The Mythologies of the Far East
Samurai on horseback, Wikimedia Commons
Japanese Mythology
Prehistoric Origins
When the eyes turn to Japan, four facts are immediately apparent.
The first is that the period of arrival of Buddhism, and with Buddhism the arts of a developed civilization, corresponds approximately to that of the Christianization of Germanic Europe. Compared to both India and China, Japan is young, still dreaming.
Second, because of this youth there was never in traditional Japan any such fundamental experience of either of social or of cosmic disillusionment as we have noted for Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. Consequently, when Buddhism arrived, its first noble truth “All life is sorrowful” may have met the ear but never reached the heart. Japan heard something quite different in the Gospel of the Buddha.
Thirdly, as a comparatively primitive people, the Japanese at the time of their entry upon the stage of history were still endowed with that primary sense of the numinous in all things.
Fourthly, Japan, like England, is an island world wherein a self-understood rapport exists by nature, from top to bottom of the social order. Whereas on the mainland clashes of race, cultures, and mutually inconsiderate classes represent practically the norm of the social history, in Japan the empire functioned mainly as an organic unit – even in the days of the most brutal disorder.
The archaeology of Japan falls into five blocks.
The first, largely hypothetical, is of Paleolithic hunters of the period of Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus, about 400 000 B.C., when the islands appear to have been connected with the continent. In mythological terms there is little to be said about this period.
The second prehistoric block, also largely hypothetical, is of Mesolithic hunters – possibly after 3000 B.C. The archaeological finds give no clues regarding mythology.
The third block is, on the other hand, of considerable importance. The period is known as Jomon (“cord-marked”) and, as the name indicates, is characterized by ceramic fabrics of a crude, hand-shaped, cord-marked type. The dating is from about 2500 to 300 B.C. It is presumed that the earliest carriers of the culture were Caucasoid. Their probable descendants, the Ainus, are confined today to the northern island, Hokkaido, but they at one time possessed all or most of Honshu as well. The absence of agriculture characterize the first phases of this period. Then, ceramic figurines and well-conceived, rhythmically organized pottery designs appear – reflecting Bronze Age influence from the continent. In the final phase settled villages are established and an agriculture is developed, together with a barnyard of cattle and horses.
The fourth block, the Yayoi period, is dated about 300 B.C. – 300 A.D., and represents the foundation of a culture properly Japanese. The sites, confined to Kyushu and southern Honshu, show that the arrivals were by way of Korea. The culture assemblage suggests pre-Shang China (Lungshan: black ware, about 1800 B.C.), but the Japanese dates correspond to Chinese Ch’in and Han. Distinctive marks of this culture complex are rice cultivation in flooded terraces, ceramics turned on potter’s wheel, pedestal vessels, and an early Chinese method of rice-steaming in a system of double jars. The culture was basically of a high Neolithic style, and yet the dates were of imperial Han (China) and Rome.
The fifth block, the Yamato period, which opens 300 A.D. represents a new penetration of Central Asians from Korea, via Kyushu into Honshu. Earth-covered, mound-type tombs, circular, square, and keyhole-shaped, placed either in hills or amid rice fields, have earned the title “mound-burial complex” for this culture. By 400 A.D. the tombs reached immense size.
In the early era of the Ainu, shamanism, bear, fire and mountain cults, burial and purification rites had an important role. Culturally, the blend from these to the more primitive aspects of Japanese Shinto is very smooth. The source land of both peoples was Northeast and North-Central Asia – a zone from which numerous entries into North America also were launched. And since continuous contributions from the same North Asiatic circumpolar sphere likewise flowed into Northern Europe, affinities turn up throughout the native lore of Japan, touching fields of myth as widely separated as Ireland, Kamchatka, and the Canadian Northeast.
The chief linkage of the primitive lore of Japan is thus with the north. However, the mythology includes many elements suggesting Polynesia and coastal fishing folk as well. North Asiatic hunters, oceanic fishing folk, marginal Neolithic agriculturalists and late waves of Bronze Age and finally Iron Age warrior folk, supply the ingredients of Japanese mythology. Tribal wars and gradual pressing back of the Ainu brought the Yamato clans into dominance by about 400 A.D. in the areas across from Korea. And it was through these that the boons of Chinese civilization arrived in force in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.
The Mythic Past
The Yamato rulers, in response to the Chinese inspiration, invented a past of their own, composed of local myths arranged as a world chronicle. Their model was a legendary Chinese chronicle of the sort first composed in Sumer, telling the origin of the universe and ages of the gods, the ages, then, of superhuman kings, and the ages, finally, of heroic men approximately of our own length of years. These locally fashioned tales are more folkloristic and fairytale-like than their inspirational sources are.
