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Loading... Shinto: The Way Home (Dimensions of Asian Spirituality) (edition 2004)by Thomas P. Kasulis
Work InformationShinto: The Way Home (Dimensions of Asian Spirituality) by Thomas P. Kasulis
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Avoid like the plague authors who try to rationalize religion with scientific analogies. ( ) Kasulis's Shinto: The Way Home avoids the two most common pitfalls of writing about Shinto: treating it as a "book religion" or taking everything offered by Japanese proponents of "national learning" at face value. Instead Kasulis first introduces the history of Shinto and his views on what Shinto means for "common people", and proceeds to analyze its relation to the above pitfalls: why does Shinto get often the book religion treatment and what led to the apperance of national learning proponents and the pre-war State Shinto. The downside is that particularly the first few chapters about the "meaning" of Shinto are in a somewhat popular style and attempt to summarize large swathes of Japanese thought and history in a very small space. This leads to "no true Scotsman" arguments which refer to the idea of an essential, lasting Japaneseness ("nihonjinron"). But to be fair, wading into the row on Japanese identity would require an entire book, so using this shortcut is understandable, and some questions of related to Japaneseness are discussed in later chapters. Despite a few problems, this is still the best introduction to Shinto I've read in English. However, I'd recommend some prior reading on Japanese history before taking on this book. no reviews | add a review
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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. It is so interlaced with Japanese cultural values and practices that scholarly studies usually focus on only one of its dimensions: 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.As a philosopher of religion, he first analyzes the experiential aspect of Shinto spirituality underlying its various ideas and practices. 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. In Shinto's idiosyncratic history, Kasulis finds the explicit interplay between two forms of spirituality: 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. 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. Shinto: The Way Home promises to do the same for future Shinto studies. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)299.5Religions Other Religions By Region/Civilization Of Asian OriginLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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