Shinto: The Way of the Kami

Rev. Abhi Janamanchi
Mr. Marty Pelhap

March 1, 2009

INTRODUCTION - Abhi Janamanchi

This morning, Marty and I want to share with you about Shinto, the indigenous religious tradition of Japan. We hope to give you a better understanding of this tradition, some of its rituals and practices, and its importance in Japan and relevance to us as Unitarian Universalists.

So what is Shinto?

Shinto is an ethnic religion associated almost exclusively with Japan and the Japanese people. It is impossible to associate Japan without Shinto and Shinto without Japan. As my friend, Prof. George Williams, points out, "Shinto discovers the sacred in the landscape of Japan, in the ancestors of Japanese families, and in the heroes associated with one nation. Among major Western religions, Shinto is most like Judaism, because it is associated with a single people and a particular land."^[1]

Japanese people are generally born into Shinto and all Japanese participate in Shinto to the extent that it shapes Japanese culture. The majority of Japanese people are simultaneously believers of both Shinto and Buddhism.

According to George Williams, "as many as 90 percent of the population of Japan are involved in some Shinto ritual practice each year; for example, attending the New Year's ritual or going to a Shinto wedding ceremony."^[2]

The word 'Shinto' is the Chinese reading of two Chinese characters (shen and do). The Japanese reading of the two characters is kami no michi or the way of the kami.

In his book The Way of the Kami, the late Rev. Dr. Yukitaka Yamamoto, 96th Chief Priest of the Tsubaki Grand Shrine, states that "Shinto is as old as the mountains . . . the way in which the natural spirituality of the Japanese people finds expression. . . . It is the way of expressing the flow of life."^[3]

During my Japanese pilgrimage last spring, I experienced and learned firsthand about Shinto's natural spirituality and flow of life through their rituals.

While staying at the Tsubaki Grand Shrine for 2 weeks, I participated in many rituals. These included the daily ritual prayers called oharahi no kotoba, which have been continuously chanted every day for over 2,000 years.

Shinto assumes a world in which the sacred can be experienced. What is experienced is not a symbol or sign that points to something supernatural but rather something that has the sacred residing within it. The object in which the sacred is experienced is called kami.

Kami is both singular and plural. The kami are the innumerable Japanese deities including full-fledged divinities (such as the sun goddess Amaterasu, from whom the imperial family is said to descend), the divinized souls of great persons (warriors, leaders, poets, scholars, businessmen), the ancestral divinities of clans, the spirits of specific places of great natural beauty (mountains, woods, trees, springs, rocks), or the more abstract forces of nature (fertility, growth, production). Kami are generally worshipped at jinjas or shrines established in their honor.

The key to all rituals performed in Shinto is the harmony between heaven and earth. The rituals create the space and process whereby you can return to the fullness of the inborn kami that is in you - the divine in each person. Modern Shinto can be roughly classified into three types: Shrine Shinto, Sectarian Shinto, and Folk Shinto.

Shrine Shinto has been in existence since before the beginnings of Japanese written history. Shrines were already in existence at that early date. Japan's two oldest shrines, the Ise Grand Shrine and the Tsubaki Grand Shrine, are said to be over two thousand years old.

The shrine does not actually house the kami but the symbols of the kami - the goshintai. At the end of the ritual, the kami are thought to return to their origin.

Shinto is very pragmatic and prefers to focus on effective ritual and simple religious experiences rather than speculation and conjecture about mystery and the unseen.

During all the rituals in Shinto, priests recite prayers called norito. The proper chanting of the ancient Japanese text by Shinto priests, the proper chanting of these norito prayers, leads to the manifestation of spiritual word power that resides in ancient Japanese words. This spiritual word power is called kotodama. The intonation of these texts orally creates a divine power - a place of the sacred, of divinity. George Williams notes the importance of the oral tradition in Shinto, stating, "the norito must be learned carefully and even when new prayers are written, old forms that contain kotodama (sacred word power) must be used."^[4]

In Shinto, the word kannagara refers to the totality of the kami, writes George Williams. Kannagara is a term for universal or cosmic harmony. Rev. Yamamoto adds that kannagara is at the heart of Shinto—a nonexclusive principle of universalism. He sees it as the underlying basis of spirituality common in all religions. Kannagara has to do with spirit and with bringing the spirit of humans and human activities into line with the spirit of great nature.