The first important Chinese influences were Confucian. These arrived possibly in the fourth, certainly by the fifth century A.D. The epochal date, however, is in the sixth century (552 A.D.), when a Korean king presented the Emperor Kimmei with a packet of sutras and a golden image of the Buddha. The arts of civilization thereafter poured into the country, and for the next three hundred years there was an avid assimilation in progress, which culminated in the Nara Period, 710 – 794 A.D. Two symbolic events took place. On the Buddhist side, the dedication of a colossal Buddha image in bronze. On the side of the native Shinto heritage, the appearance by royal decree of two compilations of the genealogical lore of the royal house. These were the Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters”, 712 A.D.), and the Nihongi (“Chronicles of Japan”, 720 A.D.). As their names indicate, they are recordings of native lore that formerly had been handed down only orally. Tales of ancient spirits and their role in the creation of the world are important elements of these works.
The Way of Spirits
Shinto, at root, is a religion not of sermons but of awe: which is a sentiment that may or may not produce words, but in either case goes beyond them. A Shinto rite can be defined as an occasion for the recognition and evocation of an awe that inspires gratitude to the source and nature of being. And, as such, it is addressed as art (music, gardening, architecture, dance, etc) to the sensibilities – not to the faculties of definition. So that living Shinto is not the following of some set-down moral code, but a living in gratitude and awe amid the mystery of things. And to retain this sense, the faculties remain open, clean, and pure. That is the meaning of ritual purity.
It is incorrect to say that Shinto lacks moral ideas, however. The basic moral idea is that the processes of nature cannot be evil. To this there is the corollary that the pure heart follows the processes of nature. Man – a natural thing – is not evil inherently, but is in his pure heart, in his natural being, divine. The fundamental terms are “bright heart” (akaki kokoro), “pure heart” (kiyoki kokoro), “correct heart” (tadashiki kokoro), and “straight heart” (naoki kokoro). The first denotes the quality of a heart shining brightly as the sun; the second, a heart clear as a white jewel; the third, a heart inclined to justice; and the last, a heart lovely and without misleading inclinations. All four unite as seimei shin: purity and cheerfulness of spirit.
In the inner sanctuaries of the chief Shinto shrines there have been preserved from of old – from far beyond the time of record – three symbolic talismans, borne to earth it is said, by the august grandchild Heaven Plenty, Earth Plenty, Heaven’s Sun Height, Prince Ruddy Rice-Ear Plenty, when kingship descended to Japan. And these are, namely, a mirror (purity); divine sword (courage); and jewel necklace (benevolence).
Shinto in old Japan was operative in four spheres: 1.Domestic, centering in its gratitude upon the kami of the well, gate, family, garden plot, etc. 2.The local community cult, in gratitude to both the natural phenomena of the scene in which one lives and the honored local dead. 3.The craft cults, honoring gratefully the very processes of work, the mysteries and powers of the tools, materials, etc. 4.The national cult, in gratitude to the emperor and his palace, the House of Awe, and to his world-preserving ancestors, the Great Kami of the Kojiki, of whom the greatest – born as the light of the universe from the left eye of the Male Who Invites, following his victory over impurity.
The Ways of the Buddha
The golden Buddha that came from Korea in 552 A.D. was not immediately a harbinger of peace. Different clans opposed each other in views on whether this was beneficient or not. For thirty years a feud went on, and only after the most powerful clan had eliminated the others, and a good ruler, Prince Shotoku (573 – 621 A.D.), reigned and favored Buddhism, did the faith take hold in Japan. Prince Shotoku fostered letters and the arts, prepared the first history of Japan (now lost), promulgated a system of laws, and even before his death was honored by many as a Bodhisattva. In his reign, Buddhism, which in Japan had been the religion mainly of one clan, became a religion of the empire. The branch of Buddhism that was favored, was the Mahayana – as in China. We shall look briefly at the periods that succeeded Prince Shotoku.
Nara period: 710 – 794 A.D.
Buddhism had as yet produced no truly native thought. The situation was one simply of eclectic juxtaposition. The Shinto spirits (kami) were faced with a cosmopolitan pantheon of alien derivation. In the court, the new faith was the carrier mainly of a continental civilization that gave to life there a new fashionable tone, while among the folk it was a vehicle of solace. In eighth-century Japan, the Bodhisattvas joined in mutual accord with the rustic spirits of the country, in strong contrast to fanatical movements such as the Islamization of the Levant, North-Africa and Spain and the Christianization of Europe which went on with considerable violence at the same time.
The accord between traditional Shinto and Buddhism was achieved in four stages:
1. At Nara: period of the first Buddhist capital city of Japan, 710-794 A.D.
This was a stage when Chinese Buddhist art and thought were arriving in force. The chief symbolic event was the building of the great Todaiji Temple and consecration within it, in 752 A.D., of a colossal bronze seated Buddha on a lotus of bronze 68 feet in circumference, and the figure itself 53 ½ feet high, having a weight of 452 tons.
2 and 3. At the second Buddhist capital, Heian (now Kyoto), 794 - 1185 A.D.
