Schinzinger’s at Tokyo University – had a close relationship with Dr. Benz so as to engage in joint research and is also a friend of Dr. Kraatz. In 1925 Shozen founded Tenri Foreign Language School. In the same year, at the age of 21, he officially assumed the office of superintendent. Also installed as principal of Tenri Foreign Language School, he initiated the training of human resources to engage in a Tenrikyo overseas mission. The library and the material collection room set up in this foreign language school later developed into Tenri

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Central Library and Tenri University Sankokan Museum. Also in this year, he established the Tenrikyo Administrative Printing Office – presently Tenri Jihosha Co., Inc. – to promote Tenrikyo mission through published materials. In 1926, after graduating from Osaka High School, he entered the Religious Studies Department at Tokyo University. The chairman of the department was Prof. Masaharu Anesaki, who laid the foundation of religious studies in Japan. The graduate students in the department then included Hideo Kishimoto, Kiyoto Furuno, Teruji Ishizu, and Hitoo Marukawa – great scholars who would lead the field of religious studies in postwar Japan. The second Shinbashira became acquainted with them through Prof. Anesaki and formed lasting friendships with them. The second Shinbashira associated with Prof. Anesaki as his lifelong teacher. Especially, in Prof. Anesaki’s later years, Shozen venerated and took care of him as his father. In 1947 Prof. Anesaki collapsed with a cerebral haemorrhage during his lecture at Tenri Central Library and stayed in Tenri for some time to recuperate. It has been told that after regaining consciousness Prof. Anesaki always looked forward to seeing the second Shinbashira who was visiting him every day. It is also known that it was at the Shinbashira’s villa in Atami where Prof. Anesaki passed away in 1949. In 1929 Shozen graduated from Tokyo University. In 1930 Tenri Central Library was completed. The original design for this library was obtained by the second Shinbashira from Prof. Anesaki who was serving as director of Tokyo University Library. It is known that this design – from the University of Minnesota in the USA – was among those contributed from various countries of the world for the design competition held to rebuild Tokyo University Library after its collapse in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. In 1932, under the second Shinbashira’s initiative, newspapers in English, German and French were published by Tenri Central Library. These newspapers in foreign languages continued until 1940. I remember some of these newspapers being preserved at Marburg University. The person in charge of the German translation for these newspapers was Mr. Shigeo Yamaguchi who had been a classmate of the second Shinbashira at Osaka High School. Mr. Yamaguchi became a professor at Tenri University after the war. The second Shinbashira’s friendship with Dr. Haenisch came to be formed through Prof. Yamaguchi’s connection with Dr. Haenisch. I will give more details on this later. In 1933, in order to participate in the Conference of World Fellowships of Faiths held in Chicago, the second Shinbashira visited the USA for the first



Exchange between Tenri and Marburg

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time. At the opening ceremony of the conference, in addition to a congratulatory address, he delivered a lecture entitled ‘The Foundress and the teachings of Tenrikyo’. Prof. Anesaki also participated in this conference. Mr. Hideo Kishimoto – who was studying at Harvard University then and was to become a professor of religious studies at Tokyo University later – served as translator for the second Shinbashira’s lecture. Now I would like to talk a little about the second Shinbashira and his travels. The second Shinbashira’s overseas travels, like the one just mentioned, were for various purposes. These included: to visit followers engaged in Tenrikyo mission in respective countries, give them words of appreciation for their efforts, and encourage them; to meet representatives of other religions and visit religious institutions so as to gain knowledge of the circumstances involving religions in respective countries; to inspect overseas university institutions, especially university libraries; to participate and make presentations in international conferences and scholarly congresses – in 1954 ‘On The Idea of God in The Tenrikyo Doctrine’ (at the International Congress of Orientalists at Cambridge University in the UK), and in 1960 ‘Women’s Position Viewed by Tenrikyo’ (at the International Congress of Orientalists in Moscow) and ‘The Various Forms of Verbal Evolution in Tenrikyo Doctrine’ (at the Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions in Marburg); to meet scholars, politicians, and other important people; to inspect the general affairs of respective countries; and so on. His overseas travels were opportunities for him to meet many people in the world and be reunited with many of his acquaintances and friends. The second Shinbashira was a lover of sports, especially himself being a judoist. Judo officially became an Olympic event at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. It is often mentioned now that the second Shinbashira played a great role in making this happen. It was well known that the then president of the IOC, Avery Brundage, was an old acquaintance of the second Shinbashira. As a collector of antiquarian books, the second Shinbashira always took time to visit bookstores or secondhand bookstores in respective countries to collect rare books and scholarly books. Before the war, he collected and brought back by himself materials of ethnological value from mainland China and the Korean Peninsula. Thus he was involved in improving the collections at Tenri Central Library and Tenri University Sankokan Museum. The second Shinbashira left the following passage in his essay entitled ‘Watashi no shomotsu doraku’ [My Hobby in Books]: ‘After the war, since 1951, I have traveled abroad several times. Of course, I had definite purposes

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each time, but what I always looked forward to most was visiting secondhand bookstores there’.1 It seems that the second Shinbashira’s strong interest in books was largely induced by his father, the first Shinbashira Shinnosuke Nakayama. The first Shinbashira did not have a high academic background, but it is known that he was deeply interested in learning from his young days and one day requested to be sent to Kyoto to study. Desiring to entrust his unfulfilled wish to his next generation, he collected Japanese and Chinese books, saying, ‘I will have young children read these’. Tenri Central Library was founded on the approximately 7,000 books donated from the Nakayamas, most of which had been collected by the first Shinbashira himself. It can be easily surmised therefore that the second Shinbashira had been strongly influenced by his father. Furthermore, after the second Shinbashira entered Tokyo University’s Religious Studies Department, the above-mentioned Prof. Masaharu Anesaki, who was serving as director of Tokyo University Library, also had a great influence on him. In the second Shinbashira’s travel journals and essays such as ‘Sekai furuhonya junrei’ [World Pilgrimage of Secondhand Bookstores] and ‘Sekai no furuhonya’ [Secondhand Bookstores of the World], we can find many accounts of the secondhand bookstores in various countries he visited. Among those are accounts of his acquaintanceship with some booksellers or clerks and his positive or negative remarks about certain booksellers or bookstores. Unfortunately, however, none of the secondhand bookstores in Germany was good enough for him, for he wrote rather harshly, ‘All the secondhand bookstores I visited in Germany were no good!’ In contrast, the second Shinbashira was quite familiar with two bookstores in the Netherlands – E. J. Brill in Leiden and Martinus Nijhoff in Hague. ‘Rudolf Ritsema’ – the name of a clerk at E. J. Brill – often appears in some of his various travel journals. All the accounts of Ritsema by the second Shinbashira are favourable ones, like the following: ‘Ritsema at Brill was a very good man. Very kind and also interested in Tenrikyo, he asked me to send Tenrikyo books and introduced books which might be of my interest’; and ‘Ritsema spared no efforts to help me, so I was able to obtain various books on the Orient’. The name, ‘Rudolf Ritsema’, is widely known in academic circles for its association with the Eranos Conference. He was at the centre of administration of the conference from 1962 to 1990. As I had a chance to attend the conference as an auditor once, I remember Mr. Ritsema talking about the second Shinbashira in my conversation with him. Incidentally, I also remember



Exchange between Tenri and Marburg

7

meeting Prof. Yoshitsugu Sawai for the first time at Ascona in Switzerland, the site of the Eranos Conference. Shortly before noon on 14 November 1967, the second Shinbashira passed away. After his passing, a great number of letters and telegrams of condolence were sent. As written by the above-mentioned Dr. Schinzinger in his memorializing words, the biggest joy for the second Shinbashira was ‘to make others joyous’. The night before his passing, a welcoming reception for a Briton and two Nepalese was held until late with the second Shinbashira playing host to the guests. It is said that ‘Whoever comes shall never leave without being filled with joy’ was his favourite phrase. Now, after a lengthy account of the second Shinbashira, I would like to go into the main subject. During his long overseas trip from 7 July to 15 October, 1960 in which the second Shinbashira visited Europe, Africa and Asia, his stay at Marburg extended from 10 to 18 September, attending the Tenth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. Just like in any other trip, the second Shinbashira wrote in his travel journal every day during this long trip. This journal was constantly sent to Japan so as to be published in Tenri Jiho, a weekly Tenrikyo newspaper, under the title of ‘Hopponankoku’ [Reporting from North and South] concurrently with his trip. These serial articles were compiled into a book later. Reading this journal, we can know what the second Shinbashira did during his stay in Marburg, with whom and where, how his condition was, what he was thinking, how he was evaluating his time in Marburg, and so on. By the way, several Germans, whom the second Shinbashira became close to, appear in this journal. The personal exchanges between him and these Marburg scholars which had been developed previously became deepened during his week-long stay in Marburg, thus marking the real start of the history of Tenri– Marburg exchanges. In particular, I would like to expound on the history of the second Shinbashira’s exchanges with three German scholars – Dr. Wolf Haenisch, Dr. Ernst Benz, and Dr. Friedrich Heiler.

Dr. Wolf Haenisch Dr. Wolf Haenisch is mentioned in his journal, dated 15 and 16 September. Dr. Haenisch studied at Kyoto University from 1930 to 1932. He was the first student sent from Leipzig University to Kyoto University in the exchange programme between the two universities. His counterpart, sent

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from Kyoto University to Leipzig University, was the above-mentioned Mr. Shigeo Yamaguchi who would later become a professor at Tenri University. Mr. Yamaguchi was a classmate of the second Shinbashira at Osaka High School. Because of this, he was later invited by Tenri University and became a professor there. It seems that Dr. Haenisch and Prof. Yamaguchi, both as exchange students, knew each other from early on. And the second Shinbashira was to develop his friendship with Dr. Haenisch through Prof. Yamaguchi. During his visit to Japan around 1948, Dr. Haenisch visited Tenri for the first time and delivered a lecture in English before the students of the German Language Department in Tenri Foreign Language School then. In 1952, when Mr. Makita Tominaga, director of Tenri Central Library then, travelled to Europe to attend the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions held at Copenhagen, he visited Dr. Haenisch at Marburg University. This was the start of the personal exchanges between the two as well. Dr. Haenisch had already become the director of Marburg University Library by then. Dr. Haenisch visited Tenri again in 1958 and strengthened his relationship with the second Shinbashira and other Tenri personnel. Thus these prior exchanges eventually led to their reunion at Marburg in September 1960. As mentioned in his journal, it was Dr. Haenisch who served as chair of the sectional meeting in which the second Shinbashira made his presentation. Their exchanges continued thereafter. On his visit to Japan in 1965, Dr. Haenisch, by the second Shinbashira’s favour, stayed at Waraku House – a guesthouse by the Shinbashira’s residence – for roughly a month to engage in his research on Hakuseki Arai in Tenri Central Library. Even after the passing of the second Shinbashira, Dr. Haenisch’s exchanges with the Tenri personnel continued, eventually leading to the Tenrikyo Exhibition in 1975. In 1967 Dr. Haenisch invited Mr. Yoshio Takahashi from Tenri to serve as staff at West Germany Library at Marburg, a national library run by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which is now located in Berlin. Mr. Takahashi stayed in Marburg for two years. And through Mr. Takahashi and Dr. Haenisch, Mr. Johannes Laube – later to be a professor at Munich University – was sent to Tenri to serve as a German teacher at Tenri University. Dr. Laube engaged in his study on Tenrikyo during his three-year-long stay in Tenri and later submitted his doctoral dissertation entitled ‘Oyagami. Die heutige Gottesvorstellung der Tenrikyō’ (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1978) [God the Parent: The Present Tenrikyō Views of God]. Dr. Laube played a great part in the 1975 Tenrikyo Exhibition.



Exchange between Tenri and Marburg

9

In his opening address at the 1975 Tenrikyo Exhibition, Dr. Haenisch stated as follows: Nakayama Shozens Aufgeschlossenheit ist aber auch der Ausbau der Verbindung mit Marburg zu verdanken, dadurch dass er anlässlich des Internationalen X. Religionsgeschichtlichen Kongresses, wie schon gesagt wurde, Beziehungen mit den Professoren unserer theologischen Fakultät Friedrich Heiler und Ernst Benz aufnahm. [Establishment of Tenrikyo’s relations with Marburg owes a large part to Mr. Shozen Nakayama’s openness. As already mentioned, this is because of the personal connection he made with Dr. Ernst Benz and Dr. Friedrich Heiler of our Theology Department at the Tenth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions.]

Next, I would like to trace the history of the second Shinbashira’s exchanges with Dr. Ernst Benz and Dr. Friedrich Heiler, who are mentioned in the abovementioned opening address by Dr. Haenisch. In an essay, ‘The second Shinbashira and Germans’, written by Prof. Shigeo Yamaguchi of Tenri University, we find a passage referring to both Dr. Benz and Dr. Heiler: Being a specialist in German, I had many opportunities to meet Germans along with the Shinbashira. Scholars, church people, and politicians, who were firstraters in Germany and sometimes worldly famous, visited Tenri. Some of their visits were rather short and merely ceremonial, yet there were many who came to develop deep connections with Tenrikyo through their repeated visits. When I traveled to Germany three years ago, I visited a few people who had been to Tenri. Dr. Benz at Marburg University showed me the happi coat given to him by the second Shinbashira and told me that he had just given a lecture on Tenrikyo the previous week. His lecture then was later printed in a newspaper. Dr. Heiler in Munich, upon hearing that I had come from Tenri, spared me his time despite his busy schedule. Reminiscing about Tenri, he wished to visit Tenri again, but he regretted that he was too old and ill to do so. When we were parting, I remember, he grasped my hands for a very long time while saying ‘Please give my regards to the Shinbashira’.

Dr. Ernst Benz Dr. Ernst Benz appears in Hopponankoku on 14 and 17 September. It was on 12 September 1957 that Dr. Benz visited Tenri for the first time.

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He had been staying in Kyoto as a visiting professor at Doshisha University. Dr. Benz, along with Dr. Helmuth von Glasenapp, a German authority on Indology, watched the evening service at the Main Sanctuary of Tenrikyo Church Headquarters and had dinner with the second Shinbashira. Afterwards Dr. Benz visited Tenri several more times. On 3 and 10 December of the same year, he delivered special lectures at Tenri University – entitled, respectively, ‘The Beginning of Early Protestant Mission in the 18th century’ and ‘On the Idea of Reincarnation in German Literature and Philosophy’. In January of the next year, he participated in the Sechi festival, a New Year’s ricecake-eating event in Tenrikyo. Further, on 26 March, he, along with Mr. Kohler, visited the second Shinbashira and presented to him the German architectural pattern of a church – with a hemispheric round ceiling-roof called a cupola – on slide pictures. Thus Dr. Benz deepened his friendship with the second Shinbashira through his repeated visits to Tenri. After returning to Germany, Dr. Benz mentioned his impressions of the Sechi festival in an article entitled ‘Japan, Asien und die Christenheit’, which he contributed to Quatember magazine in 1958.2

Dr. Friedrich Heiler It was on 6 September 1958 that Dr. Heiler visited Tenri for the first time. He came as one of the 212 participants in an excursion trip after the Ninth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions. Two years later, in his opening address at the Tenth Congress, Dr. Heiler stated as follows, even mentioning the second Shinbashira’s name: ‘We are especially glad that among them is the Patriarch of the great religious community Tenrikyo, Nakayama, by whom we were received with such kind hospitality two years ago’. Upon hearing this opening address, the second Shinbashira wrote in his journal on 11 September: … unexpectedly, in his opening address, Dr. Heiler, referring to the congress at Tokyo held two years ago, expressed his gratitude for the reception at Tenri and Tenrikyo’s hospitality even by mentioning my name, Nakayama. This utterly surprised me. It rather made me feel nervous and burdened. …

In his journal on 15 September, we find another passage concerning Dr. Heiler: At nine o’clock in the morning, along with Mutsunobu and others in Dr.



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11

Hoffman’s car, I visited Dr. Heiler at Religionskundliche Sammlung, the venue for the opening ceremony. … ‘This room is the biggest Rittersaal around here’, explained Dr. Heiler. Then he showed us rooms on Egypt, Christianity, the Orient and others in Religionskundliche Sammlung, decorated separately according to religions and regions. Dr. Heiler is now the head of this museum. The hinokishin coat I had given him in Jiba two years before was on display in Japan Room. Today, I gave him a service kimono as a way to respond to his kindness since the opening ceremony. Next time I visit here, it will be displayed next to the hinokishin coat.

Thus Religionskundliche Sammlung has continued to be the destination for visitors to Marburg from Tenri, serving as a research centre in Marburg to convey the history of Tenri–Marburg relations to the present. Dr. Martin Kraatz, head of Religionskundliche Sammlung since 1968, sent a letter of proposal to Tenrikyo in 1971. It was to present Tenrikyo as a case of a new religion by holding an academic exhibition of Tenrikyo religion. Two years later, the third Shinbashira, Zenye Nakayama, visited Marburg to listen to Dr. Kraatz’s explanation of the objectives of this academic exhibition. The third Shinbashira showed his understanding and gave his consent to the proposal by Marburg University. Dr. Haenisch, who had just retired from the directorship of Marburg University Library then, obtained the new director’s consent to allow the library hall to be used as the venue of the exhibition. In this way, Religionskundliche Sammlung, University Library, and Tenrikyo collaborated to formulate a concept, and this exhibition, entitled ‘For the Joyous Life of Human Beings’, was finally realized in the spring of 1975. It may be said that this exhibition marked the start of a new stage for Tenrikyo and Marburg University. However, it should be remembered clearly that it was the second Shinbashira’s first visit to Marburg that triggered the friendly relations between Tenri and Marburg, which were further promoted by the planning of this academic exhibition and have been maintained for many years since then. For Tenrikyo, the ‘Joyous Life’ exhibition was an unforgettable ‘great project of the century’. Since 1975, as you all know, Tenri–Marburg relations have continued to develop. Tenrikyo Overseas Department repeatedly sent its staff members to study in Marburg. As a way of cultural exchange, the Tenri gagaku music ensemble visited Marburg several times, while the Marburg students’ orchestra visited Tenri. The two universities have signed a sister-university agreement,

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actively exchanging students. And four years ago, a purely academic symposium was held at Marburg with ten scholars from each of the two universities attending. And now the second symposium between Tenri University and Marburg University is about to begin on this day which marks the passing of 50 full years since the second Shinbashira left Marburg after his first visit on 18 September 1960.

Notes 1 Rokujunen no michikusa [Loitering of 60 Years] (Tenri: Doyusha, 1972), p. 52. 2 Ernst Benz, ‘Japan, Asien und die Christenheit’, Quatember 23 (1958/9), pp. 18–25.

2

Purification of the Mindin the History of Religions: On the Basis of the Works of the Second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama Yoshitsugu Sawai

Introduction In all religious traditions in the world, the religious concepts of purity and impurity, i.e. purification and pollution are complementary to each other. In order to understand the structure of purity or purification in world religions, one needs to understand it with reference to these concepts. In contemporary religious studies, needless to say, it is very important to clarify the meaning of ‘purification’. For in the harmonious triangular links among the individual, the cosmos and the social structure, the religious action of purification forges a path to expiation, healing, renewal, transcendence and reintegration.1 Thus, in our attempt to understand the implications of the religious actions of ‘purification’ from a historical perspective of religions, we have to understand the meanings of purification, placing this concept within its various religious contexts. From Tenrikyo semantic perspectives, I would like to interpret our joint research theme of ‘purification’ (Japanese: kiyomeru) in view of the ‘purification of the mind’ (Japanese: kokoro o sumasu) in this public lecture. On the basis of the Tenrikyo theological works of the second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama, I attempt to clarify the semantic meanings of the ‘purification of the mind’. After clarifying the meanings of purification of the mind in the Tenrikyo faith, I would like to explore the religious implications of the purification of the mind, focusing on the Indian religious tradition, which is my special field in religious studies.

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Toward a Semantic Understanding of the ‘Purification of the Mind’ Now, let me begin my discussion by mentioning the second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama’s presentation of Tenrikyo doctrine, delivered at the Tenth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, held at Marburg University in 1960. The theme of his presentation was ‘The Various Forms of Verbal Evolution in Tenrikyō Doctrine’. According to the second Shinbashira, Tenrikyo doctrine consists of both ‘verbal revelation of the divine will’, which the Foundress Miki Nakayama taught with her talks and writings, and ‘the divine model’ set by her. In his presentation, in regard to the ‘verbal revelation of the divine will’, the second Shinbashira argued the main characteristics of the three Scriptures of Tenrikyo, that is, the Ofudesaki, the Mikagura-uta, and the Osashizu, and also the ‘Kōki Story’ which the adherents wrote down upon listening to the talks of the Foundress: To sum up what I have mentioned above: the Ofudesaki revealed the most important principles of the faith; and antedating the Ofudesaki, the Mikagura-uta Psalms guided the believers to the faith through emotional adaptation and physical action. Next, the Kōki Story told its mythical secrets and lastly the Osashizu gave the followers concrete directions for the everyday affairs of their lives. In other words, the Ofudesaki is a collection of poems for the believers to memorize by constant reading; the Mikagura-uta Psalms become alive through singing or as the accompaniment of the holy dance; the Kōki Story is a myth to the heart of which the leading disciples should penetrate by careful reading; and the Osashizu gives concrete precepts by which the followers should reflect on their own conduct.2

The passage quoted above represents how the Scriptures are very important for the adherents of Tenrikyo to purify their minds and understand its doctrine. Moreover, the divine model of the Foundress which the second Shinbashira mentions is also necessary for them to deepen the faith. In this regard, Shozen Nakayama read a paper, entitled ‘The Missionary Spirit of the Foundress of Tenrikyo, Manifested in the Book of Ofudesaki’ at the Ninth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, held in Tokyo in 1958. On 26 October 1838, according to Tenrikyo faith, Miki Nakayama became the ‘Shrine of Tsukihi’ (tsukihi no yashiro) and later provided the ‘divine model’ (hinagata) for the ‘joyous life’ (yōki-gurashi) for 50 years. According to



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the second Shinbashira, the missionary spirit of the Foundress ‘lies not only in promulgating the teachings of God the Parent but also in guiding people intimately with Her most parental affection’.3 Spiritually guided by the Foundress, the adherents of Tenrikyo who were brought to Jiba gradually deepened their faith on the basis of their recognition of the human primordial way of being. Through orality, i.e. parole that the Foundress directly taught them, they could understand the meaning of their lives. Linguistically speaking, parole means the linguistic action of communication in which a speaker talks to a listener. Needless to say, parole is constructed with such aspects as time, place, person, and condition of discourse. By listening to the teachings of the Foundress, the adherents of Tenrikyo deepened their faith from an ordinary or superficial understanding of life to that of a deep one or the fact that one is kept alive only through divine providence. Through an understanding of the teachings of the Foundress, they purified their hearts, sweeping off the ‘dust’ out of their hearts or the ego-centric orientation of their hearts. Moreover, through parole, they transmitted the joy of faith to those around themselves. The words of the Foundress, orally spoken to her adherents, were transmitted from one generation to the next; at present, one can read them in the form of written documents. Thus, the work of ‘helping others’ performed by adherents of Tenrikyo had the religious implication of purifying their own hearts. As mentioned above, the three Scriptures are not only the sources of Tenrikyo doctrine, but also documents which instruct the way toward the ‘joyous life’.4 They provide us with the semantic world of Tenrikyo on the basis of the revelation of God the Parent, that is, the world of the divine providence of God the Parent. In order to understand the meaning of the ‘purification of the mind’ in the semantic world of Tenrikyo, we need a hermeneutical perspective of Scriptures as écriture, bringing our minds back to the context of parole, in which the Foundress taught. In the process of understanding Tenrikyo doctrine, we can gradually deepen our understanding of the meaning of the phrase ‘purification of the mind’.

The Semantic Structure of the ‘Purification of the Mind’ The ultimate goal of Tenrikyo is to construct the world of the ‘joyous life’. According to Tenrikyo views of human beings, although one’s body is a ‘borrowed thing’ from God the Parent, one’s mind alone is one’s own. Thus,

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one is permitted by God to use one’s mind freely. Thus, whether one lives the ‘joyous life’ or not depends on one’s mind. This suggests that the individual condition of the mind is an essential key for the ‘joyous life’. The misuses of the mind are represented through comparing them to ‘dust’ (hokori). It is very important for an individual to purify the mind, sweeping away the ‘dust’ of the mind, or ego-centric orientations. We humans were created by God the Parent as primordial beings for the ‘joyous life’, but while living with the freedom of the mind and through repeated rebirths, we came to cloud our minds and use them in ways contrary to the will of God the Parent by accumulating ‘dust’ in our minds. As a means to help us reflect on the ‘dust’ of the mind, we are taught eight kinds of ‘dust’: miserliness, covetousness, hatred, self-love, grudgebearing, anger, greed, and arrogance. In understanding Tenrikyo doctrine in this context, one can say that it is the teaching of purifying the mind by sweeping the ‘dust’ of the mind. In Tenrikyo faith, daily life itself implies ‘religious training’. All things and events in our daily life are the ‘guidances’ (tebiki) or the messages of God the Parent for our ‘joyous life’. Thus, it is very important to recognize the will of God, listening to the divine talks with a pure mind. In religious traditions, ‘religious training’ is an action of purifying the mind by training the mind through the body. According to Keiichi Yanagawa, a Japanese historian of religions who is famous for his research on local festivals in Japanese society, religious training is ‘to purify and sanctify the body by segregating it from the profane world and by leading an ascetic life with the limitation of bodily desires’.5 According to Tenrikyo faith, however, the sacred and the profane are not clearly distinguished; for Tenrikyo adherents do not live an ascetic life by segregating themselves from the profane world, but live in the profane daily life where religious practice for the ‘purification of the mind’ is carried out. It is said that the Foundress told her disciples to be ‘hermits in the town’ (sato no sennin). According to the popular image of a hermit, he is regarded as a person who leads an ascetic life in the mountains, practising severe ascetic training with a pure mind. Unlike a hermit in the mountain, however, the phrase ‘hermit in the town’ implies a Tenrikyo adherent’s way of life in ordinary life, relying on God the Parent joyously with the pure mind. In 1935, the second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama published his book, ‘Kami’, ‘Tsukihi’, oyobi ‘Oya’ ni tsuite [On ‘God’, ‘Tsukihi’, and ‘Parent’], which provides the ‘guideline’ for Tenrikyo theological studies. In this book, from a philological viewpoint, he points out that in the Ofudesaki, God the Parent first begins to be referred to as ‘God’(kami), but God is then referred to as ‘Tsukihi’



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in the middle, and finally as ‘Parent’ toward the end. Through his philological analysis of the three appellations of God in the Ofudesaki, he argues that ‘God started to use those three names one by one, each time by showing a deeper meaning of God in accordance with the stage of maturity of the faith of the followers of the path, so that they are able to understand God’.6 The meanings of these three appellations correspond to the three main constituents of our life world. The three names of God the Parent symbolically demonstrate the most important motifs of our life world. In various religious traditions, ‘God’ (kami) is the most popular term of the transcendental which the faithful hold as the object of their faith. By comparing it with popular gods, God the Parent reveals divine authentic reality. In the context of the natural environment or the world, ‘Tsukihi’ suggests the moon (tsuki) and the sun (hi), being indispensable to our life. Moreover, the term ‘Parent’ is used to allow humans to understand the reality of God the Parent as the parent of humankind with reference to the parent-children relationship in the human world. In the above-mentioned transition of God’s appellations, there exists the divine intention to teach that God the Parent’s providence saturates this world of existence. As mentioned above, in the Ofudesaki, these different terms are used out of the parental concern of God the Parent, so that we could understand the reality of God more deeply, sweeping the dust of the mind in ways appropriate to our spiritual growth. While we gradually deepen our mind toward the depth of life, the world reflected on our mind changes. We become aware of the fundamental reality of life that we live in the providence of God the Parent. Thus, the purification of the mind is a condition of our recognition of the primordial fact of life, that is, the ‘joyous life’. In order to explore the meaning of the ‘purification of the mind’ semantically, we would like to pay attention to the fact that our daily life space constitutes the culturally structured world of meaning. In our daily life, we regard the things and events which we experience as being real. But as the Osashizu teaches that ‘the world is a mirror’, i.e. Sekai wa kagami (Osashizu, 4 February 1889), our minds are reflected upon the world; things and events in the world reflect our minds. While our minds are purified, we gradually notice that the ‘reality’ which we ordinarily see is not the life world of itself. While the depth of the life world is opened in the mind, in Saussure’s linguistic terminology, the relationship of significant (a physical sound or mark) with signifié (a meaning) gradually slips. In our daily life, although language is a very important means of communication, this world of meaning which is structuralized with ordinary language, semantically reflects only the superficial conventional dimension of meaning.

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Beyond the conventional dimension of meaning, the depth of meaning exists. In other words, according to Tenrikyo cosmology, we live in this world by being kept alive by God the Parent through the complete providence of God; we humans are socially related beings who live by helping each other in the ‘joyous life’ as our primordial way of life. While our minds become pure little by little, our mental horizons could reflect the world of God’s providence as it is in our minds. From semantic perspectives, the words of the three Scriptures provide us with the deep dimension of meaning built into the ordinary meaning of life. They suggest the fundamental truth of life hidden at the dimension of meaning in ordinary language. While we gradually purify our minds with the words of the Scriptures, they come to reflect the will of God. At the same time, our understanding of the meanings of words in the Scriptures becomes naturally deepened. Our own understanding of the meaning of life gradually shifts from its superficial dimension to a deeper one. Beyond the ordinary facts of life that we live with our knowledge and power, we can deepen our mental horizon toward the primordial reality where we are alive, being kept alive by the providence of God the Parent. While our minds are deepened, we gradually understand the primordial meaning of life that our bodies are the ‘things lent’ by God although they may be our own.7 Just as dusty water becomes pure, our dusty ego-centric minds transform into those which help others, relying on God the Parent. Thus, the root of illness is cut off. The unhealthy conditions of our bodies derive from our minds; if our minds are saved, various troubles are also solved. The purification of the mind is not merely obtained through understanding the doctrine of Tenrikyo, but through our experiences in our daily practices.

The Purification of the Mind in Indian Religious Traditions Now, from a historical perspective of religions, I would like to understand the religious meanings of the ‘purification of the mind’. Thus, among world religious traditions, let me mention Indian religious traditions which constitute my special field of study. It is emphasized in world religious traditions that in order to understand the nature and meaning of life, it is important to purify the mind. In Indian religious traditions, too, the purification of the mind is a requirement necessary for the attainment of the ultimate purpose, i.e. salvation or emancipation.



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In Indian religious traditions, scriptures were orally transmitted from teachers to their disciples in the parole or oral situations. For example, the UpaniŞads, which form the final part of the Vedas, and Buddhist sūtras were the so-called ‘spoken scriptures’. In Islamic religious tradition, too, a ‘spoken scripture’ as a religious phenomenon is found in the recitation of the Qur’ān.8 In Vedānta religious tradition, the words of scripture, which teachers orally transmit to their disciples, are śabda, that is, ‘voice’ or ‘sound’, in ‘pattern prayer’, to which the historian of religion in Marburg University Friedrich Heiler refers. By the repeated recitation of the words of scriptures which are taught by teachers, their disciples are able to understand the meanings of the scriptural texts. For together with an understanding of the depth of reality, the words of the ‘pattern prayer’ in the scriptures eventually become those of ‘spontaneous prayer’.9 This fact means that with the purification of the mind, one could understand the deep meanings of reality which the words of the scriptures reveal. The Chinese character of ‘mind’ represents the hieroglyph of a heart. It is a word which denotes spirit, distinguished from a thing and a body, or spiritual function in general, such as intellect, emotion and will. In India, the most popular word corresponding to ‘mind’ is citta, which means spirit, different from material or body, and regarded as pure like a blank sheet of paper. For example, thes Yogasūtras emphasize that with the yogic practice of controlling the mind, one can remove ‘delusions’ (kleśa) which pollute the mind. Such delusions as ‘ignorance’ (avidyā) are the causes of trouble in the world; if one removes ignorance which pollutes the mind, just as a burned seed never sprouts, all actions are understood to bring about no results. From the viewpoint of the earliest Buddhist teachings, all things and events in the world vary, depending on the mind alone. For example, Dhammapada I.2, one of the earliest Buddhist sūtras, says that ‘all that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him’.10 It was the Yogācāra thought in Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions which systematized the issues of the mind or consciousness. According to the Yogācāra thought which emphasized citta-mātra, i.e. the ‘mind only’, the commonly experienced world is a mental construction created by the ‘transformations of consciousness’ and superimposed on reality. In the world, a thing or an event which one perceives is not a metaphysical entity remaining identical to itself. It has no objective, permanent svabhāva, or ‘self-being’, and has only a transitory and illusory identity. In the scriptural context of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the word śūnyatā means ‘emptiness’ in the sense of the negation of

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self-subsistent, self-sufficient realities. The whole world of being is deprived of a self-sufficient reality of its own. One can say that Yogācāra thought constitutes the so-called ‘structuralization’ of delusions. If one explores the basis of delusions which control the superficial dimension of the mind, one eventually attains the region of subconsciousness called ālaya-vijñāna, i.e. ‘storehouse consciousness’. In other words, the storehouse consciousness, located at the foundation of consciousness, is really the foundation of all the metaphysical delusions; the word ālaya means a ‘storehouse’, which contains the ‘seeds’ (bīja) of all things and events. In the phenomenal world, all consciousnesses derive from the ālaya-vijñāna. It is prominent in Mahāyāna Buddhism in general, especially in Yogācāra thought, that all things and events in the phenomenal world are compared to dreams. Moreover, there are religious traditions famous for their Vedānta philosophy which developed as the hermeneutics of the Upanisads. In these religious traditions, Śan˙kara (700–750), an advaita Vedānta philosopher, is probably the greatest philosopher in India. In Śr. n˙geri of Karnataka State, he is regarded as the founder of a monastery (mat. ha) as well as of the Śan˙karan School. In his advaita philosophy, he argued that brahman alone is real and that brahman and ātman are identical. In order to attain emancipation (moksa), he emphasizes that one needs to obtain knowledge (jñāna) or wisdom (vidyā) and that the knowledge of brahman alone is the ‘highest means of purification’ (paramam.pāvanam) which could make an aspirant of emancipation free from evils.11 In Śan˙karan Vedānta tradition, the ascetic practice with three stages for the attainment of emancipation has been traditionally transmitted: ‘hearing’ (śravan. a), ‘thinking’ (manana), and ‘meditation’ (nididhyāsana). At first, disciples listen to the words (śabda which also means ‘voices’ or ‘sounds’) of the Upanişad scriptures from teachers. By repeating the words of scripture, they deepen their understanding of scripture. Moreover, they perform meditation in regard to the words called parisam.khyāna in which they repeat the essentials of scripture. In this ascetic practice, since the minds of disciples are gradually purified, they come to understand the nature of reality, i.e. the identity of brahman with ātman. According to Śan˙kara, ‘when the mind becomes pure like a mirror, knowledge shines forth; therefore [the mind should be purified]. The mind is purified by abstention, the permanent rites, sacrifices, and austerities’.12 When disciples purify their minds like a mirror, they can obtain the knowledge of brahman which is the ‘highest means of purification’. In Asian religious traditions, there are ascetic practices such as zabō in Taoism, zazen in Zen Buddhism, and seiza in Confucianism. For the purification



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of the mind, in the words of Yasuo Yuasa, ascetic practices have the significance of ‘putting to one’s self more strict restrictions than life norms in the secular places of ordinary experience’. According to Yuasa, the Buddhist practice of meditation, which could be called ‘introversive practice’ (naikō-teki jissen), corresponds to ‘prayer’ or ‘contemplatio’ in Christian monasteries. Although ultimate reality in the world may be differently expressed through such words as ‘emptiness’ (śūnyatā) in Mahāyāna Buddhism and the ‘way’ (tao) in Taoism, one can say that religious traditions share the common structure of ‘introversive practice’. These ascetic practices are ‘attempts to direct one’s eyes to the inside of the mind and to get in its deep dimension’.13 In short, they are practical activities to purify the mind and to understand its depth.

