Yamabushi - The Third Force
This writing covers all I know about what I think is most interesting in this, my life, given that there is a certain mystery, a certain sense and sensibility, that makes all the difference.
I first met up with the Yamabushi at a minor temple of the Shingon Buddhist Sect in a small village far inland, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. The priest of that temple had invited me to see the Yamabushi fire walking, knowing well my interest in the mystical. During the ceremony, suddenly, I found myself urged to follow the fire walkers and did so — without singeing my feet! Amazed, but totally at a loss as to how that could be, I took up the study of that extraordinary clan of truth seekers of the mountains.
Mountains are known to have something powerful and enchanting about them, particularly to the Japanese. It is as if they have a strange attraction and something of that clings to the reputation of the Yamabushi. The Yamabushi is he or she who is hidden in the mountain — the allegorical mountain or otherwise. In other words a recluse, one who undergoes spiritual training in a natural religious way called Shugendo, which is neither a school nor a sect. More generally a Yamabushi is given the name gyoja, simply, 'one who is training'. Shugendo is a mystery religion.
Shugendo became highly organised during and after the Heian period (794-1185). Building on the ancient themes of sacred mountains and ceremonies performed in the mountains, Shugendo developed as a 'mountain religion' that emphasised pilgrimage to the mountains and ascetic retreats, combining the Shinto notion of local gods (kami) with the Buddhist notion of local bodhisattvas — saving beings. In addition, the religion borrowed the theories and charms of China's religious Taoism and shamanistic practices from the Korean continent.
The generally accepted founder of Shugendo, En-no-Gyoja, gained spiritual power by combining the aspects of several traditions. He practised Buddhist asceticism on sacred mountains while assuming features of the Chinese mountain wizard (hsien in Chinese, sennin in Japan). Many hermit practitioners gained their religious powers by training in the mountains before descending to minister to the people.
In later periods, while mystical Shingon Buddhism languished as a separate sect, the Shugendo practitioners were instrumental in spreading the charms and incantations of esoteric Buddhism among the people in a heady mix of Taoist talismans with Shinto elements. The Yamabushi were also important in spreading Buddhism in northern Japan. The Yamabushi recluse who undergoes spiritual disciplines in the mountains is not a subject of great interest to the average Japanese and has long been considered by the public simply as a commoner, a farmer, or maybe a hunter-guide in the mountains without any profound teaching. Some Yamabushi —- mostly part-timers — looked into the future for what it held for believers, or made passes of the hands over the body in healings. The Yamabushi never achieved the reputation of the Zen Sect Buddhists, for example, with Zen's relation to the classical arts and aesthetics; but in medieval times the Yamabushi were a force to be reckoned with both in the sacred and secular worlds.
Without speaking of any revival of Shugendo itself, it is notable that scholars are giving greater recognition to the Yamabushi and to Shugendo today. I consider myself a Yamabushi in as far as I share their endeavour as a truth seeker and try to identify with the Yamabushi spirit; though I have my own methodology, my own landscape and intention as to what I am doing with my life in the application of what I have learned on my particular path — that which is detailed in this writing.
In Japan, there has always been a form of Animism. Later, Continental Asian shamanism arrived and, Taoist practices. Later again, Buddhism added to the blend. Those with a mystical proclivity took those golden threads from those diverse influences to use as materials to weave their own patterns and unbeknown to those very same scattered seekers, in time, a metaphysical tapestry lay across the land.
On the level of the individual, working in isolation, it appeared as a confusion of aims, means and terms but out of those shambling heroics and with historical distance, that tapestry resolved into the map of a magical landscape that pointed at a possible way to an illuminated life.
The troublesome centuries rolled by and family and clan rallied to their own in causes that were far from the essential interests of the mountain recluse. This fact itself meant that the Yamabushi who were priests had to engage themselves in giving another orientation to their immediate society and as this brought them into conflict with the powers, they had to do this in disguise, so to speak. They learnt the secret of being here and not-being-here, placing the onus on the spectator to decide just what it is that IS here!