First, 794 – 894, a period of continuing Chinese influence, but with a new turn; for in the teachings of two Japanese monks, Dengyo Daishi (767 – 822) and Kobo Daishi (774 – 835), the kami of Japan were recognized as local Bodhisattvas. Next, 894 – 1185, continuing at Heian: diplomatic and cultural intercourse with T’ang China was discontinued, and in the elegant Fujiwara court described by Lady Murasaki (978 – 1015) in her novel Genji Monogatari, an erotic flowery game of sensibility was played, much like that of the twelfth-century troubadours in Europe. Cut off from the continent, the Japanese now were developing a Buddhism of their own, which in the following period of the Kamakura Shogunate, achieved maturity.
4. Kamakura Period: 1185 – 1392.
An intense swing away from the delicate sensibility and aesthetic eroticism of the Fujiwara ladies and their nobles. Four vigorous, specifically Japanese Buddhist schools were founded: Jodo, founded by honen (1133 – 1212), and Shinshu, founded by his disciple Shinran (1173 – 1262), both of which were Amida sects; Zen, from the Chinese Ch’an school of Hui-neng but applied to new aims (chief founder, Eisai: 1141 – 1215); and lastly the intensely personal, chauvinistic sect of the fisherman’s son Nichiren (122 – 1282).
The doctrine of the Flower Garland is central to all Buddhist sects of Japan. The teaching of the Flower Wreath Sutra, known in Japan as Kegon, contains “Ten Profound Theories”, of which the following four may illustrate the main content:
1.The Profound Theory of Correlation, according to which all things coexist, simultaneously, arising. They coexist not only in relation to space, but also in relation to time; for past, present, and future include each other.
2. The Profound Theory of Perfect Freedom, according to which all beings, great and small, commune with one another without obstruction; so that the power of each partakes of that of all and so is limitless. One act, however small, includes all acts.
3. The fifth theory, The Profound Theory of Complementarity, according to which both the hidden and the manifest constitute the whole by mutual reinforcement. By complementarity they constitute a unit.
4. The tenth theory, The Profound Theory of the Completion of the Common Virtue, according to which a leader and his following, the chief and his retinue, work together harmoniously and brightly; for, “according to the one-in-all and all-in-one principle, they really form one complete whole” – permeating each other by inter-reflection.
To realize this, two things are needed: firstly, the Vow of Bodhisattvahood (pranidhana), which is to work without cease to bring all beings – oneself included – to the realization of Buddhahood; and, secondly, compassion (karuna).
Further remarks on the Heian Period: 794 – 1185 A.D.
The second major step toward an essentially Japanese Buddhist realization was taken when Dengo Daishi and Kobo Daishi set sail for China in 804 A.D. The priestly order founded by the former on his return is called Tendai (Chinese, T’ien-t’ai), after the mountain monastery in South China founded by Chih-kai (531 – 597 A.D.). The basic doctrine of Tendai is that the Buddha is in all things. What makes this doctrine special, however, is the statement that “The Lotus of the True Law” is itself the Buddha. Something considerably more complex arrived with the return of the second voyager, Kobo Daishi, who in China had studied the Indian Tantric mystery known as the “True Word” (Sanskrit: mantra; Chinese: Chen Yen; Japanese: Shingon).
In the latter context, the sphere of divinity, the Buddha sphere, is assumed to be within the celebrant himself. The celebrant is to assume the posture of the Buddha-principle invoked by the priest. He is thereby placed in accord with that principle at once in thought (dhyana), word (mantra), and body posture (mudra). Thus this very body of the celebrant becomes the Buddha. In line with the Hindu-Buddhist notion of numerous degrees, orders, or forms of divine manifestation, numerous symbolic images have become associated with this development, offering models for the posture system associated with the mantras. These are classified in two large categories: 1.Those of the circle of the diamond or thunderbolt body (vajra), representing aspects of the realm of the indestructible, true, or diamond state; the pivotal figure of this group being the great Solar Buddha (Variochana) surrounded by his emanations. 2.Those of the circle of the womb (garbha), symbolizing the order of the changing world, in Indian Buddhist art represented by the goddess-lotus of the world.
Kobo Daishi assigned the kami of his native land to membership in the womb circle; so that whereas formerly the Buddhas had been viewed as kami (Shinto spirits), now the kami could be viewed as Buddha-things. A two-way interplay was thereby achieved. In addition, the Indian Tantric magic became combined with the Japanese shamanistic tradition, and again, a two-way interplay was achieved. This powerful, popular as well as elite, dual order was known as Ryobu Shinto (“Two Aspect Shinto”). The Tendai sect joined the movement, terming its own approach Ichi-jitsu Shinto ““One Reality Shinto”). So, even before the intercourse with China was discontinued, Japan had begun to make Buddhism its own.
It was only in the second phase of the Heian period, however, that Japan began to exhibit its own style. By the tenth and eleventh centuries the Japanese were producing long horizontal scrolls of such narrative as the world had never seen. While the Chinese of those decades, and later, gave you moods of landscape and of weather charged with all they can imply for human beings who are sensitive to nature, the Japanese showed peopled narratives beyond compare. The main difference being that the Chinese were largely interested in matters of philosophy, while the Japanese emphasized Man and what happened in the material world at that particular time. Professor Hajime Nakamura of Tokyo University at a speech in 1955 made the point that the concept of freedom is rendered by the same two ideograms in China and Japan. In China, he said, freedom meant liberation from the human nexus, while in Japan it meant compliance with the human nexus (through devotion to secular activities). The remainder of the history of Buddhism in Japan is, by and large, the reflex of the differing human nexuses to which the doctrine has been applied.