Conclusion As discussed above, in the realms of religious traditions, one could uncover the depth of the mind i.e. reality, through the ‘purification of the mind’. This correspondence of the mind to reality reminds us of the words of the historian of religions at Marburg, Rudolf Otto. In his work Das Heilige, he says that the ‘numinous’ state of mind ‘cannot be strictly defined’. There is only one way to help another to an understanding of it. He must be guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which ‘the numinous’ in him perforce begins to stir, to start into life and into consciousness.14

There is an emphasis on the experience beyond words not only in Eastern religious traditions but also in Western ones. With the purification of the mind through one’s own experiences, one could awaken the depth of the mind or to life itself. Although various religious traditions in the world emphasize such religious practices as meditation, yoga and prayer, these practices have the significance of deepening the recognition of reality through salvation or emancipation. In order to attain the ultimate goal, the purification of the mind is indispensable; the depth of life gradually unfolds to a purified mind. In the semantic world of religions, the mind and reality constitute the multi-layered structure of mutual correspondence. Through the ‘purification of the mind’, as one opens the depth of the mind, one understands the depth of reality. Behind the emphasis on the ‘purification of the mind’, there is the structural correspondence of the mind to reality. In relation to our discussion of the depth

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of the mind, as the historian of religions Michael Pye rightly points out, one can say that the body is ‘the very locus of existential meaning’ in thinking of salvation or emancipation.15 In religious traditions, when one looks at the body and reality from the depth of the mind, they are understood as having quite different meanings although they are the same. Thus, since the landscape of reality is wholly changed, the new semantic world, i.e. the horizon of the fundamental facts of life, is uncovered. Focusing on Tenrikyo and Indian religious tradition, I have discussed the semantic structure of purifying the mind from a historical perspective of religions in this public lecture. Here, I argued the issue of ‘mind and body’ as the theme of our joint research project, paying attention to the ‘mind’. Needless to say, the religious phenomena of purification consist of the inner aspects of purifying the mind and the outer ones of purifying the body and space. In specific religious phenomena, both inner and outer aspects are inseparably interrelated.16 Finally, let me finish my public lecture by quoting two verses of the Ofudesaki, a Tenrikyo Scripture, which straightforwardly express the meaning of the purification of the mind. When the mind is made pure and open to reason, the truth will be seen of its own accord. Ofudesaki V: 77 Day by day, your innermost heart will be purified and understanding will come. You will come to see the truth as you mature. Ofudesaki VI: 15

Notes 1 James J. Preston, ‘Purification’, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade et al. (eds), (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987, vol. 12), p. 91. 2 Shozen Nakayama, ‘The Various Forms of Verbal Evolution in Tenrikyō Doctrine’ [Japanese: Tenrikyō kyōgi ni okeru gengo-teki tenkai no sho-keitai], a paper read at the Tenth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, on 16 September 1960 at Marburg University, Michinotomo, September issue, (Tenri: Tenrikyo-doyusha, 1960), p. 11.   Moreover, in his paper, the second Shinbashira Shozen Nakayama continues discussing: There is distinct difference between the former two: one is the writing in waka styled poetry intended for the instruction of profound divine truth



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and the other is a series of songs to accompany the Divine Service. The latter two also vary in that one was taken down from attendants’ memory and the other by stenographic notes. Yet all the four can be traced back to the one gracious teaching of God the Parent by reason of His parental solicitude to guide a troubled world. (p. 11) 3 Shozen Nakayama, ‘The Missionary Spirit of the Foundress of Tenrikyo, Manifested in the Book of Ofudesaki’ [Japanese: Ofudesaki ni arawareta tenrikyōso no dendō seishin], a paper read at the Ninth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, on 18 August 1958 at Tokyo-sankeikaikan, Shinbashira-kunwa-shu [Collected Speeches of Shinbashira], (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1958), vol. 18, p. 669. 4 In regard to the characteristics of the three Scriptures of Tenrikyo, see Shozen Nakayama, Hi-mizu-kaze: Nidai-shinbashira kyōgi-kōwa shū [Fire-Water-Wind: Collected Lectures on the Doctrine by the Second Shinbashira], (Tenri: Tenrikyodoyusha, 1977).   Here, from the viewpoints of écriture and parole, let me mention the main characteristics of Scripture. From a linguistic point of view, the Ofudesaki is an écriture in that the Foundress wrote it. She wrote the essence of her teachings which she taught her disciples at a parole situation, so that they could keep it in their minds. According to Shozen Nakayama, it is ‘a collection of poems for the believers to memorize by constant reading’; with various metaphors and the appellations of God the Parent, ‘it enables the reader, before he becomes aware of it, to become acquainted with the parental solicitude of God the Parent. Much care was taken by the Writer to guide the reader onward as he advanced in mental maturity’.   The Mikagura-uta, an écriture written by the Foundress, has a characteristic as a parole for Tenrikyo adherents who memorize it in that they can sing it anytime and anywhere. As Shozen Nakayama points out, the Mikagura-uta, which consists of the songs of the Divine Service, gives ‘fundamental lessons in the principles of the faith’. Moreover, the Osashizu, i.e. the Divine Directions, which were the oral revelations of God the Parent, were written down in shorthand and compiled later into a book of Osashizu. In short, it is an écriture which was originally parole. The Kōki Story consists of the notes of Tenrikyo doctrine, written by the leading disciples of the Foundress who listened to her. It is an écriture which represents the teachings of the Foundress, who taught them in parole situations; its content overlaps that of the three Scriptures. 5 Keiichi Yanagawa, Shūkyōgaku to wa nani ka [What is the History of Religions?], (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1989), p. 57. 6 Shozen Nakayama, ‘Kami’, ‘Tsukihi’, oyobi ‘Oya’ ni tsuite [On ‘God’, ‘Tsukihi’, and ‘Parent’], (Tenri: Yotoku-sha, 1935), p. 65; cf. Yoshitsugu Sawai, ‘The Appellations

24 Purification of God the Parent: An Analysis of “God”, “Tsukihi”, and “Parent”’, Tenri Journal of Religion 27 (1999), pp. 1–15. 7 In regard to the semantic understanding of life on the basis of the Tenrikyo perspective of human life, see Yoshitsugu Sawai, Tenrikyo ningen-gaku no chihei [A Horizon of Tenrikyo Anthropology], (Tenri: Tenri University Press, 2007). 8 William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 1–18; cf. William A. Graham, ‘Reflections on Comparative Study in Religion: “Scripture” as a Case in Point’, Tenri Journal of Religion 32 (2004), pp. 49–67. 9 Yoshitsugu Sawai, ‘Horizons of “Prayer” as a Religious Concept: A Reconsideration of Friedrich Heiler’s Theory of Religion’, Prayer as Interaction: International Symposium, (Tenri: Tenri University Press, 2007), pp. 54–5. 10 The Dhammapada, translated by Irving Babbitt from the Pāli with an Essay on Buddha and the Occident, (New York: New Directions Paperbook, 1965; original print: New York: Oxford University Press, 1936), I. 2, p. 3. 11 Śan˙kara, Upadeśasāhasrī, critically edited with introduction and indices by Sengaku Mayeda, (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1973), I.16.71, p. 129; cf. Upadeśasāhasrī, II. 1–3, pp. 191–218. 12 Śan˙kara, Upadeśasāhasrī, I.17.22, p. 134. 13 Cf. Yasuo Yuasa, The Body, Toward an Eastern Mind-body Theory, (New York: SUNY, 1987). 14 Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige (München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 1963), p. 7; The Idea of the Holy, translated by John W. Harvey, (London: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 7. 15 Michael Pye, ‘Perceptions of the body in Japanese religion’, Religion and the Body, ed. by Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 248–61 (260). 16 Since religious phenomena consist of both ‘interiority’ and ‘exteriority’, one needs to understand them from their interior and exterior sides. In addition to ‘the mind and the body’, religious experiences and religious thoughts as the discourses of religious experiences also contain such an essential structure. In this regard, there have been discussions in the study of mysticism in the academic world of religious studies. At the panel: ‘Interpretations of Religious Thought as a Discourse of Religious Experience’, which the author organized for the XXth World Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions held at Toronto University in August 2010, Michael Pye pointed out that the scholars of religious studies have to explore the issue of ‘interiority’ and ‘exteriority’ of religion more deeply. In regard to the issue of ‘purification: religious transformations of body and mind’, too, one carefully needs to pay attention to both ‘interiority’ and ‘exteriority’ of religious phenomena.

3

The Religious Circle of Impurity/Pollution and Purification – Presented and Reflected by a Historian of Religions Martin Kraatz

Standing here in Tenri in autumn 2010 I think back to two weeks in early autumn 1960, 50 years, half a century ago. Professor Friedrich Heiler two years before had returned from the 9th International Congress for the History of Religions, held in Japan, and told me that Marburg had been chosen as the place for the next, the 10th Congress. He asked for my assistance in organizing it. I agreed, and we began to work, supported by my wife Margot, Heiler’s private secretary Anni Boymann, and, later, Professor Annemarie Schimmel. Among those enrolling for the congress were many scholars from Japan, some from Tenri University, a delegation headed by the second Shinbashira of Tenrikyo, Nakayama Shozen. However, he had been announced by Friedrich Heiler and Ernst Benz not as Shinbashira, but under another title. They both had visited Tenri in 1958 together with other participants of the Japan congress, Benz already several times before. But they called him Patriarch. I don’t know why they did it this way. Maybe, on the one hand, they had not understood the Japanese term Shinbashira, and, on the other hand, they had become aware of him as the head of an entire religion, more than a Christian bishop heading a diocese, less than the Pope heading the Roman Catholic Church, an eminent part of worldwide Christianity. But Heiler as well as Benz, familiar with another area of Christian religion, with the Orthodox Eastern Churches, probably compared the Head of Tenrikyo with the heads of these different eastern denominations each having as their head a Patriarch. But neither Heiler nor Benz gave us a description of the person. Thus we imagined the Patriarch of Tenrikyo as similar to the EasternChristian leading churchmen wearing their dark and long robes, the serious

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faces overgrown by beards, with very special hats or even crowns, the whole appearance expressing a claim to clerical dignity. And then Shinbashira arrived. A short heavy knocking at the door of our congress office, the door opened, and there he stood – beaming on us young women and men and giving each of us the feeling as if being embraced by him. There was no sign of demanding respect due to his high position. In a light grey suit, slightly disarranged by a stormy flight, happy to be in Marburg, he started sounding us out, curious about everything and everyone he expected to see, to hear, to get to know here. Enjoying his quite natural behaviour, nevertheless, we recognized him as a person of no less natural authority. Later I used to characterize him as a man who filled a whole room in the moment he entered. He did not come alone. With him there were professors of Tenri University, representatives of Tenrikyo, and a slim and tall young man as personal assistant, who today in this room, probably along with me, is the only person who was witness of that scene 50 years ago in Marburg and later was appointed Director of Tenri Library – a special salutation to Professor Teruaki Iida! Whenever we met Shinbashira, in the congress building, the Old University, at the receptions, in the narrow streets of Marburg, on the one-week excursion after the congress days, he always was contacting somebody, talking and discussing with scholars, laughing with citizens of Marburg, even playing with children. In his contribution to the congress programme he presented and explained The Various Forms of Verbal Evolution in Tenrikyo Doctrine. A photo shows him talking and behind him a blackboard with his handwritten title guide-lines Ōfudesaki, Osashizu, tsutome, Mikagura-uta, te-odori, Kōki. The chair of this session was held by his friend Wolf Haenisch, Director of Marburg University Library and Professor of Japanese Studies. Among those listening to him and then asking questions were the famous translator of Zen texts, Wilhelm Gundert, and Henry van Straelen, one of the first Western scholars publishing about Tenrikyo. Van Straelen contributed to the congress programme a second paper on Tenrikyo, under a title similar to that of his not undisputed book, Tenrikyō, die Religion der Himmlischen Weisheit, with the subtitle Japans größte religiöse Bewegung [Tenrikyō, the Religion of Heavenly Wisdom. Japan’s Greatest Religious Movement]. The second Shinbashira with his charismatic personality and his paper as well as van Straelen’s congress paper were the first information my wife and I had got about Tenrikyo. We did not forget it. Twelve years later, now head of the Religionskundliche Sammlung of Philipps University, in an exhibition I wanted



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to present one of the so-called New Religions. I did put forward this suggestion to Tenrikyo, now to the third Shinbashira Nakayama Zenye. He agreed, and in an academic-religious co-operation we realized Yokigurashi, an exhibition about and together with Tenrikyo in the upper floor of the entrance hall of the University Library of Marburg. At that time such a co-operation between historians of religions and members of religions still was a rare practice, probably, at least in Germany, in this exhibition realized for the first time. And it was not ‘the religion’, it was individuals, members of Tenrikyo together with whom we, supported by the former German lecturer at Tenri University Johannes Laube, planned, organized and realized Yokigurashi. A group of ten/twelve Yoboku stayed in Marburg over the whole five weeks of the exhibition. Friendships developed, remained alive up to today and were passed on to Yoboku of younger generations. This brought about manifold types of common projects, including a partnership between Tenri and Marburg Universities. The most recent project is the Tenri–Marburg symposium about purification starting today. We owe this to the extraordinary personality of the second Shinbashira Nakayama Shozen who half a century ago deeply had impressed some young German students of history of religions. Having looked back into history I now have to turn to the real subject of my lecture, The Religious Circle of Impurity / Pollution and Purification. Let me start with some sentences continuing my Tenri–Marburg reminiscences, but also leading into the core of my paper’s problem. The two towns, Tenri and Marburg, have one thing in common – they both circle around an outstanding female personality, Tenri around the foundress of Tenrikyo, Miki Nakayama, Marburg around Saint Elizabeth. There are some principal differences between them. Miki lived in the nineteenth century, Elizabeth in the thirteenth. Miki was born in a village, Elizabeth in a royal palace. Miki’s husband Zembei stayed at her side over 43 years, the husband of Elizabeth, Ludwig, died six years after they had married when she was not older than 20 years. Miki, as God’s mouth, conveyed the eternal, but ever new will of God, Elizabeth, as God’s humble servant, was totally obedient to the will of God. Miki left her visible body at the age of 90, Elizabeth died at the age of 24. Miki, according to her followers’ belief, stays with them forever, working for the salvation of mankind. Elizabeth, to whose relics some miracles had been ascribed, already four years after her death was canonized, i.e. she was appointed a saint, a custom practised in the Roman Catholic church up to this day. Miki’s withdrawal from visibility got her followers to give their movement an institutional structure. The canonization of Elizabeth gave the Teutonic Order cause

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for erecting a church above and around her tomb and consecrating it to her as its patron, the Elizabeth Church. But they also have some traits in common. Both were married and both were mothers. Already before entering their specific religious ways of life they had an open heart and an open hand towards the poor, the oppressed, the needy in general. Later they selflessly took care of the sick, gave away bit by bit all their possessions and fell in poverty. Both left behind something possessing protective, even healing power, Miki red clothes to be cut into oMamori, amulets. Elizabeth’s bequest, her body with its parts, was revered as miracleperforming relics. Through Miki as well as Elizabeth the places of their life and death became centres of pilgrimage, Tenri till today, Marburg at least for some centuries. If we look at these two eminent women under the aspect of pure–impure we have to note a somewhat inconsistent situation. They may be called pure as well as impure, and this according to presuppositions which are laid down by different religions in different ways, corresponding to their respective features. I already mentioned that both women were married and mothers. As far as I can see, this in Japanese tradition is regarded as a quite natural fact. Izanami and Izanagi started their process of creating Japan and the Japanese with a sexual act. Virginity in Japanese religious traditions never played a prominent role. This also holds true of the foundress of Tenrikyo, Miki Nakayama. On the contrary her husband and the children she had procreated with him were integrated into her salvation work. In her biography Tenrikyo-Oyasama-Den much is told about her life as a loving family mother, but there is no word indicating that this might have had a negative effect on her flawless purity as the Shrine of the Parental God. However, in the Christian, especially the Roman Catholic tradition and therefore concerning Saint Elizabeth, virginity plays an important role. Well, she was married, she loved her husband, and they procreated children. But for the pious authors of her biographies this was a flaw in the biography of their saintly heroine. Whenever they talk about the marital love between Elizabeth and Ludwig they transform it into the love to the divine bridegroom, their Lord Jesus. We read: ‘She lived with her husband in laudable matrimony, in a mutual affection that was miraculous. They lovingly encouraged and strengthened each other in praising God and serving him’.1 And through her bitter repentance for having been diverted from a holy mass by ‘a sweet feeling of human affection’ for her husband standing beside her she ‘became still purer and more welcome to the divine bridegroom’.2 Consequently



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the pious biographers again and again emphasized that after her husband’s death Elizabeth strictly realized the vow of chastity which she had already taken when he was still alive. As a married woman and mother she had lost the purity of a virgin, however, she finally lived a virgin-like life in sacred purity, obedient to the ideals and claims of her religion. So far having exemplified the central idea of my lecture in the Tenri–Marburg context I now turn to religions in general. Talking about religions at first calls for talking about man as one of the manifold and innumerable living beings having in common that their life will have an end and they must die or at least perish. We don’t know how far nonhuman beings, from microorganisms to plants and animals, know something about their final lethal fate. Certainly, zoologists have noticed that there are animals which withdraw from their companions when they, in whatever way, ‘feel’ their end approaching. But there is, probably, only one animal, the human animal, that principally realizes the finite nature of life, from childhood or late childhood on, and not so much the finite nature of life in general but above all that of her or his own life. Human beings suffering from this inevitable limitation of lifetime have found and find comfort, even a way out of this fatal doom, in the messages of religions. These messages explain the cause of human mortality and, in most religions, offer perspectives giving this single life on earth a promised beyond. We can say, it is this consciousness of being mortal which creates religions. But religions in all their practices and teachings do not restrict themselves to handling this fundamental defect which brings each life to an end. They derive a good number of additional defects which are effective already during one’s lifetime and therefore must be treated. In some religions, prominent types of defects in teaching and practice are connected with impurity and pollution which require devices bringing about purification. If we take a closer look at religions regarding the origin, character and elimination of impurity and pollution we will see that they teach and put into practice rather different ideas. These ideas are based on different images of man. Religions indeed have one quite general aspect in common − an image of man as a defective being who needs to be rescued. But some religions teach the impurity of man as something inborn, while others declare human beings as born pure and in the course of their life unavoidably exposed to being polluted. At this stage of reflection some words must be said about different levels of impurity and purity in order to isolate those of specific religious importance, as far as this can be achieved at all. I shall not consider this in abstraction

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but in the light of two religions, the one of the Jews and the other one of the Hindus. In both religions impurity and purification play an important role. There are similarities and differences teaching us much about the broad field of purification. And seen as a whole each religion serves as a kind of model for demonstrating the specific subject of this lecture, The Religious Circle of Impurity/Pollution and Purification. In both religions the image of man is based on a mythical tradition. In the Holy Scripture of the Jews, the Torah, it is told that a couple, named Adam and Eve, lived in paradise, the Garden of Eden, free of worries, getting everything they needed, in peace with all other living beings, but already mortal. They lived on the produce of nature, on crops and fruits. The fruits of one tree were forbidden them, on penalty of instant death, the fruits of the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Gen. 2.17). They nevertheless did eat these fruits, did not instantly die, but had to leave paradise and live with sorrow, pains and toil. But through their disobedience human beings got a benefit, the benefit promised by the name of that tree: They won the knowledge of good and evil, up to that moment a privilege of God the Lord, now also a godlike ability of man, giving man the freedom of decision along with full responsibility for his own life. Thus the Jewish image of man proves to be the image of a being who leads a life which, independently of each religious context, we may call a quite normal life in actual reality, ‘a human existence as it is’,3 and this is a life of individual responsibility. But, according to Jewish anthropology, in this normal life man does not get the criteria for his decisions between good and evil from nature, nor from himself or herself. Jews teach that man has been created by their God who for them is the God of mankind as a whole. And it is this God who has given these criteria of good and evil to human beings, formulated in the Torah, the holy scripture of the Jews, and again and again discussed in texts commenting on the Torah. These criteria are the well-known basic Ten Commandments, and then, more important in our context, 613 additional commandments regulating life in almost every detail possible. One aspect having a heavy effect on Jewish daily life are regulations concerning impurity and purification. There are, e.g., lists declaring different kinds of animals as principally impure and forbidden as food. Such animals must be avoided, they cannot be purified. A human being flawed with a disease like leprosy is not allowed to undergo a purification ritual. But many other impurities are temporary, occurring casually. They not only can be, they need to be ritually purified. Prominently among these we find pollutions by all kinds of liquids coming out of a female as well as a male body, above all blood, also pus, mucus and sperm. The element for



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purification of women as well as men in most cases is water, at best flowing water collected in a basin situated deep in a special building, called Miqveh ‘collection (of water)’. Having cleansed oneself first outside of the basin − by the way, similar to the practice of Japanese oFuro − one totally has to immerse, from toe to top. The Miqveh is also used for the purification of utensils, above all of new dishes and pots and pans in order to make these usable in a Jewish household. Today this practice of immersion is no longer fully observed in all Jewish denominations, with one exception − total immersion in the valid water of a Miqveh is and will certainly remain a general imperative condition for a convert to the Jewish religion. In this practice of totally immersing into flowing and, as such, valid water, superficial cleaning of the body is closely connected with inner purification of the mind. The Jews endow physiological facts with a second, religious meaning, leaving them as they are, but transcending their natural aspect. So while something resulting from a bodily process creates inner impurity, with ritual cleaning, what in religious language is called ablution, inner purity can be recovered. But something more happens. Being purified from an impurity is but one effect of the immersing bath in the Miqveh. It is the more important, if not the essential effect that by undergoing a purification ritual the Jew shows his obedience to his God’s commandments. This is the main topic of Jewish life as it is summed up in the last words of Ecclesiastes, one of the books of the Jewish holy scriptures: ‘Fear this God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man!’ (Eccl. 12.13) The high role purity plays in this context we find clearly expressed at the end of a long speech of the God of the Jews, already mentioned above, determining which animals are pure and which impure, which may be touched and eaten and from which Jews must keep away. In the words concluding the very detailed list the keeping or regaining of purity is identified with the special position of an obedient Jew toward his God. The words of God are: ‘Ye shall not make yourselves unclean, that ye should be defiled thereby. For I am the Lord your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy’.4 This does not mean that a human being, when keeping away from everything impure or having undergone a purification ritual, could be holy like God. It is said to man: ‘God is in heaven, and thou upon earth’. (Eccl. 5.2) For a Jew nearness to God and attaining holiness like his are unattainable goals. He nevertheless expends a lifelong effort to reach this goal by doing something in strict obedience to his God’s commandments, just acting, irrespective of any feelings. This is the essence of Jewish religion. Man on earth, certainly, is master of his or her own

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fate, free to decide on good or on evil, free to follow God’s commandments or not. But whoever wants to live as a Jew has to accept, the according to Jewish tradition, Godgiven rules about impure and pure, and he obediently has to submit again and again, his whole life long to the necessary rituals of purification which God has included in these rules and commandments. This again shows the religious circle of impurity and purification, the central subject of this lecture. While the problem of impurity and purification in Jewish religion mainly is a matter of lifelong activity demanded of each Jew as individual obedience to God, in Hindu tradition it has a strong social touch, regulating the life of Hindu society in most of its aspects. This again is based on a myth forming an image of man, but not on a myth similar to that of man’s offence and ejection from paradise in Jewish tradition. The Hindu myth is one beside several others, some dating back to very ancient times, some a bit younger, each of which explains the origin of the world in another way. In a younger hymn of the Rigveda dedicated to a huge male being called purusha (RV 10.90, the purushasūkta) it is told that the whole world came forth from this being after he had become the victim of a great sacrifice. Many phenomena of this world are listed in detail, among them the four principal classes of human beings in Indian society which later were subdivided into more than 3000 smaller units, the so-called castes. The myth relates that: ‘The brāhmana was his [the purusha’s] mouth, out of his two arms was made the rājanya [better known as kshatriya], his two thighs became the vaiśya, and from his feet the śūdra was born’. (RV 10.90.12) This ranking from mouth down to the feet does not only endorse the Hindu hierarchy in a formally social aspect. Another, even the main and in a sense religious aspect is purity, practised in a very complicated network of regulations concerning pollution, impurity and purification. These regulations are laid down in great detail in a Law Book ostensibly composed by Manu, a mythical person, son of the god Brahmā and progenitor of mankind. In this book we find material for a lifelong study. But here and now I concentrate on the underlying structure of the class system and its purity aspect. In all probability the myth of purusha was formed in order to endorse a class system which at that time was more or less established in India. The highest class was − and is in a sense still today − that of the brāhmana. The status descends through kshatriya and vaiśya down to śūdra and goes even farther down to those beyond the ranking system, the so-called outcasts. Unlike the Jewish image of man the status of a human being in India is an inborn quality. This is practised above all in terms of purity, pollution,



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and impurity. But it is a very special kind of purity, it is absolute as well as relative. The members of each class are pure among themselves, of the highest class just as of the lowest. However they become polluted if they come into contact with members of another class, especially the members of a higher class contacting those of a lower one. This in daily life needs scores of highly complicated rules which cannot be addreessed in this lecture. I restrict myself to the fact that the base of this class system is seen by Hindus as a religious hierarchy, founded on the concept of rebirth and karma. Whether a human being is born into a higher or a lower class, a purer or a less pure one, results from the quality of thoughts, words and deeds accumulated over past lifetimes. And the members of the highest class, the brāhmana, are elevated by Hindu tradition to the position of preserver and protector of the universe. They alone are the ones who have to fulfill the demands of sanātana dharma, the ‘eternal truth’. In Manu’s Law Book we read: ‘The very birth of a brāhmana is an eternal embodiment of dharma; for he is born to fulfill dharma and worthy to become brahman [i.e. finally to attain salvation]. He is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasure of dharma’. (Manusmriti 1.98 and 99) The high-grade purity of the brāhmana, which is derived from his high religious position and which isolates him, is exemplified by some rules concerning his external conduct: ‘The brāhmana eats but his own food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in alms’. (Manusmriti 1.101) In all four classes smaller pollutions as they are described in many chapters of Manu’s Law Book can be purified by different purification rituals, remedies, as prescribed in the book right after the descriptions of pollutions. But in principle there is no ritual offering the member of a class the chance to enter a higher class with a higher degree of purity, in order to come nearer to salvation. In the Hindu religion however, ways to salvation have been developed which for a single person repeal the rules of the four classes. These ways could be another lecture under the heading Purification of Mind, similar to that you just heard by professor Sawai, but that would not be the subject I was about to present to you. I conclude: The message of my reflections is a modest one. To begin with, I wanted to connect the relation between Tenri and Marburg with the central subject of the symposium starting today. This I did with the first of three examples, by talking about the differing importance of virginity in the biographies of Miki Nakayama and Saint Elizabeth. Then I turned to religions in general, focussing on two, the Jewish tradition and the tradition

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of the Hindus. Much more than most other religions do, both regulate their socio-religious life to a great extent in terms of impurity, pollution, purity and purification. All three examples demonstrate how religious traditions, on the base of principally different images of man, explain the world each in its own way. And this is true of every religion. Religions do not depict the world, they create their own world, transcending the conditions given by nature and felt as being natural by human beings apart from the religion. It would be too harsh to say that, in a transcendental sense, impurity, pollution and the ensuing purification were ‘invented’ by religions. But we can say that religions denaturalize the world by declaring this and that, even human beings, as impure. Thus, purification becomes a necessity. This may be criticized, but it might be the central task of religions they have to fulfil to the benefit of the world and mankind.

Notes 1 Ewald Könsgen (ed., trans.), Libellus de dictis quatuor ancillarum Sancte Elisabeth confectus. Das Leben der Heiligen Elisabeth (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2007), pp. 137–93 (156, author’s translation). 2 Monika Rener (ed., trans.), Dietrich von Apolda, Das Leben der Heiligen Elisabeth (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2007), pp. 88, 90 (author’s translation). 3 Cp. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, ‘Commandments’, Arthur A. Cohen and Paul Mendes-Flohr (eds), Contemporary Jewish Religious Thought (New York: The Free Press and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1987), pp. 67–80 (69). 4 Abridged from Lev. 11.43–45.

4

Purification and Transformationin Comparative Perspective Michael Pye

The title of this symposium, Purification: Religious Transformations of Mind and Body, suggests an extremely rich subject matter, and it will surely be easier if we begin with some systematic orientations and conceptual clarifications. Even if not all who are present agree on these in detail, the points of reference may be useful for the articulation of debate. With this in mind, this introductory lecture is broadly based and will have just a few examples to illustrate the intended perspective.1 First let me note that our main term ‘purification’ has been used for a long time with a wide spectrum of associations, starting at one end with release from ritual pollution, and suggesting at the other end an entirely spiritualized ideal of perfection. There are many cases which fall somewhere in between, depending on the context of various religious systems. Let us look first at the two opposite ends of the spectrum of usage. The concept of purification has a long history in conjunction with opposing terms such as pollution or taboo (tapu). In this sense it has played a widespread, if not universal role in the study of ‘primal religions’ or, as some prefer, ‘indigenous religions’, terms which will receive further comment below. Most generally stated, in these cases it is ritual separation which is above all important. The objective, in summary characterization, is to identify and secure an area or a realm of ritual purity, and hence of ritual security and ritual effectiveness. Any visit to a Shintō shrine will illustrate this, because the first thing which visitors to the sacred area do is to rinse their mouth and their hands with water at the temizuya, just inside the entrance to the grounds. If the visit is a more formal one, that is, if a family or some other group are led in offerings and prayer by a priest inside the prayer hall, then the first thing the latter will do is to ask the assembly to bow their heads for the performance of o-harae. This is

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a ritual purification symbolized by the waving of a wand to which large strips of white paper are attached. In such cases, the whiteness symbolizes purity. For a similar reason, the ends of beams used in the construction of Shinto shrines are sometimes painted in white.2 The sacred area, or as one may equally say, the taboo area, is also separated off as a pure area, marked by various kinds of boundary symbols such as the torii (symbolic gateway) or the shimenawa (a rope of symbolic separation suspended above the shrine entrance), to which white strips of paper (gohei) are usually affixed. Thus, as far as purification is concerned the main conceptions in the context of Shintō are clearly concerned with separation, a common feature of primal religion. Shintō, as we now know it, is a primal religious system which has been adapted to modern times. Though it no longer has a complete claim on Japanese society at large, it continues to have a broad social base, and more significantly, claims to have one. The concept of ritual purification is extremely widespread in the history of religions and scarcely needs specific documentation here. Suffice it to recall the extreme detail of purification procedures in historically complex religions such as Judaism, notably in the book of Leviticus, and in Zoroastrianism, which is an even more complex case in that the concept of purification itself leads into major questions of spiritual attitude and development. To a certain extent the same intention can also be seen in liturgies which were developed much later, while drawing on ancient religious custom to a certain extent. In the Anglican churches for example, before the priests or deacons enter the church area set aside for liturgical use, they will usually wash their hands, put on a white cloak (alb), possibly sound a gong, say a short introductory prayer in private, and only then become visible to the assembled congregation. So they are enacting a visualized separation from the profane world from which they came, before carrying out their specific functions within the liturgy. We should notice however that ‘purification’ as such is here no longer the dominant theme. Rather, it is a matter of mental preparation, and of indicating to others that this mental preparation has been carried out in order to create confidence in the wider assembly. Moving along to the other end of the spectrum, we may notice that taken literally the term ‘purification’ implies an action, as is evident from its etymology. Now it is one thing to purify a separate, restricted space, or those who enter it. But if we take purification in conjunction with ‘transformation’, as in ‘transformations of mind and body’ (the symposium theme) the locus of meaning shifts considerably. The term can then take on meanings which are related less to ritual demarcations, which are above all socially significant, and



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more to a process of individual religious development. It is one thing to purify by means of ritual separation or exclusion. It is a very different thing personally to seek a kind of spiritual purification, in mind and body, as a religious process in the experience of the individual. I would therefore like to propose that these are two very different kinds of ‘purification’. Not surprisingly, these two main kinds of ‘purification’ can be linked to the wider typology of religions. Moreover, just as in the general typology of religious systems, there are in-between cases which require careful elucidation. These matters may seem rather evident to some, but it still sometimes seems to be necessary to point out that there are two main types of religion, of which the characteristics vary accordingly. Attention is drawn here to a table which was first shown at the ‘Tenrikyō-Christian dialogue’ held at the Gregorian University in Rome in March 1998. This table sets out some details of the two main types of religion, but without specific reference to purification. It is therefore repeated here so that the relevant positioning of purification can be elucidated. Primal religion (which secures the integrity of society and is in principle obligatory) regular features: social coherence identity celebration rites economic effectiveness hunting rites fertility rites industrial rites protection avoidance rites (social) positioning of individual individual life rites (including social initiation) soteriological features: proximate salvation

healing rites, etc. avoidance rites (individual)

Critical religion (which provides solutions to the critical nature of human existence and is in principle voluntary) proximate salvation ultimate salvation guidance (michibiki) awareness/gnosis



healing rites, etc. avoidance rites

 initiation into special community   reinforcement rites 

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First a few general comments may be permitted. Although it has not become widely popular, I stand by the term ‘primal religion’. It is intended to be more precise than merely referring to ‘folk religion’, for example, or more recently ‘common religion’, etc. Reader and Tanabe rejected the term ‘primal religion’ on the grounds that ‘primal’ could be confused with ‘primitive’.3 It is difficult to see how we can make theoretical progress when different words are wilfully confused! It is quite acceptable if some authors prefer other terminology, but on the other hand expressions such as ‘common religion’ or ‘indigenous religion/s’ are inherently ambiguous. The expression ‘common religion’ can either mean ‘vulgar’ in the sense of ‘of the people’ or it can mean ‘shared by’ various parties. It is therefore fatally unclear. As to ‘indigenous religions’, recently promoted by James Cox with special reference to the African context, the expression seems to have a sociological ambiguity in that new religions which significantly differentiate themselves from an underlying religious pattern in any one society could also be regarded as indigenous by outsiders to that society.4 In the Japanese context for example, we might say that Kurozumikyō or Konkōkyō are indigenous new religions, for they are not imported from outside. However, they are typologically quite distinct from the primal religion of the country. They distance themselves in their own specific ways from the underlying generality of Japanese religious culture. Because of such difficulties, I prefer the term ‘primal religion’ for the latter.5 The main types referred to above are of course ideal types, to use the phrase of Max Weber, and while they can sometimes be seen in a very clear form, we also have to reckon with a certain ‘crossing over’ of characteristics. I prefer not simply to say ‘mixed types’ since this would be an admission that the typology does not work properly. For example, as debated by James Dator, is the Sōka Gakkai a ‘sect’ or a ‘cult’ or both?6 On the contrary, the crossing over of characteristics occurs for particular reasons in the dynamic context of historical developments. The apparent complexities do not affect the validity of the ‘types’ but simply mean that we have to think about the characteristics carefully. In terms of these two main types, with consequential differentiations, how does ‘purification’ fit in? Or rather, how are practices and processes associated with purification to be correlated with the overall typology? In fact, this is not so difficult to see. We have a determining starting point in the differentiation of ritual types, and the range of actions and attitudes which falls under ‘purification’ quite naturally spreads across the same pattern of differentiation.



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For example: (i) Purification for demarcation and the creation of identity and security (with or without water, e.g. Orthodox house rite for protection against malign influences from the four quarters). (ii) Purification as proximate salvation (in both primal and critical religion). (iii) Purification in the rites of initiation to a soteriological community (baptism in Christianity being an obvious case) which is a once-only matter. (iv) Purification in reinforcement rites (Zoroastrian purification rites and Mandaean repeated baptism, adducing John the Baptist). Standing under waterfalls in the Japanese Shugendō is thought of not just as arduous but also as purificatory of the ‘six roots’ of karma (rokkon shōjō). Again, it is relevant here to provide specific examples of relevant Japanese terminology. In view of the above typological considerations, it is not at all surprising that, while some kind of ‘purification’ is a major concept in several religious traditions of Japan, there are different words for it and indeed different understandings of it. The harae or kiyome of Shintō ritual is something which is usually performed for one, often by a priest who is in charge. It just takes place, to the satisfaction of the priest himself, for it is he (or rarely she) who is responsible for the purity of the demarcated, taboo place. Relatively little attention is paid to the attitude of the other participants. Of course, they are expected to be respectful, and some will no doubt feel moved in some way, mentally set at peace for a short time, and brought into a state in which they will not disturb the ritual purity. By contrast, consider the expression rokkon shōjō or ‘purification of the six roots’, referred to above, which is current in some of the Buddhist traditions of Japan, especially in the esoteric Shingon denominations. This definitely refers to the matter of one’s own personal discipline and achievement. The idea of the purification of the six roots is also widely current in the context of the Shingonrelated Shugendō, the semi-Buddhist tradition of mountain asceticism where there is a general assumption that hard practice, shugyō, will surely lead to transformatory results. Emphasis on such a process has been part of the long-term indigenization process of Buddhism in Japan. Somewhere between politics and folklore there is a wide area of religious activity and orientation in contemporary Japan which can fairly be referred to as ‘Shintō’. But what is Shintō? One way of working out an answer to this question is to take the ‘shrines’ (jinja, etc.) as a basic starting point, and indeed

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this is a firm assumption in the Shintō world itself. Since there are very many shrines throughout the whole country which are recognizable institutions and which are grouped together in associations, notably the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honchō), it is quite a reasonable approach to start here. However Shintō is not just a question of institutions. In connection with a pilgrimage around the shrines of Shimozuke (in eastern Japan), the leaflet containing all the information about them also has a short statement on ‘how to visit shrines’, and this gives some indication of the meaning which is considered to underlie the practice, a meaning which is espoused by the institutions. Though typical, it is just a little more explicit than the statements which are sometimes seen, common though they are. So how does one visit a shrine or, that is, perform o-mairi?7 What is one’s appropriate attitude towards a divinity or kami? Here is a simple explanation of how to do o-mairi. First purify your hands and mouth at the water stand (temizuya) and proceed to the front of the main shrine.8 Offer a coin and ring the bell. The bell has the meaning of attracting the attention of the kami-sama and of cleanly purifying oneself. Making your petition within your breast, do two bows, two claps and one bow. In bowing deeply twice, clapping the hands twice, and at the end making one more bow and then withdrawing, it is most important, above all, to do o-mairi with a grateful heart.

