Shinto Meditations for Revering the Earth

Stuart D. B. Picken

• Publisher: Stone Bridge Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780893469962
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

These devotions inspired by ancient Shinto rituals are a series of calls-and-response that directly address the awesome power of the natural world to heal and restore the soul. Readers are invited to stand before rivers, stones, and trees, to listen to thunder, and to be touched by the wind and rain in order to cultivate a spirit of reverence for Nature and awaken the cosmic content within the human. Included are steps for conducting misogi (waterfall purification) and resources for learning more about Shinto practice in North America.

Stuart Picken, an ordained minister, has taught religion in Japan since 1972 and is international adviser to the High Priest of Tsubaki Grand Shrine. He is author of Essentials of Shinto.

AUTUMN

Trees

Trees and the Sacred

As a graduate student, I recollect the Professor of Divinity reading the following passage from the Hebrew philosopher Martin Buber (1878–1965) for discussion in a seminar:

I consider a tree.

I can look at it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or a splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.

I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself. I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life. . . .

It can, however, come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness. . . .

Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colors and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole. . . . Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of relation: relation is mutual. [I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1937), pp. 7–8]

I remember the sound of supercilious, muffled laughter that greeted the reading of the passage, and yet it seems now so sensible and sympathetic. Christian orthodoxy still wishes to revere the Creator but not Creation.

Trees in Shinto

In Shinto a tree may be a kami (shinboku) around whose wide trunk a thick twisted rope, a shimenawa, is tied to show its sacred status. There are too many famous shinboku throughout Japan to detail. Nearly every village or town has one in the precincts of its largest shrine. Some are famous because of historical incidents that happened to them and others simply because of their venerable age.

In Shinto rituals, the kami descend upon evergreens, principally the sakaki, unique to Japan and related to the camellia. It was in the forests and groves of Japan that the sense of sacred places found its origin. Many of these sites subsequently became shrines.

In these places we can contemplate not only our human dependence upon the tree for continued life but also the tree as a symbol of the creative and protective powers of nature. The litany here seeks to draw attention to this.

The Litany of the Tree

OBSERVATION: KANNAGARA

Leader Trees teach us about growth

They also stand for shelter

They are, like water, living organisms

Ponder the meaning of growth and development

Think of how we know nature through our senses, our eyes, our taste, our sense of smell and touch, our awareness and deep intuitions

Let us think of the self-disclosure of the divine in the providence and power of nature

Let us think of the trees as expressions of beauty, power, and energy united in endless renewal

All Our senses have been dulled and dimmed, and we see nature not as the environment of our life, but as a tool to be used, trees for building and burning

Our senses are blind to its mystery and meaning

Our senses need the purification that will enable us to see nature as our teacher and guide

INVOCATION: DAISHIZEN

Leader In the life of a tree, we may see a microcosm of the universe

All Great Trees, speak to us and teach us your wisdom

In opening ourselves to nature, in seeking its purification, and in hearing what it has to teach us, may we find enlightenment as we share in the fusion of ourselves with the universe that brings us back to the divine that is within the human

INSPIRATION: KAMI

Leader Speak to us of the flow of life as growth and not as completion, not as alpha and omega, but as the beginning that never ends and the end that never ceases—like the acorn that grows into the mighty oak

Speak to us of the meaning of change, purification, and the communion of elements within the process of becoming eternally new

All Teach us the meaning of purity, brightness, and the uprightness of the soul

Teach us how to return to our higher origins

Teach us the power of purification

PURIFICATION: HARAI

Leader Let us repeat the words of the Rokkon-shojo with careful minds

All Although the impure and polluted appears before my eyes, I will not let it blind me

Although it strikes my ears, I will not le...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Shinto and Nature
• SPRING
• SUMMER
• AUTUMN
• WINTER
• Misogi: Waterfall Purification
• Shinto in North America