The Indian Buddhist was disillusioned in the universe, the Chinese in society, the Japanese – not at all. So that, whereas the Indian retreat was to the Void and the Chinese either to the Family (Confucius) or to Nature (Lao Tzu), the Japanese did not retreat but stood exactly where he was, simply magnified his kami into Buddha-things, and saw this world itself, with all its joy as well as oddities and sorrow, as the Golden Lotus World, right here and now. And one of the first of the various human nexuses in Japan to take on the radiance of the Golden Lotus was the palace-world of the Heian court.
Further remarks on the Kamakura Period: 1185 – 1333 A.D.
The extinction in 1184 of the Taira (Heike) clan by the Minamoto (Genji) marked the opening of four and a quarter centuries of feudal strife. Buddhism in the Kamakura Period (1185 – 1333) – the moment of its maturation in Japan was of two trends: jiriki (“own strength, self-reliance”) and tariki (“other’s strength, salvation by intercession”). The latter was represented principally by the cult of Amida; the former by Zen. The social spheres in which the latter flourished were largely the chambers of the gentlewoman and villages of the poor, while those of the former were the manly warrior camps.
The cult of Amida implied awakening of faith through gratitude to the world, living life and listening to the teaching in an attitude of gratitude, cultivating faith in the mystery symbolized in the figure of the Solar Buddha Amida. In Zen, the Buddhism of the Samuraï, an essentially non-theological view is taken of the problem of illuminated life. Buddhahood is within. Look within, the Buddha will be found. In Zen, the aim is to let the mind stuff proceed spontaneously, as when the eyes see by themselves, the ears hear by themselves, and the mouth opens by itself – without having to be forced apart by the fingers. When the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one’s own sword and how to wield it – no more thought even of life and death. All is emptiness, even the thought of emptiness is no longer there. From that emptiness comes the unfoldment of doing.
The Way of Heroes
The basic principle in old customs was that of full and solemn identification of the individual with his socially assigned role. Life in civilization was conceived as a grandiose, noble play, enacted on the world stage. The function of each was to render his part without blockage through any fault of the personality. Those lords who dishonored themselves by playing their roles improperly, had – according to custom – to commit suicide. And their retinue had to follow them in the act, much like in the burial ceremonies of the early hieratic city states. In the period of the great feudal wars, this custom was played out in force. For centuries thereafter, even against the firm rulings of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603 – 1868), heroic players of the old school insisted on playing on. Bushido, "the Way (do; Chinese: tao) of the Warrior (bushi)", was an inheritance of the hieratic ideal of the mighty play.
The Way of Tea
In the course of four grim centuries of feudal disintegration, there was produced a hard civilization wherein the qualities of the entire religious inheritance of the Far East have become transmuted to secular ends. The lessons drawn from their remarkably composite, yet firmly synthetized mythological inheritance are numerous:
- the world feeling of Shinto, that the processes of nature cannot be evil, together with its zeal for purity, and the clean house as well as heart
- the recognition of ineffable wonder in little things
- the Buddhist lesson of the Flower Wreath that all is one and one is all
- the Taoist feeling for the order of nature and Confucian for the Tao in human relationships
- the Buddhist recognition of sorrow united with compassion
- the lesson that the way for Japan was not asceticism but the normal layman’s life lived properly in gratitude
- the stress in Zen upon tenacity in discipline with a view to pristine spontaneity in action,
through all of which the basic hero virtues of the gallant Warrior Way are fostered, of loyalty with courage, veracity, self-control, benevolence, together with a willingness to play one’s given role in the masquerade of life.
From the fourteenth century inward, these produced an array of mutually enriching secular, folk as well as elite, arts. Gardens were devised that brought nature itself into the manifoldly symbolic play, not merely as theater, but as an active participant. A central discipline of all this urbane spirituality was tea. The act of drinking tea is a normal, secular, common day affair; so also is sitting in a room with friends. And yet, when you resolve to pay full attention to every single aspect of the act of drinking tea while sitting in a room with friends, selecting first your best, most appropriate bowls, setting these down in the prettiest way, using an interesting pot, providing pretty things for your friends to look at, a few flowers perfectly composed, the situation will shine with its own beauty. If, in preparing, serving and drinking, every phase of the action is rendered in such a graceful functional manner that all present may take joy in it, this common affair might well be said to have been elevated to the status of a poem. The mastery of tea is the mastery of the principle of freedom (self-motivation) within the nexus of a highly complex, glass-hard, rule-bound civilization, for every one of whose contingencies only gratitude is to be felt, if one is to live as a man.
