I happened to come across a short piece today that was a stark reminder of just how intertwined Shinto once was with Zen and other forms of Buddhism. It’s been nearly 150 years since the Meiji-era split between the religions, … Read the rest
Category: Syncretism (Page 6 of 17)
On Sunday I took an out of town visitor to a combination of Tofuku-ji Zen temple and the popular Fushimi Inari shrine. They are both in the south-east of Kyoto, a mere twenty minutes walk apart, and the Zen-Shinto combination … Read the rest
It’s often said that while Shinto is concerned with affairs of this world, Buddhism looks to salvation in the next. Hence the emphasis in Shinto on rites of passage, such as birth, 7-5-3, weddings, yakudoshi ages of transition, etc. Buddhism … Read the rest
Look at the picture above. Is it a Zen garden with raked sand and rocks arranged in an enigmatic pattern to represent islands in an ocean of nothingness? Or is it a Shinto circle of ‘iwakura’ (sacred rocks), such as … Read the rest
Brian Victoria, author of Zen at War, recently gave a talk in Kyoto about Zen terrorism in the 1930s. Brian is a Soto Zen priest, and his book has been hugely influential – as well as controversial. The … Read the rest
Manpuku-ji is possibly the most striking Zen temple in Japan, because it looks so Chinese. The architecture is different, the clothing different, the statues radically different from the Japanese norm. Established in 1661 by a Chinese immigrant named Ingen, it’s … Read the rest
This post follows up the previous post on mirrors in Zen and Shinto. It consists of an article adapted from the latest issue of Sacred Hoop (no. 91), a magazine about shamanism. The article is useful in placing the context … Read the rest