Showing posts with label Taoism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taoism. Show all posts

2021/09/23

William Law - Wikipedia

William Law - Wikipedia

William Law
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This article is about the British theological writer. For other people, see William Law (disambiguation).

William Law
Born 1686
Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire
Died 9 April 1761
Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire
Venerated in Anglican Communion
Feast 10 April


William Law (1686 – 9 April 1761) was a Church of England priest who lost his position at Emmanuel College, Cambridge when his conscience would not allow him to take the required oath of allegiance to the first Hanoverian monarch, King George I. Previously William Law had given his allegiance to the House of Stuart and is sometimes considered a second-generation non-juror. Thereafter, Law first continued as a simple priest (curate) and when that too became impossible without the required oath, Law taught privately, as well as wrote extensively. His personal integrity, as well as his mystic and theological writing greatly influenced the evangelical movement of his day as well as Enlightenment thinkers such as the writer Dr Samuel Johnson and the historian Edward Gibbon. In 1784 William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the politician, philanthropist and leader of the movement to stop the slave trade, was deeply touched by reading William Law's book A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729).[1] Law's spiritual writings remain in print today.


Contents
1Early life
2Bangorian controversy and after
3Writings on practical divinity
4Mysticism
4.1Law's Admiration for Isaac Newton and Jakob Böhme
5Veneration
6List of works
7Notes
8References
9External links


Early life[edit]

Law was born at Kings Cliffe, Northamptonshire, in 1686. In 1705 he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge as a sizar, where he studied the classics, Hebrew, philosophy and mathematics. In 1711 he was elected fellow of his college and was ordained. He resided at Cambridge, teaching and taking occasional duty until the accession of George I, when his conscience forbade him to take the oaths of allegiance to the new government and of abjuration of the Stuarts. His Jacobitism had already been betrayed in a tripos speech. As a non-juror, he was deprived of his fellowship.[2]

For the next few years Law is said to have been a curate in London. By 1727 he lived with Edward Gibbon (1666–1736) at Putney as tutor to his son Edward, father of the historian, who says that Law became the much-honoured friend and spiritual director of the family. In the same year he accompanied his pupil to Cambridge and lived with him as governor, in term time, for the next four years. His pupil then went abroad but Law was left at Putney, where he remained in Gibbon's house for more than 10 years, acting as a religious guide not only to the family but to a number of earnest-minded people who came to consult him. The most eminent of these were the two brothers, John and Charles Wesley, John Byrom the poet, George Cheyne the Newtonian physician, and Archibald Hutcheson, MP for Hastings.[2]

The household dispersed in 1737. Law by 1740 retired to Kings Cliffe, where he had inherited from his father a house and a small property. There he was joined by Elizabeth Hutcheson, the rich widow of his old friend (who recommended on his death-bed that she place herself under Law's spiritual guidance) and Hester Gibbon, sister to his late pupil. For the next 21 years, the trio devoted themselves to worship, study and charity, until Law died on 9 April 1761.[2]
Bangorian controversy and after[edit]
Further information: Bangorian controversy

The first of Law's controversial works was Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor (1717), a contribution to the Bangorian controversy on the high church side. It was followed by Remarks on Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1723), in which he vindicated morality; it was praised by John Sterling, and republished by F. D. Maurice. Law's Case of Reason (1732), in answer to Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation is to some extent an anticipation of Joseph Butler's argument in the Analogy of Religion. His Letters to a Lady inclined to enter the Church of Rome are specimens of the attitude of a High Church Anglican towards Roman Catholicism.[2]

Writings on practical divinity[edit]

A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life (1729), together with its predecessor, A Practical Treatise Upon Christian Perfection (1726), deeply influenced the chief actors in the great Evangelical revival.[3] John and Charles Wesley, George Whitefield, Henry Venn, Thomas Scott, and Thomas Adam all express their deep obligation to the author. The Serious Call also affected others deeply. Samuel Johnson,[4] Gibbon, Lord Lyttelton and Bishop Home all spoke enthusiastically of its merits; and it is still the work by which its author is popularly known. It has high merits of style, being lucid and pointed to a degree.[2]

In a tract entitled The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage Entertainment (1726) Law was agitated by the corruptions of the stage to preach against all plays, and incurred some criticism the same year from John Dennis in The Stage Defended.[2]

His writing is anthologised by various denominations, including in the Classics of Western Spirituality series by the Catholic Paulist Press.