Clearly a dominant level of meaning is to be seen in the wish to receive, and ensure this-worldly benefits. These are often set out in detail. However the opportunity is also taken to instruct visitors in the correct manner of visiting a Shintō shrine. Moreover it is emphasized that, above all, the visit should be carried out with a sense of gratitude. That is to say, even while the mood of the visitor may be one of expectation, the complementary attitude of gratitude for favours received is presented as being even more important. Note however that ‘gratitude’ is a value which is also generally current, in Japan, in what is usually referred to by observers as civil religion. The specifically Shintō note is added by the emphasis on ritual and inner purity. While an emphasis on purity is clearly promoted by the Shintō purification rituals (harae or kiyome) the ‘purification’ of the heart, or of one’s being, is an intention which is not restricted to Shintō alone. Indeed the yamabushi 山伏 and related mountain traditions which are conveyed within and between Buddhism and Shintō (i.e. Shugendō) are known for their emphasis on the ‘purification of the six roots’ (rokkon shōjō 六根清浄) mentioned above. In this expression the ‘six roots’ refer to the six sense organs, traditionally listed



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(in Buddhism) as eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind. By ‘body’ is meant the physical basis of all sensory perception, i.e. physical feeling, which escapes further definition, and by ‘mind’ is meant the organ of conceptual perception, this usually being regarded in Buddhist analyses as the sixth of six senses. It is possible to take rokkon shōjō as an entirely Buddhist notion. However it just happens to fit conveniently also with the Shintō concept of purity, while leading one somehow beyond it into the Buddhist area. This probably accounts for its widespread use not only in Shingon Buddhism and among the yamabushi of Shugendō, but also among groups of Shintō-oriented pilgrims, for example on the three mountains in northern Japan known as Dewa Sanzan (Haguro-san, Gassan, and Yudono-san).9 The full phrase recited is zange zange rokkon shōjō 懺悔懺悔六根清浄 i.e. ‘penitence, penitence, purify the six roots’. In part because of this motivation and impetus towards personal transformatory processes within the Buddhist tradition, we may also remark shifts of emphasis in the wider field of religious activities influenced by Shintō. As with other primal religious systems, so too has Shintō provided a matrix for the appearance of new and independent soteriologies, religious options which answer to a sense of dissatisfaction with the on-going life as usually experienced at the level of primal religion. Normally, within Shintō, there is no need for religious ‘enthusiasm’, no need for personal conversion or transformation, no need for any special kind of spiritual development beyond normal psychological maturation. Precisely this however is offered by various new religions which include ideas and routines of purification in their activities. The group of religions known as World Messianity (Sekai Kyūseikyō) for example, focuses on a daily practice of mutual jōrei, a distinctive term usually left untranslated within the group itself in communication with its foreign members, and so highlighted as a special one.10 It means approximately ‘purification of the spirit’ although it is also considered to bring physical benefits to the sick. Hardly known today, but a thoroughly relevant example for typological consideration, is the religion known as Misogi-kyō, which means nothing less than ‘The Teaching of Purification’. This was a movement for enthusiasts who engaged in multiple washings of the body in order to experience a sense of religious concentration, a transformation of their being from its state in ordinary life. In 1973 it was possible to see a place just outside Ise Shrine (usually thought of as the most important of all Shintō shrines), very close to the main bridge which forms the entrance through which all must pass, where such ablutions were possible. There was a lowered area in which the practitioners could stand and where the water which they used would run off. All around

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were large wooden ladles, rather like those used in a traditional bath house. This arrangement has not survived however. The whole area before the shrine, outside the sacred area, has been steadily redeveloped as a tourist road. On recent visits informants have consistently claimed complete ignorance of any such religion as Misogi-kyō, or its facilities just outside the shrine. Clearly the group had been eased away from the area by pressure from the shrine authorities. This in turn illustrates that a separate, special transformatory process for just some individuals who think of themselves as special is not regarded as appropriate in relation to Shintō as such. On the other hand, the previously mentioned use of the term rokkon shōjō by the group of Shintō-oriented pilgrims on Gassan, mentioned above, to describe the intention of their arduous journey, is a further example of the way in which critical, transformatory religious patterns can be crystallized within the primal religious pattern. In complex societies, this primal pattern is constantly subject to pressure and stimulation from the various ‘critical’ religions, i.e. from religious orientations which demand or seek for more than is normally available in life’s natural routines. The precise status of such ‘Shintō’ pilgrims is unclear, and this ambiguity, which is typologically speaking prior to the emergence of a full-blown new religion, is facilitated by the arrangement known in Japanese as a kō, a religious interest group. Such groups are often formed specifically to perform religious journeys, which are in turn thought to contribute to the spiritual development or transformation of the individual in mind and body. The very idea of a religious development in the individual is much stronger in some kinds of religion than in others, so that it is necessary to co-ordinate that too with any consideration of the general typology of religions. If it is an individual process which involves both body and mind, then it will involve matters not only of a ‘spiritual’ kind, as they are sometimes referred to in sokushin jōbutsu religious contexts, but also of a behavioural kind, ritual or otherwise. The phrases ‘mind and body’ or ‘body and mind’ are quite convenient expressions in English, but what do they hide? In other words, what exactly is the locus of religious or spiritual transformation in any one case? A well-known Japanese expression is 即身成仏, ‘attaining buddhahood in this very body’, which sounds clear enough, yet we have to remember that a state of buddhahood is at the same time a state of mind or consciousness, and is so presented in Buddhist contexts. So there is a close connection between mind and body. Indeed, if we think of the expression shikishin funi 色心不二which is typical of Mahāyāna Buddhism, we are reminded that ‘form’ (which includes body) and ‘consciousness’ are non-dual.



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We sometimes hear scornful references to ‘logocentricity’, especially with respect to western Christianity. It may be that this is justified with respect to some variations of Protestantism, and in so far as it is so, then it may be argued that this arose because of the problem of authority in the church and the consequent emphasis on the biblical writings as the preferred locus of authority, over against the papacy or even councils. This in turn led in Protestant sectarianism, to what may be called Biblicism, typical of the North American religious scene, a form of Christianity which fails to make the dialectical distinction between the New and the Old Testaments, and treats all biblical writings as being of equal status and even literal validity. However logocentricity is not typical of all Christianity. Indeed, in the major historic forms of Christianity there has usually been a very strong consciousness of the body as the essential locus of spiritual endeavour or spiritual growth. This can be seen in the long tradition of Christian asceticism, however imperfectly striven for. Insofar as asceticism was rejected in the classical Protestantism of the historic Reformation, as an expression of the ‘works’ through which nothing can be achieved except failure, there was in a sense a rejection of the relevance of the body for the spiritual life. On the other hand, the subsequent rejection of the body as such in the Puritan way of life, following some indications in the epistles of the New Testament, eventually gave way in favour of a new, apparently secularized centrality of the body in Western culture, as seen in later modern times. How was this possible? The usual idea is that mediaeval concepts of the body as a suitable object of mortification were replaced, at least for some, by the revival of classical aesthetics during the Renaissance. At the same time however, we may see in the Protestant rejection of asceticism, because of its supposed contribution to a heretical reliance on ‘works’, a freeing of the body from urgent theological and spiritual relevance. This freeing of the body, after the passing of the age of puritanism, ultimately led to its rediscovery as a new locus of spiritual value, as can be seen in the sustained interest in yogic meditation, mystical dance, neo-shamanic adventures, and so on, in the second half of the twentieth century and onwards till today. Room has even been made for this broad movement in various ways by the mainstream Christian churches. The result is that the idea of ‘religion’ as being a purely cerebral or logocentric matter has long lost favour. Indeed, it has rarely if ever been specifically advanced as such, except in a certain way by the fundamentalist, Biblicist stream mentioned earlier. Even in such contexts, the so-called pentecostalist variations make considerable use of the body, although purely imitative and often strongly manipulative forms are usually dominant.

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The word ‘spiritual’ and its cognates have now appeared several times. This term is of course contentious, just as the terms ‘religion’ or ‘religious’ have often been contentious. In the study of religions we are used to this. So what, especially in connection with the current theme, is the relationship between these leading terms? Recently there has been a strong trend to separate ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’, sometimes by default, but sometimes by driving an intended wedge between them. According to this fashion, the area of ‘religion’ is scorned, while something called ‘spirituality’ is held in high esteem. This seems to be mainly because of a popular assumption that ‘religion’ is something to do with ‘belief ’, or with ‘beliefs’, and even more specifically with beliefs which cannot be entertained rationally. This assumption is even shared by clever people such as cognitive scientists who gleefully explain just how it is that ‘religious’ people carry irrational beliefs in their heads about ‘supernatural agents’. By contrast it is assumed (though not by cognitivists) that ‘spirituality’ is a matter of the higher heart, somehow elevated and not conceptually limited, neither falsifiable nor verifiable, and therefore not really subject to any rational critique or even any intellectual systematization. This loose usage has been taken up as a slogan-like catch-all for social scientists to claim major funding for new studies of ‘spirituality’, thus cutting out those who would study such an out-ofdate and discredited matter as ‘religion’. From the point of view of the study of religions, or Religionswissenschaft, such assumptions should of course be roundly rejected. There are two good reasons for thinking otherwise. First, the area which is nowadays referred to as ‘spirituality’ is of course not at all new, but has always been an aspect of religion. Even the term itself (in Western languages) has a long pedigree. It is not for nothing that a Maurice F. Wiles’ book about the interpretation of the Gospel of St. John in the early church was entitled The Spiritual Gospel,11 picking up the Greek term pneumatikos used by Christians and Gnostics alike. So there is nothing new about ‘spirituality’. Second, these matters are all best understood in terms of a correlation of the major aspects or dimensions of ‘religion’, which can be defined and correlated most economically as four groupings: (i) the conceptual and symbolic, (ii) the social and institutional, (iii) the behavioural and ritual, and (iv) the subjective and attitudinal. Sometimes one or other of these main aspects is emphasized, and this is quite natural when the study of religions is regarded as an interdisciplinary exercise. However it goes wrong when one of the four main aspects is highlighted to such an extent that another is lost from view. When people refer to ‘spirituality’ they are usually highlighting the subjective and attitudinal aspect of religion, possibly with some reference to the conceptual and symbolic



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aspect as well. So when the term ‘spirituality’ is used as a designation for a pars pro totum, distortion occurs, one aspect being picked out to stand for the whole. And the word used in this apparently fresh sounding sense is not in fact adding anything. It is like saying, ‘We aren’t going to study fungi any more, and certainly not mycology; we’re going to study mushrooms. So please fund us!’ On the other hand, insofar as account might be taken of all four main aspects of religion, the study of ‘spirituality’ would simply be a replacement for the study of religions, with no scientific advantage. Insofar as there is an acceptable usage of the term ‘spirituality’ in the study of religions, in the context of Religionswissenschaft, it would be a usage which intentionally focuses, quite strongly, on the subjective/attitudinal aspect of religion, even while taking account of the connecting threads to the other main aspects of religion: the conceptual/symbolic, the ritual/behavioural and the social/institutional aspects. In this case, spirituality could be a rival or a replacement for ‘religiosity’, as often used by social scientists to refer to the subjective/attitudinal aspect of religion. Although we are not talking about systematic or pastoral theology here, ‘spirituality’ as a term highlights the positive intentionality of the religious persons whose experience is under study. There is no harm in that. It simply throws the emphasis on the initial tasks of recognition and characterization in the study of religions, work undertaken by those now regarded as having formed the ‘phenomenological school’, rather than on the subsequent tasks of analysis and explanation, which are more characteristic of those who nowadays claim to represent the ‘empirical’ social sciences. In fact, all of these tasks belong to the study of religion: recognition (of the phenomena), characterization, analysis and explanation. However, these matters concerning the methodology of the study of religions have been set out elsewhere.12 Returning to the overall title of this symposium therefore, it seems to me that by using these words, Religious Transformations of Mind and Body, we are establishing a certain focus. By referring to ‘transformations’ we are pointing, by preference, to religious systems where purification is understood as a process which changes individuals as they go along through life. Such processes are typical of what I call ‘critical’ religions. On the other hand we are not interested so much in demarcations between the profane and the taboo, however important these are in the primal religious systems for which such distinctions are typical. Moreover we are, on the other hand, conscious of the totality of the human person who is involved in transformatory processes, regarding mind and body as inseparable. The implication of this is that when religious teachers emphasize

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‘the body’ we will at the same time look for the patterns of interpretation which they bring with them. For example in Buddhist meditation we will take note of the underlying metaphysics which goes with it, even if it is ‘non-metaphysics’. There is hardly any such thing as ‘just’ doing meditation, supposedly without any conceptual presuppositions at all. In this regard the meditation suttas of the Theravāda Canon are of considerable relevance. And when religious teachers emphasize ‘mind’ we will note carefully how they understand the relationship between consciousness and thought processes. This will link up with the way in which we explore the connecting threads between the subjective/attitudinal and the conceptual/symbolic aspects of religion. In this way we can follow through the patterns of spirituality found in various religious contexts, and understand how acts of conscious purification can lead to transformative processes, whether gradual or in discontinuous steps.

Notes 1 The paper was originally entitled ‘Conceptual Patterns in the Analysis of Religious Transformations’. It is also due to be published in a section on comparative studies in a forthcoming collection by the author, entitled Strategies in the Study of Religion. Volume Two: Religions in Relation and Motion (Berlin: de Gruyter). 2 This does not imply that white always has this connotation in the Japanese context. It can also symbolize death as in the shirts of pilgrims who are provisionally dead to the world. 3 Ian Reader and George Tanabe, Practically Religious. Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998), p. 27. The espousal of the term ‘common religion’ seems to go back to the usage of Robert Towler, who was trying to find an alternative for ‘popular religion’, cf. his Homo Religiosus: Sociological Problems in the Study of Religion (London: Constable, 1974) p. 149. 4 A spirited espousal of the expression may however be found in James L. Cox, From Primitive to Indigenous: The Academic Study of Indigenous Religions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1977). 5 For a presentation of the key features of Japanese primal religion see Michael Pye, The Structure of Religious Systems in Contemporary Japan: Shintō Variations on Buddhist Pilgrimage (Marburg: Centre for Japanese Studies, Occasional Papers No. 30, 2004). 6 James Allan Dator, Soka Gakkai. Builders of The Third Civilization. American and Japanese Members (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969).



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7 That is, here, to perform a visit to a Shintō shrine, although the word is also used more widely in various religious contexts. 8 The honden. Usually the building before which individual prayers are offered is known as the haiden, behind which a smaller honden is situated. In some larger shrines it is also possible to walk round and stand in front of the honden, where the kami is presumed to reside. 9 Cf. Michael Pye and Katja Triplett, Streben nach Glück. Schicksalsdeutung und Lebensgestaltung in japanischen Religionen (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2007) and for an illustration of such pilgrims see Michael Pye 2004, frontispiece. 10 The spelling johrei will also be found. 11 Maurice F. Wiles, The Spiritual Gospel. The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959). 12 See especially Michael Pye, ‘Methodological integration in the study of religions’ and the diagram in ‘Getting into trouble with the believers. Intimacy and distance in the study of religions’, Strategies in the Study of Religion. Volume One (1.2) (1.6).

5

Matter Out of Placeas a Window into Purification Saburo Morishita

Introduction We are all inclined to have a sense of ‘cleanliness’ however strong or weak it may be. We endeavour to make sure things are ‘tidy’ and ‘clean’ at some time, and in some way or another, whether it be our offices, our homes, or our bodies. Cleaning, of course, does not exactly have the same meaning as ‘purification’ but the two concepts are interrelated from the perspective that both appear to have something which distorts the way ‘things should be’ from the way ‘things actually are’. The aberration believed to be found in such situated ideals could be a product of my own imagination, or it could be an objective one for anyone to see and believe, or may even be both. My decade-old car, for example, has been washed maybe twice this year. For car enthusiasts, leaving your vehicle in such conditions would be a grave matter indeed and for them I most certainly need to get the car, and maybe even my brain, ‘washed’. The same adage could also come from religious circles, too, as Tenrikyo members are encouraged to ‘cleanse’ the mind from mental dust so as to retain the full view of living the Joyous Life which is taught as the purpose of human existence. Needless to say, the differences between a vehicle and a human mind are infinite, but the similarities for wanting them ‘cleansed’ are very down to earth and real: there is an ‘ideal condition’ with an unnecessary ‘gloss’ attached to it. Metaphorically, such gloss can be likened to a haze which hinders light from shining from its ideal state. Cleaning, and to a certain extent ‘purification’, may just then be a removal of the unnecessary, of eradicating the undesirable, so as to allow for that ‘ideal condition’ to be. Although easier said than done, cleaning could be thought of as a casting away of certain (unwanted) elements from an ideal whole and could therefore be cast

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as a ‘subtraction’ of sorts. It goes without saying that this view of ‘subtracting’ may also be deployed in the analysis of ‘purification’. If we are to quantify these concepts, let’s say, by focusing upon objective spatial features as ‘the really real’, then what we are left with is an emphasis on context whereby boundaries and things within those confines are as important as what needs to be subtracted. It is here that we come to the notion of ‘matter in place’, and ‘matter out of place’, and I would like to begin by sticking to and developing the latter. ‘Matter out of place’ is a term the social anthropologist Mary Douglas employs in her seminal work Purity and Danger1 which has been listed as among the hundred most influential non-fiction books since the Second World War.2 Her theory appeals not only to students of social anthropology but to non-specialized ones as well. Indeed, there is a sense that her ideas will help fuel a discussion regarding the transformations of body and mind through purification particularly when fleshing out an idea as simple as ‘matter out of place’ to help the inquiry along. In this essay, therefore, I first revisit Mary Douglas’ notion of ‘matter out of place’ and provide an overview of her claims. From there, I introduce the arguments in favour of cremation during the cremation movement’s early years in the United States (America hereafter). This section serves as an example couched comfortably in both the notion of ‘matter out of place’ and the theme of bodily and mental transformations through purification. Lastly, I wrap-up the presentation by specifying some points in a self-reflexive manner in light of present-day ‘purification’ notions and practices.

Dirt: ‘Us and Them’/‘Hygiene and Impurities’ Mary Douglas’ concern for everyday ‘cleanliness’ and its implication for analysing so-called primitive (and in a broad sense ‘other peoples’) patterns of ‘purification’ is suggested quite forcibly from the very start. She claims that dirtavoidance ‘is a creative movement, an attempt to relate form to function, to make unity of experience. If this is so with our separating, tidying and purifying, we should interpret primitive purification … in the same light’.3 As this statement shows, one of her core arguments is to demonstrate that the dichotomy between ‘us’ (believers of great religions) versus ‘them’ (believers of so-called ‘primitives’ religions), common among anthropologists then and still prevalent among the general public today, is an untenable analytical difference which necessitates discovering similarities – a common humanity – to overcome it. In search for a generic platform, Douglas suggests pollution ideas and shows that they



Matter Out of Place

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are universal for two reasons: they possess a strong language which influence behaviour and they relate to social life when used as analogies to express the social order.4 With this framework, Douglas then introduces the rather commonly confounded relationship between ‘uncleanliness’ and ‘hygiene’ in modern society, and by extension, how this misinformed connection should not be considered pivotal if we wish to pursue a comparative project on ‘purification’. Along the way, Douglas draws out a few precautionary conditions for comparing ‘our’ hygiene with ‘their’ idea and action of ‘pollution’. First, Douglas argues against ‘medical materialism’ which she claims has had a negative impact on explaining (away) how rituals – especially those that are considered to be ancient and performed by the ‘other’ – are based upon hygienic sensibilities.5 The notion that Jews do not eat pork because of the health dangers of eating it in hot climates or that incense is important in rites to make reprehensible odours a bit more tolerable are exemplary of reducing symbolic action into salutary matters. Thus, medical materialism, a term apparently coined by William James to signify the reduction of religious experience into medical terms, should not be considered a factor for analysing purification. Second, Douglas asserts that the view of non-Western rituals having absolutely nothing to do with our modern notions of cleanliness is also deceptive since this only heightens the differences between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as in, to quote Douglas, ‘our practices are solidly based on hygiene; theirs are symbolic; we kill germs, they ward off spirits’.6 As a result, Douglas argues, we must therefore re-evaluate our ideas about ‘cleanliness’ by first examining our notions of ‘dirt’. At this point Douglas introduces the notion ‘matter out of place’, another phrase which also appears in William James’ most widely known work.7 For Douglas, dirt is ‘matter out of place’ and this brings about two conditions: (1) a set of ordered relations and (2) a contravention of that order.8 The kernel of this claim is that dirt ‘is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements. This idea of dirt takes us straight into the field of symbolism and promises a link-up with more obviously symbolic systems of purity’.9 In so saying, dirt is a relative idea whereby the location of the stuff defined as such is as salient as the things surrounding it: sneakers are not dirt in themselves but they are when placed in the middle of a dining table among dishes to be consumed for dinner; a brush for polishing a toilet may not be dirty when hidden away behind a toilet but is considered very filthy when placed inside a toy box with a teething toddler nearby. In other words, dirt, and by extension

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impurities to a certain degree have for their criteria an ordered system in which they do not ‘fit in’. Perception therefore becomes a key factor in our efforts to understand ‘purification’ since the ability to perceive things and to almost instantaneously recognize and schematize where they belong is part of human nature itself.10 After developing a connection between matter out of place with the notions of ‘ambiguities and anomalies’, Douglas concludes with the following summary: ‘Defilement is never an isolated event. It cannot occur except in view of a systematic ordering of ideas … [and] the only way in which pollution ideas make sense is in reference to a total structure of thought whose key-stone, boundaries, margins and internal lines are held in relation by rituals of separation’.11 In this way, dirt, when defined as ‘matter out of place’, can be enlightening when probing questions are asked: is purification, as mentioned earlier, attained by eradicating the presence of something ‘out of place’? Do we consciously try to remain at bay from the perils of ‘matter out of place’ so that ‘purification’ as it were remains in place? Because the human body is the quintessential symbolic classificatory system, it is no wonder then that notions of ‘dirt’ would engage the natural symbol for which out-of-place things – blood, excreta, urine, feces, breast milk, and saliva – are redefined based on cultural biases. Yet what about the natural symbol itself when it loses life and ceases to breathe? Obviously, it becomes a very significant but nevertheless lifeless ‘matter out of place’ and all cultures of all ages have had to somehow deal with it. In what follows I will introduce the arguments in favour of cremation at a time when purposely inflaming the body was still unheard of, and somewhat revolting if anything, during the early years of cremation’s beginnings and will analyse the associated ideas with a ‘matter out of place’ framework. The outcome may just be a useful way to open a small window into the general notion of purification.

Some Pro-Cremation Arguments According to Stephen Prothero, upon whose work I substantially rely on below, the nascent cremation movement of late nineteenth century America triggered a change in post mortem attitudes by translating the incineration of the lifeless body as ‘purification’.12 Prior to the introduction of cremation practices in America, the only way to dispose of the body after death was to have it buried at a befitting place – the graveyard. In a typical fashion, the corpse was primed



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into an appropriate casket for a religious rite and, after the proper funerary procedures, the body was interred in the graveyard precinct while lying in the casket with feet usually pointing east. Conceptually, the body returned to earth – its proper post mortem place – to ‘enjoy eternal sleep’ whereby the body would be resurrected after death. In America during the 1870s, it was undoubtedly believed that both body and soul were particularly thought to be an entity in one being. Having a burial after death meant a preparation for the whole person to be raised out of the grave in bodily form so that God could transport the body to a heavenly state. Such burials are a time-honoured tradition and, as with all things with a rather long history, centuries had to pass before the emergence of an alternative post mortem procedure could be accepted. One may therefore envision that the introduction of cremation in the 1870s to certain classes of the American people definitely raised many eyebrows and caused some really ‘grave’ concerns. In the attempt to incorporate cremation practices into American society, two types of arguments which were not unrelated to each other were made. One of them was the scientific sanitary perspective whereas the other was a spiritual one. These views were forcefully represented through two leading cremation activists, Persifor Frazer Jr. and the Reverend Octavius B. Frothingham. Whereas the former endeavoured especially to convince sceptics from the sanitary perspective, the latter carried the debate over to the pulpit in the hopes of rallying support for what was by and large considered to be a deplorable ‘heathen’ practice.13 Both made their pro-cremation positions public in 1874 and, according to Stephen Prothero, these two ideas became the basic foundations for the cremation claims to take place in the years thereafter.14 Frazer’s claims were based on the then popular theory that diseases could spread from dangerous gases emitted from decaying organic matter called ‘miasma’.15 Dead bodies buried in graves were thought to send off toxins into the air and spill into the water, resulting in fever, diarrhoea, and in some cases, death among the living. Cremation, therefore, was the very way to protect the living and their environment from those malignancies. Frazer also added a theologically bent argument that God is so omnipotent that God could raise the dead in either full-body form from the graveyard or the remains of one from an urn.16 Frothingham’s claims were spiritually effective, not in the name of Christianity, but in the name of religion. Rather than arguing that sizzling human bodies would be a reason for interreligious discord, he urged that the end result of cremation was reconcilable with any belief and therefore a way toward better

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relations, past and present, among religions.17 Connecting cremation with so-called ‘heathen’ Greek and Roman practices, he endeavoured to show that ‘heathens’ were as ‘intelligent, refined, and worshipful’ as the most ‘genteel Americans’, and that they possessed in their funerary practices ‘feelings of the noblest kind, with veneration and tenderness, and regard to moral obligation’.18 While compassionately preaching that Christians and ‘heathens’ could be read from the same page, Frothingham then argued that nature slowly decomposes the body and consumes it, standing the common Christian notion of ‘eternal sleep’ on its head. Resting in peace, as the adage goes, no longer was tenable since a corpse simply didn’t belong below the surface of the earth – ‘out of place’ as it were – especially under such horrid conditions. To be buried underground for Frothingham signified the prolonged deterioration of the corpse and cremation only provided a way to avoid this perverse fate: cremation most certainly would bring relief to anyone’s mind dead or alive. In this way, Frothingham endeavoured to persuade others that the place of the grave itself – the cramped, cold, and crowded lots – was far less attractive than the destination of the ‘clear blue of the skies’ of cremation.19 These two perspectives were aiming at one very powerful but simple dichotomous claim that ‘burial pollutes’ and ‘cremation purifies’.20 Coupled with the dangerous health concerns of the inhumation processes at that time, and especially the disfiguring upshots of the corpse remaining lifeless underground after the lapse of considerable time, pro-cremationist activists expressed spiritual standpoints of the human body and the afterlife by advocating for a more refined manner of human closure than the rather coarse one brought about by burial. It is important to note that the significance of this pollution/ purification dichotomy hinged on both sanitary and spiritual points. In other words, both religion and science interlocked with one another to fuel new meaning and provide a different order of meaning with regard to ‘tidying the dirt’ from the underground all the way up.

Purification and Sanitary Concerns Returning back to Douglas’ ‘us/them’ dichotomy, we moderns have always had a strong tendency to connect hygiene and health concerns with ‘purification’. Although Douglas would argue and cautions against ‘medical materialism’, she was far more concerned about applying those same values and ideals onto non-Western ones, dominating the ‘other’ with ‘our’ own categories for the sake



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of the comparative pursuit. In the case for the nascent cremation movement taking place during the development of modern America, however, hygiene was wholly a part of the classificatory system whereby the medical/hygienic concerns were as important as the symbolic ones. In fact, both spiritual and sanitary factors were, in the words of Stephen Prothero, ‘two sides of the same coin’ whereby one fed off the other and vice versa. This is still true today, for what is ‘healthy’, ‘sanitary’ and ‘hygienic’ have filtered into religious circles in the west as well as in Japan and have thereby become important factors, almost the criteria for, ‘purification’. The causes for this may just be that the development of medical science has become so influential that notions such as ‘germs’, ‘viruses’ and ‘bacteria’ are interwoven with everyday common sense in modern societies and therefore have sprawled even into our own theologies: hygiene appears to be the criteria for ‘matter out of place’ rather than a symbolic one. In other words, the classificatory system of the modern medical worldview does hold quite a bit of ground, a very powerful force, when elaborating and analysing the transformations of mind and body through purification. To say that we ought to seriously consider the way hygiene plays a role in our notion of purification would of course go against the grain of Mary Douglas’ ‘matter out of place’ enterprise. However, with fears of the first global pandemic in 41 years as the H1N1 influenza is still fresh in our minds, it would be reasonable to say that the ideas and practices of ‘purification’ within religion have been impacted by the recent changes being made in our day-to-day lives to avoid contagion. Though an extreme example, it just may be that these extremities actually provide an opportunity to help us put matter back in place.

Notes 1 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboos (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966). The book has been through numerous editions and has been translated into 15 languages. 2 ‘The hundred most influential books since the war: which books defined the second half of the twentieth century?’ The Times Literary Supplement, 30 December 2008. 3 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 2. 4 Ibid., p. 3. 5 Ibid., p. 29. 6 Ibid., p. 32.

56 Purification 7 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature (London: Fontana Library, 1960), p. 142. 8 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, p. 35. 9 Ibid., p. 35. 10 Ibid., p. 36. 11 Ibid., p. 41. 12 Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). An earlier shorter version regarding the nascent cremation movement and details of the execution of the first ‘scientific’ and ‘modern’ cremation appears in Stephen Prothero, ‘Lived Religion and the Dead: The Cremation Movement in the Gilded Age America’, David D. Hall (ed.), Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 92–115. 13 The sounds of the ‘sizzling’ burning human body in direct contact with fire coupled with the nauseous odour from internal organs and flesh are some of the examples of how deplorable it was to incinerate the body. For pro-burial supporters, then, the human body had a place after death – underground – whereby God could in time resurrect it. 14 Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire, pp. 17–20. 15 Ibid., p. 17. 16 Frothingham cited an article in his sermon by the then Bishop of Manchester, England, regarding the all-powerful possibilities of God. See Stephen Prothero, ‘Lived Religion and the Dead’, p. 94. 17 Stephen Prothero, Purified by Fire, p. 18. 18 Ibid., p. 19. 19 Ibid., p. 19. 20 Ibid., p. 20.

6

Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercisesunder the Aspect of Purification1 Gerhard Marcel Martin

I. Introduction In history, concepts of ‘purification’, understood as ‘religious transformations of mind and body’, are evidently perpetually present in the process of change and transformation. In my contribution I deal with a dramatic shift in Catholic spirituality in the interim time between the Middle Ages and the modern era represented by the theoretical construction and practice of the ‘Spiritual Exercises’ (SPEX) of the Spaniard Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556). He is the founder of the very influential Jesuit Order (Societas Jesu/SJ) which spread its missionary and educational activities all over the world. (The Jesuits reached Japan as early as 1549 for the first time.) SPEX do not represent the classic medieval tension of mystical withdrawal and worldly activities, rather they are unambiguously directed towards a full active engagement in church and society. Even when the exercises are done in groups they have their focus on the development of the single individual. With evident alliance to medieval spiritual movements (devotio moderna) they support and foster subjectivity. However they are not meant to be a private and personal substitute for the common outward practice of religion (mass, rituals), but to integrate such activities from within the individual. The SPEX have been put together in clear connection with an intensive personal process of mystical experiences and conversion up from 1521/2 (first publication in a Latin translation, approved by Pope Paul III, in 1548). ‘… this book is not a treatise on the spiritual life, nor was it composed to communicate its message through reading by a retreatant. Instead, it is a manual to guide exercises which were to be carried out by an exercitant, ordinarily with council from a director’.2

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The entire concept is an important part of the Catholic counter-reformation against the reformation initiated by Martin Luther, Huldreych Zwingli, Johannes Calvin and many others. At the same time, this reform process within the Catholic Church fought against the secular attitudes of the ongoing renaissance with its critical position over against religious traditions and also against spiritually more or less esoteric movements, such as the illuminati, which took up position alongside the hierarchically institutionalized church. Up to the present day SPEX are a central component of the Jesuit novitiate training programme and are offered in completely different settings both inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church and retreat centres.

Short Characterization of the spiritual exercises of Ignatius In the very beginning SPEX declare as their basic aim ‘to overcome oneself, and to order one’s life, without reaching a decision through some disordered affection’. (SPEX 21) SPEX are a four-week retreat programme which might be extended or shortened up. ‘… the First Week is devoted to the consideration and contemplation of sins; the Second, to the life of Christ our Lord up to and including Palm Sunday; the Third, to the Passion of Christ our Lord; and the Fourth, to the Resurrection and Ascension’. (SPEX 4) Thus, at the beginning there are well-structured repeated examinations of conscience (SPEX 24ff.) with the intention ‘to purify oneself, and to make a better confession’ (SPEX 32). Implicit effects are supposed to be ‘correction and improvement’ (SPEX 25). These examinations are followed by a composition of prayer, ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’, which have in common basic dynamics and ideas which in our context are more decisive than the inner distinctions that could be discerned between these entities. As far as means and media are concerned the essential characteristic of almost all exercises is that, beside verbal activities – especially prayers, usually as ‘colloquies’ with God the Father, Christ (Christ on the Cross, cf. SPEX 53) and the Virgin Mary –, they operate with techniques of the imagination. That means: something like an ‘inner stage’ is constructed, on which landscapes, ways and certain locations are imagined (e.g. SPEX 47). This is a methodological approach, by which complete scenes with the persons, which belong to the dramatic idea or to the biblical story, are built up. Quite often the exercitant is encouraged to enter the scene on his or her own and to communicate with the set of persons. The scenic atmosphere is augmented by the so called ‘application



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of the five senses’ (e.g. SPEX 66–70). Thus in this type of ‘imagination’ there is not only something and someone to be seen (1) and to be heard (2) but also to be smelled (3), tasted (4) and touched (5) (even by a kiss) (SPEX 121–6). Techniques like this seem to be very modern. We are familiar with them due to the therapeutic notion of ‘active imagination’ in the depth psychological treatments of Carl Gustav Jung and in ‘Gestalt’ therapy (Fritz Perls and others). Wherever important differences, as far as the entire conception is concerned, might remain, both systems have a basic idea in common, namely the importance of what Alfred Lorenzer calls ‘scenic understanding’ (‘szenisches Verstehen’). The theologian Eilert Herms explicates: ‘scenic’ refers to the ‘interaction with our objective and personal environment’. ‘The bodily Gestalt of words is always an ingredient of scenes of personal interactions one has experienced, one can remember or anticipate’.3 The whole procedure of Ignatius’ ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’ might be adequately and better understood if one applies the concept developed by Peter Schellenbaum who coined the term ‘mirror communication’ (‘Spiegelkommunikation’) as a basic term in the psychology of religion. Mirror communication ‘generally aims at the cognition of something which belongs to oneself which so heretofore is unconscious, but to be seen in a yet exterior image, so that it finally may become a mirror image’.4 In this communication a vivid back and forth between image and spectator occurs in an ongoing process of growing identity and remaining difference. For the mirror image never becomes identical with its counterpart, but helps to discover roles and aspects of one’s own life and ego, which had remained unconscious thus far and therefore did not belong to potentials of one’s own path of life. By way of this, biblical persons and scenes, God images, icons, rituals, prayers, stories, even ethic and religious concepts and ideas can bring forth existential changes of life and belief. That is exactly what happens when exercitants pray to a person they imagine in front of them and also and especially when they deal with inner fantasies concerning ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ and with biblical narratives. Following this brief characterization of SPEX, the second part of my presentation will attempt to show the attraction and the relevance of this material for the topic of our symposium: ‘Purification – Transformation of Body and Mind’ (beyond that which may have become evident already). And since my contribution is part of Session One (‘Theoretical Perspectives’) and not of Session Two (‘Historical Perspectives’), which may perhaps have been even more appropriate, I dare to continue the discussion of ‘conceptual patterns’ Prof. Pye has dealt with in his keynote address with a clear conscience.

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Basic Anthropological and Theological Patterns Let us begin with Ignatius’ conceptualizations of ‘mind’ and ‘body’. The SPEX are a procedure in which conscious intentions of the will and the activities of the conscience as well as of consciousness in general (the Spanish version, conciencia, contains both connotations) are predominant. The exercises of the first week deal with the ‘examination of conscience’ and the SPEX in general are supposed to support the process of ‘overcoming oneself ’ and of liberating oneself from any ‘disordered affection’. (SPEX 21) From this point of view SPEX really can be understood as a very special sort of ‘mind game’ (to allude to John Lennon). Where subconscious thoughts and affections had heretofore prevailed, a cleansed mind is to emerge. However this personal approach is not completely detached from other human basic modes of interaction towards oneself, the others and the world. SPEX are meant to reach and to reform not only the mind, but also the patterns of active life as well as the universe of feelings (emotions) and all kinds of inner ‘motions’ in connection with their bodily expressions. As far as feelings are concerned I would like to mention ‘shame and confusion about myself ’ (SPEX 48), ‘regret’ (SPEX 193), ‘sorrow with Christ in sorrow; a broken spirit with Christ so broken; tears; and interior suffering because of the great suffering, which Christ endured for me’ (SPEX 203) but also ‘gratitude’ and ‘love’ (SPEX 230ff.). From a general point of view Ignatius shows a rather well-balanced concept of the interrelation of ‘mind’ and ‘body’. ‘Very often … Ignatius uses the scholastic term anima (soul) to mean the person, the whole self considered as a compound of body and soul’.5 According to scholastic terminology the ‘soul’ has three powers: intellective, sensitive and vegetative. Further, a distinction between ‘lower’ or ‘inferior parts’ on the one hand and ‘higher parts’ on the other can be found. The ‘lower parts’ include ‘sensory faculties and appetites’. Here ‘the soul depends directly on the bodily senses for their operation. … The “higher parts” or faculties are the memory, intellect, and will’.6 Also the fact how Ignatius uses the term mociones (motions) shows the large scale of anthropological aspects he takes into consideration: ‘thoughts, impulses, inclinations, urges, moods, consolations, desolations and the like’.7 Mociones refer to ‘the interior experiences in the soul. They can be acts of the intellect (e.g., thoughts, lines of reasoning, imaginings, etc.); or of the will (such as love, hate, desire, fear, etc.); or of affective feelings, impulses, inclinations, or urges (such as peace, warmth, coldness, consolation, desolation, etc.). These can come (1) from ourselves under some control of our free will; or (2) from a good spirit (God or an angel); or (3) from an evil spirit’.8



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In the following I will share a few observations and hints concerning the way in which the body is truly integrated into Ignatius’ anthropological concept: changing positions in space while praying may be of importance, not to mention the relevance of body positions. A step or two away from the place where I will make my contemplation or meditation, I will stand for the length of an Our Father. I will raise my mind and think how God our Lord is looking at me, and other such thoughts. Then I will make an act of reverence or humility. / I will enter upon the contemplation, now kneeling, now prostrate on the floor, or lying face upward, or seated, or standing … if I find what I desire while kneeling, I will not change to another posture…9

Another interesting aspect of Ignatius’ advice on how to pray is his idea ‘to pray according to rhythmic measures’: In this … Method of Praying, with each breath taken in or expelled, one should pray mentally, by saying a word of the Our Father, or of any other prayer which is recited. This is done in such a manner that one word of the prayer is said between one breath and another. In between these two breaths one reflects especially on the meaning of that word, or on the person, to whom the prayer is being recited, or on one’s own lowliness, or on the distance between that person’s dignity and our lack of it.10

For me this advice proves the statement quite wonderfully that the SPEX are a ‘mind game’ in a certain tension but in clear relation to an explicit awareness of bodily existence. To add one last point as far as the body is concerned: Exercises in the third week even extend to ‘rules to order oneself henceforth in the taking of food’ (SPEX 210–17). These rules can be considered as short bodily and spiritual dietetics. One main point is to find out ‘what is more suitable to one’s own bodily sustenance’ as well as to increase the capacity to ‘perceive (more clearly) interior lights, consolations, and divine inspirations’. (SPEX 213) After all I hope that George E. Ganss’ general statement has some plausibility and even a certain self-evidence: ‘To make the Exercises according to (Ignatius’) directions requires a well-balanced union of logical reasoning, imagination, affectivity, and decisions’11 in explicit connection with all sorts of bodily realizations.