From a Shinto perspective, the divine or sacred is found within nature, not above, outside, or beyond it. And the pathway from the sacred word power of kotodama to the understanding of a nonexclusive principle of universalism in kannagara is through ritual.

Shinto's notion of truth is pragmatic, liturgical, and ritualistic. It has no words or doctrines that are said to be received directly from God or contained in infallible scripture. In fact, Shinto has no canon of sacred scriptures; yet it has sacred books. It has no revealed code of ethics or moral commandments; yet Shinto does have a moral system encoded in its rituals. Shinto is an action-centered religion and not a confessional centered religion.

When I sat down and tried to articulate why I am drawn to Shinto, I discovered that it was more than a set of beliefs or practices. I came to Shinto through a journey that began with my father, before I was ever born. And I believe - and I'm pretty sure you've never heard anyone say this before - I believe Ralph Waldo Emerson brought me to Shinto. I'd like to tell you about that journey.

After flunking out of college, my Dad was drafted and sent to Korea, thankfully, after the worst of the conflict had ended. I recently browsed through his photo album from Korea for the first time in decades and it is clear from the pictures that, whether or not he enjoyed the Army, he definitely enjoyed Korea. There are only a few pictures of American military personnel. Most of the pictures are of Koreans he met through churches and orphanages. In the pictures that include him, he looks like he's having the time of his life. He was never financially able to travel much in the following decades and sadly did not live long enough to do so in retirement, but his brief time living within a different culture expanded and changed his views on life and the world and was an experience he treasured.

That experience might be why my Dad volunteered me, without my knowledge, to participate in a six-week Lions Club Youth Exchange in Japan in the summer of 1976, when I was eighteen years old. I wanted to travel abroad but my interests lay in Europe. I went along with the idea after it was presented to me because I knew there was no money for me to travel otherwise. That trip changed my life. There was plenty of touristy sightseeing that summer but I lived in private homes, spent my time with Japanese teenagers, learned a great deal about the Japanese people, and developed a deep affection and interest for Japanese culture that has steadily grown over the years. I first learned about Shinto during that trip, in a superficial manner, with visits to lots of shrines, and I saw Shinto as just another cultural phenomenon.

I still considered myself a Christian at that time and spent another dozen years trying to fit into various Christian churches before admitting I didn't belong. I then spent a decade trying to find a spiritual practice that fully engaged both my head and my heart, gradually coming to see Buddhism as the faith movement that made the most sense to me. Buddhism is a big tent and, over time, I developed a special affinity for Zen Buddhism, certainly influenced by my interest in Japan. And you can't learn about the development of Buddhism in Japan without learning about Shinto, because their coexistence there, encompassing competition, appropriation, and symbiotic growth, is unique.

Finally, in 2001, I found my tribe, the Unitarian Universalist Association. Within Unitarian Universalism were three elements that prepared me to embrace Shinto. The first was an environment where I could safely express my doubts and questions about Christianity. I did not anticipate that this space of freedom would also become a place of reconciliation, but once I was in a place where it was acceptable to not be a Christian I began to reclaim the best parts of my Christian past. This is when I began to realize that I have always been a Universalist and my lifelong inability to fit into several Christian communities was largely due to my reluctance to accept that God will reject what she created in her own image.

Secondly, I met Ralph Waldo Emerson through his writings, which I had somehow not encountered earlier in my life. I was heavily involved with the worship committee at the Tampa church for a couple of years and I found myself repeatedly drawing on Emerson's work for every aspect of worship. I was especially drawn to what I interpret as his awareness of God within all of creation, not just in churches and people.

Thirdly, I met some pagans. I had little knowledge of earth-centered religions prior to becoming a Unitarian Universalist and I found that a belief in the sacredness of nature made sense to me. I also found that a belief in the usefulness of ritual and an appreciation for worship as a distinct special space within life was something I shared with many pagans that some of my humanist brothers and sisters didn't quite "get".

Last year I returned to Japan and this trip was even better than the first. I did a variety of things but essentially tried to spend my time simply "being" part of another culture; a culture that has an appreciation for nature that I believe is missing in much of American society; a culture that goes to great lengths to bring nature into daily life. Of course, I visited Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines with a much greater understanding than on my first trip of what these faiths mean to the Japanese. I chose one of the most recent books on Shinto published in English as one of the books I read while traveling. At some point in my reading, I realized that, just as I had been a Unitarian Universalist long before I knew those words, I had somehow grown into a person who found spiritual strength and truth in Shinto.