At the start of Japan's Meiji Era (1868), it must have been inconvenient for the modernising authorities to have a loose grouping of mountain priests around, apparently sitting between religious definitions, so the Yamabushi were slotted and the only adequate pigeon-hole the government of Japan could find — which kind of fit — was a Buddhist one.
Thus the Yamabushi were considered Buddhists — but they were not. Then later, the government split off the Buddhist from the Shinto because the former's non-violent intentions were too clear and the latter's simplicity lent it to be easily engineered into a State religion that would not oppose the ruling class's militarism. In 1948, under a new constitution imposed on a defeated-in-war Japan, Shugendo gained its religious independence, and was recognised as a distinct religion.
For themselves, the true Yamabushi simply rejected the warring ways of tribalism — bequeathed as they were with an ancient teaching long in development — and looked to their own profound internal search for truth and wholehearted service to life. 'The perennial philosophy' that the Yamabushi contacted, eloquently written about by Aldous Huxley in the book of the same name, was born of a wisdom that dwells in the depths of the human being, a wisdom that existed before Japan was called Japan.
The wisdom spoken of holds its currency still, yet it is not the result of modern education. It is achieved by sincerity, by intentions cleansed of ignorance. Some people are born with a propensity to see clearly their real situation and that was all it took. Spontaneously, they acted on what they saw. This 'seeing' was no small matter. En-no-Gyoja, the archetype Yamabushi, was one such destined to develop this 'look'.
Just so, some earlier Yamabushi survived the times of barbarism and in their wisdom, kindness and strength — as revealed in the extracts used in the reports included here, taken from the annals of Japan's literature, they helped the inhabitants — in their own strange way — to bring their culture to a better state.
How they acted to better society is an interesting question. This is where a particular viewpoint of how an esoteric group works is looked at and this angle has a bearing on the ways of the Yamabushi in this writing, otherwise they could be seen as just another group without any coherence, hardly worthy of study.
The Way of the Yamabushi as recluse is not limited to Japan alone, as the esoteric tradition is without geographic limit, based as it is on the mystical experience which transcends all cultures and in that act, integrates and unites all cultures — yet leaves each of them with their peculiarities intact. This is why this writing includes remarks, not only on Buddhism, but on mystical Christianity, among others.
By taking the Yamabushi to show a means and meaning and a way of achieving a fulfilling life I do not want to infer that the religion of Shugendo has any extraordinary merit. On the contrary, as a religion it has little possibility for rebirth or development as it is encrusted with the historical weight of the past and its sudden thrust into the tourist trade with advertised interest in its fire walking exploits will surely overwhelm what remains of the old ways. Today is not the moment of the old religions, except in their most eccentric and reactionary forms.
The modern Yamabushi — using updated tools — is happy to withdraw to the eternally present refuge of the physical and metaphysical mountain hideaways in the midst of daily life, as always, to continue the quest — this topic is spoken of in more detail in the Afterward.
It needs to be noted that there is a marked difference in the Oriental and particularly the Japanese approach to mountains and that of the average Westerner — it is not getting to the top that matters so much, rather it is the way of getting there; it is the process itself that is important. It may not even matter whether the top is reached or not! In fact the top may not be the obvious 'top'.
In Japan this has to do with a certain way of relating to nature. In engaging in such ascent the Japanese yearn to feel the mountain in themselves — whatever that may mean to others — and there is something important to be learned from this as it is a mystical yearning.
With the famous Rasputin as reference — a Shaman from the Siberian wastes who altered the course of Russian history — I give the Yamabushi a more universal credibility than most, so far, have been willing to give.
What is it about the mountain that can be drawn out and imbued by the man or woman of the mountain? Does the drawing power come from the mountain itself, or from the hidden contents and potential of the gyoja?
This is the mystery of the Yamabushi developed in, Yamabushi — the Third Force.
~ Tony Henderson, from the book Yamabushi - The Third Force.