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Purification – Transformation of Mind and Body? a. The aim of purification: In SPEX ‘purification’ is not a specific term (terminus technicus). But that which this term refers to is a main point of the concept: SPEX aim at an ongoing process of clarification of all sorts of mociones, bodily expressions and conduct of life, which are supposed to lead to a decisively new orientation in life (‘election’) within the second week of these exercises already. To quote SPEX 21 once again: ‘Spiritual exercises are meant to overcome oneself, and to order one’s life…’ Purification in this conception does not lead to the extinction of negative elements, but much rather to a raised awareness of the different forces (or ‘energies’ or ‘spirits’) within and without me12 and to a radical change of patterns of ‘order’ and ‘disorder’. ‘Impurity’ basically is ‘disorder’. That is why I dare to argue that Ignatius’ type of purification does not lead to ‘transformation’, rather that the aim is ‘formation’. That which is out of form and without order is supposed to find a ‘form’. b. The means of purification: SPEX as a whole are acts of intensive communication with oneself under the spiritual guidance of a ‘director’ who is the personal representative of the hierarchically ordered Holy Church. With the risk that comes along with employing Freudian terms I dare to say: Where ‘id’ has been at work, ‘ego’ is supposed to take over. However, powerful and a diversity of (functional equivalents of) ‘super egos’ remain: e.g. the director, ‘the ten commandments, the precepts of the church, and the official recommendations of our superiors’ (SPEX 42), not to mention God, present in ‘Christ our Lord’, who is ‘our high priest, model, and rule’ (SPEX 344).13 After all, in SPEX ‘purification’ is neither a priestly directed procedure, nor an ‘objective’ ritualistic, nor an extraverted procedure in the church. What is by no means practised is ritual exorcism. The ‘discernment of spirits’ (cf. SPEX 328–36) is not the extinction of certain evil powers. Rather, ‘purification’ is a subjective development with a high grade of self-reflection and introspection, which may happen at any given place and under very different circumstances. That is why SPEX are, historically, an important step toward contemporary standards and procedures of professional pastoral care and personal spiritual guidance.14 c. Evaluation. What remains, for me is a strong tension and an ambivalence between ideas of subjectivity and autonomy on the one hand and dynamics of authoritarian heteronomy on the other. It is a tension between a model of open



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face-to-face communication, even in patterns of friendship even with Christ (cf. SPEX 54, 224) on the one hand and persistently enduring ‘top dog’ : ‘underdog’ models on the other.

Excursus at the End to Open Up the Horizon: Ignatius’ ‘Contemplation to Attain Love’ Ignatius’ rather rigid programmes – intended to clarify the will and gain selfcontrol – contain a tremendous beautiful exercise ‘contemplation to attain love’ at the very end of the fourth week (SPEX 230–7). Having surpassed aspects of mutuality in love, boundless gratitude and corresponding obligations towards God, creation as such comes into focus. To quote point 2 (SPEX 235) of this contemplation: … to look how God dwells in creatures, in the elements, giving them being, in the plants vegetating, in the animals feeling in them, in men giving them to understand: and so in me, giving me being, animating me, giving me sensation and making me to understand; likewise making a temple of me, being created to the likeness and image of His Divine Majesty …

Within point 3 (SPEX 236): … to consider how God works and labors for me in all things created on the face of the earth … as in the heavens, elements, plants, fruits, cattle, etc., giving them being, preserving them, giving them vegetation and sensation …

And in point 4 (SPEX 237): … look how all the good things and gifts descend from above, as my poor power from the supreme and infinite power from above; and so justice, goodness, piety, mercy, etc.; as from the sun descend the rays, from the fountain the waters, etc. …15

This exercise however does not lead out of the world, rather it leads into its deepest ground and toward its last horizon. The frame of reference for this exercise is a theology of creation and is oriented toward the world. It might be beneficial to strengthen all varieties of practice which are turned towards justice, kindness, piety and compassion.

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Notes 1 This text written in English and all translations of German texts are my own, with important support by Yorick Schulz-Wackerbarth, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. 2 George E. Ganss S. J., The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. A Translation and Commentary (Chicago: Loyola Press, 1992, pp. 2–3). 3 Eilert Herms, ‘Die Sprache der Bilder und die Kirche des Wortes’, Rainer Beck/ Rainer Volp/Gisela Schmirber (eds), Die Kunst und die Kirchen. Der Streit um die Bilder heute (Bruckmann: München, 1984, pp. 242–59 (247, 254). (Translation by GMM) ‘…in Interaktion mit unserer dinglichen und personalen Umwelt. … Die leibliche Gestalt des Wortes ist stets Ingrediens von Szene erlebter, erinnerter und erwarteter, personaler Interaktion’. 4 Peter Schellenbaum, Stichwort: Gottesbild (Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1981), pp. 9–10. 5 Ganss, p. 150, cf. e.g. SPEX 38, 40. ‘… to consider my soul as imprisoned in this corruptible body, and my whole compound self as an exile in this valley [of tears] among brute animals. I mean, my whole self as composed of soul and body’. (SPEX 47). 6 Ganss, pp. 158–9, cf. also SPEX 246. 7 Ibid., p. 144. 8 Ibid., p. 191. 9 SPEX 75–6. However this recommendation ‘will never be practiced in church in the presence of others, but only privately, for example, in one’s house’. (SPEX 88). 10 SPEX 258 (cf. SPEX 258–60). 11 Ganss, p. 150. 12 Entities which are relevant here have been mentioned already: ‘own powers under some control of our free will’, good spirits, evil spirits. (cf. note 7). 13 Cf. the last text units of SPEX 352–370 with the famous ‘principle’ of point 13: ‘What seems to me to be white, I will believe to be black if the hierarchical Church thus determines it’. (SPEX 365). 14 In this context cf. the elementary advice addressed to the director ‘to be more eager to put a good interpretation on the neighbor’s statement than to condemn it’. (SPEX 22). 15 Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. From the Literal Translation by Elder Mullan, S. J. http://www.nwjesuits.org/JesuitSpirituality/Exercises/SpEx230_260.html (accessed 6 January 2009).

7

Penance as a Ritual for Purification: Conceptual Transformation of Christian Sacrament in Early Modern Japan Ikuo Higashibaba

The primacy of practice over doctrine is clear in the Japanese approach to religions, especially in the realm of popular faith. Shinto is primarily a ritual tradition, and Buddhism, an imported religious tradition in Japan, took root and grew in Japan by responding to people’s religious expectations through its ritual practices. The same held true for the people’s approach to Christianity in Early Modern Japan. Since first introduced to Japan in 1549 by F. Xavier and his Jesuit companions, Catholic Christianity made remarkable progress in the country; there were more than 300,000 baptized Japanese adherents by the early 1600s. Its faith and adherents were called Kirishitan, from the Portuguese Christão. Kirishitan ritual practices – including sacramental rites, prayers, and the Mass – played significant roles in the followers’ religious lives. The Society of Jesus’ annual report for Japan in 1596 describes how many Japanese received sacramental rites in that year. The numbers were especially high in areas where missionaries resided. In Ōmura of western Kyushu, where four priests and nine Jesuit brothers stayed, most of the 20,000 Kirishitan in the domain came to make their confessions, with 1,600 receiving the Eucharist, 380 married in churches, and 393 baptized.1

Textual Explanation of Penance The Kirishitan were taught how they could rectify themselves by having their sins forgiven and attain the conditions for their salvation in the afterlife. They learned in particular the sacraments of Baptism and Penance as ‘the two ways the

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Lord Jesus Christ settled to forgive human sins (tsumi-toga)’.2 Through Baptism, Kirishitans’ original sin was forgiven, and so were their sins committed theretofore. Penance took care of sins committed since their Baptism or since their previous Penance. The Orasho no hon’yaku (Translation of prayers), published in 1600, lists eleven essential articles for the life of the Kirishitan, its ninth article saying: After one has received Baptism, one ought not to lose one’s confidence in [salvation in] the afterlife, no matter how serious a sin one may commit. This is because the Lord Jesus Christ, through his power, forgives one’s sins after Baptism by the sacrament of confession, if one regrets the sins after Baptism, begs Deus for their forgiveness, and makes one’s confession with resolution not to commit the sins again, or becomes determined to make it on the occasions decided by the Church.3

Not only did the Kirishitan texts advocate Baptism and Penance, but also the Japanese followers popularly accepted them. Although both sacraments are intriguing subjects for our discussion of ‘purification’ and thus deserve a detailed account, I would like to focus on Penance for the reason of space. Kirishitan had a rich textual explanation of Penance. According to the Dochiriina Kirishitan, the Kirishitan catechism, it is a ‘good spiritual medicine for curing sins, the illness of the soul’. It teaches Peance as comprised of contrition, that is, sorrow from the bottom of the heart, confession, verbal regrets, and satisfaction, passing away of one’s sins (toga-okuri). The Dochiriina Kirishitan then explains the essential point of each:4 D: How should I perform the true contrition? M: You should truly regret and have remorse for the sins you have committed against [the will of] Deus and make confession, finding occasions for it. [Contrition] is completed when you strongly resolve not to commit mortal sins thereafter and make up for the sins you committed. D: How should I perform confession? M: If it is your first confession, you should mention the sins you have committed since your Baptism. If you have done it before, you should reflect on the sins you have committed since your last confession and mention all of them. ... D: What is satisfaction? M: It is to make up for your sins to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is done by your sorrow and spiritual pains as well as the sending away of sins (toga-okuri) as directed by the padre.5



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Emphasis on Confession Among the three parts of the sacrament of Penance, Confession was the most important. We can find in Kirishitan texts such expressions as ‘Penance means confession’6 or ‘the sacrament of confession’.7 The Jesuits emphasized the frequent practice of confession. They had inherited ‘the view of medieval theologians about the necessity of confession to a priest for the forgiveness of serious sins’. Their particular emphasis on Penance was based on their view of confession as a means of ‘beginning a new way of life’. Jesuits encouraged confession as something one does periodically to aid spiritual growth and ‘to attain a better knowledge of oneself and more firmly turn to God and away from what was wrong and harmful’. The Jesuits taught it ‘as the keystone and expression of their conversion’.8 Confession was probably the most explicit demonstration of people’s association with the Kirishitan group. The actual practice of the sacrament in Japan was not always the same as in Europe due to the small number of priests available. Nonetheless, confession, which required the follower’s verbal and non-symbolic participation in the ritual act for the atonement of the evils they had committed, was not comparable with any popular ritual action in Japan. For, the Japanese popular religious ethos of protecting from and warding off evils was embodied in symbolic practice. Missionaries’ reports are full of stories of local Kirishitan flocking around padres, who at times had to listen to hundreds of confessions at one place. For example, in 1565, Kirishitan of the Bungo area in Kyushu, solicited priests to listen to their confessions, because they had spent 18 months without making it. Moved by the earnest request of the followers, priests finally began to listen to their confessions although their Japanese was not good enough to understand them.9 In 1589, 150,000 adherents were living in the western district of Kyushu. When a priest arrived in a local village, he collected all the Kirishitan and encouraged them to make their confessions. ‘Then’, the report says: The followers, singly out of their desire to be helped, accepted the padre’s recommendation willingly. They unanimously say that they feel great comfort by making their confessions. They believe that they become good Kirishitan only after making a confession. Therefore, at many places followers flock to make their confessions . . . and there are no priests who have not listened to more than one thousand confessions.10

In the same year, Padre Organtino alone listened to more than three thousand and five hundred confessions in Nagasaki and the surrounding area.11 The

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confessions were usually very concrete and detailed, including specifying how many times particular sins had been committed.

Contrition as a Substitute for Confession Despite the popularity of the rite of confession, however, priests were not always around when needed. According to the Jesuit annual report for 1596, when the Jesuit mission in Japan had advanced close to its peak, there were only 46 priests living at about 20 residences. Moreover, most of their residences were limited to western Kyushu, particularly in areas surrounding Nagasaki, with only a few others in Bungo, Kyoto, and Osaka.12 A great number of Kirishitan were unable to make confessions for more than a year, even in areas where Jesuit missionary work was most advanced. Moreover, even if a priest lived relatively close, he was not necessarily available when confession was most desired – when followers were on their deathbed, for example. In order to deal with the lack of padres, Kirishitan were instructed that, when a padre was unavailable for their confession, ‘they receive forgiveness for their sins by their regret and sorrow through contrition’.13 The Konchirisan no riyaku [Benefits of contrition] teaches: Contrition is done to have one’s sins forgiven; firm faith (in the Creed) is necessary; and one should leave oneself to Deus and Jesus Christ.14 In making contrition, Kirishitan had to examine if they had committed mortal sins, if they had lost Kirishitan faith by worshipping kami and hotoke, if they believed in non-Kirishitan teachings, or if they had acted against the Ten Commandments.15 They further had to resolve not to sin again. The Kirishitan were, however, taught also to regret sins they had forgotten or sins they had unconsciously committed. ‘Even though you do not recall a sin’, the manual of contrition says, ‘you should not feel at ease, thinking you have no sin’. If they had sins but did not make their confessions, the manual taught, they would fall into hell.16 It would hardly be surprising if such an instruction provoked the idea among the followers that they had to perform the contrition whether or not they had sins to confess. Very significantly, the Konchirisan no riyaku also taught a prayer of contrition for the follower’s self-fulfilment of contrition. Namely, the Japanese followers were taught a prayer that enabled them to receive the same benefits as from a formal confession with a padre. This prayer continued to be chanted by Kirishitan through subsequent centuries like many other prayers.



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Penance as a Ritual for Purification When confession was replaced by a Kirishitan’s formalized self-practice such as prayer, it could lose its intelligibility and cognitive aspects. Instead, it could enhance the symbolic character of the whole process of Penance and deal with non-cognitive and unconscious evils as well. The teaching about unconscious sins reveals an important aspect of the Kirishitan view of sin and of the practice of the sacrament of Penance. By incorporating unconscious sins, the Kirishitan sense of sin could, while retaining its strong ethical and religious flavour, dissolve into the Japanese popular concept of ‘pollution’ that broadly included indigenous ideas of physical and spiritual impurity called tsumi. The meaning of tsumi was based on an ancient connotation. According to Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801), a great scholar of the National Learning (kokugaku) in the Tokugawa period, tsumi ‘meant whatever people hate and abominate as evil, including not simply evil deeds, but also diseases, various disasters, filthy things, ugly things, and so forth’.17 The referent of tsumi, therefore, was not restricted to evil or sin in a moral sense. Tsumi broadly referred to ‘filthiness or impurity, physical and spiritual’,18 only a part of which was concerned with morality. ‘Tsumi was pollution of the senses’.19 This being the case, there was no clear distinction between moral guilt on the one hand and physical disaster and pollution on the other. Shinto purification was not just the purification from filth or pollution but also the rectification of evil.20 And all impurity could be removed by purification rituals. Furthermore, the Japanese popular sense of purity never developed into metaphysical or highly idealized forms. Rather, their sense of purity was expressed by concrete acts which would appeal to the senses and sentiment.21 Popular purification rites were, therefore, not a method of attaining something beyond, such as forgiveness of sins, divine grace or faith. The very act of purification was the embodiment of purity. Its meaning was confined into the action itself. Thus, the theological meaning of Penance could be corrupted when understood within the limits of Japanese popular understandings of ritual purification. When understood in this broad sense of ‘pollution’, the Kirishitan idea of human sin became quite recognizable in Japanese popular religious culture, and the instruction that the sacrament of Penance had to be performed on a regular basis, whether one was aware of one’s own sins or not, made perfect sense. If human sin was apprehended through the image of pollution, the act of confession would be conceived of as a purification rite.

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The Kirishitan ethos of sorrow about sin could be translated into the Japanese religious ethos of purification of pollution. Parallels exist between sin and pollution as they do between penance and purification. The idea of ‘pollutionpurification’ worked in the Kirishitan teaching of human sin as more than a metaphor, as we see in the following instruction of the Dochiriina Kirishitan: The Sacred Church hopes that you make your confession often since you commit sins often, but I tell you to make your confession at least once or twice a year. You purify your body whenever it gets polluted. Likewise, since your soul often becomes polluted by evils, you must purify it as often by confession.22

Notes * This presentation is based on Chapter 4 of my own work, Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in early modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001). I would like to thank E. J. Brill for its permission to reprint the relevant parts from the work. 1 John Hey, De Rebus Iaponicis, Indicis et Peruanis (1605), p. 426. 2 Byōja o tasukurukokoroe in Kirishitansho, Haiyasho (KH) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1970), p. 84. 3 Orasho no hon’yaku. Nagasaki, 1600, reprinted in Hayashi Shigeo (ed.), Bauchizumo o sazukeyō, Orasho no hon’yaku: Honbunoyobisōsakuin (Tokyo: Kasama Shoin, 1981), pp. 163–4. 4 Dochiriina Kirishitan; KH, p. 71. 5 Ibid., pp. 71–2. 6 Byōja o tasukurukokoroe; KH, p. 90. 7 Orasho no hon’yaku, p. 163. 8 John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 136–9. 9 Luis Frois, S.J., Furoisu Nihonshi (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, 1977–80) 7: 26. 10 Annual report for 1589 and a letter from the Vice-provincial to Alessandro Valignano, 10/7/1589, in 16–17 seikiIezusukai Nihon hōkokushū (Kyoto: Dōhōsha, 1987–) I-1: 118. 11 Ibid., I-1: 125. 12 Ibid., I-1: 119. 13 Byōja o tasukurukokoroe; KH, p. 90. 14 Konchirisan no riyaku; KH, pp. 363–8. 15 Ibid., pp. 368–9. 16 Ibid., 369.



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17 Shigeru Matsumoto, Motoori Norinaga 1730–1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 217. 18 Ibid., pp. 98–9. 19 Tsunetsugu Muraoka, Studies in Shinto Thought, trans. Delmer Brown and James T. Araki (Tokyo: Ministry of Education, 1964), p. 30. 20 Shigeru Matsumoto, Motoori Norinaga, pp. 98–9. 21 Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern People (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1964), p. 556. 22 Dochiriina Kirishitan; KH, p. 57.

8

Negative Theology as ‘Purification’of Language: Nicholas of Cusa on Divine Names Katsumi Shimada

Introduction In the religious traditions of the world, ‘purification’ is generally viewed as a part of physical and mental practices for those who try to nurture themselves based on their religious or spiritual belief. In this view, to purify polluted conditions of both mind and body is a preliminary procedure for individuals to be able to experience the divine or God. A similar understanding of purification has played a crucial role in the tradition called ‘mysticism’ in Christianity. In this view, however, purification is considered not so much as the opposing category of pollution or impurity than as the first step of the three stages in the soul’s ascent to God. In this upward approach to God, purification is thus placed at the outset of a gradual process in which one comes to lose his/her words on God. In the discourse of ‘mystical ascent to God’, there seems to be a vital connection between a practice of purification and a theological discourse called via negativa, or negative theology. In this paper, I will focus on Nicholas of Cusa’s view of the divine names in order to examine such ‘purificatory’ aspects of negative theology. As is well known, Nicholas of Cusa, or Nicolaus Cusanus (1401–64), is one of the most prominent theologians/philosophers at the end of the middle ages of the Christian West. While managing official capacities as cardinal of the curia and vicar of the papal state, Nicholas also made a great contribution to the tradition of negative theological discourse in Christian intellectual history. Following the classic formulation of the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, Nicholas tried to find a new way of looking at the problem of the divine names. This paper first takes a brief look at the Pseudo-Dionysian formulation of the three stages of the

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mystical life, and then explores the way in which Nicholas receives it and makes some modifications to it, primarily based on the discussion found in his first major philosophical work, De docta ignorantia (1440). By investigating broader implications of the notion of purification for the academic study of religion, I hope this paper will shed some new light on one of the most difficult problems in the discourse on God.

Purification and Negative Theology: The PseudoDionysian Triad In the Christian ‘mystical’ tradition, purification was commonly described as the first stage of the threefold process in the soul’s ascent to God: ‘purification’, ‘illumination’, and ‘union’. Although the foundation of this triad can be traced back to Origen,1 it was the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum (c. 500), who attached the name of Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17.34) to his pseudo­ nymous writings, that became the primary source and authority on mystical, and also ‘negative’ theology for both the Eastern and Western churches.2 Dionysius’ Mystical Theology in particular provided a framework which formed a matrix for ‘mystical experience’ in the Christian theological discourse throughout the Middle Ages.3 For Dionysius, the ultimate goal of the Christian life is the ecstasis in union with God. Following Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of Moses’ ascent of Mount Sinai, Dionysius describes the soul’s approach to God as the three stages. First, before Moses goes up to the summit of the divine ascent, he undergoes ‘purification’ and stands apart from the crowds, accompanied by chosen priests (MT, 1000D). For Dionysius, those who have not submitted to purification are not eligible to ascend to God (MT, 1000C). Then, after breaking from the things perceived with the eye of the body, only the mind can ascend the heights of the holy places where the unimaginable presence of God is shown through the things perceived (MT, 1000D). In this second stage, the mind gains ‘illumination’ of the place of God. As Moses plunges into the truly mysterious darkness, however, even the mind has to be abandoned. The higher we ascend, the more our words are confined to the ideas we are capable of forming. Since the darkness is beyond intellect, we find ourselves speechless and unknowing (MT, 1033B). In other words, we become completely silent in darkness because God is ineffable. This is the final stage called ‘union’ (or ‘perfection’) in which the soul is finally at one with God in an ecstatic moment.4



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In this Dionysian account of the triad of the ascent to God, purification symbolically means to remove anything ‘impure’ or sensible from your mind. Purification here conveys a condition in which we are free from anything creaturely, that is fundamentally human language, in order to approach God. Purification is indispensable, Dionysius says, because God is essentially ineffable. The notion of the ineffability of God lies at the heart of the negative theological discourse, commonly characterized as the denial of all descriptions and attributes as predicated of God. The concepts of purification and negative theology thus meet each other in the Dionysian formula. Although the concepts of ‘kataphatic’ (affirmative) and ‘apophatic’ (negative) theologies were first used by Proclus (c. 412–484), it was Pseudo-Dionysius who set a decisive tone in the usage of the bipolar formulation of theological propositions. Nicholas of Cusa, too, was vastly influenced by this Dionysian format of affirmative and negative theologies.

Negative Theology and the Divine Names Throughout his career as a theologian and a philosopher, Nicolaus Cusanus, or Nicholas of Cusa, engaged himself in ‘seeking God’. He elaborated on this speculative issue in his writings with a wide variety of mathematical symbols and metaphors. Yet, Nicholas also examined the infinite nature of God in terms of the problem of the divine names. He discussed the issue in his first major philosophical masterpiece, De docta ignorantia (1440),5 which was written at the early stage of his career, and then, 20 years later, he took up the issue again and made his third additional attempts on the divine names in the last four years of his life.6 In De docta ignorantia, Nicholas devotes the last three chapters of the first volume to the themes of the divine names and the scheme of affirmativenegative theologies. According to Nicholas, every religion needs to have affirmative theology, since the worship of God has to be based on positive affirmations about God. In fact, God has been worshipped as ‘Light’, ‘Life’, ‘Truth’, or any other given names in the history of mankind. Yet, those names are not appropriate for God, Nicholas says, ‘for such names are attributed to God on the basis of something found in creatures’.7 For Nicholas, negative theology is indispensable for affirmative theology because he suspects that God would be worshipped as a creature without it.8 Following the Dionysian premise, Nicholas holds that negative theology ultimately surpasses affirmative theology:

76 Purification Sacred ignorance has taught us that God is ineffable. He is so because He is infinitely greater than all namable things. And by virtue of the fact that this is most true, we speak of God more truly through removal and negation – as teaches the greatest Dionysius… Hence, God is neither Father nor Son nor Holy Spirit in accordance with this negative theology, according to which God is only infinite.9

For Nicholas, as for Dionysius, negative theology is an attempt to remove or to ‘purify’ all the names, even those of the personas of the Trinity, attached to God by affirmative theology. Purification is therefore understood in terms of the Dionysian discourse of negative theology, which is founded on this principle: the removal, or the ‘purification’ of affirmative names from God.

Reason and the Imprecision of Language: The Epistemological Account It is worth noting here that there seems to be another reason why Nicholas finds the affirmative names inappropriate for God, which cannot be found in the Dionysian argument for negative theology. For Nicholas, the positive affirmations are inappropriate for God, not only because God is categorically beyond all created beings, as Dionysius claims, but also because every affirmative name, which is found in created things, has its opposite. Nicholas writes: ‘For if you call God “truth”, falsity stands in opposition; if you call God “virtue”, vice is the opposite; and if you call God “substance”, accident opposes, and so on’.10 In this view, the essence of a name lies in the fact that it inevitably introduces opposition (oppositio) or discretion (discretio). God, on the contrary, is prior to all opposition, to all ‘otherness’ (alteritas) that divides and confronts finite things. To put it another way, any affirmations or names are relative to something, and hence, they are not suitable for God, for whom Nicholas coined a term coincidentia oppositorum (‘coincidence of opposites’). This argument is fairly unique to Nicholas because it originally stems not only from the Neoplatonic view of ‘the One’ (unum, unitas), on which the entire Dionysian tradition is founded, but from his own ‘epistemological’ view of the nature of reason (ratio) as well. According to Nicholas, ‘names are imposed by a movement of reason, which is much inferior to the intellect (intellectus), in order to distinguish between things. Yet, since reason cannot leap over contradictories, there is, in accord with reason’s movement, no name to which another



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is not opposed.’11 In this view, no matter how much a divine name is ‘purified’, or no matter what kind of name is ascribed to God, there is no chance that it represents God precisely. For Nicholas, the whole notion of the possibility of ‘negative theology as purification of language’, which can be observed most typically in the tradition of Neoplatonic or the Dionysian mystical theology, is destined to be eradicated. Moreover, Nicholas’ epistemological account of the relationship between the role of reason and the nature of a name should apply not only to the domain of the divine names, but to all the territories of our created world as well. In his view, the essence or the ‘thing-ness’ (quidditas) of things in the world, too, can never be comprehended precisely by words, since the perpetual imprecision of our language is a part of the intrinsic nature of human beings. He states: Clearly, therefore, we know of the truth only that we know that it cannot be comprehended precisely as it is. Truth is like the most absolute necessity, which can be neither more nor less than it is, which our intellect is like possibility. Therefore, the quiddity of things, which is the truth of beings, is unattainable in its purity, and although it is pursued by all philosophers, none has found it as it is. The more profoundly learned we are in this ignorance, the more closely we draw near truth itself.12 (Italics mine)

It should be noticed here that Nicholas identifies God with the truth, which is described as ‘the most absolute necessity’. For Nicholas, the fact that we are unable to name God precisely implies the recognition that we cannot comprehend the truth of beings, or quiddity of things, in its purity. Nicholas thus considers: If there is any chance that we could come closer to God or the Truth, it would be possible, not by removing or ‘purifying’ the divine names step by step, but rather by recognizing the very impossibility of attaining the truth as it is. As is mentioned in the quote, Nicholas was clearly aware of the fact that he was on a different horizon concerning the limitation of human knowledge than his predecessors ever were; this is the horizon he calls ‘learned ignorance’. For Nicholas, God is the one who enables us to acknowledge most clearly the fact that we are ignorant of him when we face his infinite nature. As Ernst Cassirer puts it, ‘This position towards the problem of knowledge makes of Cusanus the first modern thinker. His first step consists in asking not about God, but about the possibility of knowing about God’.13

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The World as the ‘Contracted Maximum’: The Ontological Account At the same time, it has to be kept in mind that Nicholas of Cusa’s discussion of our knowledge and language about the divine is intimately connected with his ‘ontological’ perspectives on the relationship between God and creatures. He tries to elucidate this matter in terms of his other original word-pair; ‘enfolding’ (complicatio) and ‘unfolding’ (explicatio). In his remarks, ‘God is the enfolding of all things in that all things are in Him; and He is the unfolding of all things in that He is in all things.’14 For Nicholas, God enfolds the creature on the one hand, and hence the creature is a manifestation of God on the other. This principle of God’s enfolding and unfolding should not be understood as a sort of ‘pantheism’, for Nicholas does not conflate the identities of the Creator as the infinite, and creatures as the finite. But this principle did lay itself open to misunderstanding on this issue right after De docta ignorantia had been published in 1440. One of the sharpest criticisms came from a Heidelberg theologian John Wenck, who accused Nicholas of identifying creature with Creator in such a way that the essence of the creature is said to be identical with the essence of the Creator.15 According to Wenck, Nicholas is wrong in that he considers God to be the absolute quiddity, or essence, of things. But if all creatures have an identical essence of God, Wenck argues, then they are not different from each other, and consequently it will cause confusion between creatures. For Wenck, Nicholas seems to claim that the absolute quiddity of the sun amounts to that of the moon.16 Nicholas counters this charge by stressing his novel notion of ‘contraction’ (contractio), which expounds the feature of the finite beings vis-à-vis the infinite. By contractio, Nicholas means restriction to something so as to be individuated and differentiated. By highlighting the contrast between the world (universum) as the contracted maximum (maximum contractum) and God as the absolute maximum (maximum absolutum), Nicholas tries to portray the ways in which two different manners of quiddities are manifested. On the one hand, everything has a restricted nature or contracted quiddity and makes what it is in this contracted universe (quidditas contracta). Then, from the perspective of the contracted universe, we can talk about the difference of quiddity between the sun and the moon. On the other hand, since God is the essence of all things or the absolute quiddity (quidditas absoluta), He can be seen as the absolute essence of both the sun and the moon.



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Wenck’s accusation against Nicholas of being a ‘pantheist’ is probably based on his misunderstanding, or disregard of such a ‘mediatory’ nature of contractio. For Nicholas, since the universe exists only in a contracted way, it is only individual things that actually exist. At the same time, however, it is through the ‘mediation’ of the universe that God exists in individual things, or, in other words, individual things exist in God.

Concluding Remarks Nicholas’ description of the mediatory character of the contracted universe is of paramount importance for the understanding of his perspective on the divine names, or even on his theory of language and knowledge as a whole. It is on this ground that Nicholas finds it impossible not only for any name of God, but for any name of anything to attain its quiddity. For Nicholas, no name is adequate for God not only because His essence is practically inexpressive, as Dionysius argues, but because the world (or the universe) itself, in which we live, cannot be the object of precise knowledge. In this sense, our knowledge is no more than ‘conjecture’ (coniectura), by which Nicholas means our apprehension’s inability to reach the pure truth.17 As we have seen, Nicholas considers that the infinite God be represented by neither affirmative assertions nor negative ones after all. Yet this is exactly the knowledge that he tries to illustrate with the idea of the learned ignorance. The idea of the learned ignorance, to put it another way, should be understood not merely as a premise of his argument for negative theology but rather as an underlying principle of his attempt to invalidate this dichotomous framework by acknowledging the very impossibility of ultimate purification of our language and knowledge. In this paper, I was trying to look at the concept of purification from a rather different point of view than the way it is normally discussed in the studies of Christian mysticism. When the concept is examined only in terms of the three steps toward the union with God in mystical life, it looks as if the union is the completion of purificatory attempts. According to Nicholas of Cusa, however, the achievement of the complete purification always suffers a setback on its way. Yet it is not necessarily because our language system ‘always and already’ has to involve the disappearance or delay of the ‘original’, as the contemporary French philosopher, Jacques Derrida would put it.18 For this late medieval Christian thinker, it is rather because the world is thus ontologically conditioned in terms

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of its relationship with the infinite God. In this sense, we might say that Nicholas of Cusa’s speculative endeavour for an appreciation of ‘the learned ignorance’ can be seen not as an accomplishment but rather as an abandonment of the notion of the ‘negative theology as purification of language’.

Notes 1 Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 54–5. 2 Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). 3 Pseudo-Dionysius, De mystica theologica, in Corpus Dionysiacum II, herausgegeben von Günter Hiel und Adolf Martin Ritter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991). 4 Pseudo-Dionysius, De mystica theologica, III, in Corpus Dionysiacum II. 5 Nicolai de Cusa, Opera Omnia I, De docta ignorantia, Iusse et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codicum fidem edita (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1920, 2nd edn). 6 On the development of Nicholas’ thought, see Kurt Flasch, Nikolaus von Kues, Geschichte einer Entwicklung. Vorlesungen zur Einführung in seine Philosophie (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1998). It is probably fair to say that Nicholas of Cusa was under the strong influence of Pseudo-Dionysius from the beginning of his career to the end of his life. It is debatable, however, whether Nicholas actually read the Corpus Dionysiacum himself when he wrote De docta ignorantia, since he admitted at one place that he had not examined Dionysius as well as other theologians at that time. See, Nicolai de Cusa, Opera Omnia II, Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae, Iusse et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codicum fidem edita (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2007), 17. 7 Nicolai de Cusa, De docta ignorantia I, Cap. 24. ‘nam talia secundum aliquid, quod in creaturis reperitur, sibi attribuntur’. 8 Ibid., Cap. 26. ‘Et ita theologia negationis adeo necessaria est quoad aliam affirmationis, ut sine illa Deus non coleretur ut Deus infinitus, sed potius ut creatura’. 9 Ibid., Cap. 26. ‘Docuit nos sacra ignorantia deum ineffabilem; et hoc, quia major est per infinitum omnibus, quae nominari possunt; et hoc quidem quia verissimum, verius per remotionem et negationem de ipso loquimur, sicuti et maximus Dionysius… Unde neque pater est filius neque spiritus sanctus secundum hanc negativam theologiam, secundum quam est infinitus tantum.’ 10 Ibid., Cap. 24. ‘Nam si dicis ipsum veritatem, occurrit falsitas; si dicis virtutem, occurrit vitium; si dicis substantiam, occurrit accidens; et ita de reliquis.’