I believe in a power or presence that is outside of the realm of my senses. I sometimes call this presence "God" but do not necessarily see it as single monolithic force. I think it is possible that the creation presence of an ocean wave is different from the life force within a pine tree. Indeed, it is quite possible that the very land that nourishes that pine tree may have its own creation presence. What I mean when I say "God" is not unlike the concept of Kami.

Emerson said the universe is present in every one of its particles, that everything in nature contains all the power of nature. Some of the moments in my life when I have been most aware of the interconnectedness of all of existence have been closely tied to nature: realizing some of the emotional and spiritual consequences of living apart from nature while hiking on a forest path in north Georgia and suddenly realizing I couldn't remember the last time I had been far removed from human technology and vowing I would have that experience more often; appreciating the power of nature when, as a result of that previous vow, finding myself running up a mountain trail near Kyoto because hostile monkeys were chasing me, and being wildly grateful that I could still run uphill at the age of fifty. I see God in trees and moss and the ocean as much as in people. Shinto understands and utilizes the sacredness of nature in the prayers, their practices, and the presence of thousands of small shrines throughout the beautiful forests of Japan.

Shinto values the practice of purification. This one's easy for me. I was baptized twice in my life by full immersion - OF COURSE I believe water washes away impurity. Shinto utilizes the power of ritual. I have a restless mind and physical actions and utterances unique to my religious practice help me focus; help me be fully present in the moment. And being fully present in worship helps me learn to be fully present in the rest of my life, making me more available to help others.

I am a Universalist. I believe in a greater presence and I believe I am inherently and inextricably bound to it; prior to my conception in the form of my ancestors and the biological forces that brought them into being and far beyond my physical death, when my molecules and my actions will continue to affect this universe for an unknown length of time. I don't believe I can be separated from the life force of the universe, from God. Shinto does not preach the idea of absolute sin but rather the inherent goodness of nature. Even if humans err, the error is in the act, not the person, and the person can be purified. My universalism and Shinto can both be seen as eventually reconciling each soul with the greater force of creation.

Shinto does not deny or denigrate my Christian past or my Buddhist present. Instead it supports the Universalist bent of my Christianity and complements and balances the tilt towards intellectualism I sometimes foster within my Buddhism. I could not truly find Shinto until I found Unitarian Universalism. Now I see Shinto as a logical intersection of my love for Japan and my Unitarian Universalist spiritual practice. And I am thankful for my dad and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

In March 2008, I had the blessed privilege of spending a couple of weeks at Tsubaki Grand Shrine during the second phase of my sabbatical. It was a spiritually transformative and emotionally uplifting experience, helping me develop deeper ties with an ancient tradition and people who I had come to know and love through my involvement in the IARF (International Association for Religious Freedom).

I first learned of Tsubaki Grand Shrine at the 1993 IARF World Congress in Bangalore, India. There the late Guji Yukitaka Yamamoto, the 96th chief priest of the shrine, led a powerful Shinto worship service. It made a deep spiritual impact on Lalitha and me. Then, in 1995, I saw a video on Tsubaki Shrine as part of a class on interfaith dialogue taught at Meadville-Lombard Theological School in Chicago, Illinois. I was captivated by what I saw - a beautiful, simple, elegant shrine surrounded by huge trees with the mountains as a backdrop; I was also intrigued to learn about misogi, the waterfall purification ritual and I secretly hoped that someday I would be able to visit.

In 2006, I had the opportunity to visit the shrine along with the Rev. Bill Sinkford, UUA President. We stayed for a couple of days during which we attended morning worship and did misogi early in the morning with Guji Yukiyasu Yamamoto, the son of Yukitaka Guji and the 97th chief priest. I felt nurtured by the spirit of the place and fully alive after doing misogi. There was something about the experience that made me wonder if I was connected to the shrine somehow, maybe in a previous birth; I felt accepted, welcomed, and at home. That is when I made another wish - to return to Tsubaki shrine and stay for at least a couple of weeks to learn more about shrine Shinto and to do misogi regularly. That wish came true last spring and I was doubly blessed to have my friend, Mark Morrison-Reed, join me.

