Shinto Meditations for Revering the Earth. Stuart D. B. Picken

last year,” she said, “so I asked for a month’s leave and flew back to Scotland. I rented a car, drove north to the island of Skye, and checked into a small hotel that was on the edge of nowhere. It was spring and the life of nature was reviving. I felt a little ray of hope was lighting on me. I went for a climb up the hills, and it being early in the season, there were no other climbers in sight. After pushing my way through a clump of bushes, within a small wooded patch a few hundred feet up, I came on a small pond that was fed by a waterfall.”

      I watched her eyes begin to sparkle as she came to this point in the narrative. “I felt as though it was inviting me. I am a Scottish woman with all the inhibitions of our Calvinist tradition, but I resisted myself. I peeled off my clothes and plunged in. I swam under the waterfall, naked, and stood there, letting it wash me. I felt that its cold, fresh, and pure waters were cleansing me, restoring me to a purer self, and healing the wounds that the sufferings of life had inflicted. I felt uplifted and left the pond feeling completely renewed. It was as though I had been born again.”

      She had discovered Shinto without knowing its name and without the help of a teacher.

      Then she asked me, almost with uncertainty, “Is that strange?” “No,” was my reply. “You have, in that simple experience, discovered what religion was like when nature itself was the guide. You found it by yourself. I found it in Japan. There, it is called Shinto.”

      I was really moved. It was eloquent confirmation of what I have believed and seen. If Mari could find this experience, so can you or anyone else who wants to find rebirth and restoration in a natural way.

      Climbing mountains has been practiced in Japan for countless centuries as a way to find purity. Let’s use that metaphor of steps toward the divine—not intellectual or doctrinal leaps of understanding, but progress based on pure, unmediated, and authentic experience, with nature as our teacher and our guide.

      I would like to walk with you through the steps of this ascent.

      Stuart D. B. Picken

      Nagoya, Japan

      Shinto and Nature

      The torii gateway is a distinctive symbol of Shinto. Although stylized over the centuries, it was probably originally a simple rope hung between two trees or posts to mark off an area considered sacred. In large shrines, there is often a succession of torii leading up the approach road to the principal building where rituals are conducted.