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11 Ibid., Cap. 24. ‘Nomina quidem per motum rationis, quae intellectu nulto interior est, ad rerum discretionem imponuntur. Quoniam autem ratio contradictoria transilire nequit, hinc non est nomen, cui aliud non opponatur secundum motum rationis.’ 12 Ibid., I, Cap. 3. ‘Patet igitur de vero nos non aliud scire quam quod ipsum praecise, uti est, scimus incomprehensibile, veritate se habente ut absolutissima necessitate, quae nec plus aut minus esse potest quam est, et nostro intellectu ut possibilitate. Quidditas ergo rerum, quae est entium veritas, in sua puritate inattingibilis est et per omnes philosophos investigata, sed per neminem, uti est, reperta; et quanto in hac ignorantia profundius docti fuerimus, tanto magis ipsam accedimus veritatem.’ 13 Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Gesammelte Werke, Band 14 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002), p. 11. For the English translation, see, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (translated by Mario Domandi, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963), p. 10. 14 Nicolai de Cusa, De docta ignorantia II, Cap. 3. ‘Deus ergo est omnia complicans in hoc, quod omnia in eo; est omnia explicans in hoc, quod ipse in omnibus.’ 15 On the debate between Wenck and Cusanus over De docta ignorantia see: Rudolf Haubst, Studien zu Nikolaus von Kues und Johannes Wenck aus Handschriften der Vatikanischen Bibliothek (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1955). 16 John Wenck, De Ignota Litteratura, 36. Its original Latin text is included in Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa’s Debate with John Wenck: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Ignota Litteratura and Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae (Minneapolis: The Arther J. Banning Press, 1981), pp. 95–118. ‘Correlarium secundum: Quidditas solis absoluta non est aliud a quidditate lunae. Patet, quoniam est ipse Deus qui est entitas et quidditas absoluta omnium. Correlarium hoc nefandissimum est, quia et rerum quidditates confundit et quidditatem omnium Deum dicit.’ 17 Nicolai de Cusa, Opera Omnia III, De coniecturis, Iusse et auctoritate Academiae Litterarum Heidelbergensis ad codicum fidem edita (Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 2002), Prologus. ‘Hinc ipsam maximam humanitus inattingibilem scientiam dum actualis nostra nulla proportione respecte, infirmae apprehensionis incertus casus a veritatis puritate positiones nostras veri subinfert coniecturas.’ 18 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

9

Mystical Purification of the Mind: Meister Eckhart on Calmness/Gelassenheit Christoph Elsas

In 1260, that means 750 years ago, the Christian theologian Meister Eckhart was born in Germany. Nevertheless his thoughts are fresh till now. So my reflections on mystical purification of the mind are embedded in the Western,1 especially German2 discussion on Eckhart’s concept of Gelassenheit. For there seem to be interesting chances for connections with Japanese discussions. I think of three important books on Eckhart inspired from Kitarō Nishida’s Kyoto School of Philosophy in a Japanese Buddhist Perspective: of Keiji Nishitani3 in Tokyo, of Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki4 in New York (and Berlin), of Shizuteru Ueda5 in Marburg (and Gütersloh), followed by the integration of Eckhart’s thoughts in Nishitani’s famous work on religion and nothingness.6 For Eckhart, the solution for all problems in human life is founded upon embracing the essential nothingness and emptiness of humans, because God loves all creatures equally and fills them with his being. Detachment into the bareness of our universal human nature and the imageless character of the soul‘s essence make it a place which God can inhabit. His Word is spoken in the nakedness of this nature, when one‘s own powers have been completely withdrawn from all their works and images. Therefore Eckhart’s main point is calmness resulting from the birth of God in the bare human soul. He called this calmness, using a special German word, Gelassenheit. Eckhart himself was a Dominican monk. His order not only honoured him twice by sending him to the famous university of Paris, but also entrusted him with the solution of some explosive ecclesiastical and socio-political conflicts involving religious women. His attempt of mediation between the individualistic exuberance of such women and the hierarchical regulation of the church includes an attitude of criticism towards exclusive fixations on either side:

84 Purification Indeed, if a man thinks he will get more of God by meditation, by devotion, by ecstasies or by special infusion of grace than by the fireside or in the stable – that is nothing but taking God, wrapping a cloak round His head and shoving Him under a bench. For whoever seeks God in a special way gets the way and misses God, who lies hidden in it. But whoever seeks God without a special way gets Him as He is in Himself, and that man lives with the Son [of God], and he is life itself.7

Such preaching indicates Eckhart’s understanding of calmness, Gelassenheit. Eckhart’s approach towards a solution of the great conflicts of suffering and sorrow is determined by this as well: Truly, a man who had quite renounced his own would be so surrounded by God that all creatures could not touch him, and whatever got to him would have to pass through God, and in doing so take on His flavour and become godlike. However great the suffering may be, if it comes through God, then God suffers first from it …, and if you will endure that which God endures and which comes to you through Him, then it inevitably becomes godlike …8

Acknowledging the common creatural neediness means to leave oneself and the world (Latin relinquere). Eckhart emphasized more clearly than Thomas Aquinas that ‘all creatures are a pure nothing. I do not just say that they are insignificant or are only a little something: They are a pure nothing. Whatever has no being, is not. Creatures have no being because their being depends on God’s presence… If God would turn away from creatures for an instant, they would turn to nothing’.9 Humans are distinguished by the special feature of being able to reflect – up to the point that a part of one’s own life is one’s own death in which one has to leave everything that can be perceived with the senses. Thus Eckhart teaches to understand the ideal of virginity: ‘Virgin’ is as much as to say a person who is void of alien images, as empty as he was when he did not exist … – if I had these without attachment, whether in doing or in leaving undone, … rather standing free in this present Now ready to receive God’s most beloved will and to do it continually, then in truth I would be a virgin, untrammelled by any images, just as I was when I was not.10

Eckhart also adds ‘that man who is established thus in God’s love must be dead to self and all created things, paying as little regard to himself as to one who is a thousand miles away’.11



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Therefore, ‘people should not worry so much about what they have to do, they should consider rather what they are’.12 ‘The simple intellect is so pure in itself that it comprehends the pure bare divine being immediately …’ .13

The willingness to leave oneself to God (Latin committere) belongs to the act of recognizing God as the sole being. Because this aspect belongs to the Middle High German word gelâzenheit coined by Eckhart, it includes: ‘The soul is all things. Whatever is the noblest, the purest, and the highest in all things beneath the soul, God pours all this into it [the soul]. God is all and is one’.14 This is the other side of the act of leaving: ‘All our perfection and all our bliss depends on our traversing and transcending all creatureliness, all being and getting into the ground that is groundless. We pray to our dear Lord God that we may be one and indwelling, and may God help us to find this ground’.15 Eckhart’s sermon on Mt. 5.3, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ gives the explanation: ‘A poor man is one who wants nothing and desires nothing’, ‘who knows nothing’ and ‘who has nothing’.16 This means: ‘We should place ourselves with all we have in a pure renunciation of will and desire, into the good and precious will of God’.17 And: ‘Then I am what I was … Here God finds no place in man, for man by his poverty wins for himself what he has eternally been and shall eternally remain. Here, God is one with the spirit, and that is the strictest poverty one can find’.18 Then the spirit will be a place in which God can work, and as an essential and not only as an assumed God: ‘So we say that a man should be so poor that he neither is nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is to preserve distinction. Therefore I pray to God to make me free of God, [that means God in the sense of a human concept; Ch. E.] for my essential being is above God, taking God as the origin of creatures’.19

Man can experience a gracious birth of God in himself, because Jesus Christ as His essential son manifests the love of God that is bestowed upon mankind. In the beginning of Eckhart’s treatise ‘On Detachment’ we read of the ‘highest virtue whereby a man may chiefly and most firmly join himself to God, and

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whereby a man may become by grace what God is by nature, and whereby a man may come closest to his image when he was in God …, before God made creatures’.20 Reflecting upon his creatural nothingness men will recognize: ‘Poverty of spirit means being so free of God and all His works [in the sense of a human concept], that God, if He wishes to work in the soul, is Himself the place where He works’.21 Because the imageless character of the soul’s essence makes it a place which God can inhabit the soul ‘must keep absolutely pure and must live in a noble fashion, quite collected and turned entirely inward’.22 ‘It is in the purest thing that the soul is capable of, in the noblest part, the ground – indeed the very essence of the soul which is the soul’s most secret part. There is the silent “middle,” for no creature ever entered there and no image’.23 ‘For God to be born in the soul, all time must have dropped away from her’.24 Then ‘God must enter into your being and powers, because you have bereft yourself of all possessions, and become as a desert’.25 For ‘God’s natural place is unity and purity’ and ‘therefore God is bound to give Himself to a detached heart’.26 Orientated towards Christ Eckhart can preach about God like this: ‘What is God’s love? His nature and His being: that is His love. If God were deprived of loving us, that would deprive Him of His being and His Godhead, for His being depends on His loving me’ because ‘God has only one love: with the same love with which the Father loves His only-begotten Son, He loves me’.27

In relying on God’s own grace, man sufficiently prepares for God’s birth within himself. Eckhart is sure for the soul: ‘In drawing God into itself it is changed into God, so that the soul becomes divine. God does not become the soul. Then the soul loses its name and its power, but not its will or existence. Here the soul remains in God as God remains in Himself ’.28 There is the example of St. Paul, as Eckhart remarks: He left everything that God was able to give him and everything that he was able to receive from God. When he had left all this, he left God for God’s sake, and there remained for him God as God exists in Himself ... He never gave God anything nor did he ever receive anything from God. It is a oneness and a pure union. In this state a person is a true human being.29

For ‘when the soul receives a kiss from the Godhead, then she stands in absolute



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perfection and bliss; then she is embraced by unity’.30 And: ‘God creates the world and all things in one present now … If a soul stands in this present now, the Father bears in her His only-begotten Son, and in that same birth the soul is born back into God. It is one birth: as often as she is born back into God, the Father begets His only-begotten Son in her’.31 This implies the solution for the fundamental conflict of dying: ‘There is oneness in the Godhead and in eternity’.32 Therefore ‘be careful not in the least to hold unto yourself as you are this person or that, but preserve yourself as a free, undivided human nature’.33 For it is this universal human nature which was assumed and so divinized by Christ. Inasmuch as it leads towards receptivity for God’s power, love as an ability of the soul can be called the highest creatural power by Eckhart. For love is the necessary and sufficient readiness for God who unites the soul with Himself through the love power of the Holy Spirit. Then ‘God is acting above the power of the soul, not as in the soul, but divinely as in God. There the soul is plunged into God and baptized in the divine nature, receiving the divine life therein and taking upon herself the divine order, so that she is ordered according to God’.34 Thus the soul experiences God’s naturally overflowing love that offers only to man the liberty to reject it or to open up towards it, to ‘receive’ it. Eckhart preaches thus: ‘When the soul does not go out after things outside, it has come home and dwells in its simple, pure light’.35 And: In my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God’s will, of all His works, and of God Himself, then I am above all creatures and I am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. There I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as He is God, or with all His divine works: for this breaking-through guarantees to me that I and God are one.36

For Eckhart that birth of God in man is orientated towards Christ, in the Trinity of the One God the Son as image of the Father: ‘To the degree that we are like the image in which all images have flowed forth and have left, and to the degree that we are reconstituted in this image and are carried directly into the image of the Father’,37 ‘God can do no more for the detached mind than give Himself to it … That is what St. Paul meant when he said: “I live and do not live – Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2.20)’.38

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The body serves to convert God’s birth into the calmness in life. According to Christian conviction, God has co-suffered in the suffering and dying of Jesus Christ. Therefore Eckhart combines the idea of God’s birth in man with the compassion. In the imitation of Christ the immediate presence of divine love can be ascertained. Therefore Eckhart writes in his ‘Talks of Instruction’: ‘One must have a well-trained detachment’ and ‘we must school ourselves in abandoning till we keep nothing back. All turbulence and unrest comes from self will … We should place ourselves with all we have in a pure renunciation of will and desire, into the good and precious will of God’.39 Moreover, the mortal fear of Jesus, and Mary’s lamentation under the cross according to Eckhart are only related to their external nature experiencing sensory perceptions and vehement emotions: ‘You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved. Now Christ too had an outer man and an inner man, and so did our Lady, … but the inner man remained in unmoved detachment’.40 The person who has totally delivered himself to God, even if he suffers the experience of himself being deserted by God, remains in his interior through God’s nature ‘in equality and in unity and remains completely the same’: ‘The person who has forsaken all and remains in this state and never for an instant casts a glance toward what he has forsaken and remains constant and unmoved in himself and unchanging, only such a person is detached’.41 In another sermon Eckhart explains: ‘A person who is in a race, a continual race, and is in peace, such a person is a heavenly person. The heavens are constantly running around [i.e. revolving] and in running they seek peace’.42 ‘Out of this inmost ground, all your works should be wrought without Why … And so, if you were to ask a genuine man who acted from his own ground, “Why do you act?”, if he were to answer properly he would simply say, “I act because I act”. Where creature stops, God begins to be’.43 Eckhart explains the unity of contemplation and activity in a Christian way: ‘It was not until after the time when the disciples received the Holy Spirit that they began to perform virtuous deeds’.44 In this context it is all about enhancement of world and life: ‘See God in all things, for God is in all things’. St. Augustine says God made all things, not that He might let them come into existence while He went His way, but He stayed in them’.45 This does not mean any pantheistic deification of the world, but lays a foundation for the love of God and one’s neighbour: ‘The first intention of your



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love should be purely God and then your neighbour as yourself and not less than yourself ’.46 According to Eckhart this should be happening in the certitude that he who has left his own will becomes ‘just because of justice’:47 ‘Thus God loves all creatures equally and fills them with his being. And thus too, we should pour forth ourselves in love over all creatures’.48 For ‘whatever God works, the humble person works’.49

A first example for responses to social challenges is living together in religious plurality. Eckhart’s starting-point is to turn against attaching more importance to one’s own interests than to anything else, even in piety: ‘If a man were in an ecstasy as St. Paul was (2 Cor. 12.2-4), and if he knew of a sick person who needed a bowl of soup from him, I would consider it far better if you were to leave that rapture out of love and help the needy person out of greater love’.50 These explanations in the tenth chapter of the ‘Talks of Instruction’ demonstrate at the beginning of Eckhart’s activity the meaning of the many forms in which God’s activity can be translated into life and love. At Eckhart’s time and nowadays different ways of men and women are being seen, and today more than in the former days also different ways of confessions and religions, according to the seventeenth chapter of Eckhart: God has not bound man’s salvation to any special mode. Whatever has one mode has not another, but God has endowed all good ways with effectiveness and denied this to no good way. For one good does not conflict with another good … Let every man keep to his own good way and include all ways in it, and take up in his way all goodness and all ways.51

A final example for responses to social challenges is living together of men and women. Eckhart, the medieval theologian, has sometimes taken up social traditions of the superiority of males above females that can be found in the New Testament as well. However, he just uses them for preparing his subject, to leave things behind in order to set free the highest power of the soul: ‘This power grasps all things in truth. Nothing is hidden from this power. According to scripture men’s heads should be bare, and women’s covered (cf. 1 Cor. 11.6-7). The women are

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the lower powers, which should be veiled. The man is this power, which should be bare and unveiled’.52 As he joins Antiquity and the Middle Ages in assuming that the male is the natural and normal human form, Eckhart emphasizes God’s partiality for the one who is – allegedly – placed at a disadvantage by nature: ‘Nature’s intention … is always the man …; and when nature ceases her operation, God begins to work and create, for without women, there would be no men’.53 Another step in his argument leads to equality in love: ‘Love does not wish to be anywhere but where there is likeness and oneness. Where there is a master and a servant there is no peace, for there is no likeness. A woman and a man are unlike, but in love they are alike’.54 In a way typical for him, Eckhart relates this towards God’s own love: ‘St. John says: “The Word was with God.” It was all together equal and side by side with Him, not below or above, but equal. When God made man, he made the woman from the man’s side, so that she should be like him. He did not make her from the head or from the feet, so that she ... should be his peer’.55 This paragraph ends with the words: ‘And so the just soul will be equal with God and beside God, just equal, neither below nor above’. This sentence shows that in Eckhart’s argumentation love and justice caused by God are the foundation for calmness as a way to solving conflicts by mystical purification of the mind.

Notes 1 Cp. Oliver Davies, Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian (London: SPCK, 1991); Bernard McGinn with Frank Tobin and Elvira Borgstadt (eds), Meister Eckhart: Teacher and Preacher (London: SPCK and New York: Paulist Press, 1986) – this translation is abbreviated McGinn; Maurice O’C. Walshe, Meister Eckhart, German Sermons and Treatises. Translated with Introduction and Notes (London: Watkin; Longmead: Element Books, 1979, 1981, 1987, 3 vols) – a concordance of the sermons’ numbers in different editions in Vol. 3 – this translation is abbreviated Walshe. 2 Cp. Markus Enders, Gelassenheit und Abgeschiedenheit. Studien zur deutschen Mystik (Hamburg: Kovač, 2008); Niklaus Largier (ed.), Meister Eckhart: Werke (Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993, 2 vols); Peter Reiter, Der Seelen Grund: Meister Eckhart und die Tradition der Seelenlehre (Mainz: Univ. Diss., 1992; Würzburg: Koenigshausen & Neumann, 1993); Adeltrud Bundschuh, Die Bedeutung von Gelassen und die Bedeutung der Gelassenheit in den deutschen Werken Meister Eckharts unter Berücksichtigung seiner lateinischen Schriften



3 4

5

6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

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(Freiburg: Univ. Diss., 1989; Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1990); Konrad Weiss et al. (eds), Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke. Die lateinischen Werke (vols I/II/III/IV/V, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964/1992/1994/1956/2006) – this critical edition Latin/German is abbreviated LW; Josef Quint (ed.), Meister Eckhart: Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke. Die deutschen Werke (vols I, II, III, V; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1958/1971/1976/1963) – this critical edition Latin/ German is abbreviated DW. Keiji Nishitani, Kami to Zettaimu (God and pure Nothingness) (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1948, rev. edn, Tokyo, Sōbunsha, 1971). Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957; repr. New York, 2002); German trans. Liselotte und Walter Hilsbecher; Der westliche und der östliche Weg. Essays über christliche und buddhistische Mystik (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1960: 2nd edn 1981). Shizuteru Ueda, Die Gottesgeburt in der Seele und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit. Die mystische Anthropologie Meister Eckharts und ihre Konfrontation mit der Mystik des Zen-Buddhismus (Marburg: Univ. Diss.; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1965). Keiji Nishitani, Shūkyō towa nanika (Tokyo 1961; new edn, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002); Engl. trans. Jan van Bragt; Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley: The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1980); German trans. Dora Fischer-Barnicol; Was ist Religion? (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1982; rev. edn, 1986). DW II, p. 363 = Sermon 13b Walshe I, pp. 117–18. DW V, pp. 228–9 = Talks of Instruction 11 Walshe III, pp. 27–8. DW I, pp. 69–70 = Sermon 40 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 4 McGinn, p. 250. DW I, pp. 24–6 = Sermon 8 Walshe I, p. 71. DW I, p. 201 = Sermon 57 Walshe II, p. 87. DW V, p. 197 = Talks 4 Walshe III, p. 15. DW I, p. 250 = Sermon 51 Walshe II, p. 52. DW I, p. 370 = Sermon 97 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 21 McGinn, p. 283. DW II, p. 309 = Sermon 80 Walshe II, p. 238. DW II, p. 488 = Sermon 87 Walshe II, pp. 271–3. DW V, p. 283 = Talks 21 Walshe III, p. 48. DW II, p. 499 = Sermon 87 Walshe II, pp. 275–6. DW II, p. 502 = Sermon 87 Walshe II, p. 274. DW V, p. 401 = Detachment Walshe III, p. 117. DW II, p. 500 = Sermon 87 Walshe II, p. 274. 1 Pfeiffer = Sermon 1 Walshe I, p. 2 – sermons in the Medieval German without critical edition are cited with their number in Franz Pfeiffer, Deutsche Mystiker des 14. Jahrhunderts, vol. 2: Meister Eckhart (Leipzig, 1857 = Aalen: Scientia, 1966). 1 Pfeiffer = Sermon 1 Walshe I, p. 3.

92 Purification 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

DW II, p. 231 = Sermon 29 Walshe I, p. 216. 3 Pfeiffer = Sermon 3 Walshe I, p. 33. DW V, p. 403 = On Detachment Walshe III, pp. 117–18. DW II, p. 287 = Sermon 43 Walshe II, p. 2. DW III, p. 387 = Sermon 94 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 80 McGinn, p. 334. DW I, p. 197 = Sermon 57 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 12 McGinn, pp. 268–9. DW I, p. 172 = Sermon 66 Walshe II, p. 145. DW I, p. 172 = Sermon 66 Walshe II, p. 144. DW I, p. 216 = Sermon 24a Walshe I, p. 189. DW II, pp. 381–2 = Sermon 47 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 46 McGinn, p. 305. DW III, pp. 23–4 = Sermon 45 Washe II, p. 15. DW III, p. 547 = Sermon 19 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 71 McGinn, p. 324. DW II, pp. 504–5 = Sermon 87 Walshe I, p. 275. DW III, pp. 197–8 = 41 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 70 McGinn, pp. 318–9. DW V, p. 411 = Detachment Walshe III, p. 120. DW V, pp. 280–1 = Talks 21 Walshe III, pp. 47–8. DW V, pp. 419–22 = Detachment Walshe III, p. 124. DW I, p. 203 = Sermon 57 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 12 McGinn, p. 270. DW I, p. 118 = Sermon 72 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 7 McGinn, p. 253. DW I, pp. 91–2 = Sermon 13 b Walshe I, pp. 117–18. DW III, p. 492 = Sermon 9 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 86 McGinn, p. 344. DW II, pp. 100–1 = Sermon 18 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 30 McGinn, p. 292. DW II, p. 104 = Sermon 18 Walshe; ibid., p. 294. LW III, p. 104; author’s translation. DW III, p. 296 = Sermon 88 Walshe II, p. 280. DW I, p. 235 = Sermon 50 Walshe; here I prefer Tobin’s translation of Sermon 15 McGinn, p. 273. DW V, p. 221 = Talks 10 Walshe III, pp. 24–5. DW V, pp. 251–2 = Talks 17 Walshe III, p. 36. DW I, p. 160 = Sermon 68 Walshe II, p. 160. DW II, p. 64 = Sermon 17 Walshe I, pp. 143–4. DW II, pp. 47–8 = Sermon 12 Walshe I, p. 105. DW I, pp. 106–7 = Sermon 65 Walshe II, p. 134.

10

A Genealogy of Discourse on Self-cultivation in Modern Japan: New Style for Narrating Buddhism and New Discourse on Religion in Modern Japan Masahiro Okada

Introduction In the religions of the world, there is a strong emphasis on the practice of ‘purification’ for the religious transformation of mind and body in connection with achieving such ultimate objectives as enlightenment and salvation. In the history of modern Japanese religion, the issue of the religious transformation of body and mind had been discussed in terms of self-cultivation (shuyo) in many cases. In this paper, I would like to consider the issue of religious purification by tracing a genealogy of discourse on self-cultivation in modern Japan. Sekiyama Kazuo, who studied the fushidan sekkyo (Buddhist artistic sermon) in the early modern period as a representative narrative art for public entertainment in Japan, stated on the condition of Meiji Buddhism as follows: Since Japanese politicians and educators started to make a fluent speech wearing Western clothes, some Buddhist preachers started to design a new Western style of sermon as a replacement of the old style. Therefore, there emerged a lot of people who denied the old style of artistic sermon and insisted to adopt a new approach for Buddhist missionary one after another.1

After the Meiji Restoration, all Japanese Buddhist sects were forced to renew their traditional institutions and to restart their history in a completely altered social condition. How did Japanese Buddhism reconstruct them within a totally new social and cultural condition?

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When the artistic sermon in early modern Japanese Buddhism, which is usually considered an origin of representative Japanese narrative art, rakugo, changed their clothes into the new style, Buddhism retold in the new style of narrative would have a new look just as writing did after changing a brush into a pen. In this article, I would like to consider how Japanese Buddhism changed their clothes from Japanese style (wafuku) to Western style (yofuku) and what kind of new look they accomplished afterwards, by featuring the works of Kato Totsudo (1870–1949) who introduced the Western style rhetoric and speech during the early twentieth century and retold the Eastern religious traditions including Buddhism through a new style of narrating. This shift in style for narrating religion is also related to the emergence of the new discourse on self-cultivation in Japan.

From Sekkyo to Enzetsu: Patterns for Narrative Arts and New Style of Speech According to the study by Sekiyama Kazuo, there were many masters of the artistic sermon called wajo within early modern Japanese Buddhist society. They travelled around the country and delivered public sermons to people. Their sermons were basically for entertainment. The renowned sermon masters were followed by a number of disciples. Those disciples memorized the standard stories for sermons and learned skills and techniques under the guidance of masters. There were many standard patterns of sermon. The different patterns and styles of sermon were adopted by each group. It is well known that there were many styles for composing a story, such as sanshu seppo (three cycles of storytelling) and sekkyo no godanho (five stages for storytelling). The three cycles consist of the explanation of Dharma (hosetsu), tropes (seiiyu), and causation (innen) and the five stages are divided into the pronouncement of theme, the explanation of Dharma, tropes, causation, and conclusion. They also shared the melody and tempo for telling the story. The disciples adopted their master’s style of vocalization and action too. It was highly significant for them to inherit those patterns and techniques of speech as a traditional skill of their own groups.2 In order to acquire the good skill of artistic sermon, they had to be a disciple of a talented master and engage in a severe practice by living and travelling together with their master. Their everyday practice itself might have a religious



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meaning, but the main purpose of their practice was to acquire a good preaching skill as an entertainer. The Buddhist artistic sermon was firmly established as a popular entertainment of people in early modern Japanese society. Beyond the role of the sermon to convey a religious message, the masters of Buddhist artistic sermons were expected to entertain people by their narrative art. The emotional response of people inspired by the master of the sermon, such as laughing, crying, and fear, causes a spiritual purification of people who attended the sermon. Among those masters of the artistic sermon, therefore, there were a number of people who cannot be categorized just as a Buddhist priest. One of the most renowned preachers is Anrakuan Sakuden (1554–1642) who edited Seisuisyo (a laugh to sober the drunken up) which is usually considered one of the most significant resources for the later development of Japanese narrative art called rakugo.3 The fact that people accepted the Buddhist sermon as an entertainment was closely related to the roles of Buddhism within the local communities in this period. The artistic sermon of a sekkyo master was accepted by people just like the other popular Buddhist practices in the local communities. The style of artistic sermon is totally different from that of the modern Buddhist speech (Bukkyo enzetsu) after the Meiji Restoration which was called kairyo sekkyo (an improved sermon). Even after the Meiji Restoration, the traditional artistic sermon played a significant role in preaching to the people. However, the main focus of the Buddhist sermon or speech shifted from entertainment to enlightenment. Especially the improved sermon, which became popular during the period of the Doctrinal Instruction (daikyo senpu) and within the context of an antiChristianity campaign, possessed a totally different style and purpose from those of the traditional artistic sermon. The main focus of Buddhist speech or improved sermon in the early Meiji period was to criticize Christianity and to debate with the other intellectual traditions. Kato Esho who was famous as a Buddhist speech expert in the early Meiji period classified the four basic styles of Buddhist speech in his book titled Introduction to the Buddhist speech: a handbook of speakers (1882) as follows: The first type (Instructional Speech): By introducing the basic ideas and quotations from standard Buddhist texts, to explain the teachings of Buddhism. This is close to the traditional instruction of Buddhist texts. The second type (Theme Speech or Point Speech): By stating the titles, such as ‘the idea of immortality’ or ‘the ultimate freedom’, to instruct people in the

96 Purification theme of speech logically and practically. This is not a simple interpretation of the quotations from Buddhist texts. The third type (Refutation Speech): By raising the titles, such as ‘reading the old testament’ or ‘original sin of Christianity’, to refute the points contradictory to our position. The fourth type (Discussion Speech): By raising the titles, such as ‘the advantages and disadvantages of mercy’ or ‘the front of the teaching profession’, to refute the evil and to promote the right.4

The main purpose of those speeches is to reinterpret Buddhist scriptures and Buddhist thought intellectually to confront the other intellectual traditions represented by Christianity and to enlighten people by explaining the teachings of Buddhism. The most significant role of Buddhist speech, therefore, was to persuade people of the significance of Buddhist teachings. Kato Esho, moreover, pointed to ‘scholarship’, ‘boldness’, ‘recollection’, and ‘voice’ as ‘the four requirements of a speaker’ and gave the speakers an instruction for the enlightenment activities.5 The Buddhist speech in the early Meiji period only played a role of intellectual commentary on Buddhism. The traditional style of artistic sermon was still popular and the works of sermon masters were highly active in this period.

The Rhetoric for Speech: Kato Totsudo’s Art of Eloquence The speech culture, which became popular during the early Meiji period, usually combined the traditional style of artistic sermon and the new style of speech. Then it moved to the stage dividing narrative art and social speech. While the colloquial style of writing and the naturalistic literature became popular, a style of recitation and singing of stories called Naniwa-bushi had come into fashion during the Meiji 30s. This fact is already pointed out by some previous studies. The growing interest in the improved sermon among Buddhists at that time was closely related to the trend of the times. However, the traditional style of sermon was still popular even after the radical shift of the political system. While the traditional style of artistic sermon and the new style of Buddhist speech worked together, the fundamental difference between them started to gradually become clear. The traditional artistic sermon was basically a narrative art for the sake of entertainment,



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but the modern Buddhist speech was a medium to spread the opinions of the speakers to the general public. Kato Totsudo (1870–1949) introduced the Western style of rhetoric for speech and developed his unique theory of religion in this period of time. He was active in the literary and religious society as a writer or a commentator who spread a unique theory of self-cultivation based on the reinterpretation of traditional Eastern thoughts. He continually published new books on thoughts titled A View on the Life and Death (1904), A View on the Destiny (1904), A View on Women (1904), and A View on Meditation (1906) during the Meiji 30s. On the other hand, he led the publication of religious or intellectual journals, such as Meikyo-shinshi and Chugai-nippo. He also taught at some Buddhist universities as a professor and had a strong connection with the Buddhist societies at that time. During the early Showa period, he issued some journals for the social education. Kato also played a significant role in the united society for the enlightenment of the nation (kyoka dantai rengo kai) at the same time. He published more than 200 books in his lifetime and gave more than 200 lectures to the public each year. He was popular as an accomplished lecturer who plainly explained the difficult thoughts and classics to people. Kato Totsudo considered ‘the Buddhist speech is a special product of the Meiji period and it already passed through the three stages of development’. Then, he arranged the historical development of the Buddhist speech after the Meiji Restoration as follows: (1) The age of refutation speech It started from the refutation against the missionary work of Christianity. Therefore, most of them were a refutation speech (hajya enzetsu). The main purpose of those speeches was to denounce Christianity. (2) The age of honor The Buddhist speech in this period only insisted on the philosophical and scientific legitimacy of Buddhist teachings and never preached Buddhism itself. Therefore it had a tendency to explain Buddhism only theoretically. (3) The age of enlightenment When we determined the true value of religion moving away from the theories of science or philosophy, the enemies in the past including Christianity became friends to shake hands with. They have their positions and we have ours. We convey our path to people and this is our duty. Today’s speech gets closer to the traditional artistic sermon in its purpose and becomes similar to the public lecture in its method.6

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Kato Totsudo introduced the new style for narrating Buddhism in this historical period which he called ‘the age of enlightenment’. While the Buddhist speech in the early modern period solely denounced Christianity and insisted on the scientific or philosophical meanings of Buddhist teachings, the new social condition required a new style of Buddhist speech. Kato Totsudo emphasized that the Buddhist speech needed a fresh style for invalidating the contrast between the traditional artistic sermon and modern Buddhist speech. Kato Totsudo frequently dealt with the rhetoric and style of speech or writing in his huge volumes of books. Of those works, Yuben-ho (the method of eloquence) which was published in 1908 was the best-organized work. This book had been reprinted many times. Its eleventh edition published in 1914 added an appendix titled ‘Rhetoric for Speech’. In this appendix, he said that ‘the ancestor of rhetoric is rather speech than writing’. The rhetoric of writing was originally derived from a colloquial expression of speech. Therefore, Western culture has a long tradition of rhetoric for speech too. Kato Totsudo explained the characteristic of the Western rhetoric for speech as follows: When we explain the rhetoric for speech, there is the one point to be cautious. This point has nothing to do with the rhetoric for writing. In the rhetoric for writing, there are two different styles. The one is practical and another is unpractical. The speech is solely practical and it is never allowed to be unpractical. The unpractical writing is the style usually called the artistic writing (bibun), such as poem, drama, novel and so on. The goal of these writings is to touch people’s aesthetic sense. Even though the speech also moves people’s emotion, it is never separated from a practical use. There are some styles similar to the artistic writing even in the field of colloquial expression, such as Noh songs, joruri (the narrative which accompanies a Bunraku puppet show) and lieder. These unpractical usages of colloquial expression have nothing to do with the speech. The speech is always practical. Therefore, it should avoid any types of unpractical rhetoric.7

He emphasized the practical use of speech, while denying the artistic factors which were significant for the traditional artistic sermon in Japan. The rhetoric used in speech is mainly practical. It is meaningless for the speech to utter a string of flattering compliments. This aim was different from that of the traditional artistic sermon which attached importance to the quality of narrative art. It also differed from that of the improved sermon which tried to demonstrate the significance of Buddhist thought theoretically. Kato’s following opinion is interesting too:



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Just as the straight and natural expression is getting popular in the field of writing, the straight and natural style is also valued on the platform of speech nowadays. The old style of narrative art which shakes a desk and intones the narration intentionally are started to be rejected by people. … The first foundation of eloquence is a fine character. The thought of speaker is the second. The voice or manner of speech is only at the end.8

According to Kato Totsudo, what is most significant for the contemporary style of speech is to convey its message and thought to people straightforwardly. It no longer amuses people by the narrative art. The rhetoric for speech is a technique to spread the message to people deeply. Its goal is totally different from that of the traditional artistic sermon. Moreover, Kato insists that ‘the first foundation of eloquence’ is ‘a fine character’. The ‘thought’ and ‘the voice or manner’ of the speaker plays only a supportive role for the contemporary speech. For Kato the speech is no longer a narrative art to entertain people, nor a means to enlighten people by spreading the new knowledge. It becomes a medium for conveying its own thought or faith.

New Rhetoric for Speech and Modern Discourse on Self-cultivation The traditional artistic sermon which conveyed the fixed contents of a script by the skilful technique of narrative is totally different from the new style of speech that conveyed its own thought or message to people. The role of eloquence had rapidly changed after the Meiji restoration. The audience who were gathered to attend the artistic sermon in the early modern period looked to enjoy the narrative technique of the sermon master. Nobody expected to understand the thought or message of the master directly. It might be the case that the audience learned a lesson from the patterned stories and passages from the Buddhist scriptures. The emotional factors, however, always preceded the theoretical explanations in the traditional narrative sermon. Moreover, the ‘improved sermon’ simply explained Buddhism as a theory, because their task was to refute the other religious and intellectual traditions logically. On the other hand, it is significant for the Buddhist speech as a new medium to talk about the self reflectively and convey its own thoughts to others. It would be secondary to entertain people and to explain the meaning of Buddhism

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objectively. The speech or lecture for the enlightenment of people requires a new style of speech to talk about the individual faith. This style of speech is not the same as the style of the traditional artistic sermon. It is also different from the style of the improved sermon that tried to explain the meaning of Buddhism theoretically. Kato Totsudo insists that the traditional artistic sermon and the modern improved sermon could peacefully coexist during the early Meiji period, but the role of Buddhist speech has been changed nowadays. According to Kato, ‘the merit of speech is to inspire the faith of non-believers and the merit of sermon is to strengthen the faith of believers’. We need a new style of speech which is different from both types of sermon in the present age. He arranges the five points of the speech which would be required in the contemporary social and cultural condition as follows: (1) In order to inspire the old style faith of the traditional Buddhism, the traditional artistic sermon was useful. However we need to use the modern style of speech to respond to the requests of the youth who are not satisfied with the traditional style of faith. (2) The vital point of Buddhist speech is to spread the teachings. There are two directions to expand the line of teachings. The one is a propaganda for the non-believers, and another is for the believers. (3) Since the Buddhist monk who delivers the artistic sermon is mean and uncultured, we need to invite some celebrities who have a good knowledge on the contemporary issues in order to expand the line of teachings. Therefore the style of the Buddhist sermon inclined to be a style of public speech. (4) Besides, the common projects of various Buddhist sects are getting popular nowadays. Therefore the sectarian sermon had gradually declined and the speech based on the trans-sectarian perspective became popular. (5) However the Buddhist speech today needs, at least partially, to inspire the modern style of faith and the new ideas. The goal of the Buddhist speech is no longer an advertisement of patent medicine. We need to give medicine and treat the patients actually. The speakers on the platform, therefore, should have own principle and doctrine.9 Kato Totsudo said that the new style of speech requires both roles of the sermon to the inside and the speech to the outside. We can call this new style of speech ‘the speech for enlightenment (kyoka-enzetsu)’. It should be



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distinguished from the styles of sermon or speech in the previous period. The style of speech in the new age is expected to inspire people’s faith and change their life. Therefore we need a style of speech which integrates the artistic sermon with the public speech, in order to approach both the insider and the outsider. The rhetoric for this kind of speech can neither be a simple art nor a matter-of-fact explanation. Kato Totsudo, for example, started his speech titled ‘Buddha Shakyamuni’ at that time with the following metaphor: A religion is like a firefly. It is bright in the dark, but it is not bright in the light. The reason for this saying is that nobody knew the perfect religion yet. The true religion shines not only in the dark age of barbarianism, but also in the shiny sunlight of civilization.10

In this speech, Kato likens the popular religion at that time to the light of a firefly and Christianity or Islam to the light of a lantern or lamp. Also, he starts talking about the life of Buddha Shakyamuni who spread the teachings of Buddhism as a shiny sunlight. His metaphor that likens the teachings of various religions to lights is a trope to emphasize the value of Buddhism as a religion in comparison with the other religious traditions. This is not a narrative art for inducing people to laugh and cry. In order to emphasize the value of Buddhism as a religious teaching, we should avoid this type of flowery prose. Kato’s ‘rhetoric for speech’ (enzetsu shuji-ho) was a technique to insist on his own opinion and on the superiority of Buddhism as a religious teaching. The goal of speech in this context is to change people’s consciousness. When it was put into religious action, we call it fukyo (missionary work). Kato talked about the missionary work of Buddhism in his book titled ‘The Crowd and Its Enlightenment’ (1933) as follows: The word, ‘fukyo’, is totally new. The word, ‘kedo’, has been used in the Buddhist tradition for a long time. In this case, ‘ke (changing)’ does not mean ‘kyo (teaching)’ which means to lead people consciously. The meaning of ‘ke’ is to influence people naturally and unconsciously. We can teach people using the power of speech and writing, but we have to rely on the fine character of the preacher when we try to change people.11

It is insufficient for the missionary work to convey teachings verbally or theore­ tically. Its goal would be accomplished for the first time by influencing people and changing their life. Therefore the fine character of the individual preacher

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is most significant for the speech of enlightenment. Then the speech becomes a medium for changing people’s consciousness in this context. The emergence of ‘the rhetoric to talk about a self ’ brought a new style to Buddhist speech. This style of sermon was different form both ‘the artistic sermon’ and ‘the improved sermon’. For the traditional artistic sermon, the techniques and patterns of narrative art were more significant than the character of the preacher. The modern improved sermon attached more importance to the logical persuasiveness and the intellectual impact of speech. However for the speech for enlightenment or missionary work it is most significant to nurture a fine character of the preacher. The emergence of the discourse on modern individual faith and the establishment of a modern category of ‘religion’ could be a background of this new style of speech. Moreover, it is interesting that Kato Totsudo said ‘the word, fukyo (missionary), is totally new’ in the above text. This idea of missionary work is connected to his unique theory of self-cultivation (shuyo-ron) which promoted the movement for social education and reconstructed the traditional religious or ethical thoughts in Japan. Kato Totsudo published a book titled ‘A New Dictionary for Missionary’ co-edited by Adachi Ritsuen and Oosumi Shun in 1910. Both of them were representative thinkers who developed their own theories for self-cultivation in the modern Japanese society. According to the explanatory notes of this book, ‘this dictionary is designed and edited to cover all materials which would support the missionary work and the spiritual education’.12 The main materials are collected from Buddhism, but there are many materials from Shinto and Confucianism. They collected the quotations even from Western thoughts. They collected the materials for the spiritual cultivation of people without discriminating between the East and the West. Moreover, Kato Totsudo revised the journal titled ‘Spiritual Self-cultivation’ and started to publish the new journal titled ‘New Style of Self-cultivation (shin shuyo)’ in 1953. The declamation of publication placed on the top of the journal is as follows: The declamation We eliminate all personal considerations and discuss politics, economy, religion, and various social issues from the standpoint of fair public. We never neglect to study the fundamental meanings of self-cultivation featuring the thoughts of both Eastern and Western thinkers and covering modern thoughts. We never involve in an empty theory and try to found a guiding principle



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for the everyday practice and a norm for the actual life in order to handle the practice of self-cultivation in reality. We are never satisfied with a simple self-cultivation and try to influence or lead people in order to open the new path for the popular education. We plan to discipline a strong will and improve our taste in order to inspire a sturdy disposition and a fresh taste of nation.13

Kato Totsudo united Western and Eastern thoughts and developed a unique theory of self-cultivation based on the idea of ‘sankyo icchi (the unity of three teachings)’. In this case, the three teachings mean Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto. Kato’s position was basically that of a layman. He established a publication company named ‘Seishinsha (a spiritual company)’ and started to publish the journal titled ‘Seishin (spirit)’ in 1924. Also, he started to play an active role in the newly established ‘central alliance of enlightenment and education parties’ under the guidance of the Japanese government. He delivered a huge number of lectures and published many articles or books as an executive director of this institution. The alliance planned a number of lectures titled ‘the lecture series for the promotion of national strength’. Kato delivered lectures titled ‘The Spiritual Meanings of Saving’ or ‘The Spirit of Showa’ as a main speaker of the institution throughout Japan. He also gave public lectures titled ‘Social Education and Religion’ as an official lecturer of ‘the course for social education’ organized by the institution.14 The unique theory of self-cultivation developed by Kato Totsudo was inspired by the introduction of new rhetoric for narrating religion and the emergence of new discourse on religion which anticipated a new role for religion in general. Then the traditional religious thoughts and practices were given a totally new social and cultural role in the modern Japanese society. The religious traditions, whether it is the West or the East, were reinterpreted as a tool for self-cultivation which supported the spiritual growth of people.