During those two weeks last spring, my daily routine included slowly walking up the pathway to the Tsubaki Grand Shrine to attend the early morning prayers.

I found Tsubaki shrine to be a peaceful haven from all the tumult and strife in the outside world; a place where I could catch my breath after all the running around and feel grateful for being alive. There is a peaceful aura that enfolds the place to the spirit of the late Guji Yukitaka Yamamoto, a spirit embodied now in the person of Guji Yukiyasu Yamamoto, a spirit that nurtures those who come seeking inner peace.

During my stay, I attended worship every morning. The ritual of worship began at the entrance when I washed my hands and mouth with proper respect and attention at the temizu-ya. It was worship when I bowed with reverence at the torii gate and when I walked towards the shrine, with the gravel crunching under my feet, feeling the presence of the holy among the tall trees which themselves seemed like prayers to the heavens. The walk itself provided a sense of release, expectation, and purification. The ritual continued with my greeting priests and shrine maidens with "Ohayo gozai-masu," taking my shoes off at the entrance, and bowing before Yukitaka Guji's picture by the main office. The faint smile on the Guji’s face made me feel welcome each morning.

I would enter the haiden and sit on a stool and wait. The beating of the taiko drum would remind me that I was entering sacred time. After bowing and clapping, I would join in the chanting of the Ohorai No Kotoba or the Great Words of Purification followed by silent meditation and then, reciting the Commitment of Life Devotion, Articles of Faith, and Five sacred Shinto poems. I would pay attention to the beating of my heart and try to align it with the Guji's rhythmic beating of the taiko drum. The service ended with the congregation being purified by the haraigushi, the purification wand.

Mark and I decided to hike up to the shrine on Mt. Nyoda. We set off after worship one morning with walking sticks, water bottles, and bananas. We continued on the road for as long as it went and then switched to the trail. We didn't realize that we had chosen to take the more difficult, steeper route. We made slow and steady progress stopping from time to time and taking in the beauty of the woods and the sound of water running down the mountain. As we got up higher, we encountered quite a bit of snow on the trail. Progress became difficult. At one point, there was so much snow that we could not see any markers or signs. We felt completely lost. I found myself praying to Sarutahiko Okami asking for guidance and strength. A few minutes later, I noticed two people, a man and a woman, coming downhill towards us. They showed us how to get to the top and continued on their downward trek. I felt that Sarutahiko Okami and Ame No Uzeme No Mikoto had appeared in human form to guide us. We continued on our trek to the top and offered our prayers at the torii gate. On our way down, we took an easier route.

I was really looking forward to doing misogi again. We were fortunate to be able to perform misogi three times during our stay. The first time, we showed up at 5 in the evening, received purification at the Haiden, the outer shrine, wore our loincloths and hachimakis, and walked out into the cold, open area facing the Honden, the inner shrine. The Guji led us through spiritual and physical warm-up exercises and invited us into the water. The water was very cold. I was shivering and trying hard to stand still. The Guji went in first, followed by Mark and another priest. I was next. I stepped into the waterfall with my right shoulder first. As the water fell in torrents on my shoulders, I tried to focus my mind and chant, "Harae tamae, kiyome tamae, rokon sho jo!" For a few seconds, everything went blank. Then, I found myself relaxing and becoming one with the waterfall. I felt enfolded in its embrace and a deep sense of peace pervaded me, an amazing feeling. Afterwards, I felt completely alive and alert to my surroundings. Each time was unique and different. Every time I performed misogi, I felt purified in body and spirit, and refreshed.

I felt welcomed and accepted at Tsubaki shrine. Yukiyasu-Guji's generosity and friendship, the caring ways of all the staff, and the love and affection of everyone at the shrine, made me feel completely at home there. I was honored to be included in the many events and celebrations at Tsubaki - the annual memorial service at the Gyomando, to remember and venerate the spirits of ancestors enshrined at the shrine, a beautiful wedding ceremony at Ame No Uzume No Mikoto’s shrine, and other events - all of which allowed me to witness to the close bond that existed among members of the shrine.

I realized during my stay that Tsubaki Shrine represented the essential Shinto principles of openness towards all people and honoring the divine in everyone. These principles were reflected in how people went about their lives, in their relationships with one another, and in their welcoming of strangers like me and helping them feel at home.

