12/8/2023 0 Comments Best audio book on shintoismAs a Christian, I read this book and was thinking of all kinds of ways this analytical lens applies to Christianity, from the Old Testament through to the present. This is a really intriguing way of examining any religion, actually. Essentialist, on the other hand, is where behavior follows an accepted set of guidelines-that is, there just is a correct way to “be Shinto,” and if you deliberately follow that way with your actions, then you are Shinto. It is therefore possible to “be Shinto” without even necessarily being able to explain why you do what you do, or how it aligns with standard praxis. Existential means that Shinto is not a codified set of rules and guidelines that must be followed rather, it is simply what people do. Kasulis’s main lens for understanding Shinto is the tension between what he calls existential and essentialist approaches. The concluding chapter looks at Shinto more broadly, as connected to other major religious traditions in the world and the study of religions generally. Thomas Kasulis explains Shinto in a basic way that is helpful for outsiders like me, and then leads the reader through a history of three main eras of Shinto’s changes and development over time. I learned a lot! I’ll admit that prior to reading this book, I probably would have assumed that Shinto is basically the same as Zen Buddhism. I read this in preparation for teaching an upcoming course in arts and religion. The Way Home promises to do the same for future Shinto studies. Two decades ago, Kasulis’ Zen Action/Zen Person brought an innovative understanding to the ideas and practices of Zen Buddhism, an understanding influential in the ensuing decades of philosophical Zen studies. In Shinto’s idiosyncratic history, Kasulis finds the explicit interplay between two forms of the "existential" and the "essentialist." Although the dynamic between the two is particularly striking and accessible in the study of Shinto, he concludes that a similar dynamic may be found in the history of other religions as well. Second, as a historian of Japanese thought, he sketches several major developments in Shinto doctrines and institutions from prehistory to the present, showing how its interactions with Buddhism, Confucianism, and nationalism influenced its expression in different times and contexts. It is so interlaced with Japanese cultural values and practices that scholarly studies usually focus on only one of its Shinto as a "nature religion," an "imperial state religion," a "primal religion," or a "folk amalgam of practices and beliefs." Thomas Kasulis’ fresh approach to Shinto explains with clarity and economy how these different aspects interrelate.Īs a philosopher of religion, he first analyzes the experiential aspect of Shinto spirituality underlying its various ideas and practices. Nine out of ten Japanese claim some affiliation with Shinto, but in the West the religion remains the least studied of the major Asian spiritual traditions.
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