A Genealogy of Self-cultivation in Modern Japan: Buddhist Speech and Modern Religion Sekiyama Kazuo explained the decline of the Buddhist artistic sermon as follows: The style of practice, which required living together with his master and accompanying travels for delivering sermons, had already disappeared during the first ten years of Showa (1935–1944). The platform for sermon was changed to the

104 Purification desk and chair for speech. The most of Japanese Buddhist sects started to run their universities from the Taisho period to the Showa period. It was a driving force to lead a collapse of the traditional system for the artistic sermon.15

Afterwards, the Buddhist monks who studied and cultivated themselves at the universities engaged in educational and missionary work. The period of decline for the traditional artistic sermon was also the period when the new style of Buddhist speech became popular. Passing through the period when the traditional artistic sermon coexisted with the modern improved sermon, the new style of narrating Buddhism or religion had gradually been established in the modern Japanese society. The new style of speech for enlightenment basically integrated the style of the traditional artistic sermon and the style of the modern improved sermon. When the new style of speech became prevalent, it became difficult for both the artistic sermon and the improved sermon to coexist in the contemporary society. This side of the history of modern Japanese Buddhism or religion has never been studied by the previous works. However, we should pay more attention to the fact that the style for narrating Buddhism or religion had been drastically changed in this way. More attention should be paid to this change of style for narrating religion or leading people, for this is a significant factor to understand the history of the modern Japanese religion. Moreover, Kato’s discourse on religion, which narrated Buddhism or religion for the enlightenment or missionary work and attached significance to the character of the speaker, was based on a unique theory of self-cultivation that premised a pluralistic and essentialist definition of religion. In this context, Buddhism or religion was retold as a culture which contributed to the characterbuilding of the Japanese nation. It is significant for the reconsideration of the relation between state and religion in modern Japan to analyse the process in which the modern discourse on self-cultivation had been apprehended by the ultra-nationalism. Kato Totsudo had kept narrating Buddhism or religion by delivering the new style of speech. For Kato those speeches and lectures were a new medium to convey the meaning of traditional religious thoughts to people in his contemporary political, social, and cultural condition. His activities provide us with a highly interesting material for considering the ‘historicity’ of Buddhism or religion retold in the modern Japanese society and defining a genealogy of selfcultivation in modern Japan.



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Notes 1 Sekiyama Kazuo, Sekkyo no rekishiteki kenkyu (A Historical Study of Sekkyo) (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1973), p. 355. 2 Ibid., pp. 385–6. 3 Sekiyama Kazuo, Anrakuan Sakuden no shogai (The Life of Anrakuan Sakuden) (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1990). In this book, Sekiyama introduced the character of Anrakuan Sakuden as a versatile intellectual beyond the category of a Buddhist monk. 4 Kato Esho, Benshi hikkei bukkyo enzetsu shinan (A Handbook for the Speaker: Introduction to the Buddhist Speech) (Kyoto : Nunobe bunkaido, 1882), p. 3. 5 Ibid., pp. 3–4. 6 Kato Totsudo, Fude to shita (Brush and Tongue) (Tokyo: Heigo shuppan, 1911), pp. 23–5. 7 Kato Totsudo, Yuben ho (The Method of Eloquence) 11th edn (Tokyo: Toado shobo, 1922), pp. 203–4. 8 Ibid., pp. 204–5. 9 Kato, Fude to shita, pp. 25–7. 10 Kato Totsudo (ed.), Mieka bukkyo enzetsu shu (A Collection of Speeches Delivered by Famous Buddhists) (Tokyo: Morie shoten, 1903), p. 2. 11 Kato Totsudo, Gunshu to kyoka (The Crowd and its Enlightenment) (Tokyo: Shinko shuppan, 1933), p. 138. 12 Kato Totsudo, Osumi Shun, Adachi Ritsuen (eds), Fukyo shin jiten (A New Dictionary for Missionary) (Tokyo: Morie shoten, 1910). The quotation is from the explanatory note. 13 Shin shuyo (New Style of Self-cultivation) No.4, vol.1 (1953). The quotation is from the foreword. 14 Chuou kyoka dantai rengokai (ed.), Chuou kyouka dantai rengokai yoran (A bulletin of the central alliance of enlightenment and education parties) (Tokyo: Chuou kyoka dantai rengokai, 1929), pp. 31–56. 15 Sekiyama, Sekkyo no rekishiteki kenkyu, p. 395.

11

Healing Rituals in Contemporary Japanese Esoteric Buddhism as Acts of Individual and Collective Purification Katja Triplett

Healing and Salvation While religious healing rituals can be seen as aiming at healing the physical body, the larger context is that of attaining individual salvation along with healing the ills that have befallen all of human society. The close relationship between religion and healing is, for instance, evidenced in the English language by the etymology of the term ‘health’.1 The term is derived from the Old English hal, which has its roots in the Old English halig, or ‘holy’. Something that is halig or holy must be preserved in its whole state (hal) and should not be transgressed or violated. Once a state of wholeness or holiness is reached we can speak of ‘salvation’. In the modern German language the connection between ‘salvation’ and ‘healing’ has remained obvious: The noun ‘Heil’ (salvation) denotes a state of wholeness in a religious sense. Something is referred to as ‘heil’ when it is complete, whole or uncompromised. It not only refers to the state of the physical body or mind, but to an overall state of prosperity and wellbeing. In modern German, however, the verb ‘heilen’ is exclusively used in the context of healing physical or mental ailments, i.e. ‘Heilung’ (healing). Still, ‘Heilserwartung’ (hope of salvation) can either relate to worldly or to other-worldly benefits. In Buddhist religious practice there is a much closer connection between ‘salvation’ and ‘healing’ than is suggested by doctrinal texts.2 From earliest times the Buddha has been presented as a supreme healer or ‘doctor’ and his foundational teachings, The Four Noble Truths, are structured in accordance with ancient Indian medicinal practice.3 Thus Buddhist practice was originally designed as a method of healing the fundamental suffering of sentient beings

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who are shackled to the cycle of birth and death (sam.sāra). To be healed means to escape this cycle, i.e. to transcend the three realms of existence (i.e. the realms of desire, of form and of formlessness) that are governed by the laws of karma. However, as is the case with most religions, it could be said that much of common Buddhist practice was in reality never primarily concerned with such lofty ideals as final salvation, but more with mundane afflictions. Therefore, Buddhist monks and nuns in various parts of East Asia have developed and practised rituals aimed at healing the physical body. Still, the direct application of healing rituals is usually seen in the context of personal or universal salvation.4 In this paper, healing rituals and some of the underlying ideas of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism in general are addressed. The paper presents examples of contemporary Japanese Buddhist groups in this tradition who are engaged socially. The social engagement of so-called established Japanese Buddhist traditions dating from the ninth or tenth century tends to be neglected in academic research because of their image as backward, introverted and somewhat mysterious and closed religious traditions. Even a casual glance at traditional Buddhist institutions, however, reveals their engagement with lay people. Also, in recent decades Buddhists from these traditions have made a special effort to emphasize the relevance of their teaching and practices in modern society, as can be seen in the examples presented below.

Purification: Individual and Collective Quests The subject of purification is addressed on two levels in this paper: Healing rituals in Esoteric Buddhism are regarded as methods to obtain a pure, whole state and to reach buddhahood in this life. The individual adept of Esoteric Buddhism applies various practices in order to reach these goals. This is the level of the individual quest. This quest, however, would not work without the inspiration to save others, thus the individual quest includes or is intrinsically linked with the quest for collective purification. Despite this linkage between individual and collective we can see a separate level of collective quest, which addresses more the institutional developments: Institutions seek to ‘purify’ their own tradition by removing practices, teachings, materials and social structures thought to have a negative effect, to be superfluous or degenerate and too far removed from the ‘original’ teachings. Often, these activities of ‘purification’ are tied to movements of revitalization. These movements and their political



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activities may be welcomed by the established institution or – as in most cases – lead to a separation or ‘schism’. Some cases are introduced below.

The Individual Quest: Healing and the Transference of the Great Sun Buddha’s Power When speaking about Japanese Esoteric Buddhism or mikkyō, meaning the practice and teaching of Shingon – one of the major schools of Japanese Buddhism – ‘speech’ needs to be added to the two words ‘mind’ and ‘body’ that appear in the title of the symposium. According to Shingon Buddhism, ‘mind, body and speech’ are the basic units that are joined with the mind, body and speech of the universal Buddha Mahāvairocana, or Dainichi Nyorai in Japanese, who in English is sometimes referred to as the Great Sun Buddha. This joining is seen as a mutual empowerment and is the aim of the practice of the so-called ‘Three Mysteries’, sanmitsu in Japanese. Meditative concentration and contemplation of sacred images are connected to the mind practice, sitting in certain meditation postures and making symbolic hand gestures belong to the body practice, and repetition of sacred syllables (mantras, dhāran. ī) form the speech practice. Those practices provide a means for entering a state of non-duality with the cosmos and achieving buddhahood (jōbutsu) in this life and in this very body we are born with, according to the basic Shingon teachings. In Sino-Japanese this is expressed with the term sokushin jōbutsu, ‘obtaining buddhahood in this very body’.5 A second important teaching in Shingon Buddhism is that all human beings and by extension all beings, even inanimate objects, possess an innate potential for becoming a Buddha, and awakening to the actual reality of the cosmos and the things around us without any bias. A Buddha is also imagined as absolutely pure and without illusions although able to feel physical pain. So, if we humans are innately and potentially awake or ‘enlightened’ to use another, better known term, then what is keeping humans away from this desirable state? It has to do precisely with the notion of obstructive, impure thoughts and actions. Very simply put, the fact that humans and other beings remain in their present unenlightened state and are therefore caught in struggle and war, is – according to Shingon Buddhists – the belief in a solid self that is separate from other selves and from Dainichi Nyorai (the Great Sun Buddha) and the ordered cosmos. The process of how the mind, body and speech can become obstructed and impure is actually extremely complex and will require an excursion into the world of Buddhist ideas of consciousness and perception

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and how these have been developed by generations of Shingon Buddhists since the inception of Shingon into Japan in the ninth century by Kōbō Daishi (Kūkai). This contribution, however, will be limited to ideas of Mahāyāna philosophy as they pertain to the understanding of religious transformation in Esoteric Buddhist healing rituals. An important teaching in Buddhism in general and also in Shingon Buddhism is the idea of religious merit. In Shingon, the merit produced by an individual’s practice of the Three Mysteries is only one of altogether three ‘powers’ or sources that bring about the mutual empowerment mentioned above. The merit obtained in the practice is not kept to oneself but dedicated at the end of the ritual to all suffering sentient beings. The second of the three ‘powers’ is the response of Dainichi Nyorai’s power to the effort of the individual. In English translation this is often rendered as ‘grace’. It is a transference of the universal Buddha’s powers to the individual. This is referred to as kaji in Sino-Japanese and adhişt. hāna in Sanskrit. The third ‘power’ is the power of the ordered cosmos that encompasses all. This last power Shingon Buddhists call the ‘power of the dharma-body’, hōshin in Sino-Japanese, or in Sanskrit dharmakāya. Dharma denotes the teachings of the Buddha, but also the ‘truth’. In general Mahāyāna teaching, the dharmabody is the true body of reality; the body of essence that is pure and possesses no marks of distinction, and so is the same as emptiness (kū, Sanskrit: śunyatā). The two terms dharmakāya and emptiness and their ideas are closely related, even seen as identical. Both mind and matter are continually changing and inseparable, and since everyone has the potential to become a Buddha, the individual person and the Buddha are of one body, in the Shingon view. This is expressed in the well-known phrase: isshin funi, literally ‘one body, not two’. Awakening – or enlightenment – occurs in the Shingon view along with the transference of the Buddha’s powers – kaji. The idea is that in the moment of transference, there is naturally a response or reverberation not only in the spiritual realm of the mind but also in the material realm, the physical world. This means that the practice has a direct effect on tangible situations, and humans benefit directly from the transference. In Japan, this is called genze riyaku, which can be translated as ‘worldly, or mundane, benefits’. One of the workings of kaji is the power to heal illness, so the benefit received would be perfect health or the healing of a particular disease. In modern Japanese dictionaries, kaji has the meaning of ‘faith-healing’, so the healing of illnesses is a well-known aspect of this Shingon ritual. The frequently practised Kōmyō Shingon mantra is part of such a kaji healing ritual.



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In the Kōmyō Shingon mantra the ritual leader says, quoting from an English-language liturgical guidebook: ‘The Mantra of Light contains’ and then the group of practioners continues the sentence in saying: ‘in its twenty-three syllables, the entire power of the omni-present Mahavairocana Buddha. When recited egolessly, with single-minded concentration, the Light of the Buddha will embrace us. Clouds of illusions covering our mind will be cleared spontaneously, and our mind recovers its original purity of unborn Suchness, just as the full moon becomes free from mist.’ The 23 syllable mantra is then recited in phonetically rendered Sanskrit syllables: ‘On abokya beiroshano maka-bodara mani handoma jimbara harabaritaya un.’6

According to this liturgical text the ritual practice of reciting a mantra will have a direct effect: ‘The Light of the Buddha’ will clear the minds of the practitioners. It does not say of what exactly the minds will be cleared of but what follows is that the mind recovers its original purity. So we have here an act of purification. The purity is further specified as a ‘purity of unborn Suchness’. This desirable result is described metaphorically in the words ‘just as the full moon becomes free from mist’. The full moon represents the unborn Suchness that is present in the night sky but may be shrouded in mist, so ordinary human beings think that there is no moon. However, this is only an illusion. When the mist is removed the moon becomes visible to all although it has been there all along. What does this Suchness that is recovered through the Kōmyō Shingon mantra mean? The word ‘suchness’ is a translation of shinnyo that in turn is a translation of the Sanskrit term thatatā. It is the final and absolute truth behind all phenomena and is the basic and original, inherently pure state of our minds, according to many traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism. There is also a relative and provisional truth that constantly points to the absolute truth but is not identical with it. The full moon in the metaphor represents the absolute truth, the clouds or mist the provisional truth.

Three Collective Quests: Healing Rituals in Modern Institutional Contexts The first of three examples is concerned with the activities of the priest Oda Ryūkō (1914–93) and his foundation of a temple and a lay Buddhist group called Mitsumonkai. Then follow two examples of ritual activities that aim at healing

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sight-related diseases, ganbyō heiyū in Japanese, at two temple institutions, one in the Shingon, the other in the Zen (formerly in the Tendai) tradition.

Mitsumonkai and Miracle Healing Oda Ryūkō was an active and apparently charismatic Buddhist priest born in Aomori, in Northern Japan, and trained on Kōyasan where the main branch of Shingon Buddhism has its training centre. He was the abbot of Shinjōin temple in Tōkyō, but after obtaining a high rank he founded a lay Buddhist association called Mitsumonkai in 1975 and a new temple, Seiryūji, in his hometown of Aomori in 1985. One of the best-known features of this temple in Aomori is a 21m high bronze statue of Mahavairocana Buddha. Oda wrote numerous books in Japanese, and one in English for the Western audience. His main mission in Japan was to ‘rid Buddhism, especially Shingon Buddhism, of its negative image’. He also wrote that the true notion of genze riyaku, worldly benefits, has been forgotten, and that rituals and practices of Esoteric Buddhism must be revitalized and brought to the attention of all Japanese, not only a few specialized priests. He imagined Mitsumonkai to be a group of lay Buddhists studying together and learning the ‘pure secret teachings’ (seijun mikkyō) that he sees as going back to Kōbō Daishi (Kūkai), the founder of Japanese Shingon Buddhism and others before Shingon came under the influence of Japanese mountain asceticism. Oda saw this influence as a cause of decay of Shingon Buddhism. He also wanted to give others the chance to enter a true religion and not become victims of newly formed religious groups that he saw as highly materialistic and harmful. Finally, he demonstrated the truth of pure Shingon Buddhism by healing patients afflicted with terminal diseases. Oda felt that modern science has recently managed to prove what Shingon Buddhists have known and practised all along. All in all, the position of Oda Ryūkō bears the marks of fundamentalism, claiming the need to go back to the roots but at the same time applying tradition to contemporary problems. He also positioned himself quite clearly and critiqued the current social and medical situation in Japan and elsewhere. He stated in his English publication: I feel secure in emphasizing the fact that kaji not only cures human illness but affects other forms of life, such as plants, as well. For example, an apple tree to which kaji’s blessings were directed yielded twice as much fruit of exceptional flavor each year. […] One may wonder if I am telling the truth. Buddhism teaches that matter and mind are not separate. If this is so, isn’t it obvious that plant life too could receive benefits from kaji? Current scientific thought has assumed that plants have no level of mind or consciousness. From my direct



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experience and understanding of Buddhist philosophy I know that this is not correct. It is time to start new research and experiments on the premise that plants do have a level of mind that can be affected by the activities of the human mind. The reason modern science cannot escape this confusion or ignorance is because of clinging to the notion that “the mind is a function of the brain.” As long as scientists insist on imprisoning their thought in this sort of Cartesian dualism, there is little wonder why a true cure for disease cannot be found.7

Oda also emphasizes the difference between psychic faith healers and Buddhist kaji healers. With ‘psychic healers’ he means practioners of mountain asceticism whose practices were highly influenced by Esoteric Buddhism, but were a source of the degradation of Shingon: [… T]hese psychics lose their ability to heal in old age with the decline of their physical abilities. In comparison, the ability to heal through kaji, gained by way of enlightenment through the three mysteries, knows no fatigue. Even after the practitioner enters old age, because of serenity of mind, healing power actually increases and ‘incurable’ diseases can be cured and disaster averted. This should be called a miracle. With the practice of kaji what is most necessary to develop is peace of mind and purity, not just the ability to demonstrate ‘powers.’8

In Oda’s books, physicians and patients give testimony to being healed or witnessing a healing through kaji, thus supporting his mission. After his death in 1993, he was followed in Aomori by Oda Ryūgen and in Tokyo by Oda Ryūshin. Apparently, the kaji healing activity ended with Oda’s death, but both his successors work on lifting the negative image of Buddhism in Japan, for example, by organizing a summer jazz festival at the temple in Aomori in 2009. A local news site reported that the abbot stated: ‘One says that we live in an age of spiritual decline in Japan. I wish that by encountering Buddhism together with music, people will have the opportunity of healing their spirit and move swiftly and comfortably ahead’.9

Tsubosakadera: Healing and Social Engagement The second example concerns a medium-sized Shingon temple near Nara called Tsubosakadera.10 Its official name is Minami Hokkeji. The temple was founded in Japanese antiquity and has presented itself over many centuries as a centre for the healing of sight-related diseases. It is connected to the oldest pilgrimage circuit in Japan, the pilgrimage to 33 places where Kannon works miracles, the Kannon reijō Saikoku sanjūsan kasho. Kannon is one of the Japanese names for Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva that hears and reacts to the cries for help of all

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suffering beings. Tsubosakadera houses a so-called Thousand-armed Kannon. In fact, the statue has 42 arms indicating a large number of helping hands for suffering beings. Each hand holds an object connected to a hand gesture or mudra and to a set of sacred syllables. The statue itself represents the object of visualization. For example the upper left hand holds a sun disc. The sanmitsu practice of body, mind and speech connected to the sun disc will bring about the healing of blindness according to a canonical text. The assistant to the present abbot, Tokiwa Shōhan, explained to the author of this contribution in an interview in 2008 that Tsubosaka Kannon is especially skilled with this particular hand thus pilgrims and visitors or their relatives with eye problems are helped. The temple offers numerous services in regard to eye-healing: They offer free tea and rice crackers that are good for the eyes; they sell amulets and eye-drops, offer a memorial service for used eye glasses and contact lenses, and one of the two fire-offering ceremonies is aimed at healing sight-related illnesses. The late abbot, Tokiwa Shōhan’s father, arranged to have a home for the elderly blind built on the temple grounds, the first of its kind in Japan that now has several branch institutions all over the country. Moreover, the temple has engaged in charity activities in a number of places in India, all instigated by the late abbot. One project supports Indian stonemasons by purchasing large stone Buddha statues, another activity is the support of people afflicted by Hansen’s disease (leprosy) in India. There is a gigantic stone statue made in India, of Kannon in his standing, two-armed manifestation overlooking the mountains around Tsubosakadera. The son of this socially engaged abbot diligently continues his father’s efforts. In the 1980s, during his father’s time, Tsubosakadera broke away from the Shingon school because these activities seemed to have been too difficult to arrange under the authority of the headquarters.

Ichibataji: Pilgrimage to the Medicine Buddha The final example is a Buddhist temple that used to belong to the other tradition of Esoteric Buddhism in Japan, the Tendai-shū, but presently has ties to the Myōshinji branch of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist school. It is popularly called Ichibata Yakushi. The principal object of worship is Yakushi Nyorai, the so-called Medicine Buddha who is called Bhaişajyaguru in Sanskrit. The speciality of this particular temple is also the healing of sight-related diseases, ganbyō heiyū. The official name of the temple is Ichibataji, which includes the name of its location, Ichibata, near the city of Izumo in Shimane Prefecture. Ichibataji is



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quite difficult to reach from the bigger urban centres of Japan and therefore, a pilgrimage to this rural Buddhist sanctuary takes considerable effort. As many older temples in Japan, Ichibataji is connected to circular pilgrimage networks that are constantly being created in Japan to attract visitors. For example, Ichibataji is No. 1 of 10 temples in the Izumo region that are dedicated to Yakushi Nyorai. Since it also has a hall dedicated to Kannon, it is part of a Kannon pilgrimage: No. 26 of a circuit to 33 Kannon temples in central Japan: Chūgoku Kannon reijō. Because of its foundation legend that involves an eye-healing miracle in the ninth century, it has attracted pilgrims to Ichibata for centuries. Apparently, there was no medical support directly at the temple but pilgrims have been offered a special medicinal tea to drink to improve their eye-sight. This tradition is followed to this day. As with Tsubosakadera, tea that is blessed by Yakushi Nyorai is made available to drink. Also water can be used either for drinking or washing one’s eyes. When you approach the well, a movement sensor activates a fountain pump, so that water spouts from the medicine box of a sitting Yakushi Nyorai statue made of stone. In addition, votive tablets for special prayers for eye-healing and health, but also other benefits, are provided for a fixed donation. Ichibataji mentions safety for children as another benefit, but there is also a hall for memorial services of pets. A direct connection between pet memorials and eye healing is made obvious by a pamphlet from the Japanese Association for Seeing-Eye Dogs, which can be found in the pet memorial hall. All in all, the temple gives the impression of an active institution despite its secluded location, with traditional offerings for worldly benefits. Although Ichibataji is connected with Myōshinji, a Zen temple, and offers Zen meditation sessions for lay practitioners on weekends, Ichibataji is the head temple of an independent religious corporation called Ichibata Yakushi Kyōdan officially registered with the Ministry of Culture in 1953. At present it comprises about 60 temples, a considerable network. The present abbot is the third leader of this religious group, Iizuka Daikō (born 1960), following the second leader, his father, Iizuka Kōken who published a number of pious books. The founder, Ōnishiki Sokō, originally formed this association as a separate institution in the early twentieth century. Apparently the network of Ichibata Yakushi groups goes back to the Edo period (eighteenth century) and was already organized as an association at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Conclusion In all three examples, it is striking to see that the individual temples have separated to some extent from their headquarters and are not connected to the administrative authority any longer. In all three cases, the separation or formation of a new institution goes back to an individual. And in all three cases healing plays a prominent role. Naturally, as one of the changes that humans have to deal with – birth, old age, sickness and death – sickness is of great human and personal concern. In the traditional lists of the worldly benefits at temples that visitors and pilgrims come for, healing of sickness, good health etc. is one of the most frequently mentioned benefits they wish for. Others include safety in traffic, success in business and career, safety in the home, and the fulfilment of all wishes. All three institutions support small but apparently active lay study groups that read and discuss texts and practise together, so lay followers are aware of what kaji or other ritual acts imply, knowledge that had been circulated more or less within monastic circles in the past and therefore ‘esoteric’ in the literal sense of the word. After an institution’s charismatic founder dies, the tradition is carried on and a new lineage is slowly formed. This process is nothing particularly new or actually surprising since it continues a trend in Japanese Buddhism. It is probably too extreme to speak about schisms since there is no single and central Buddhist authority, but clearly new institutions have branched off frequently forming new traditions with an emphasis on certain teachings. Since new religions that do not see themselves as branches of another tradition often have healing and caring for the ill as part of their activities, traditional Esoteric Buddhists may feel that they have to defend their teachings and practices, like Oda Ryūkō clearly stated, and emphasize healing as a particularly strong point of their tradition, in order to survive in a highly contested religious field. By doing this they form, as we have seen in the three examples, new religious groups themselves. In their own view they would rather see this as a process of revitalization or ‘purification’ of the tradition going directly and fundamentally back to their lineage’s founder.

Notes 1 Cf. Christoph Kleine and Katja Triplett (eds), ‘Introduction: Religion and Healing in Japanese Religions’, Japanese Religions 37.1 and 2 (2012), pp. 1–12.



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2 Pamela Winfield, ‘Curing With Kaji: Healing and Esoteric Empowerment in Japan’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32.1 (2005), pp. 107–30 (108). 3 In modern medical terms the Buddha presented his path according to the four medical principles of (1) diagnosis, (2) aetiology, (3) recovery and (4) therapeutics: The Buddha (1) identifies the symptoms of suffering, (2) reveals the causes for suffering, (3) states that there is a way to heal the disease, and finally (4) prescribes a therapy. 4 In his systems theory Niklas Luhmann stresses the difference between sickness and suffering, health and salvation in functionally differentiated societies: ‘Von Krankheit auf Gesundheit hin zu denken, ist etwas anderes als von Leid auf Heil’, (Niklas Luhmann, Funktion der Religion [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982], p. 193). According to Luhmann the system of religion does fulfil functions that are also addressed by other systems. However, the system of religion fulfils these functions in a different way. For instance, Buddhist monks or nuns who perform healing rituals and apply medication gleaned from the ‘secular’ system of medicine do address their activity as alleviating fear of the indeterminacy of sickness and health but as the system of religion’s dual of suffering and salvation. 5 Cf. Professor Pye’s contribution in this volume. 6 Ryuko Oda, Kaji: Empowerment and Healing in Esoteric Buddhism (Tokyo: Kinkeizan Shinjo-in Mitsumonkai Publishing, 1992), p. 119. 7 Ibid., p. 74. 8 Ibid., p. 46. 9 Source: http://www.kahoku.co.jp/news/2009/06/20090609t25004.htm (last accessed September 2009); passage translation by author of this contribution. 10 Cf. Katja Triplett, ‘Gründungslegenden in der Erinnerungspflege japanischbuddhistischer Tempel am Beispiel des Tsubosakasan Minami Hokkeji’, Max Deeg, Oliver Freiberger and Christoph Kleine (eds), Geschichten und Geschichte: Historiographie und Hagiographie in der asiatischen Religionsgeschichte, Historia religionum; 30 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2010) pp. 140–80; Katja Triplett, ‘Esoteric Buddhist eye-healing rituals in Japan and the promotion of benefits’, in Lucia Dolce, Gil Raz and KatjaTriplett (eds), Grammars and Morphologies of Ritual Practices in Asia, Section II, Axel Michaels et al. (eds), Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual; 1, (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), pp. 485–97.

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Karma-yoga as a Self-purificationthrough Service for Others: The Case of the Ramakrishna Movement Midori Horiuchi

Preface There is a Japanese branch of the Ramakrishna Mission in Zushi, which is known as Nippon Vedānta Kyōkai (Vedānta Society of Japan). They explain their ideals and activities as follows: Vedānta, as revealed to the saints of Ancient India, teaches that man’s real nature is divine, that the true object of human life is to unfold and manifest this divinity and that truth is universal. Vedānta believes in one God who has both ‘transcendental’ and ‘immanent’ aspects. God-vision can be obtained by controlling nature, internal and external, and through paths (Yoga) of knowledge (Jñāna), selfless work (Karma), devotion (Bhakti) and psychic control (Rāja-yoga). Vedānta accepts all the religions of the world and reveres the great prophets, teachers, and sons of God, because it recognizes the same divine inspiration in all.1

Ramakrishna Math and Mission According to the their home-page, ‘Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are twin organizations which form the core of a worldwide spiritual movement (known as Ramakrishna Movement or Vedānta Movement), which aims at the harmony of religions, harmony of the East and the West, harmony of the ancient and the modern, spiritual fulfilment, all-round development of human faculties, social equality, and peace for all humanity, without any distinctions of creed, caste, race or nationality’.2

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The main goals and objectives of these twin organizations are based on the principles of Practical Vedānta, and they indicate six points. Among these, the third is ‘To treat all work as worship, and service to man as service to God’. And the fifth is ‘To work for the all-round welfare of humanity, especially for the uplift of the poor and the downtrodden’. Thus they can say their motto is: Atmano mokshartham jagad hitaya cha. For one’s own salvation, and for the welfare of the world.

Further, three characteristics of the philosophy of Ramakrishna Movement is stated as being modern, universal, and practical. The basic principles of this philosophy are: (1) God realization as the ultimate goal of life (2) Potential divinity of the soul (3) Synthesis of the Yogas (4) Morality based on strength (5) Harmony of Religions (6) Avatarhood of Sri Ramakrishna (7) A New Philosophy of Work3

A New Philosophy of Work All work in the Ramakrishna Math and Mission is done according to this philosophy of work, which is based on the new philosophy given by Swamī Vivekānanda for the modern world. There are five principles. We can read them on their website: (1) According to Vedānta, the physical universe is a manifestation of God known as Virat. Hence, as Sister Nivedīta has stated, there is ‘no distinction between the sacred and the secular’. What this statement means is that all work is sacred. Even menial work such as sweeping the floor or mending shoes is to be done with as much attention and devotion as work in the shrine. (2) The Gīta (18.46 and 9.24) states that the all-pervading God is the ultimate source of all work and the enjoyer of the fruits of all sacrifice. Hence all work is to be done as worship and the fruits of actions are to be offered to the Lord. (3) One of the important principles Swamī Vivekānanda learned from his Master was Shiva Jnane Jīva Seva, ‘to serve Jīva as Shiva’. Since man is



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potentially Divine, service to man is indeed service to God. Instead of looking upon a needy person as an object of pity, he is looked upon as an object of worship. Such an attitude elevates both the giver and the recipient. (4) Swamī Vivekānanda was the first religious leader in India to speak for the poor and the downtrodden and to state boldly, ‘He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak and the diseased, really worships Shiva; and … with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples’. It was Swamījī who coined the word daridra-nārayāna to refer to the poor. Swamījī’s love and concern for the poor continues as a directive principle in Ramakrishna Mission’s service programmes. (5) When work, any work, is done fulfilling the above conditions, it becomes a spiritual discipline: The mind gets purified and the potential Divinity of the soul manifests itself more and more. Thus work done as worshipful service benefits the doer himself spiritually: It becomes a spiritual discipline or Yoga. It is with this understanding of work as a spiritual discipline (Karma Yoga) that all the service activities of the Ramakrishna Mission, such as giving food and clothing to the poor, nursing the sick etc. are undertaken. Thus service done as worship of God in man helps in two ways: It helps physically or mentally the person who is served, and it helps spiritually the person who serves.4

Activities of Ramakrishna Math and Mission For example, there were nine types of the activities of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission from 2006 to 2007. They are: (1) Medical Service (2) Educational Service (3) Work in Rural and Tribal Areas (4) Relief and Rehabilitation Work (5) Women Welfare Programmes (6) Youth Welfare Programmes (7) Mass Contact (8) Spiritual and Cultural Work (9) Celebrations.5 They were carried out according to the three ideals of Work as worship, potential divinity of the soul, and harmony of religions which are based on the two

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organizations’ motto. It is this syntactic ideal of service to man as service to God that sustains the large number of hospitals, dispensaries, mobile medical units, schools, colleges, rural development centres and many other social service institutions run by the twin organizations. For example, the Ramakrishna Mission Boys Home, Rahara in West Bengal, which was started in 1944, is primarily a residential educational institution for orphans and poor boys. However, a good number of day-scholars also attend its various schools and colleges. When I visited this centre, monks (swamīs) and lay disciples taught in the classes. The school was famous for the good percentage of students who go on to a higher stage of education, therefore many students came from outside. Boy-orphans in this centre lived with swamīs, studied from swamīs, learned jobs like sewing, carpentry, daily farming, and sold their own products such as bread and milk every morning. When they were 18, they became independent of this centre.

Why Does Modern Society Need a New Philosophy of Work? Karma-yoga taught in the Hindu tradition is originally to perform rituals perfectly and to do their dharma such as varnāshramādharma and svadharma. The root of the word karma is the Sanskrit kri, literally meaning ‘to do’. The essence of karma relies heavily on action, it theorizes that past actions incur consequences and affect one’s position and progression in life. In this way karma is both action and the result of action. A major facet of karma is the work one does, and the attitude with which s/he goes about her/his duty. Karma-yoga is the path (way) of work (action) to mok. sha (perfect liberation/ united with God/self-realization), and is one of the three traditional paths to mok. sha. It is the yoga of action or work; specifically, karma-yoga is the path of dedicated work: renouncing the results of our actions as a spiritual offering to God as the Gīta has taught. This is a teaching of nishkāmakarma. As we mentioned earlier, karma is both action and the result of action. What we experience today is the result of our karma – both good and bad – created by our previous actions. This chain of cause and effect has been created by ourselves. Usually all of us tend to work with expectations in mind. For example we work hard to get respect and appreciation from our colleagues and promotions from the boss, or to earn more money and fame. It might be said that much of our lives is run simply in expectation of future results so that we do it automatically and unconsciously. As the modern age is often said to be the



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age of material civilization and full of self-centred persons, so it is easy to act materialistically. But, whether we realize it or not, all of us perform actions all the time since even sitting and thinking is action. Since action is inevitable, an integral part of being alive, we need to reorient it into a path to God-realization. Therefore, we should stop the chain reaction of cause and effect by disengaging the ego from the work process, by offering the results up to a higher power, a God. Thus karma-yoga is consecration of all actions and their fruits unto the Lord. Karma-yoga is performance of actions dwelling in union with the God, removing attachment and remaining balanced in both success and failure. So actions become a means for purifying one’s own self. Ramakrishna said: Householders devoted to God live in the world like a maidservant, who performs her duties for her master but always keeps her mind fixed on her own native village; that is to say, they do their duties in the world keeping their minds on God. Anyone leading a worldly life is sure to come in contact with its dirt; but a householder who is a true devotee of God lives like the mudfish, which, though remaining in the mud, is not stained by it.6

And: Do you know what ignorance means? It is the feeling: ‘This is my house; these are my relatives; I am the doer; and the household affairs go on smoothly because I manage them’. But to feel, ‘I am the servant of God, His devotee, His son’ – that is a good attitude.7

He also talked to his devotees about God’s manifestation through men. You see, my nature is changing on account of this injury to my arm. It is being revealed to me that there is a greater manifestation of God in man than in other created beings. God is telling me, as it were: ‘I dwell in men. Be merry with men’. Among men God manifests Himself in a still greater degree in pure-souled devotees. That is why I feel great longing for Narendra, Rākhāl, and other such youngsters.8 One often sees small holes along the edge of a lake. Fish and crabs accumulate there. Just so, there is a greater accumulation of divinity in man. It is said that man is greater than the salagram. Man is Narayana Himself. If God can manifest Himself through an image, then why not through man also?9

In this way, to serve a person as a God is recommended. When householders devoted to God live in the world like ‘a maidservant’ always keeping her mind on God, one can live like ‘the mudfish, ’ which, though remaining in the mud, is not stained by it. And to feel ‘I am the servant of God’ leads to selfless service

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to others. Further, Ramakrishana said ‘ “I” and “mine”–that is ignorance. “Thou” and “Thine” that is Knowledge. A true devotee says: “O God, Thou alone art the Doer; Thou alone doest all. I am a mere instrument; I do as Thou makest me do ....” ’10 Thus when work is done without egoism, to feel that I am an instrument or a servant of God, it becomes a spiritual discipline: the mind gets purified. He always advises householders on worldly duties to perform in an unselfish spirit and without desiring any result.11 He explained, ‘All, without exception, perform work. Even to chant the name and glories of God is work, as is the meditation of the non-dualist on “I am He”. Breathing is also an activity. There is no way of renouncing work altogether. So do your work, but surrender the result to God.’12 Ramakrishna talked to us in the following words (quotations of Ramakrishna, available on the website of Ramakrishna Math and Mission): Purity of mind is an essential condition for the attainment of the Ultimate Reality; real purity is freedom from lust and greed. External observances are only of secondary importance. God realization is possible for all. The householders need not renounce the world; but they should pray sincerely, practise discrimination between the Eternal and the temporal and remain unattached. God listens to sincere prayer. Intense longing (vyakulata) is the secret of success in spiritual life. God dwells in all people but the manifestation of this inner Divinity varies from person to person. In saintly people there is greater manifestation of God. Women are special manifestations of Divine Mother of the Universe, and so are to be treated with respect. Since God dwells in all people, helping the needy should be done not out of compassion (which is an attitude of condescension) but as humble service to God. Egoism, caused by ignorance, is the root-cause of all suffering.13

And Swamī Vivekānanda started the Ramakrishna Math and Mission to carry out Ramakrishna’s teachings as religious practices, which are recognized as the new ideal of monasticism of Hindu monks. That is the rejuvenation and modernization of monasticism. In this new monastic ideal, followed in the Ramakrishna Order, the ancient principles of renunciation and God realization are combined with service to God in man (Shiva jnane jiva seva). It is said that Vivekānanda elevated social service to the status of divine service. Ramakrishna monks engage themselves in service activities not for selfglorification but for the ‘greater glory’ of the God. They also follow the path of Jñāna and, by the practice of self-analysis, learn to identify themselves



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with the Pratyagatman or Inner Self which is the unchanging inner witness of all thoughts and actions. Through all these means the monks learn to be unselfish and unegoistic. Thus the way of life under the name of Service as a way of life followed in Ramakrishna Math and Mission has certain distinctive features. The first of these is Selflessness, Sacrifice, Love. (The others are 2. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity 3. Excellence, Efficiency, Teamwork 4. Truthfulness, Honesty, Transparency 5. Social commitment without politics.) It is meant that the principle of selflessness is an important teaching of the Holy Trio, and constitutes the very first step in the three main spiritual paths of Karma, Bhakti and Jñāna. They work towards those words of Ramakrishna shown above: ‘purity of mind is an essential condition for the attainment of the Ultimate Reality; real purity is freedom from lust and greed’.