When the eyes turn to Japan, four facts are immediately apparent.
The first is that the period of arrival of Buddhism, and with Buddhism the arts of a developed civilization, corresponds approximately to that of the Christianization of Germanic Europe. Compared to both India and China, Japan is young, still dreaming.
Second, because of this youth there was never in traditional Japan any such fundamental experience of either of social or of cosmic disillusionment as we have noted for Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. Consequently, when Buddhism arrived, its first noble truth “All life is sorrowful” may have met the ear but never reached the heart. Japan heard something quite different in the Gospel of the Buddha.
Thirdly, as a comparatively primitive people, the Japanese at the time of their entry upon the stage of history were still endowed with that primary sense of the numinous in all things.
Fourthly, Japan, like England, is an island world wherein a self-understood rapport exists by nature, from top to bottom of the social order. Whereas on the mainland clashes of race, cultures, and mutually inconsiderate classes represent practically the norm of the social history, in Japan the empire functioned mainly as an organic unit – even in the days of the most brutal disorder.
The archaeology of Japan falls into five blocks.
The first, largely hypothetical, is of Paleolithic hunters of the period of Sinanthropus and Pithecanthropus, about 400 000 B.C., when the islands appear to have been connected with the continent. In mythological terms there is little to be said about this period.
The second prehistoric block, also largely hypothetical, is of Mesolithic hunters – possibly after 3000 B.C. The archaeological finds give no clues regarding mythology.
The third block is, on the other hand, of considerable importance. The period is known as Jomon (“cord-marked”) and, as the name indicates, is characterized by ceramic fabrics of a crude, hand-shaped, cord-marked type. The dating is from about 2500 to 300 B.C. It is presumed that the earliest carriers of the culture were Caucasoid. Their probable descendants, the Ainus, are confined today to the northern island, Hokkaido, but they at one time possessed all or most of Honshu as well. The absence of agriculture characterize the first phases of this period. Then, ceramic figurines and well-conceived, rhythmically organized pottery designs appear – reflecting Bronze Age influence from the continent. In the final phase settled villages are established and an agriculture is developed, together with a barnyard of cattle and horses.
The fourth block, the Yayoi period, is dated about 300 B.C. – 300 A.D., and represents the foundation of a culture properly Japanese. The sites, confined to Kyushu and southern Honshu, show that the arrivals were by way of Korea. The culture assemblage suggests pre-Shang China (Lungshan: black ware, about 1800 B.C.), but the Japanese dates correspond to Chinese Ch’in and Han. Distinctive marks of this culture complex are rice cultivation in flooded terraces, ceramics turned on potter’s wheel, pedestal vessels, and an early Chinese method of rice-steaming in a system of double jars. The culture was basically of a high Neolithic style, and yet the dates were of imperial Han (China) and Rome.
The fifth block, the Yamato period, which opens 300 A.D. represents a new penetration of Central Asians from Korea, via Kyushu into Honshu. Earth-covered, mound-type tombs, circular, square, and keyhole-shaped, placed either in hills or amid rice fields, have earned the title “mound-burial complex” for this culture. By 400 A.D. the tombs reached immense size.
In the early era of the Ainu, shamanism, bear, fire and mountain cults, burial and purification rites had an important role. Culturally, the blend from these to the more primitive aspects of Japanese Shinto is very smooth. The source land of both peoples was Northeast and North-Central Asia – a zone from which numerous entries into North America also were launched. And since continuous contributions from the same North Asiatic circumpolar sphere likewise flowed into Northern Europe, affinities turn up throughout the native lore of Japan, touching fields of myth as widely separated as Ireland, Kamchatka, and the Canadian Northeast.
The chief linkage of the primitive lore of Japan is thus with the north. However, the mythology includes many elements suggesting Polynesia and coastal fishing folk as well. North Asiatic hunters, oceanic fishing folk, marginal Neolithic agriculturalists and late waves of Bronze Age and finally Iron Age warrior folk, supply the ingredients of Japanese mythology. Tribal wars and gradual pressing back of the Ainu brought the Yamato clans into dominance by about 400 A.D. in the areas across from Korea. And it was through these that the boons of Chinese civilization arrived in force in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D.
The Mythic Past
The Yamato rulers, in response to the Chinese inspiration, invented a past of their own, composed of local myths arranged as a world chronicle. Their model was a legendary Chinese chronicle of the sort first composed in Sumer, telling the origin of the universe and ages of the gods, the ages, then, of superhuman kings, and the ages, finally, of heroic men approximately of our own length of years. These locally fashioned tales are more folkloristic and fairytale-like than their inspirational sources are.
