Buddhism and Japanese Culture
I. Some basic concepts for studying religions
A. Some preliminary questions: What do we tend to study when we study religions?
1. What other ways could we look at religion? What aspects of religion are worth studying? What do you think of when you think of a religion?? What sorts of things are necessary for it?
B Three main aspects of religious experience that scholars study:
1. Doctrine
a Doctrine or philosophy
b. narrative or myths (all faiths have important stories)
2. Ritual
a. practices: worship, prayers, ceremonies (all involve repetition)
3. Community
a. Ethical or legal: code of moral conduct
b. Social or institutional: how the religion is organized and how it relates to the rest of societyty)
C. Two other categories that can be placed in the three above:
1. Material artifacts
a. religious icons, statues, images, temples and churches, cave paintings
2. Emotional experience
a. how we experience religion: mystical, meditative, trance, rapture
D. Of these various aspects of religious experience which tend to get emphasized by scholars? How might this effect our understanding of the religious experience of people who lived in earlier times and cultures?
II Doctrinal-Ritual-Communal Triangle
A. All religions have a communal aspect, but some religious cultures emphasize doctrine more, and others emphasize ritual more.
B. Orthodoxy versus Orthopraxy
ortho: correct
doxy: doctrine
praxy: practiee
1. Orthodoxy: When community membership is primarily based on faith in and active commitment to doctrine, we call it orthodoxic.
a. membership in community is based on faith in specific doctrinal beliefs
b. ritual participation may also be important but is not suffcient for membership in the community
2. Orthopraxy: When the most important criteria for being a member in the community is that you practice correct rituals, then we call it "orthopraxic."
b. membership in community is based on participation with the community in the proper rituals.
c. belief may strengthen your commitment, but it is not necessary for membership in the community
C. Is Christianity Orthodoxic or Orthopraxic?
1. example of Christian eucharist and the doctrine of transubstantiation (that the bread and wine celebrated in the eucharistic mass actually is transformed into the body and blood of Jesus Christ during the ritual)
a. if you believe in transubstantiation: you are probably a Catholic
b. if you do not believe in transubstantiation: you are probably a Protestant
c. another example: trinitarian versus unitarian
2. belief in a specific doctrine dicates your religious community membership
D. Are Asian Religions Orthodoxic or Orthopraxic?
1. Most Asian religions emphasize communal participation in ritual as a criterion for membership rather than correct belief, and so we say Asian religions are orthopraxic.
2. What this means: Asian religions tend to be much more tolerant of a variety of individual beliefs, or even no belief at all, as long as everyone shares in the rituals.
a. This is also true, for the most part, of Judaism
3. Common example:
a. Japanese who have their wedding at a Shinto shrine, but who also practice Buddhism, praying to Amida Buddha to help them go to the Western Pure Land after death. Or do not believe in Buddhism or Shinto, but continue to practice funeral rituals for their parents, grandparents and other ancestors.
E. Another way to think about this split: rituals as languages
1. Orthopraxic religions can be seen as a set of rituals to get in contact with unseen powers. You can think of these rituals as languages which people use to communicate with gods.
2. analogy: you choose the best language to use based on context and what linguistic tools are available to you.
a. Eg of a person who speaks both Japanese and English. Which language is most effective in Japan? In the United States? What about in a sushi restaurant in the United States?
b. which language you choose isn't a matter of belief, it is a matter of which is most pragmatically effective.
II. Studying Japanese Religions: Example of Wikipedia on Religion in Japan
III. Premodern Japanese Religion: Shamanism
A. What is shamanism? Who or what is a shaman?
1. Originated in Siberia 10,000 B.C.E.
a. spread to Americas
b. spread to South Asia
c. spread to China, Korea, Japan
1) oracle shells
2. Importance of shamanism in the study of religion: why is it underestimated?
a.
b.
3. Belief in two worlds:
a. material world
b. spiritual world
B. What can Shamans do?
1.
2. How do they do this?
a.
b.
C. Two Main Functions of Shamanism
1. Make prophecies/fortune telling
2. Pacification/exorcism of:
a. deities (kami/ujigami)
b. spirits (goryô/onryô or muenbotoke)
IV. Two main categories of Shamans
A. passive vehicles or mediums (MIKO)
1. How do they gain their power?
2. When did they develop?
3. What gender mainly?
4. What kind of trance?
5. What can they do?
B. Active ascetics
1. How do they gain their power?
2. When did they develop?
3. What gender are they mainly?
4. What is their trance like?
5. What can they do?
V. How did male ascetics take over the role of exorcism from female miko? (see also Robert Ellwood, Japanese Religion, pp. 28-30)
A. Early shamanic women very powerful
1. image of female shaman (Uneme)
2. 4th century e.g. of Himiko from Chinese historical chronicles (Catalpa Bow, p. 28)
B. Development of Male Exorcism Specialists (8th-10th c.)
1. Ubasoku or hijiri (8th-9th c.): figures who combined Buddhist and Shamanic practice
a. often outside established religious and political institutions (associated with common people)
b. eg. En no Gyôja, seen as the founder of Shugendô (mountain asceticism)
2. Yamabushi mountain ascetics (9th c. onwards)
a. practice Shugendô (combination of esoteric Buddhism and Shamanism):
b. practice centered on mountains
c. ascetic discipline (described pp. 85-93 Catalpa Bow)
d. images of modern-day yamabushi practice
C. Split of male and female roles after development of Buddhist shamanic specialists
1. female role:
"She can enter a state of trance in which the spiritual apparition may possess her, penetrate inside her body and use her voice to name itself and to make its utterance. She is therefore primarily a transmitter, a vessel through whom the spiritual beings can make their communications to us in a comprehensible way." (Catalpa Bow, p. 22)
2. male role:
3. exceptions:
VI. Deities
A. What are kami (native deities) and what do they look like?
1. Began as any numinous manifestation of the sacred (hierophanies), mainly in natural phenomena
a. Therefore can take on a wide variety of forms and characteristics (Carmen Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, p. 35)
shinto priests with sakaki branches
B. When do they take on human-like form? (p. 38)
1. QUOTE: "The belief that the kami have any permanent or true form which they can manifest to human senses is late, and derivative from Buddhist iconography." (Catalpa Bow, p. 38)
C. What all forms of kami share:
1.
2. Why do they appear in this world?
a.
b.
D. What do kami require from the living?
1.
2.
VII. Tama or tamashii ("soul")
A. "An entity which resides in some host, to which it imparts life and vitality..." (Catalpa Bow, p. 43)
[Edo period image of hitodama]
1. Ikiryô (living spirit)
a. unconscious process:
Poem by Izumi Shikibu mourning her dead love, Prince Atsumichi:
mono omoeba
sawa no hotaru mo
wa ga mi yori
akugareizure
tama ka to zo miru
Thinking of him:
could the firefly of the marsh
be my soul
departing from my very flesh
wandering off in anguish?
(adapted from Brower and Miner, Japanese Court Poetry)
b. conscious process:
2. Shiryô (dead spirit)
B. What happens to tama after they leave the body for good?
C. Next class: will think about how this process of deification and pacification be interfered with and create angry ghosts
|