Notes 1 http://www.vedanta.jp:8080/ploneEn/about`_us/the-ramakrishna-math-andramakrishna-mission?set-language=ja&cl=ja (accessed 15 September 2010). 2 http://belurmath.org/home.htm (accessed 15 September 2010). 3 http://belurmath.org/Ideology.htm (accessed 15 September 2010). 4 Ibid. 5 http://belurmath.org/activities.htm (accessed 15 September 2010). 6 Mahendranath Gupta, Swami Nikhilananda (transl.), The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna II (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math Mylapore, 1985, 8th edn) p. 1017. 7 Ibid., p. 1019. 8 Mahendranath Gupta, Swami Nikhilananda (transl.), The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna I (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math Mylapore, 1985, 8th edn) p. 405. 9 Ibid., p. 405. 10 Ibid., pp. 900–1. 11 Ibid., p. 113. 12 Ibid., pp. 113–14. 13 http://www.belurmath.org/sriramakrishna.htm#message (accessed 1 September 2010).

13

Purification and Emotion Jörg Lauster

The Return of the Emotions in Western Civilization Emotions play an ambivalent role in Western civilization. Beginning from famous ancient philosophers like Plato or the Stoics we find a strong tradition devaluating emotions. Emotions, so the argument goes, belong only to the bodily dimension of man, they are more a part of our past as animals than of our true human nature. Nevertheless emotions have a strong power, a really destructive potential, so strong that they could lead to an absolute loss of selfcontrol. Therefore Plato and the Stoics recommend the use of reason against the power of the emotions. In the Stoic tradition a wise man lives as free as possible from the influence of his emotions and passions. In a famous remark the philosopher Hegel wrote that to appeal on emotions in an argument means trampling upon humanity because there is never a chance to find an objective criterion. This was a fierce attack against the theology of feeling of his personal enemy at Berlin, the protestant theologian Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher. I will come back to that point. We can simply conclude here: There is a long tradition in Western thought of criticizing emotions, a strong distrust, almost a kind of fear, because emotions can cause rebellion. From its beginnings the Christian religion shares this contempt of emotions with the Hellenistic culture. The transformation from the wise man to a holy man is based on a similar attitude towards emotions. In a general view we can say that purification means always also purification of emotions. In the last two decades this classical approach in Western civilization and religion has deeply changed. Regarding the book market it would not be exaggerated to call the phenomenon a return or even a rebirth of emotions. The starting point is the new treatment of the emotions in the neurosciences. To give an example: In his popular works the Portuguese-American neurologist

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Antonio Damasio describes how emotions play a very important role in the evolution of man. In opposition to reasonable thinking emotions can evaluate environmental situations very fast. In a complex evolution, emotions emerge from biochemical processes and build a part of human consciousness. In their special manner they help to facilitate orientation in the world. This input from the neurosciences is an important impulse for the actual discussion. Especially in the philosophical debate the importance of feelings has grown enormously. We can see the point of the discussion quite clearly in the title of one of the famous books in this discussion. The American philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum called her study Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions.1 Of course, I cannot repeat here the whole philosophical discussion of the last decade. A big part of the discussion deals with the rationality of emotions, a point which I have to neglect now. More important for us are two other points: (a) In the human consciousness emotions present a kind of sensual engagement. To have emotions means to be involved in the world with body and soul. So we can say that the return of the emotions also indicates a new opinion of the body. (b) Emotions befall us, we cannot produce them. So they are a result of our encounter with reality. Emotions represent a kind of worldview of their own. Of course, this concept is a certain attack on the idea of autonomy. Emotions show us that the world is more than a construction of our reasonable thought. So the decisive question is what we can see of the world through emotions. This new evaluation of emotions might seem to be a surprisingly new attitude; in fact, it is not as new as it seems to be. As I mentioned before, the attitude of Western civilization towards emotions has always been ambiguous. Even philosophers like Plato or Kant, whom we usually consider critics of emotions, highly esteemed emotional modes like intuition or presentiment. In this context, European Romanticism is for us a very interesting movement. In this époque at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century the programme of rationalism was criticized as too limited. According to the famous Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, Romanticism is one of the most important sources of the modern self.



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The Romantic Programme: Religion as Feeling For our topic this period is very interesting because here we find a singular and outstanding Christian evaluation of emotions. Therefore we have to look at Friedrich Schleiermacher, a so-called church father of the nineteenth century. His fame goes back to his new foundation of religion. He tried to give an answer to the various challenges of religion in modern times. The central part of his argument is the identification of religion and feeling. It is remarkable that he talks about feeling not about emotion. The definition of religion as a kind of feeling is a common theme in Schleiermacher’s thinking. According to some famous phrases, religion is ‘neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling’,2 and it is the ‘sensibility and taste for the infinite’.3 In his main work The Christian Faith we find the basic definition: ‘The piety which forms the basis of all ecclesiastical communions is, considered purely in itself, neither a Knowing nor a Doing, but a modification of Feeling, or of immediate self-consciousness’.4 Three points seem to be of interest in Schleiermacher’s definition: First, Schleiermacher calls piety a modification of feeling. The contrary would be something like an unconscious or dark feeling, which Schleiermacher clearly excludes with this definition. ‘Modification of Feeling’ means an act of consciousness with intentionality. This is the reason why Schleiermacher uses only the expression feeling and never emotion. This definition isn’t without risk, because it could bring religion into the region of objective consciousness. And Schleiermacher surely wants to exclude just that. So, this is the second point: more precisely he defines the modification of feeling as an immediate self-consciousness. It seems that Schleiermacher wants to reject any kind of reflection, even any kind of mediate representation; therefore he uses the expression ‘immediate’. Following this aim Schleiermacher goes quite far. In a famous note, he portrays the immediate consciousness according to his colleague Steffen as ‘the immediate presence of whole undivided Being’.5 Some examples give us a chance to understand the distinction between the consciousness of states of feelings and the objective consciousness: Objective consciousness must be always mediated by a kind of reflection, whereas the consciousness of the states of feelings is an activity of the consciousness as pure receptivity. The feeling of joy, for example, demonstrates this evidently, joy could not be produced by an act of reflection or of will; it is just the awareness of an inner state.

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Of course, Schleiermacher observes that one could not surgically cut out feeling from any particular knowing or doing. He admits that ‘the stirredup Feeling sometimes comes to rest in a thinking, which fixes it sometimes discharges itself in an action which expresses it’.6 But what Schleiermacher emphatically points out is that there is no identity between feeling and knowing or feeling and doing. Third point: An important benefit to Schleiermacher’s concept of religion is the new view on the essence of religion in itself. Religion is no longer an objective conception of reality; it is a symbolization of inner states of feeling. Thus the religious feeling is a subjective representation and expression of a certain inner state of feeling. Moreover, this idea of religion, based on a theory of subjectivity, helps us to understand religion as a pre-reflexive, inner, mental phenomenon of consciousness. The most basic element of religion is feeling. Language or other forms of objective symbolization like dogmatic systematization or artistic representation expressing the inner feeling are secondary procedures of symbolization. In a certain sense we must say that all these symbolizations always come too late. This is important for our topic. All religions consist in secondary acts of verbal expressions or cultural symbolizations. In this sense purification of religion could mean to free the feeling from additional and superfluous secondary modes of expression. This means that the original religious feeling is purer than the secondary expression like theological doctrines, ritual practice or moral orders. This also has a great importance for the interreligious dialogue. I am not an adherent of a pluralistic theory of religion. Therefore on the base of Schleiermacher’s concept of religion I would not say that the religious feeling is always the same and that we differ only in our religious expressions. Nevertheless, we can learn from this concept that we have to distinguish very precisely between religious feelings and their expressions. Back to our argument: The crucial benefits of Schleiermacher’s theory of religion as feeling are evident. He was able to give religion a modern analysis based on the highly-developed philosophy of Kant and German Idealism, and furthermore he was able to free religion from all dogmatic weight. Dogmatic expressions are a kind of secondary interpretation of the inner feeling; they depend on the cultural context of their genesis, and they never could exactly express the inner state of religious feeling. Religion is always greater and deeper than all kinds of possible symbolization and expression. This, finally, gave Schleiermacher the possibility of opening new sources for the communication of religion in the dialogue with his contemporaries. Religion does not manifest



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itself in a precise description of Christian Faith in the language of the church tradition. One can find it first in the evidence of an inner feeling, and even then it’s a kind of hermeneutical effort to compare this inner state with the cultural and religious tradition of Christianity. Of course, such a concept of religion as feeling is far away from a commonsense-theory. I want to mention at least the three basic points of criticism. The first point is that Schleiermacher’s construction exceeds the competence of whatever feeling could reach. In Schleiermacher’s concept his critics see an underestimation of reflection. Without any kind of reflection an immediate self-consciousness could never reach as far as Schleiermacher claims. This criticism does not want to again reduce the religious feeling to a kind of knowing. What we need in the process of religious feeling is a more detailed analysis of the interaction of interpretation on the one hand and experience on the other hand. The most vulgar and famous accusation comes from the other end of the theological spectrum. It is the criticism of subjectivism. Here we should distinguish between a primitive and a more elaborate version of this objection. In the first version, the fact that Schleiermacher insists on the inner and personal conviction of the individual just means subjectivism. But this is too easy an argument. Of course, in a certain way all our expressions are subjective acts, operations of human beings. There must be a subject who expresses religion. In this way, the primitive criticism of subjectivism falls back behind Kant. To criticize religion as subjective would be the same as criticizing a white horse for being white. A more sophisticated version of this objection is an attack on Schleiermacher’s conception of religion as subjective.7 According to this criticism, Schleiermacher’s religious feeling is only the realization of human desires, a kind of pure aestheticism which leaves religion in irrationalism. If religion really is a feeling, it has no more significant content, no concrete propositions; all is left in a kind of semi-darkness. Despite some rough assaults, this kind of criticism obviously teases out the neuralgic point: What is the link between the precision or determination of the immediate self-consciousness and the propositions of Christian faith? And in this form the objection immediately leads us to contemporary discussions on the objective value of feelings as mentioned before. And here we are at the main point of the actual discussion. Under the actual conditions of various kinds of criticism of religion, religions have to demonstrate that their propositions must be more than just a kind of subjective self-interpretation; the question is what these propositions are for and what they can actually latch onto in reality.

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Religious feelings must be more than a kind of intellectual solipsism which cannot guarantee any relation to the world outside the individual.

Higher Realism: Religious Feeling as a Manifestation of an Outside ‘Numen’ Perhaps it is caused by some kind of local patriotism, but in dealing with this problem I find some helpful ideas pointing in the right direction in the work of Rudolf Otto. Together with Rudolf Bultmann, Otto is Marburg’s most famous twentieth century theologian, but for some reason his reception seems to be wider in the English-speaking world than in Germany. In his work Otto brings together very different influences, and not always in a systematic order, so perhaps we may describe him almost as a kind of ‘freak’ thinker. Interesting for us is how he tries to overcome the problem of subjectivism and realism in Schleiermacher. Following a famous expression of Schleiermacher, let us call it ‘higher realism’.8 At the very beginning of his main work The Idea of the Holy Otto suggests replacing Schleiermacher’s feeling of absolute dependency by a concept which he calls ‘creature-feeling’.9 He starts off by criticizing Schleiermacher, because ‘I can only come upon the very fact of God as the result of an inference, that is, by reasoning to a cause beyond myself to account for my “feeling of dependence.”’10 We might read this as Otto’s version of the objection of subjective solipsism. Sharing Schleiermacher’s basic definition of religion as a feeling, he argues further on that religion must be more than a ‘feeling concerning oneself in a special determined relation’.11 He continues: ‘Rather, the “creature-feeling” is itself a first subjective concomitant and effect of another feeling-element, which casts like a shadow, but which in itself indubitably has immediate and primary reference to an object outside the self. Now this object is just what we have already spoken of as “the numinous.”’12 Religious feelings are therefore ‘accompanying emotions’.13 Otto’s remarks help us to make some progress in the theory of religion as feeling. On the one hand, religion is a subjective act, the feeling is an accompanying interpretation of an inner experience. On the other hand, this experience is caused by something outside the individual. The subjective interpretation has a referent; it is something like a reaction, an answer, a reflex – of course, always under the conditions of individual subjectivity. So both elements may be taken into account: Religion as feeling is an act of human subjectivity and an interpretation – this approach rejects every premodern so-called ‘objective’ category



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in theology; it also keeps out the subjective solipsism which reduces religious feeling to a mere act of self-interpretation; and finally it excludes regarding feeling as the basic form of knowing. It is a matter of conserving the peculiarity of feeling.

Conclusion I am almost at the end of my paper, and I must confess that we are just now arriving at the real task. Following the programme of Schleiermacher and Otto, the main task is to have a closer look at the peculiarity of feeling compared with knowing. There are a lot of helpful ideas like, for example, the debate on the ‘genesis of values’ in thinkers like Charles Taylor and Martha Nussbaum.14 Even here the concept of intuition plays an important role. The peculiarity of feeling comes out very clearly: The difference in any kind of objective conceptions of reality is the mode of presentation in the consciousness of the individual. Feeling produces an evaluative representation.15 Instead of an objective description, this kind of symbolization of reality emphasizes the importance of the things for the subject, it accentuates how the subject itself is engaged with the world. To give an example: Schleiermacher’s romantic friends offered us a lot of wonderful descriptions of nature. They spoke of the magical fascination and charm which tends to reveal a mysterious teleology operating in the world. Of course, these issues are no objective propositions in the style of natural sciences, but rather only interpretations of the immediate self-consciousness, evaluative representations of nature in the human mind. In the expression of this inner experience as a particular kind of representation, we locate the importance of religious feeling dealing with an evolutionary worldview of natural sciences. What does all this mean for the topic of purification? As we can learn from Schleiermacher and Otto, religious feeling brings us closer to the heart of religious experiences than other secondary expressions like for example dogmatic or philosophical concepts. So purification precisely means: going back to the roots of our religious feelings. And for this project of intellectual purification we can find some remarkable hints in the works of Schleiermacher and Otto. Schleiermacher wrote in On Religion: This whole ignorance about religion reveals itself most clearly in their feelings, which are still most diffused widely among you […] When the world spirit has majestically revealed itself to us, when we have overheard its action guided by such magnificently conceived and excellent laws, what is more natural than to be

134 Purification permeated by a heartfelt reverence in the face of the eternal and invisible? And when we intuited the universe and, looking back from that perspective upon our self, see how, in comparison with the universe, it disappears into infinite smallness, what can then be more appropriate for mortals than true unaffected humility? […] our fellow creatures … to embrace them all with heartfelt love and affection […] How can we refrain from that feeling of gratitude that prompts us to honor them as people who have already united themselves with the whole and are conscious of the same in their lives? […] What is more natural than the most heartfelt compassion toward all the pain and suffering that arise from the unequal battle and toward all the blows that dread Nemesis deals out on all sides? […] overwhelming remorse over everything in us that is hostile to the genius of humanity. […] All these feelings are religion.16

In The Christian Faith Schleiermacher also offers such a list: ‘Finally, no one will deny that there are states of Feeling, such as penitence, contrition, confidence, and joy in God, which we pronounce pious in themselves, without regard to any Knowing or Doing that proceeds from them […]’.17 It would be interesting to discuss these distinctions, but right now I can only give an overview. In these sections, Schleiermacher starts with the description of the feeling, and this may allow us to get closer first to the evidence of immediate self-consciousness and only after this move forward to the classical expressions of the Christian tradition. So it must be very clear that these are always secondary articulations, which can only support better understanding of the inner experience. For our topic the result is this: Purification is not necessarily a kind of liberation from all emotions. According to the presented tradition purification could mean almost the opposite. The true purification of all our secondary religious expressions is the way back to the inner experience, the way to the centre of religious feelings. And this could be the foundation of a dogmatic theology under modern conditions, and it could also be the fundament for an interesting interreligious dialogue.

Notes 1 Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 2 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion. Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Introduction, translation, and notes by Richard Crouter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 102.



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3 Ibid., p. 103. 4 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith. Edited by H. R. Mackintosch and J. S. Stewart (London and New York: T & T Clark Ltd, 1999), p. 5. 5 Ibid., § 3.2, Note 7, p. 8. 6 Ibid., § 3.4, pp. 10–11. 7 Emil Brunner, Die Mystik und das Wort. Der Gegensatz zwischen moderner Religionsauffassung und christlichem Glauben dargestellt an der Theologie Schleiermachers (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1924), pp. 36ff. Even Karl Barth found this critic too hard, cf. Karl Barth, ‘Brunners Schleiermacherbuch’, in Zwischen den Zeiten 2 (1924), pp. 49–64. 8 Schleiermacher, On Religion (note 2), p. 103. 9 Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy. An Inquiry into the Non-rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. Translated by John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 10. 10 Ibid., p. 9. 11 Ibid., p. 10. 12 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 13 In the original German text Otto calls them a ‘Reflex im Gemüt’, a ‘reflex in the mind’ (ibid., p. 11). 14 For Taylor cf. Hans Joas, Die Entstehung der Werte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), pp. 195–226. 15 Cf. Sabine A. Döring, Philosophie der Gefühle (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2009), pp. 14–16. 16 Schleiermacher, On Religion (note 2), pp. 128–30. 17 Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (note 4), p. 11.

14

Purification and Salvation: Rethinking Our Way of Thinking Motokiyo Fukaya

A Deep-rooted Presupposition regarding Acts of Purifications Defilement, which brings harmful influences to people, seems to occur in many cultures and customs at important points in human life. Death especially seems to have been considered as one such typical occasion, as well as birth,1 initiation, puberty, marriage, in which people expose themselves to the dangers of pollution. For example, in Japan there is a well-known custom of sprinkling salt upon a mourner coming back from a funeral, which is called kiyome-no-shio [purification salt], before they enter their homes.2 In many of these cases, however, people seem to have a tendency to think that the causes of serious trouble, which makes them impure, exist independ­ ently of them and come from without. Leaving the original meanings aside, and included in the above-mentioned case, people tend to think that death, or sometimes the corpse, is the cause of pollution, and contact with it brings a loss of purity, which is then followed by illness and death.3 People therefore try to purify the defilement, or perform a proper ritual, when they engage in a funeral by using salt. A more lucid example is a well-known belief in Japan called yaku-doshi [calamitous years]. Some people believe namely that certain years of the human lifespan are inherently dangerous and liable to great misfortune. According to this belief people perform various practices to avoid, or to weaken, the danger of these calamitous years. Yaku-barai [a ceremony of exorcism] is one of those practices performed especially during the yakudoshi. People visit temples or shrines and pray so that they can avoid danger. To be more concrete, they will acquire adequate amulets for protection, or burn

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incense to drive away evil, or let others take on the danger as substitutes for themselves. In these ways people seem to have a tendency to think that the causes of danger which makes them impure exist by themselves and independently of them. This dualistic way of thinking would be strengthened by the fact that many purification ceremonies use material mediums as if the causes of impurity could be handled in a material-like manner. Water may be used, for example to purify an agent or thing, and it would be reasonable to assume that it is because people know the effects of water in cleansing physical impurities.4 Although water may be used in a symbolic sense, there seems to be a strong tendency to treat the cause of impurity on material lines and conceive it as if it could be matter-of-factly purified with water.5 Needless to say, not all purifications will be performed according to this dualistic idea, that is, that the causes of danger which make us impure exist independently of us. However, it seems to be a deep-rooted presupposition for performing purification rituals, or performances.

Another Way of Understanding the Cause of Impurity As a matter of course the cause of impurity, such as defilement, pollution, or dirt, could be understood differently. According to the social anthropologist Mary Douglas, for example, dirt is considered as undifferentiated, which can not be classified in the creation of order. She argues namely that the modern European idea of dirt is on the one hand, a matter of hygiene or aesthetics and not related to religion, and on the other hand, understood in the context of pathogenicity. She insists, however, if these two elements, i.e. pathogenicity and hygiene could be abstracted from the modern European idea of dirt, we could get the old, but very suggestive definition of it, which is said to be ‘matter out of place’.6 She interprets this further and gives us her own definition: ‘Dirt was created by the differentiating activity of mind, it was a by-product of the creation of order. So it started from a state of non-differentiation; all through the process of differentiating its role was to threaten the distinctions made; finally it returns to its true indiscriminable character. Formlessness is therefore an apt symbol of beginning and of growth as it is of decay’.7 Therefore from this point of view purification will be understood in the first place as not something to be removed and rejected as inappropriate elements in a system, but as an ‘attempt to force experience into logical categories of



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non-contradiction’.8 Mary Douglas admits that this attempt falls into contradiction because our experiences are not ‘hard-set and fixed in form’ and that we should accept undifferentiated things. The point however is to see that she would not consider these undifferentiated things as dirt in and of themselves and attempt to remove them, but would consider them as a source of power for future production. But if the system itself, whatever kind it may be, is relative and depends on the builder, or in other words, if the dirt which should be removed is determined through classification, doesn’t it mean that the causes of impurity are relative? Mary Douglas herself insists even so: ‘Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is system’.9 A good example to think about this problem of the relativity of dirt, or evil, which should be removed, is termites. Termites are sometimes referred to as ‘white ants’, because their colour is creamy and ant-like in appearance, but from the point of view of scientific classification, they have nothing to do with ants and are more closely related to cockroaches than ants. In Japan, where there are many houses built of wood, termites are considered as one of the most terrible insect pests, because it is said that the total damage caused by them in Japan is far more than those caused by fire. Because of this damage and ignorance, termites are therefore usually treated as evil. But this is only from the perspective of human beings and not from the perspective of nature. Termites are insects, which are said to have appeared on earth more than three hundred million years ago, while human beings are said to have appeared only several million years ago. Termites are also considered to be a very successful group from an ecological point of view since they recycle wood and other plant matter. Parallel to this example, certain insects, but also many kinds of animals and even human beings have been the object of elimination, because they were considered to be impure from a certain perspective, i.e. unsuitable for their system or society. They seem to bring about danger and sometimes unfortunate results, when we think the causes of danger exist independently from us. It would be safer and more plausible to be aware that impurity is dependent on a system, which one selects, than to think of it as an objective and absolute matter. We know that there are different views regarding the understanding of kegare (defilement), which is an important concept in understanding purification in Japan. Some Buddhist sects, such as the Jōdo sect, insist that death is not a cause of impurity and therefore they will not use the kiyome-no-shio in a funeral. According to their teachings, they don’t consider death as a kegare.10 Some people however consider kegare not as defilement, but as a situation where

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ke (vapour), or vital force is exhausted. Yanagita Kunio, who is known as the father of folklore in Japan, used the term ke to refer to the ordinary or everyday conception of time and hare to refer to the extraordinary or non-everyday.11 The folklorist Sakurai Tokutarō added the concept of kegare to this hare-ke idea. He insists that we should not understand kegare simply as a concept indicating impurity, in opposition to the concept of hare indicating purity, but in the context of a tripartite structure of hare-ke-kegare. According to Sakurai, energy, which maintains the ke, constantly is emitted but when it becomes exhausted in the condition of daily life, it becomes ke-gare which consists of ke and kare (wither). This condition of ke-gare (withered vapour) could be recharged and reinvigorated by holding hare events or festivals.12

Some Closing Remarks There are many kinds of interpretations of impurity from different points of view. But this does not mean however that impurity should be left undetermined and left to be judged by each individual. The reason why is that a society, in which the conceptualization of defilement, pollution or dirt is unclear and arbitrary, appears to be in an anarchic situation. Gakkyū-hōkai (classroom disintegration), which is nowadays a big problem in elementary schools in Japan, may be a good example for thinking about this problem. It is a situation in which the classroom teacher is unable to control the students and to come to work. The teacher doesn’t have the authority or power to determine what is wrong at school. Moreover, children and even their parents not only reject the teacher’s judgement, rather they become judges themselves. This typical case and other social phenomena, such as ijime (bullying), yōji-gyakutai (child abuse), itai-hōchi (abandoned corpses), and so on, tell us that modern Japanese society seems to be in an anarchic situation and one of the main reasons is because of the excessive individualism and lack of societal norms or claims of absolute value related to human nature or to transcendent religious standards. Each person appears to create his/her own system and ‘dirt’ is therefore decided upon individually. To make matters worse, people tend to consider ‘dirt’, which they have unconsciously created for themselves, as an objective and absolute matter, and try to remove it without a sense of wrongdoing. Their acts of purification will be at times recognized as justice. In these situations we should at first break with the dualistic way of thinking and should be aware that impurity depends upon a system as we have seen



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above. Secondly, we should recognize that, although many systems exist and we have the freedom to select any one of them, not all systems are the same. Insofar as dirt is determined through a system, we should notice that the system itself, or our freedom to select one, could also be considered as the root of impurity. Therefore we should strive to create a system, or to choose one, which will cut the root of impurity, i. e., an all-inclusive system. This steady and constant effort as much as possible not to produce dirt in our system making could be considered as a type of purification which seems to be necessary in our multicultural world.

Notes 1 Teigo Yoshida, ‘The feminine in Japanese folk religion: polluted or divine?’, Eyal Ben-Ari, Brian Moeran, James Valentine (eds), Unwrapping Japan: Society and Culture in Anthropological Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, reprinted by University of Hawaii Press, 1994), pp. 58–77 (60). 2 Some see the foundation for this custom in the story concerning the death of the Izanami in the Kojiki. According to the story, Izanagi lamented over the death of his wife Izanami and undertook a journey to the land of the dead (Yomi) in order to bring her back. But Izanagi disobeyed the taboo not to look upon Izanami and saw the horrid form of the once beautiful and graceful wife. After fleeing from Izanami, which could be interpreted as the pollution of death, Izanagi then performed lustration (misogi). 3 Edwin Nicolas C. Fallaize, ‘Purification (Introductory and Primitive)’, James Hastings and John A. Selbie (eds), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, X (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919; Kessinger Publishing C.’s Photocopy Edition, 2003), V19–20, pp. 455–66 (462). 4 It is reported that in some areas in Japan people take a bath also after the funeral. Cf. Emiko Namihira, Kegare (defilement) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2009), p. 53. 5 Edwin Nicolas C. Fallaize, ‘Purification (Introductory and Primitive)’, p. 464. 6 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, with a new preface by the author, (London and New York: Routledge, 2002, first published 1966 by Routledge and Kegan Paul), p. 44. 7 Ibid., p. 198. 8 Ibid., p. 200. 9 Ibid., p. 44. 10 http://www.jodo.or.jp/jinkendowa/kiyomenoshio.html 11 Yanagita Kunio, Meiji Taisho shi: Sesou hen [History of Meiji and Taisho: The volume on social trend] (Tokyo: Kōdansha, the refurbishment version, 1993), p. 29.

142 Purification 12 Sakurai Tokutaro, Minkan Shinkou no Kenkyu: Kyōdōtai no Minzoku Kisei [Research of a folk belief: Folk-customs regulation of Community], Sakurai Tokutaro Chosakushu 3, (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1988), p. 359, p. 367.

15

Fasting– Reflecting on the History and the Contemporary Renewal of a Christian Exercise Ulrike Wagner-Rau

A New Interest for Fasting In the last few years one can observe an increasing interest for the practice of fasting in the Western world. One can also observe a variety of motivations for this practice besides the Christian religion. Staying healthy and becoming slimmer is one motivation amongst others. Another important reason however for the renewal of this old religious bodily practice is the search for a meaningful life. Bodily practices always serve a number of different purposes because they impact the body as well as the psyche and one’s mental and spiritual being. A first example for the increasing interest for the practice of fasting: Two million copies of Hellmut Lützner’s book ‘Born-Again by Fasting’1 have been sold since 1976. Lützner is a doctor in a large health resort, which specializes in fasting. His book accompanied a TV programme about a fasting-week at home. The doctor’s book gives advice on how to fast on your own. Its main message is the promise that fasting will result in a healthy and strong body and more energy for life. It does this with good medical arguments. Between the lines however the book also conveys the conviction that fasting may contribute to psychic and mental renewal. The background of this form of fasting cure is not Christian, but the so-called Life Reform Movement.2 This movement started in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its aim was a healthier way of life for the modern human being. Modernity was considered a danger. The Life Reform programme promoted a more organic lifestyle in clothing, housing and diet. Yet, it was not only a movement for the body but also for the hungry

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soul in need of nutritious mental and spiritual food. In this respect the Life Reform programme also contained aspects of a salvation doctrine. Fasting is related to hope also today: not only hope for bodily wellbeing but also hope for a full life. A second example for the new interest in fasting: Each year during Lent two million people participate in the Protestant Church’s fasting campaign ‘7 Weeks Without’ (‘7 Wochen Ohne’). For 25 years now this campaign has had a different motto each year that is to motivate people to do without something that is normally part of everyday life: mainly alcohol, cigarettes and sweets. But also other seemingly indispensable habits can be interrupted in order to purify the individual’s life and enable him or her to concentrate on spiritual values. ‘Calm and alert we hear ourselves again – and God’ (‘Ruhig und wach hören wir uns selber wieder – und Gott’), says the campaign’s homepage. It also offers several incentives and aims: a new rhythm of time by following the rhythm of the Christian tradition, the renewal of one’s spiritual life, opening up to ecological issues and to questions of justice. But also health is an issue. Both the fasting cure and the Protestant campaign want to motivate people regarding fundamental questions of life style and orientation of life. Religious motives are part of these fasting practices. But they are interwoven with other motives. I think that this mixture is an important reason for the contemporary attraction to the practice of fasting.

Fasting – Religious and Psychosomatic Phenomenology How do religious studies understand fasting? A broad understanding is that fasting is a universal cultural technique. By limiting eating and/or sexual activities fasting aims at improving one’s psychological and social control, to increase one’s power and to clear the mind.3 The intention is to reduce one’s central needs and desires. Thus, fasting is to lead to more self-control and self-reflexivity. In several religious traditions you find different forms of fasting. Human beings fast alone or in a community. They fast at special times of the year or they follow an individual rhythm. They practise total fasting – that means: they drink only – or they do only without meat. Fasting can have different purposes: ascetic traditions, like Yoga for example,4 follow the aim of emptiness and total lack of needs. But also mortifying the flesh and strengthening body and mind can be the motivation.

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In religious studies you find the following differentiation:5 MM

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Fasting at passages of initiation is to strengthen one’s position against bad influences in the process of biographical transition, for example when a child becomes a grown-up, a child is born or when a group of men go hunting. Fasting before a baptism was a regular practice in the first centuries of the church’s history. Fasting can be a means of reaching ecstatic experiences and entering states of trance. It is told in the respective holy scriptures of the monotheistic religions that Moses, Jesus and Muhammad passed through long periods of fasting before their public appearances. Buddha was also fasting just before he came to his central insight. The purification rite of fasting has an ethical meaning. It is related to the confession of sins, repentance and new life. In the Christian religion Lent and Advent are originally times of repentance and fasting. Finally, fasting is related to mourning. This can be a ritual practice as well as an individual decision.

These motives can be seen in relation to physical processes and to psychosomatic experiences during times of fasting. In the process of absolute fasting – drinking only – one’s metabolism changes. It turns to feed the body with its own reserves. Purification is the consequence.6 Many people experience new strength having overcome this transition. Surprisingly, individuals fasting are not weak but strong. This is true especially in the time after having broken the fast. To stop eating can intensify emotional and sensory experiences. People recall their bodily experience during a week of fasting as having an ecstatic quality. They feel extremely sensitive and pervious to encounters of inner and outer reality. Fasting leads to a confrontation with oneself. The excretion is not only a physical but also a psychological one. That which has been swallowed – also in the sense of emotional issues and conflicts – can get into your mind and claim your attention. Psychological crises often have oral aspects: they can lead to an addiction to food and/or to drugs or – in the other extreme – their consequence can be the denial of hunger. Oral and emotional reactions are related closely. Thus, fasting is a practice that results in dealing intensively with basic problems of life and with one’s self-understanding.

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Fasting in the Christian Tradition Fasting in the New Testament Fasting was a normal practice in the Jewish community.7 The early Christians followed this practice as well. The New Testament, however, conveys an ambiguous attitude towards fasting. On the one hand, fasting is seen as a positive exercise. On the other hand, there are passages in which Jesus and his disciples are shown to dissociate themselves from it. This ambiguity can be seen for example in Mk 2.18-20 parr. It says: Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. And people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ 19And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. 20 The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day’. 18

In this text, which is composed of different parts, you can observe that Jesus and his disciples do not follow John the Baptist who can be seen as Jesus’ teacher:8 They do not fast as John had done. The reason for this is given in Jesus’ answer: The community surrounding him is full of eschatological joy. The wedding metaphors are signs of the kingdom of God which begins with Jesus’ – the bridegroom’s – presence. During the feast you do not fast. Verses 19b and 20 were added later. They presuppose that Jesus has died. Fasting then is a reminder of his death and a sign of mourning. In this passage one can observe a development with respect to the question of fasting: at first Jesus’ disciples differed from John’s disciples by not fasting because they lived in eschatological joy. In this context Jesus is called a ‘glutton and a drunkard’ (Lk. 7.33-35). Later, the young Christian communities have to deal with the death of their leader. They began fasting again: two days a week according to the Didache, a text from the beginning of the second century ad, and once a year during Passover. The tension between ‘not being able to fast because of the joy’ on one hand and ‘fasting as an act of mourning’ on the other is reflected in the structure of the Christian year: Fasting became the practice during Lent. In the joyous time between Easter and Pentecost there are no days of fasting at all. Mt. 6.16-18, the second passage in the New Testament about fasting, emphasizes a different aspect.9 It concentrates on the question how to fast. According to these verses it is important that other people cannot tell that you are fasting.

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One’s fasting should not be made public by special signs like in the Jewish tradition of Yom Kippur. Instead everyone should be well dressed and clean. The religious practice of fasting is to remain private. It is to facilitate focus on God, becoming open for a relationship with him. Here fasting is related strongly to prayer: it supports prayer. This is its main function. Hence there are three distinct conceptual strands in the New Testament with respect to fasting: MM

MM

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Fasting is not central in the Christian tradition but normal like it was in the Jewish tradition. There is also a line in the Christian tradition that criticizes fasting because of the eschatological joy. Christians live in the tension of being redeemed in present time whilst simultaneously awaiting the kingdom of God. This tension is reflected in the ambiguity between fasting and not fasting. In a Christian perspective fasting is related to prayer and to the relationship with God. That is why theological texts have criticized forms of fasting that are too extreme from the very beginning.

Fasting in the Church’s History The New Testament’s ambivalence regarding the practice of fasting resulted in different forms of fasting in the Early Church. As far as we know there was no common practice of fasting. Mostly fasting meant reduction of food or renunciation of meat. Abstaining from food altogether (ieiunium) was common only during the time of fasting one or two days before Easter. This main fast was related to the fasting of those who wanted to be baptized on Easter Sunday. It was in memory of Jesus’ death on the cross and served also as preparation for the first Holy Communion.10 During the first centuries of the church these days of fasting turned into several weeks. Forty days of fasting became a duty in reference to the time Jesus had spent fasting in the desert according to Mt. 4.2 parr. In the weeks following Easter however, there was no fasting at all. The Didache, an order of parish life from the end of the first century, mentions two fasting days a week: Wednesday and Friday (8.1). The Orthodox churches continued with this practice. The Western church fasted only once a week on Fridays. According to Acts 13.2f and 14.23, fasting was used as a preparation when somebody took over a special function in the community. Especially among monks and nuns you could find intense fasting. When the Holy Communion

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was turned into a sacrament and conceived on a substance-ontological level, fasting became a common practice in preparation for the reception of bread and wine, the real body of Christ.11 This is still strict Catholic practice today. Penitence was the main issue in fasting; but important motives also were the strengthening of one’s body against evil, the mourning of Jesus’ death, and the facilitation of one’s spirituality and enlightenment.12 Additional bodily and social aspects had some importance. One can observe the relationship between fasting and taking care of the poor – Origenes is a noteworthy example – throughout the entirety of church history. Today the Roman Church calls for two days of fasting a year – a ‘day’ here referring merely to one meal a day: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But all Fridays and Wednesdays should be days of mental purification. In principle the Reformation emphasized the individual’s freedom regarding pious practices. This also shaped the meaning of fasting in the Protestant context. It was considered a good and healthy practice, but not necessary for salvation. The main theological issue is faith in God’s grace and forgiveness. All practices are a good addition, but are not considered duties. In consequence, the Protestant churches do not have strict orders for fasting. There are however regional customs, which were common at least up to the middle of the last century: for example eating fish on Good Friday.