The first important Chinese influences were Confucian. These arrived possibly in the fourth, certainly by the fifth century A.D. The epochal date, however, is in the sixth century (552 A.D.), when a Korean king presented the Emperor Kimmei with a packet of sutras and a golden image of the Buddha. The arts of civilization thereafter poured into the country, and for the next three hundred years there was an avid assimilation in progress, which culminated in the Nara Period, 710 – 794 A.D. Two symbolic events took place. On the Buddhist side, the dedication of a colossal Buddha image in bronze. On the side of the native Shinto heritage, the appearance by royal decree of two compilations of the genealogical lore of the royal house. These were the Kojiki (“Record of Ancient Matters”, 712 A.D.), and the Nihongi (“Chronicles of Japan”, 720 A.D.). As their names indicate, they are recordings of native lore that formerly had been handed down only orally. Tales of ancient spirits and their role in the creation of the world are important elements of these works.
The Way of Spirits
Shinto, at root, is a religion not of sermons but of awe: which is a sentiment that may or may not produce words, but in either case goes beyond them. A Shinto rite can be defined as an occasion for the recognition and evocation of an awe that inspires gratitude to the source and nature of being. And, as such, it is addressed as art (music, gardening, architecture, dance, etc) to the sensibilities – not to the faculties of definition. So that living Shinto is not the following of some set-down moral code, but a living in gratitude and awe amid the mystery of things. And to retain this sense, the faculties remain open, clean, and pure. That is the meaning of ritual purity.
It is incorrect to say that Shinto lacks moral ideas, however. The basic moral idea is that the processes of nature cannot be evil. To this there is the corollary that the pure heart follows the processes of nature. Man – a natural thing – is not evil inherently, but is in his pure heart, in his natural being, divine. The fundamental terms are “bright heart” (akaki kokoro), “pure heart” (kiyoki kokoro), “correct heart” (tadashiki kokoro), and “straight heart” (naoki kokoro). The first denotes the quality of a heart shining brightly as the sun; the second, a heart clear as a white jewel; the third, a heart inclined to justice; and the last, a heart lovely and without misleading inclinations. All four unite as seimei shin: purity and cheerfulness of spirit.
In the inner sanctuaries of the chief Shinto shrines there have been preserved from of old – from far beyond the time of record – three symbolic talismans, borne to earth it is said, by the august grandchild Heaven Plenty, Earth Plenty, Heaven’s Sun Height, Prince Ruddy Rice-Ear Plenty, when kingship descended to Japan. And these are, namely, a mirror (purity); divine sword (courage); and jewel necklace (benevolence).
Shinto in old Japan was operative in four spheres: 1.Domestic, centering in its gratitude upon the kami of the well, gate, family, garden plot, etc. 2.The local community cult, in gratitude to both the natural phenomena of the scene in which one lives and the honored local dead. 3.The craft cults, honoring gratefully the very processes of work, the mysteries and powers of the tools, materials, etc. 4.The national cult, in gratitude to the emperor and his palace, the House of Awe, and to his world-preserving ancestors, the Great Kami of the Kojiki, of whom the greatest – born as the light of the universe from the left eye of the Male Who Invites, following his victory over impurity.
The Ways of the Buddha
The golden Buddha that came from Korea in 552 A.D. was not immediately a harbinger of peace. Different clans opposed each other in views on whether this was beneficient or not. For thirty years a feud went on, and only after the most powerful clan had eliminated the others, and a good ruler, Prince Shotoku (573 – 621 A.D.), reigned and favored Buddhism, did the faith take hold in Japan. Prince Shotoku fostered letters and the arts, prepared the first history of Japan (now lost), promulgated a system of laws, and even before his death was honored by many as a Bodhisattva. In his reign, Buddhism, which in Japan had been the religion mainly of one clan, became a religion of the empire. The branch of Buddhism that was favored, was the Mahayana – as in China. We shall look briefly at the periods that succeeded Prince Shotoku.
Nara period: 710 – 794 A.D.
Buddhism had as yet produced no truly native thought. The situation was one simply of eclectic juxtaposition. The Shinto spirits (kami) were faced with a cosmopolitan pantheon of alien derivation. In the court, the new faith was the carrier mainly of a continental civilization that gave to life there a new fashionable tone, while among the folk it was a vehicle of solace. In eighth-century Japan, the Bodhisattvas joined in mutual accord with the rustic spirits of the country, in strong contrast to fanatical movements such as the Islamization of the Levant, North-Africa and Spain and the Christianization of Europe which went on with considerable violence at the same time.
The accord between traditional Shinto and Buddhism was achieved in four stages:
1. At Nara: period of the first Buddhist capital city of Japan, 710-794 A.D.
This was a stage when Chinese Buddhist art and thought were arriving in force. The chief symbolic event was the building of the great Todaiji Temple and consecration within it, in 752 A.D., of a colossal bronze seated Buddha on a lotus of bronze 68 feet in circumference, and the figure itself 53 ½ feet high, having a weight of 452 tons.
2 and 3. At the second Buddhist capital, Heian (now Kyoto), 794 - 1185 A.D.
