Prof. George M. Williams

California State University

In my previous article I discussed six different kinds of Shinto. Although they often overlap, distinguishing among them is essential. In this brief essay I want to talk about Shrine Shinto as being centered in the actional type of religion and immanental in its experience of the sacred.

Introductory Remarks

Let me act as if you can intuit the four types of religious experience (mystical, devotional, cognitional and actional) from this brief description. I have treated these types extensively in my book, Eastern Paths, and do not have the space here to describe each adequately. This typology of religion seeks to find the varying ways that religious practice is capable of transforming individuals and groups.

Religion is usually treated as if devotional religion is the norm and monotheism is its highest achievement. But since these are centered in the emotional function, other areas are either subordinated to emotion or are actively opposed. This can lead to a tyranny of devotional religion over other equally valid forms of spiritually. Only at the end of the twentieth century does there seem to be a growing awareness that this tyranny has led to significant losses. Mystical, cognitional and actional religion have important features which are both missing from devotional religion and needed for complete human development. The following table will sketch the outline of this map for the variety of religious experience.

Actional religion transforms by doing or acting (deed, action) as the central religious response. All other religious practice is subordinated to action; one is really "alive religiously or spiritually" in the here-and-now of acting, doing, practicing, performing. If one or more of the five senses are not involved, then one is not centered in actional religious practice. Traditionally, actional religion has involved dancing, physical purifications (in waterfalls, rivers, ocean), sweats (in a sweat lodge), singing and chanting (as enactment or possession), storytelling (again as enactment, performance or possession), yoga (as physical exercises), and rituals (as enactment, performance or possession).

Beliefs and explanations are secondary to the physical practices. This often annoys Western researchers who are constantly asking "why is this done?" or "what does this mean?" It is thought that inadequate belief systems or rational explanations indicate (1) lack of religious (i.e., devotional) content, (2) loss of religious content, (3) ignorance of the particular informer, and so on. Western anthropology has felt justified in adding the needed rational explanations to make up for the "native" ignorance. Academic study of religion has not been exemplary in conduct of Shinto studies. It has left non-devotional religions for sociology and anthropology, as if actional religion is defective or uninteresting.

Shinto's second characteristic is its immanental nature. It is "of this world" or immanent in nature. Immanental religious experience refers to the opposite of transcendental religious experience. Immanental religion is the horizontal plane of the sacred being experienced in nature, human life, community. Transcendental religion is the vertical plane of the sacred being experienced as radically other than the horizontal. While there are religious systems which attempt to combine both immanental and transcendental religious experience, Shrine Shinto is comfortably immanental.

The basic Japanese term capturing this experience of the immanentally sacred is kami. Kami can refer to the sacredness of anything--of supernatural beings, of special mountains or islands, of special waterfalls, of special human both living and dead. Sacredness is found within nature, community and human possibility.

Actional religion and ritual

At the heart of actional religion is ritual. Ritual is not just an appendage or an artifact from the past. In actional religion it is central. Ritual can be defined as an action or series of actions which is intentionally directed toward the sacred. ("Action" in this context includes the use of the voice for prayer, chanting and song.) All societies and all ages have engaged in ritual behavior for deep, life-preserving and life-enriching reasons. Because of its focus on this moment, ritually prescribed ways of moving and behaving can provide immediate satisfaction to the participant. But rituals also have long lasting effects as well, encoding ethics without commandments as well as etiquette and even value systems.

You are a practitioner of Shinto. You join a group at the local shrine at the beginning of a festival commemorating the changing season or a day in the ritual cycle of the shrine. Upon entering the shrine, you wash your hands and mouth at a natural spring with proper gestures and respect. An additional purification is performed by the priest as you enter the shrine. He waves a wand of paper streamers over all the worshippers' heads. You may then make an offering of money to the kami. This can be done with two claps, a bow and even a request.

There may be a ritual prayer read by the priest before the kami and even an offering of some kind of evergreen branches. Now you may partake of a symbolic feast, which is actually a few sips of rice wine and sometimes a sweet. This represents eating with the kami.

As a group you may request a performance of the shrine's sacred dance. And you are moved by this reenactment of ancient meanings and symbols. As you watch, you have a sense of becoming more kami-like through the ritual.

Analyzing the simplest of Shinto rituals is not always successful. Many Western observers used to say that "Shinto was just too meager a religion to be fulfilling." If devotional religious experiences are expected, then perhaps that criticism follows. But it totally misses the point--and the actional religious experience for that it is and how it transforms religiously and spiritually.

First, let's list a few of the objections to rituals in general and actional religion specifically: (1) The ceremony or ritual is too long. A good ritual might be many hours and might repeat many elements. (2) It lacks intellectual sophistication. (3) It is too relaxed. People are not paying attention all the time. Sometimes the priests seem to relax and not take that part seriously. (3) The prayers are memorized or read and obviously performed "before the kami" rather than prayed in a conservation directly one-to-one with God as is supposed to be the case in devotional religion. (4) Offering the deities food and drink is primitive and even childish. (5) Water, and therefore rituals, do not remove moral impurities. And so on.

Now I realize that most persons in the twentieth century want "instant spirituality" and do not look with favor on hours and hours of dancing, drumming, chanting, sweat lodge, or waterfall purification (misogi ). But objecting to the time requirements of actional religion is of the same order as objecting to its intellectual sophistication. Both are irrelevant because actional is working in the here-and-now (present time experience of doing, acting); so the longer, the better. And acting and doing are a way around the thinking, doubting mind--so the experience is to be judged on its own merits. One can bond more easily with a group by doing something together than be studying a doctrine. There are other appropriate areas to judge a ritual--and also actional religion. One can say that the experience was weak, ugly, without psychological and spiritual power, and so on.

Second, let's not some of the ethics that are encoded in ritual. (1) In the invocation of and to kami it is learned that spiritual entities are "experience-able" everywhere. (2) Other Shinto presuppositions which are "learned" through ritual include pleasure is good, community is primary, life is interconnected. (3) Performative acts of Shinto ritual teach the community how to act. Shinto ethics teaches Sei, Mei, Shô, Jiki . Be Purified. Don't Complain. Clean Ourselves. Don't tell a lie. Be Cheerful.

One difficulty in researching actional ritual practices is that it is difficult to separate out the "pure" actional from other religious experiences. Actional experience often and easily "springboards" into mystical experiences of connectedness and unity. And so it is in our "ordinary human experience." Emotional experience can springboard into cognitions or rational conclusions about life. We integrate our human experiences into more adequate understandings of ourselves and life generally. So also in the area of spiritual development. Acting leads to transformation, a transcending of ordinariness to new possibilities. But self-transcendence in one area can lead to knowledge and mastery in another. Just as we remain inadequate to our possibilities as humans if we are limited to one area of mastery (emotional or rational or intuitive or physical), we remain inadequate to our spiritual possibilities if one only know one spiritual path.