In the West, religion can be seen sometimes as something people get to only on Sunday, or faith may be something people need only when they are in trouble. Yet in Japan, Shinto is one's life. It is living.

During my pilgrimage, I had the opportunity to visit other sacred locations in Japan, including Kyoto, Osaka, Ittoen, and Tokyo, which have numerous Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. These visits deepened my awareness and understanding of the importance and impact Shinto has had on Japanese culture and vice versa.

I learned from conversations with Buddhist and Shinto friends that, in Japan, one can be Shinto and anything else they want. One can be Shinto, as well as Buddhist or Christian or Unitarian Universalist or even, Hindu. In Shinto, there is an acceptance of other traditions that is consistent with Unitarian Universalist commitment to pluralism.

Shinto and Unitarian Universalism share something else in common. Both of them are action-oriented religions. Like Shinto, we believe in deeds, not creeds that define our religion. Also, both of them believe in the here and now or as we like to say, in "life before death."

So as UUs, what can we learn from the ritual practice that is in Shinto? I think there is a lot to be learned. I am not trying to say that we don't have any rituals and therefore need to borrow Shinto rituals or create more rituals. We already have ritual in our movement; we have it in our weekly worship services where we come together every week, rituals that begin the moment we pull in to our parking lot and park our cars, that continue into the lobby when we greet one another and walk into the sanctuary looking for familiar faces and sitting in our usual places and corners; rituals during worship - like announcements, welcoming our guests, lighting the chalice, sharing of joys and sorrows, meditation, singing hymns (and sometimes struggling through them), applauding even when we are encouraged not to, and holding hands; and rituals that extend into the social hall during coffee hour. I am sure that there are many of you who have ritual in your own personal lives, maybe walking, jogging, or hiking, or meditating, journaling, praying, or engaging in activities and conversations with family and friends that nurture your spirit. We also have rituals in our rites of passage: child dedications, weddings, and memorial services. We may even have rituals in our everyday lives that we do not recognize as such, like the way we greet the morning, or the way we tend our garden or plants, or even the way we care for those we love. What Shinto can teach us is to approach those rituals mindfully, with a sacred intent, and wholesomely, with our mind, body, and spirit. Thus, we learn to embody an engaged spirituality that nourishes our whole selves and makes us feel alive and present. Similar with consistent beliefs in accepting other faith tradition practices.

Shinto and Unitarian Universalism also affirm the sacred being present in nature and the moral responsibility of all human beings to honor the sacred by being good stewards of our planet. Shinto believes that the kami or the divine is present in all parts of nature—in trees, plants, forests, earth, rocks, mountains, volcanoes, streams, rivers, lakes, animals, birds, humans, in everything. And because the kami is present in everything, everything is worthy of reverence. This is the Shinto way of affirming and promoting the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part, our seventh principle. Shinto can teach us to live out that principle more actively by making a real commitment to live more simply and sustainably and working towards making our congregation and Tampa Bay a greener and energy efficient community.

Shinto, particularly Tsubaki Shinto, offers an attractive alternative to commercial exploitation of our planet. It teaches an ecologically oriented, earth-centered religion. It is a traditional yet progressive form of Shinto, with courage not for war but for the progressive evolution of the human spirit, with strength not for dominance and exploitation but for acquiring character, with determination not for personal gain but for social betterment, with direct experience not for self-praise but for the advancement of life and its possibilities.

Shinto is very simple in its reality, but very deep in its context, meaning, and sharing. There is passion. That is the joy, the hope, the ecstasy for living. It is fully living the realm of the possible. It is living the realm of the possible by truly being present and real with those whom you love and care for. That is the simple way of Japanese life. Shinto is the freedom to love in that context, that framework of their culture. The United States and Unitarian Universalism have the same freedom for us, yet our culture is even more open, allowing even more exploration for understanding and openness than the culture of Japan. But the essence of each is very much the same.

My time at the Tsubaki Grand Shrine instilled in me a deeper appreciation of kannagara, a sense of universal and cosmic harmony. And I know that this sense of kannagara, this universal and cosmic harmony, is not just something you can only experience while doing a pilgrimage to Japan. This sense of universal and cosmic harmony is available for each and every one of us - right here, right now. May it be so.