First, 794 – 894, a period of continuing Chinese influence, but with a new turn; for in the teachings of two Japanese monks, Dengyo Daishi (767 – 822) and Kobo Daishi (774 – 835), the kami of Japan were recognized as local Bodhisattvas. Next, 894 – 1185, continuing at Heian: diplomatic and cultural intercourse with T’ang China was discontinued, and in the elegant Fujiwara court described by Lady Murasaki (978 – 1015) in her novel Genji Monogatari, an erotic flowery game of sensibility was played, much like that of the twelfth-century troubadours in Europe. Cut off from the continent, the Japanese now were developing a Buddhism of their own, which in the following period of the Kamakura Shogunate, achieved maturity.
4. Kamakura Period: 1185 – 1392.
An intense swing away from the delicate sensibility and aesthetic eroticism of the Fujiwara ladies and their nobles. Four vigorous, specifically Japanese Buddhist schools were founded: Jodo, founded by honen (1133 – 1212), and Shinshu, founded by his disciple Shinran (1173 – 1262), both of which were Amida sects; Zen, from the Chinese Ch’an school of Hui-neng but applied to new aims (chief founder, Eisai: 1141 – 1215); and lastly the intensely personal, chauvinistic sect of the fisherman’s son Nichiren (122 – 1282).
The doctrine of the Flower Garland is central to all Buddhist sects of Japan. The teaching of the Flower Wreath Sutra, known in Japan as Kegon, contains “Ten Profound Theories”, of which the following four may illustrate the main content:
1.The Profound Theory of Correlation, according to which all things coexist, simultaneously, arising. They coexist not only in relation to space, but also in relation to time; for past, present, and future include each other.
2. The Profound Theory of Perfect Freedom, according to which all beings, great and small, commune with one another without obstruction; so that the power of each partakes of that of all and so is limitless. One act, however small, includes all acts.
3. The fifth theory, The Profound Theory of Complementarity, according to which both the hidden and the manifest constitute the whole by mutual reinforcement. By complementarity they constitute a unit.
4. The tenth theory, The Profound Theory of the Completion of the Common Virtue, according to which a leader and his following, the chief and his retinue, work together harmoniously and brightly; for, “according to the one-in-all and all-in-one principle, they really form one complete whole” – permeating each other by inter-reflection.
To realize this, two things are needed: firstly, the Vow of Bodhisattvahood (pranidhana), which is to work without cease to bring all beings – oneself included – to the realization of Buddhahood; and, secondly, compassion (karuna).
Further remarks on the Heian Period: 794 – 1185 A.D.
The second major step toward an essentially Japanese Buddhist realization was taken when Dengo Daishi and Kobo Daishi set sail for China in 804 A.D. The priestly order founded by the former on his return is called Tendai (Chinese, T’ien-t’ai), after the mountain monastery in South China founded by Chih-kai (531 – 597 A.D.). The basic doctrine of Tendai is that the Buddha is in all things. What makes this doctrine special, however, is the statement that “The Lotus of the True Law” is itself the Buddha. Something considerably more complex arrived with the return of the second voyager, Kobo Daishi, who in China had studied the Indian Tantric mystery known as the “True Word” (Sanskrit: mantra; Chinese: Chen Yen; Japanese: Shingon).
In the latter context, the sphere of divinity, the Buddha sphere, is assumed to be within the celebrant himself. The celebrant is to assume the posture of the Buddha-principle invoked by the priest. He is thereby placed in accord with that principle at once in thought (dhyana), word (mantra), and body posture (mudra). Thus this very body of the celebrant becomes the Buddha. In line with the Hindu-Buddhist notion of numerous degrees, orders, or forms of divine manifestation, numerous symbolic images have become associated with this development, offering models for the posture system associated with the mantras. These are classified in two large categories: 1.Those of the circle of the diamond or thunderbolt body (vajra), representing aspects of the realm of the indestructible, true, or diamond state; the pivotal figure of this group being the great Solar Buddha (Variochana) surrounded by his emanations. 2.Those of the circle of the womb (garbha), symbolizing the order of the changing world, in Indian Buddhist art represented by the goddess-lotus of the world.
Kobo Daishi assigned the kami of his native land to membership in the womb circle; so that whereas formerly the Buddhas had been viewed as kami (Shinto spirits), now the kami could be viewed as Buddha-things. A two-way interplay was thereby achieved. In addition, the Indian Tantric magic became combined with the Japanese shamanistic tradition, and again, a two-way interplay was achieved. This powerful, popular as well as elite, dual order was known as Ryobu Shinto (“Two Aspect Shinto”). The Tendai sect joined the movement, terming its own approach Ichi-jitsu Shinto ““One Reality Shinto”). So, even before the intercourse with China was discontinued, Japan had begun to make Buddhism its own.
It was only in the second phase of the Heian period, however, that Japan began to exhibit its own style. By the tenth and eleventh centuries the Japanese were producing long horizontal scrolls of such narrative as the world had never seen. While the Chinese of those decades, and later, gave you moods of landscape and of weather charged with all they can imply for human beings who are sensitive to nature, the Japanese showed peopled narratives beyond compare. The main difference being that the Chinese were largely interested in matters of philosophy, while the Japanese emphasized Man and what happened in the material world at that particular time. Professor Hajime Nakamura of Tokyo University at a speech in 1955 made the point that the concept of freedom is rendered by the same two ideograms in China and Japan. In China, he said, freedom meant liberation from the human nexus, while in Japan it meant compliance with the human nexus (through devotion to secular activities). The remainder of the history of Buddhism in Japan is, by and large, the reflex of the differing human nexuses to which the doctrine has been applied.