Fasting – New Invention of Tradition This short overview of biblical texts and the Christian tradition shows that fasting has always been an important practice in the Christian world. And yet it was also questioned from the very beginning. Fasting has been limited by eschatological joy and it has been related to prayer. Sin and the necessity of penitence were the main motives for fasting. That means: Fasting ever has been a practice of critical self-reflection. It was and is a possibility for rethinking the orientation of one’s life. Considering the fact that so many traditional customs have been lost in our modern society and that freedom in questions of religious duty and individual self-understanding has grown considerably, it is interesting that fasting has once again managed to capture people’s attention today. This new awareness for fasting cannot be understood as a return to former times. Rather it must be seen as ‘inventing the tradition anew’, as a decision for certain elements of a traditional practice, which help to structure and to orient everyday life. For

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interests of this kind fasting seems to be a good choice. The following reasons can be put forward for this: MM

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Acceleration is a significant process in modern capitalism.13 The structuring of time and the interruption of a hectic lifestyle become positive values in the context of this social life. Religious practice offers ways of slowing down and of regaining a sense of being in touch with oneself. The broad academic interest for ritual is a significant signal for the importance of this kind of human practice. It has lost its self-evidence in modern society. But today ritualizing once again is seen as a helpful and important ability for a single person as well as for society as a whole. Fasting is a bodily practice. This relates to Western society’s particular interest in health and control over the body. One can discern a quasireligious interest in this. On the one hand it is a consequence of the necessity to care for oneself in the individualized structures of modern society.14 On the other hand one can interpret the desire to have control over one’s body as an attempt to control a life that seems to be more and more out of control. The material basis of life, the body, seems to afford the possibility of forming at least some aspects of one’s life according to one’s own will. Fasting is a traditional mode of bodily control. Nowadays it is used as a means of self-empowerment. It can be a resource of spirituality and liberation. It frees from the pressure of consumption. It can set free from life conditions that are experienced as suppressive and out of control. However, the attempt to control one’s own body can also lead to abuse if it becomes obsessive and turns into an addiction. That is why communication about and rules for fasting are important. Lifestyle and aesthetic categories are of growing importance for evaluating whether or not one’s own life is a ‘good’ life. Life should be an intensive experience.15 This can also be a motive explaining today’s interest in fasting: It intensifies one’s self-experience because it leads to an extraordinary bodily experience. In this respect you can observe a similarity with extreme sports and other peak experiences and events that go beyond everyday life experiences. Last but not least, fasting is a voluntary self-limitation. In a world of overwhelming consumption and financial interests fasting can be part of a search for a new way of life on a spiritual as well as a political level. This is the case, when fasting is used as a means of politically or religiously motivated protest – for example in the tradition of Gandhi. Fasting is often

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related to ecological or ethical issues such as sharing the resources of the earth. Fasting can be a demonstrative action against the dominating values and practices of society, a possibility of finding another way of life. Fasting seems to be a practice that is interesting for many people because of the mixture of motives that are related to it. There are different perspectives from which to understand one’s own fasting as a meaningful and authentic practice: moments of spirituality, wellness, beauty, political protest, religious identity or the search for it – all these motives are possible and may come together. This mixture of motives seems to be a significant feature of those religious practices capable of reaching out also to people in the modern world not associated with any specific confession or religious community.

Notes 1 Hellmut Lützner, Wie neugeboren durch Fasten (München: Gräfe und Unzner, 2008; überarbeitete Neuauflage). 2 Diethard Kerbs, and Jürgen Reulecke (eds), Handbuch der deutschen Reformbewegungen 1880–1933 (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer Verlag, 1998). 3 Oliver Freiberger, Fasten I. Religionsgeschichtlich, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart 4th edn, vol. 3 (2000), col. 40. 4 Elvira Friedrich, Yoga. Der indische Erlösungsweg. Das klassische System und seine Hintergründe (München: Diederichs, 1997). 5 Peter Gerlitz, Fasten I. Religionsgeschichtlich, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 33 (1983), pp. 42–5. 6 Hellmut Lützner, Fasten- und Ernährungstherapie. 40 Jahre Erfahrung (Norderstedt: books on demand GmbH, 2009, p. 61). 7 Cf. Hugo Mantel, Fasten II. Judentum, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 33 (1983), pp. 45–8. 8 Cf. Joachim Gnilka, Das Evangelium nach Markus. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar II/1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener 1978), pp. 110–18. 9 Ulrich Luz, Das Evangelium nach Matthäus. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar I/1 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener 2002, 5, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage), pp. 416–29. 10 Stuart Gregore Hall, and Joseph H. Crehan, Fasten III. Biblisch und kirchenhistorisch, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 33 (1983), pp. 48–59. 11 Michael Meyer-Blanck, Liturgie und Liturgik. Der Evangelische Gottesdienst aus den Quellentexten erklärt (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2001), pp. 101–8. 12 Cf. Stuart Gregore Hall, and Joseph H. Crehan, Fasten III. Biblisch und kirchenhistorisch, Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 33 (1983), p. 54.

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13 Hartmut Rosa, Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstruktur in der Moderne (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 2005); Richard Sennett, The Culture of New Capitalism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005). 14 Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Riskante Freiheiten. Individualisierung in modernen Gesellschaften. (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1994, esp. pp. 10–38). 15 Gerhard Schulze, Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart (Frankfurt a. M. and New York: Campus, 1992).

16

From ‘Purifying’ to ‘Having Been Purified’: The Tenrikyo Practice of Purification Shugo Yamanaka

Introduction: Purification in the General Japanese Context and in Tenrikyo It has been pointed out by scholars of religion that the Japanese people traditionally are very much concerned about purity and impurity, both in a physical and ritual sense with an emphasis on the latter. Shinto – a term I use here to denote the traditional and indigenous spirituality or religiosity of the Japanese – comprises various ‘purification rites’ held on various occasions. It may be properly said that purification rites have been a vital part of Shinto or Japanese life. For example, almost every Shinto shrine, whether it is small or grand, has a hand washing water basin near the entrance to its precinct for visitors to wash their hands and rinse their mouth before worshipping. This is for the sake of purifying themselves both physically and ritually before approaching a kami. Food offerings for a shrine or a kami are prepared in a very careful manner so as not to contaminate them, in a ritual sense, before being offered. The start and end of one’s life are often marked with purification rites. The start and end of a year are traditionally marked with ceremonial events for purification. The start and finish of a new building are also marked with purification ceremonies. Coming into contact with blood or death is considered to be a source of impurity or pollution which needs to be contained and be purified ritually. Indeed, some say that the degree of one’s genuine Japaneseness may be determined by the degree of his or her preoccupation with purity and impurity, yet it is also pointed out that nowadays the Japanese concern about ritual purity has been weakening.

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Tenrikyo, which has developed mainly in the context of Japanese culture and religion, may appear to be not free from the traditional Japanese preoccupation with purity. In fact, one can easily detect in the everyday life of Tenrikyo followers a seemingly strong emphasis on purity or purification – such as daily cleanings in and around the sanctuaries and the manner of preparing food offerings. The long wooden corridor around the Church Headquarters’ Main Sanctuary is always kept shiny clean because many followers spend their time and energy in cleaning it. You may also have noticed that there are three big water basins located in front of the worship halls of the Main Sanctuary. Those are for followers to purify themselves before worshipping. A Tenrikyo funeral also includes many elements associated with purification. Tenrikyo’s emphasis on purity or purification, however, is not so much on the external, physical, or ritual aspect as on the inner, mental, or spiritual aspect of human life. That is, the Tenrikyo emphasis on purity and its practice of purification mostly pertain to the inner state of the human heart or mind, which has a deep relation with salvation in Tenrikyo.

What Tenrikyo Aims at: The Joyous Life and Purification of the Mind Tenrikyo teaches that the very purpose of God the Parent in creating us human beings was to take delight in seeing our Joyous Life. The Joyous Life means living each day with a truly joyous mind, with a bright and spirited mind. It is a life of ‘true joyousness’, filled with a strong sense of gratitude and joy for the constant blessings of God the Parent, accompanied by helping one another as well as bringing joy, happiness and spiritedness to one another, based on the realization of the truth that all human beings, who are equally children of God the Parent, are thus brothers and sisters with one another. The basic purpose of human existence therefore is to live the Joyous Life, and the very goal of Oyasama’s teachings is to lead us to live the Joyous Life and realize the world of the Joyous Life. Whether we can do this or not depends mainly on our mind; more specifically, it depends on how we use the mind and the very state of our mind. Tenrikyo clearly distinguishes the two aspects of human existence, that is, between the material or physical aspect and the mental or spiritual aspect, as we find in the Osashizu, one of the Tenrikyo Scriptures: ‘With human beings, the body is a thing lent by God, a thing borrowed; the mind alone is yours’.1



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In other words, our human bodies are not ours but things we are borrowing from God the Parent, and the only thing that can be considered ‘our own’ is the mind or the workings of the mind. That the mind alone is ours means that we are basically free to use our mind any way we like; this is referred to as the ‘freedom of mind’. This freedom of mind has been granted to us human beings because God the Parent desires to see us live the Joyous Life, not forced into it like robots being manipulated, but voluntarily of our own will after realizing God the Parent’s intention and taking it upon ourselves. Otherwise it would not be a truly ‘Joyous’ Life for God the Parent to take delight in seeing. The expressions often used in this connection are that we human beings ‘are kept alive’ by God the Parent and that we receive protection or workings of God the Parent ‘in accordance with the way we use our mind’. In Tenrikyo, therefore, our daily use of the mind is crucial; to be able to receive God’s blessings or workings fully depends on whether we use and keep the mind in accord with the intention of God the Parent who desires to see us live the Joyous Life. It may be said, however, that the human mind, because of its God-given freedom, is influenced quite easily by the actual conditions surrounding human beings. In fact, we human beings, placed in the realities of everyday life, naturally tend to use the mind in a self-centred, selfish manner, contrary to the wishes of God the Parent. So it is actually not easy at all to use the mind always in accord with the intention of God the Parent and keep it that way all the time. And it is here that the Tenrikyo metaphor of ‘dust’ or ‘dust of the mind’ comes to play an important role. ‘Dust of the mind’ refers to our use of the mind not in accord with God the Parent’s wishes, that is, the self-centred mind not leading to the Joyous Life. Our erroneous use of the mind not in accord with, or even going against, the intention of God the Parent, thus keeping us from the Joyous Life, is metaphorically compared to ‘dust’. Such a state of mind may be referred to as a mind of dust, or ‘dusty’ or ‘impure’ mind. In contrast, our use of the mind in complete accord with the intention of God the Parent should enable us to live the Joyous Life. Such a state of mind – mind always in complete accord with the intention of God the Parent, completely free from dust – may be referred to as a ‘pure’ mind. It is also taught in this connection that the human mind was originally pure when created but has come to be clouded with ‘dusts’ because of misusing the God-given freedom of mind. Thus the very process of attaining salvation in Tenrikyo, namely, realizing the Joyous Life, is necessarily based on an individual process of changing a dusty or impure mind to a pure mind. That is, each person’s effort at trying to change

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his/her mind of dust to a pure mind, or trying to recover the original purity of his/her mind, when combined and accumulated, should lead to the realization of the Joyous Life. This process itself can be referred to as ‘purification of the mind’. Indeed, ‘the Tenrikyo practice of purification’, which is the subtitle of this presentation, exclusively refers to the ways of purifying or cleansing the interior of human beings, namely the human mind, as taught in Tenrikyo.

Why it Is Necessary to Sweep away ‘Dusts’ and Purify the Mind It may be said that dust of the mind is something inevitable so long as we human beings live with freedom of mind. Just as real dust accumulates when left uncleaned, the dust of the mind accumulates continually. Therefore, it is vital to notice the dust of the mind and sweep it away promptly. Further, sweeping the dust away once does not mean there will never be any more dust. Soon after each cleaning, dust will naturally start accumulating again. Likewise, dust of the mind is not to be wiped away for good after one cleaning. It is something that we have to keep sweeping away constantly so long as we live as human beings with freedom of mind. But if we do not recognize the dust or fail to reflect critically on our use of the mind – that is, if we neglect to sweep the dust away – the dust can pile up to the point where its removal is difficult and eventually becomes negative causality. When the dust piles up, it clouds the mind, causing it to lose its inherent clarity and brightness. This keeps us from awakening to God the Parent’s intention and thus prevents the Joyous Life. Therefore, it is of crucial importance for the mind to become clear and pure if the Joyous Life is to be realized. Purifying the mind is both the first step of faith and something that should be given constant attention throughout our life of faith. In the Kagura Service, Tenrikyo’s most important ritual through which to pray for salvation of humankind, we first pray to God to help us sweep away evils – or the source of evils, namely dusts of the mind, and then we vow to participate in God the Parent’s salvific activity by endeavouring to purify all people’s minds. This is indicated in the first and third sections of the songs that accompany the Service: Sweeping away evils, please save us, Tenri-O-no-Mikoto.2 Sweeping away evils, hasten to save us.



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All humankind equally purified, The Kanrodai.3

It is noteworthy that each of the above-mentioned sections of the songs is repeated 21 times, indicating the very importance of ‘sweeping away evils’. Judging from the accompanying hand movements, it is clear that ‘evils’ refer to our dusts of the mind. Even though we ask God to ‘save us’, we are not just asking God to sweep away our dusts of the mind without us doing anything. We first make our own efforts to sweep away our own dusts, while asking God to help us complete the sweeping and further help us sweep away other people’s dusts, thus moving toward the world of the Joyous Life. The third section in particular clearly shows that the purification of the mind of all human beings is the prerequisite for setting up the Kanrodai at Jiba, which is to mark the realization of the world of the Joyous Life. Following the Kagura Service, this important theme of purifying the mind is further expressed in the Teodori, the Dance with Hand Movements, as follows: This time, my innermost heart has become completely pure. How grateful I am!4 God, the same as water, Washes away the dirts from your minds.5 Though there is no one who is free from greed, Before God there is no greed.6 Greed is fathomless like muddy water. When your mind is completely purified, Then comes paradise.7

Here it is interesting that God the Parent’s effort and function to purify, or wash clean, the human mind is likened to ‘water’ whereas the state of the human mind filled with dusts, or dirts, is likened to ‘muddy water’. That muddy water, when settled and purified, can become pure water may indicate a possibility for any state of human mind to become purified.

How we can Purify the Mind As indicated in the above verses of the Mikagura-uta, it is God the Parent who requests and effects the removal of dusts in the human mind. We human beings are expected to make earnest efforts constantly to clean and purify our minds, while God the Parent oftentimes works directly on each of us to sweep away

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the dusts of our mind through giving us various signs in the form of illnesses, calamities, or troubles – signs for us to reflect critically on our use of the mind. There is a variety of methods by which or through which we can purify our minds. For instance, attending and performing the services – the Kagura Services, monthly services, or morning and evening services – is a very important way for us Tenrikyo followers to tune ourselves with the intention of God the Parent, thus sweeping away dusts. We can listen to talks about the teachings of God the Parent and read the Scriptures or other texts, thus deepening our understanding of the teachings and further reflecting on our use of the mind. We can also convey the teachings to other people around us, work for the salvation of others who are suffering, and engage in hinokishin with a mind of gratitude and joy. All these actions, which can be done in the course of everyday life, help to purify our minds, and constantly continuing to do these actions leads to further purification of the mind. Many Tenrikyo followers actively engage in cleaning activities for hinokishin both in public places and in their churches, including the corridor-cleaning hinokishin around the Main Sanctuary, which I mentioned at the beginning. Any of these cleaning hinokishin is not just for the sake of cleaning what is being cleaned but, more importantly, for the sake of cleaning or purifying the mind of those doing it. When we selflessly engage in hinokishin with a mind of gratitude and joy for God the Parent’s blessings while being singly intent on helping or benefiting others, our mind is in complete accord with God the Parent’s intention and is entirely free from dust. Cleaning hinokishin therefore becomes a symbolic act of purifying the mind. Almost all Tenrikyo followers are aware of ‘Eight Dusts’ or ‘Eight Kinds of Dust’. These were taught by God the Parent as a concrete means to help us grasp what dust of the mind is and thus always reflect on, and sweep away, our dusts of the mind. The eight dusts are miserliness, covetousness, hatred, self-love, grudge-bearing, anger, greed, and arrogance. (The word ‘greed’ is sometimes used to represent all the kinds of dust, as seen in the verses of the Mikagura-uta cited above.) It does not necessarily mean that there are only eight kinds of dust. (In addition, we are also warned against falsehood and flattery, because both of these point to an insincere mind, a discord of mind and speech.) Any use of the mind contrary to the intention of God the Parent – self-centred and self-serving use of the mind, not caring about helping or benefiting others – is considered ‘dust’. It is important to recognize and reflect on this selfishness and proceed to ‘sweep the mind’ and ‘replace the mind’. It is as a means of encouraging us to



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do so that the various negative uses of the mind have been cited as ‘dusts of the mind’. This is indicated in the following Osashizu: Day after day, you teach the eight dusts, the eight dusts. Merely teaching the eight dusts is like a picture painted on a sliding screen. No matter how many times people may look at it, that will serve no purpose if they do no more than merely admire how beautifully it is painted. Everyone must understand and settle the truth in the mind.8

To sweep the dusts away, it is vital to follow the teachings of God the Parent. We are encouraged to reflect critically on our use of the mind, based on the teachings, and constantly sweep away our dusts of the mind. Further, God the Parent is also endeavouring to hasten our sweeping of the mind by giving us various signs. Thus the expression that ‘God is the broom’ has a double meaning – that we proactively apply God the Parent’s teachings to reflect on and sweep away the dusts, and that God the Parent endeavours to hasten our sweeping.

What Happens When the Mind Is Completely Purified It is recorded that Oyasama spoke the following words to one of Her followers: I can hear the words of a person who has purified his heart. But I cannot hear the words of a person who has not purified his heart.9

These words of Oyasama are indicative of what it is like when our minds have been purified. Our words, or prayers, may only be heard by Oyasama or God the Parent when our minds are purified. Assuming that our communion with God the Parent is two-directional, then it can also be said that God the Parent’s intention may only be perceived fully when our minds are purified. Another concrete aspect of a purified mind is shown in the following Osashizu: When your mind becomes completely pure and clear, anger will not arise no matter what others may say. That is the state of a purified mind.10

Thus a purified mind is totally unaffected by what others say or do, for it is solely intent on seeking God the Parent’s intention in anything. A purified mind is also marked by such a sense of deep gratitude for God the Parent’s blessings as to exclaim ‘How grateful I am!’ And when our mind is completely purified, it will bring about a sense of being in ‘paradise’, a sense of living in the world of the Joyous Life.

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In my understanding, a purified mind is characterized (1) by complete trust in the teachings of God the Parent, (2) by the clear realization that God the Parent’s loving heart pervades the world, and (3) by the ability to perceive or discern God the Parent’s intention as manifested in various occurrences or phenomena around us. It is, therefore, a prerequisite for joyousness and spiritedness that typically characterize Tenrikyo followers. Once our mind becomes pure and clear, we can begin to truly understand the teachings, which will enable us to see God the Parent’s workings more clearly and eventually awaken fully to the realm of truth, divine will, underlying the world of everyday life, thus becoming joyous and spirited. This is indicated in the following verse of the Ofudesaki, another one of the Tenrikyo Scriptures: Day by day, your innermost heart will be purified and understanding will come. You will come to see the truth as you mature.11

Through purifying the mind, truly understanding and internalizing the teachings, and clearly perceiving God the Parent’s intention, we human beings will thus be able to approach and attain the Joyous Life. Our sustained and diligent effort is indispensable if the purification of the mind is to be accomplished and the world of the Joyous Life is to be realized.

Ending Remarks As seen in my short presentation, the purification of the mind is essential for attaining salvation in Tenrikyo. Indeed the phrase ‘purification of the mind’ is used almost synonymously with ‘spiritual maturity’. The process of purifying the mind is the very process of becoming spiritually mature, and vice versa. It is in the nature of our human mind to produce ‘dusts’ so long as we use the mind or live with freedom of mind. We are taught to always reflect on our use of the mind and constantly sweep away the dusts, thus purifying the mind and keeping it purified. Therefore it can be said that the process of purifying the mind is a dynamic process, always operative and never ceasing. We ourselves cannot tell when the purification of the mind is complete. Further, in the eyes of God the Parent, it is never complete until the minds of all human beings have been purified. As indicated in the third section of the songs that accompany the Kagura Service: ‘Sweeping away evils, hasten to save us. All humankind equally purified, The Kanrodai’. God the Parent is hastening to save us human beings and realize



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the world of the Joyous Life. In order to attain this ultimate goal, it is necessary to purify the minds of all human beings. We Tenrikyo followers, therefore, are not only concerned about the purification of our own minds but also of other people’s minds. In short, our efforts for purifying the mind will proceed toward a day when all people’s minds have been purified. This is what is meant by the title of this presentation: From ‘purifying’ to ‘having been purified’.

Notes 1 Osashizu given on 1 June 1889. The Osashizu, the Divine Directions, are revealed words of God the Parent delivered mostly through Honseki Izo Iburi between 1887 and 1907. These dictated revelations of God the Parent later came to be published as the Osashizu, The Divine Directions, which comprises one of the three Scriptures of Tenrikyo. The other two Scriptures are the Mikagura-uta, The Songs for the Service, and the Ofudesaki, The Tip of the Writing Brush. The references to the Scriptures of Tenrikyo in this paper are from the following primary sources: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, Osashizu (Tenri: Tenrikyo Kyokai Honbu, 2nd edn, 1981); idem, Mikagura-Uta, The Songs for the Service (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 7th edn, 1999); idem, Ofudesaki, The Tip of the Writing Brush (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 6th edn, 1993); Tenrikyo Overseas Department, An Anthology of Osashizu Translations (Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Department, 2007). 2 Mikagura-uta, section one. The Mikagura-uta, The Songs for the Service, was taught personally by Foundress Miki Nakayama as the songs to accompany the Service. It consists of five sections: The first three sections are for the Kagura Service and the latter two for the Dance with Hand Movements. 3 Mikagura-uta, section three. 4 Mikagura-uta, section four, Song Four, Verse Ten. 5 Mikagura-uta, section four, Song Five, Verse Three. 6 Mikagura-uta, section four, Song Five, Verse Four. 7 Mikagura-uta, section four, Song Ten, Verse Four. 8 Osashizu given on 23 July 1899. 9 Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, ‘#176: Person with a Pure Heart’, Anecdotes of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1976), p. 141. 10 Osashizu given on 22 March 1887. 11 Ofudesaki, Part VI, Verse 15. The Ofudesaki, The Tip of the Writing Brush, was written by the Foundress from 1869 to 1882 and consists of 1,711 verses divided into 17 parts. It is said that this Scripture presents the Tenrikyo teachings in their entirety.

Index Adachi Ritsuen 102 addiction 145, 149 aesthetics 43, 138 afterlife 54, 65–6 ālaya-vijñāna 20 amulets 28, 114, 137 anger 16, 158–9 Anglican churches 36 anima (soul) 60 Anrakuan Sakuden 95 apophatic (negative) theology 73–7, 79–80 arrogance 16, 158 asceticism 20, 39, 43, 112–13 Association of Shintō Shrines (Jinja Honchō) 40 ātman 20 Augustine 88 Avalokiteśvara see Kannon awareness 37, 61–2, 129, 148 Baptism 39, 65–6, 145 bathing 31, 42, 141 belief 27, 44, 53, 59, 70, 73, 109, 137 bhakti 119, 125 biblical persons and scenes 59 birth 33, 83, 85–8, 108, 116, 137 bodily and mental transformations 50 body 15–16, 19, 22, 27–8, 30–1, 35–7, 41–3, 45–6, 50, 52–5, 57, 59–62, 70, 73–4, 88, 93, 107–10, 114, 128, 143–5, 148–9, 154 body and soul 53, 60, 128 brahman 20, 33 Brāhmana 32–3 bread and wine 148 Buddha 101 as healer 107 Mahāvairocana (Dainichi Nyorai) 109–10 Medicine Buddha (Bhaişajyaguru, Yakushi Nyorai) 114–15 Buddha statues 114

Buddhist meditation 46 Bultmann, Rudolf 132 burial 52 calamitous years 137 calmness 83–4, 88, 90 Calvin, Johannes 58 Cassirer, Ernst 77 catechism 66 Catholic Christianity 65 Catholic spirituality 57 causation (innen) 94 charity 114 Christ: body 148 Christianity 25, 39, 43, 53, 65, 70, 73, 95–8, 101, 131 Chūgoku Kannon reijō 115 citta 19 citta-mātra 19 civil religion 40 class system 32–3 classroom disintegration (gakkyū hōkai) 140 cleaning/cleanliness 31, 49–51, 154, 156, 158 coincidentia oppositorum 76 colloquies 58 common religion 38, 46 community 37, 39, 144, 146–7, 150 confession 58, 66–70, 145, 150 Confucianism 20, 102–3 contemplation 58–9, 61, 63, 88, 109 contrition 66, 68, 134 covetousness 16, 158 Cox, James 38 cremation 50, 52–5 crises 145 critical religion 37, 39 Damasio, Antonio 128 Dator, James 38 death 30, 84, 116, 137, 139, 146, 147, 148, 153

164 Index abandoned corpses 140 burial 53–4 post mortem attitudes 52 Decalogue (Ten Commandments) 30, 62, 68 defilement 52, 137–41 definition 41, 104, 129, 132, 138 delusions (kleśa) 19–20 demarcation 39 Derrida, Jacques 79 Dewa Sanzan 41 Dhammapada 19 dhāran. ī 109 dharma 33, 94, 110, 122 dharma-body (dharmakāya, hōshin) 110 dharmakāya see dharma-body Didache 146–7 Dionysius the Areopagite 74 dirt 50–2, 54, 123, 138–41 disorder 62 divine names 73, 75, 77, 79 divine will 14, 160 divinity 40, 119–21, 123–4 doctrinal instruction 95 Douglas, Mary 50, 55, 138–9, 141 dust 15–17, 49, 155–6, 158 Easter 146–7 Ecclesiastes 31 egoism 124 Eight Dusts 158–9 emancipation (moksa) 18, 20–2 emotions 60, 88, 127, 128, 129, 132, 134 see also mociones emptiness (śunyatā, kū) 19, 21, 110 enlightenment 93, 95–8, 100–4, 110, 113, 148 entertainment 93–6 eschatological joy 146–8 essential nothingness 83 evil 30, 32, 60, 62, 69, 96, 138–9, 148 explanation of dharma 94 faith-healing 110 falsehood 158 fasting: definition 144 flattery 158 folk religion, 38, 141 folklore 39, 140

food 30, 33, 61, 121, 144–5, 147, 153–4 food offerings 153–4 Four Noble Truths 107 freedom of mind 155–6, 160 Frothingham, Octavius B. 53 fukyo (missionary work) 101–2 funeral 137, 139, 141, 154 Gandhi, Mahātma 149 Ganss, George E. 61 Garden of Eden 30 Gassan 41–2 Gelassenheit 83–5, 90 genze riyaku 110, 112 German Idealism 130 Gestalt therapy 59 God, 73 see also will of God absolute maximum (maximum absolutum) 78 absolute quiddity (quidditas absoluta) 78 Brahma 32 Christian God 53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 73–80, 147–8 feeling of dependence 132 God in Christian mysticism 83–90 God the Parent (Oyagami) 15–18, 154–61 Jewish God 30–2 kami 16–17, 40, 68, 153 Shiva 120–1, 124 God the Parent (Oyagami) 15–18, 154–61 gohei (white strips of paper) 36 good and evil 30 grace 69, 84, 86, 148 grace (adhişt. hāna, kaji) 110, 112–13, 116 gratitude 40, 60, 63, 134, 154, 158–9 graveyard 52–3 greed 16, 124–5, 157–8 grudge-bearing 16, 158 Gundert, Wilhelm 26 Haenisch, Wolf 26 hand gestures 109, 157, 161 harae 35, 39–40 hatred 16, 158 healing 13, 28, 37, 107–16 healing rituals 107–11, 113, 115 health 51, 54, 107, 110, 115–16, 143–4, 149

Index hearing (śravan. a) 20 Hegel, Georg Friedrich 127 Hellenistic culture 127 Herms, Eilert 59 hierarchy 32–3 hinokishin 158 Holy Communion 147 Holy Spirit 76, 87–8 hosetsu 94 hōshin see dharma-body hotoke 68 hygiene 50–1, 54–5, 138 Ichibataji 114–15 icons 59 identity 19–20, 37, 39, 59, 130, 150 Ignatius of Loyola 57 ignorance (avidyā) 19 Iizuka Daikō 115 Iizuka Kōken 115 ijime (bullying) 140 Illuminati 58 images 29, 34, 59, 83–4, 87, 109 imagination 49, 58–9, 61 impurity 13, 25, 28, 29–34, 62, 69, 73, 75, 109, 137–41, 153, 155 indigenous religion 38 individualism 140 initiation 37, 39, 137, 145 inner self (pratyagatman) 125 institution 103, 109, 115–16, 122 intellect 19, 60, 74, 76–7, 85 intuition 128–9, 133 invention of tradition 148 Ise Shrine 41 isshin funi 110 itai hōchi (abandoned corpses) 140 Izanagi 28, 141 Izanami 28, 141 James, William 51 Jesuit Order 57 Jesus Christ 66, 68, 85, 88 jōbutsu (achieving buddhahood) 42, 109 Jōdo school 139 jōrei 41 joy 15, 129, 134, 146–8, 154, 158 joyous life (yōkigurashi) 14–18, 49, 154–7, 159–61

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Judaism 36 Jung, Carl Gustav 59 Kagura service 156–7, 160–1 Kannon (Avalokiteśvara) 113–15 Kannon reijō Saikoku sanjūsan kasho 113 kanrodai 157, 160 Kant, Immanuel 128, 130–1 karma 33, 39, 108, 119, 121–3, 125 kataphatic (affirmative) theology 75–6 Kato Esho 95–6 Kato Totsudo 94, 96–104 ke (vapour) 140 kirishitan 65–70 kiyome 39–40, 137, 139 knowledge (jnāna) 20, 119, 124–5 kō (religious interest group) 42 Kōbō Daishi (Kūkai) 110, 112 Kōki Story 14 kokoro 13 Kōmyō Shingon mantra 110–11 Konkōkyō 38 kū see emptiness Kurozumikyō 38 Kyoto School 83 Laube, Johannes 27 learned ignorance 77, 79–80 Lennon, John, 60 lent 18, 144–6, 154 Life Reform Movement 143 lifestyle 143, 149 liturgy 36 logocentricity 43 Lorenzer, Alfred 59 love 16, 28, 60, 63, 84–90, 121, 125, 134, 158 Luther, Martin 58 Lützner, Hellmut 143 mantra 110–11 Manu 32–3 marriage 137 mass 28, 57, 65, 121 matter in place/out of place 50–3, 55, 138 medical materialism 51, 54 medieval spiritual movements 57 meditation 20–1, 43, 46, 58–9, 61, 84, 97, 109, 115, 124 meditation (nididhyāsana) 20

166 Index Meister Eckhart 83, 90 merit 100, 110 miasma 53 Mikagura-uta 14, 26, 157–8, 161 mind 36–7, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49–50, 55, 57, 59–62, 73–5, 90, 109–14, 121, 124, 125, 133, 138, 144–5, 154–61 see also kokoro, shin miqveh 31 miracle 112–13, 115 mirror communication 59 miserliness 16, 158 Misogi-kyō 41–2 missionary work 68, 97, 101–2, 104 Mitsumonkai 111–12 mociones (motions, emotions) 60, 62 moksa see emancipation Moses 74, 145 Motoori Norinaga 69 mountain asceticism (Shugendō) 39–41, 112–13 mourning 145–6, 148 Myōshinji 114–15 mysticism 73, 79 myth 14, 32 Nakayama Miki 14, 27–8, 33, 161 Nakayama Shozen 13–14, 16, 22, 25, 27 Nakayama Zenye 27 Naniwa-bushi 96 neurosciences 127–8 new orientation in life (election) 62 New Testament 43, 89, 146–1 Nicholas of Cusa 73, 75, 78–80 Nicolaus Cusanus see Nicholas of Cusa Nippon Vedānta Kyōkai (Vedānta Society of Japan) 119 Nishida Kitarō 83 Nishitani Keiji 83 nishkāmakarma 122 norms 21, 140 numinous 21, 132 Nussbaum, Martha C. 128, 134 o-mairi 40 o-mamori 28 Oda Ryūkō 111–12, 116 Ofudesaki 14, 16–17, 22, 160–1 Ōnishiki Sokō 115

Oosumi Shun 102 oral tradition 15, 19 Origen 74 Osashizu 14, 17, 26, 154, 159, 161 Otto, Rudolf 21, 132 Oyasama 28, 154, 159, 161 Padre Organtino 67 pain 109, 134 parisam.khyāna 20 passages of initiation 145 pathogenicity 138 Paul III 57 penance 65–7, 69–70 penitence 41, 134, 148 pentecost 146 perception 41, 52, 109 Perls, Fritz 59 Persifor Frazer Jr. 53 personal transformatory process 19, 36, 41–2, 45, 50, 55, 62, 93, 110, 127 pet memorials 115 pilgrimage 28, 40–2, 46, 113–16 Plato 80, 127–8 politics 39, 102, 125, 149 pollution 13, 25, 27, 29–35, 50–2, 54–5, 69–70, 73, 137–8, 140–1, 153 practical Vedānta 120 prayer 19, 21, 35, 36, 58, 59, 61, 68, 69, 85, 124, 137, 147, 148, 156 pattern prayer 19 spontaneous prayer 19 preaching 54, 84, 95 presentiment 128 primal religion 36–8, 41, 46 Proclus 75 Protestantism 43 puberty 137 pure mind 16, 155–6 purification aims and means 62 collective purification 108 definition 13–35, 73, 133 highest means of purification (paramam.pāvanam) 20 of the mind 13–22, 31, 73, perception 50–2 purification rites 31, 33, 35, 36, 39–41, 69, 138, 145, 153

Index ritual and inner purity 40 typological considerations 39 purification salt (kiyome no shio) 137, 139 purity 13, 16, 18–20, 22, 28–9, 31–6, 39–41, 50–1, 55, 69, 77, 79, 84–8, 108–13, 123–5, 129, 131, 137, 140–1, 153–7, 159–61 ritual and inner purity 40 purusha 32 Pye, Michael 22, 35, 46 Qur’ān 19 rakugo 94–5 Ramakrishna mission 119–22, 124–5 realm of truth 160 rebirth 33, 127 rectification of evil 69 reformation 43, 58, 148 refutation speech 96–7 renaissance 43, 58 resources 95, 150 revitalization 108, 116 rhetoric 94, 96–9, 101–3 Rigveda 32 Rinzai Zen 114 ritual 30–1, 33, 35–40, 42, 44–5, 62, 65, 67, 69, 110–11, 116, 130, 137, 145, 149, 153–4, 156 calendrical rites 153 healing rituals 107–11, 113, 115 reinforcement rites 37, 39 rites of initiation 39 ritual and inner purity 40 Shintō ritual 39 yaku-barai (ceremony of exorcism) 137 rokkon shōjō (purification of the six roots) 39–42 romanticism 128 śabda 19–20 sacrament 65–7, 69, 148 sacred image 59, 63, 109 sacred mountains 16, 41 sacred syllables 109, 114 sacrifice 32, 120, 125 Saint Elizabeth 27–8, 33 Sakurai Tokutarō 140

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salt 137 salvation 18, 21–2, 27–8, 33, 37, 39, 65–6, 89, 93, 107–8, 120, 137, 139, 141, 144, 148, 154–6, 158, 160 sam.sāra 108 Śan˙kara 20 sankyō icchi (unity of the three teachings) 103 sanshu seppo (three cycles of storytelling) 94 Saussure, Ferdinand de 17 scenic understanding 59 Schellenbaum, Peter 59 Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. 127 security 35, 39 Seiryūji 112 Seishin 103 Seishinsha 103 seiza 20 Sekiyama Kazuo 93–4, 103 sekkyo no godanho (five stages for storytelling) 94 self-being 19 self-control 144 self-cultivation 93–5, 97, 99, 101–4 self-love 16, 158 self-reflexivity 144 selflessness 125 sermon 85, 88, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104 fushidan sekkyo (Buddhist artistic sermon) 93, 95, 103 kairyo sekkyo (improved sermon) 95–6, 98–100, 102, 104 Prothero, Stephen 52–3, 55 shikishin funi (non-duality of form and consciousness) 42 shimenawa 36 shin (mind, heart) 102 Shingon school 39, 41, 107–10, 112–14 Shinjōin 112 Shintō 35–6, 39–42, 46, 65, 69, 102–3, 153 shrine 14, 28, 35–6, 40–2, 120, 153 Shugendō see mountain asceticism sight-related diseases 112–14 significance 17, 36, 52, 65, 94–9, 102, 104, 131, 149–50 sin 66, 68–70, 96, 148 social engagement 108, 113

168 Index sokushin jōbutsu (obtaining buddhahood in this very body) 42, 109 soteriology 41 soul 53, 60, 66, 70, 73–4, 83, 85–7, 89–90, 120–1, 128, 144 speech 31, 93–104, 109, 114, 158 Spiritual Exercises 57–63 spirituality 17, 19, 36–7, 41–6, 53–5, 57–9, 61–3, 66–7, 69, 73, 95, 102–3, 110, 113, 119, 121–2, 124–5, 143–4, 148–50, 153–4, 160 stoics 127 storytelling 94 Straelen, Henry van 26 subjectivism 57, 62, 130–2 suchness (thatatā, shinnyo) 111 śunyatā see emptiness Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro 83 svabhāva 19 svadharma 122 Swamī Vivekānanda 120–1, 124 taboo 35–6, 39, 45, 141 Taoism 20–1 Taylor, Charles 128, 133 Temizuya 35, 40 Tendai school 114 teodori (dance with hand movements) 157 Theravāda Canon 46 thing-ness (quidditas) 77–8 thinking (manana) 20 Three Mysteries (sanmitsu) 109–10, 113–14 Torah 30 torii 36 toxins 53 trance 145 transformation 35–7, 39, 41–3, 45, 57, 59, 62, 65, 93, 110, 127 tropes (seiiyu) 94 Tsubosakadera 113–15 tsumi 66, 69 Ueda Shizuteru 83

ultra-nationalism 104 uncleanliness 51 union (with god) 74, 79, 86, 123 Upanisads 20 varnāshramādharma 122 Veda 19, 32 Vedānta 19–20, 119–20 vidyā 20 Virgin Mary 58, 88 virginity 28, 33, 84 visualization 114 vital force, 140 washing, 115, 153 water 18, 31, 35, 39–41, 53, 115, 138, 153–4, 157 Weber, Max 38 welfare 120–1 Wenck, John 78 white 36, 46, 131, 139 will 19, 63, 88, 89, 103 will of God 14, 16, 18, 27, 85, 87, 88, 160 wisdom 20, 26 World Messianity (Sekai Kyūseikyō) 41 Xavier, Francisco de 65 yaku barai (ceremony of exorcism) 137 yaku doshi (calamitous years) 137 yamabushi 40–1 Yanagawa Keiichi 16 Yanagita Kunio 140–1 Yasuo Yuasa 21 yoboku, 27 yōji gyakutai (child abuse) 140 yōkigurashi see joyous Life yuben-ho (method of eloquence) 98 zabō 20 zazen 20 Zen 20, 112, 114, 115 Zwingli, Huldreych 58