The Indian Buddhist was disillusioned in the universe, the Chinese in society, the Japanese – not at all. So that, whereas the Indian retreat was to the Void and the Chinese either to the Family (Confucius) or to Nature (Lao Tzu), the Japanese did not retreat but stood exactly where he was, simply magnified his kami into Buddha-things, and saw this world itself, with all its joy as well as oddities and sorrow, as the Golden Lotus World, right here and now. And one of the first of the various human nexuses in Japan to take on the radiance of the Golden Lotus was the palace-world of the Heian court.
Further remarks on the Kamakura Period: 1185 – 1333 A.D.
The extinction in 1184 of the Taira (Heike) clan by the Minamoto (Genji) marked the opening of four and a quarter centuries of feudal strife. Buddhism in the Kamakura Period (1185 – 1333) – the moment of its maturation in Japan was of two trends: jiriki (“own strength, self-reliance”) and tariki (“other’s strength, salvation by intercession”). The latter was represented principally by the cult of Amida; the former by Zen. The social spheres in which the latter flourished were largely the chambers of the gentlewoman and villages of the poor, while those of the former were the manly warrior camps.
The cult of Amida implied awakening of faith through gratitude to the world, living life and listening to the teaching in an attitude of gratitude, cultivating faith in the mystery symbolized in the figure of the Solar Buddha Amida. In Zen, the Buddhism of the Samuraï, an essentially non-theological view is taken of the problem of illuminated life. Buddhahood is within. Look within, the Buddha will be found. In Zen, the aim is to let the mind stuff proceed spontaneously, as when the eyes see by themselves, the ears hear by themselves, and the mouth opens by itself – without having to be forced apart by the fingers. When the heart is troubled by no more thought of I and You, of the opponent and his sword, of one’s own sword and how to wield it – no more thought even of life and death. All is emptiness, even the thought of emptiness is no longer there. From that emptiness comes the unfoldment of doing.
The Way of Heroes
The basic principle in old customs was that of full and solemn identification of the individual with his socially assigned role. Life in civilization was conceived as a grandiose, noble play, enacted on the world stage. The function of each was to render his part without blockage through any fault of the personality. Those lords who dishonored themselves by playing their roles improperly, had – according to custom – to commit suicide. And their retinue had to follow them in the act, much like in the burial ceremonies of the early hieratic city states. In the period of the great feudal wars, this custom was played out in force. For centuries thereafter, even against the firm rulings of the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603 – 1868), heroic players of the old school insisted on playing on. Bushido, "the Way (do; Chinese: tao) of the Warrior (bushi)", was an inheritance of the hieratic ideal of the mighty play.
The Way of Tea
In the course of four grim centuries of feudal disintegration, there was produced a hard civilization wherein the qualities of the entire religious inheritance of the Far East have become transmuted to secular ends. The lessons drawn from their remarkably composite, yet firmly synthetized mythological inheritance are numerous:
- the world feeling of Shinto, that the processes of nature cannot be evil, together with its zeal for purity, and the clean house as well as heart
- the recognition of ineffable wonder in little things
- the Buddhist lesson of the Flower Wreath that all is one and one is all
- the Taoist feeling for the order of nature and Confucian for the Tao in human relationships
- the Buddhist recognition of sorrow united with compassion
- the lesson that the way for Japan was not asceticism but the normal layman’s life lived properly in gratitude
- the stress in Zen upon tenacity in discipline with a view to pristine spontaneity in action,
through all of which the basic hero virtues of the gallant Warrior Way are fostered, of loyalty with courage, veracity, self-control, benevolence, together with a willingness to play one’s given role in the masquerade of life.
From the fourteenth century inward, these produced an array of mutually enriching secular, folk as well as elite, arts. Gardens were devised that brought nature itself into the manifoldly symbolic play, not merely as theater, but as an active participant. A central discipline of all this urbane spirituality was tea. The act of drinking tea is a normal, secular, common day affair; so also is sitting in a room with friends. And yet, when you resolve to pay full attention to every single aspect of the act of drinking tea while sitting in a room with friends, selecting first your best, most appropriate bowls, setting these down in the prettiest way, using an interesting pot, providing pretty things for your friends to look at, a few flowers perfectly composed, the situation will shine with its own beauty. If, in preparing, serving and drinking, every phase of the action is rendered in such a graceful functional manner that all present may take joy in it, this common affair might well be said to have been elevated to the status of a poem. The mastery of tea is the mastery of the principle of freedom (self-motivation) within the nexus of a highly complex, glass-hard, rule-bound civilization, for every one of whose contingencies only gratitude is to be felt, if one is to live as a man.