The devotional writer Andrew Murray was so impressed by Law's writings that he republished a number of his works, stating "I do not know where to find anywhere else the same clear and powerful statement of the truth which the Church needs at the present day."[5]
Mysticism[edit]

Böhme's cosmogony: The Philosophical Sphere or the Wonder Eye of Eternity (1620).

In his later years, Law became an admirer of the German Christian mystic Jakob Böhme. The journal of Law's friend John Byrom mentions that, probably around 1735 or 1736, the physician and Behmenist George Cheyne had drawn Law's attention to the book Fides et Ratio, written in 1708 by the French Protestant theologian Pierre Poiret. It was in this book that Law came across the name of the mystic Jakob Böhme.[6][7] From then on Law's writings such as A Demonstration of the Errors of a late Book (1737) and The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739), began to contain a mystical note.[8] In 1740 appeared An Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr. Trapp and in 1742 An Appeal to All that Doubt. The Appeal was greatly admired by Law's friend George Cheyne, who wrote on 9 March 1742 to his good friend, the printer and novelist Samuel Richardson: "Have you seen Law's Appeal ... it is admirable and unanswerable". John Byrom wrote a poem based on An Earnest and Serious Answer, which was found among the manuscripts of Samuel Richardson after his death in 1761.[9]

Law's mystical tendencies caused the first breach in 1738 between Law and the practical-minded John Wesley after an exchange of four letters in which each explained his own position.[10] After eighteen years of silence Wesley attacked Law and his Behmenist philosophy once again in an open letter in 1756 in which Wesley wrote:

Lime Grove Putney (1846), home of the Gibbon family where William Law walked with John Byrom and other friends.


I have scarce met with a greater friend to darkness except 'the illuminated Jacob Behmen'. But, Sir, have you not done him an irreparable injury? I do not mean by misrepresenting his sentiments; (though some of his profound admirers are positive that you misunderstand and murder him throughout) but by dragging him out of his awful obscurity; by pouring light upon his venerable darkness. Men may admire the deepness of the well, and the excellence of the water it contains: But if some officious person puts a light into it, it will appear to be both very shallow and very dirty. I could not have borne to spend so many words on so egregious trifles, but that they are mischievous trifles: ... bad philosophy has, by insensible degrees, paved the way for bad divinity.[11]

Law never responded to this open letter, though he had been deeply upset, as was testified by John Byrom.[12]

After seven years of silence Law further explored Böhme's ideas in The Spirit of Prayer (1749–1750), followed by The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752) and The Spirit of Love (1752–1754). He worked on a new translation of Böhme's works for which The Way to Divine Knowledge had been the preparation.[13] Samuel Richardson had been involved in the printing of some of Law's works, e.g. A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection (second edition of 1728), and The Way to Divine Knowledge (1752), since Law's publishers William and John Innys worked closely with Samuel Richardson.[14]

Title page of the Johann Georg Gichtel (1638–1710) edition of 1682, printed in Amsterdam.

Law had taught himself the "High Dutch Language" to be able to read the original text of the "blessed Jacob". He owned a quarto edition of 1715, which had been carefully printed from the Johann Georg Gichtel edition of 1682, printed in Amsterdam where Gichtel (1638–1710) lived and worked.[15]

After the death of both Law and Richardson in 1761, Law's friends George Ward and Thomas Langcake published between 1764 and 1781 a four-volume version of the works of Jakob Böhme. It was paid for by Elizabeth Hutcheson. This version became known as the Law-edition of Böhme, even though Law had never found the time to contribute to this new edition.[16] As a result of this it was ultimately based on the original translations made by John Ellistone and John Sparrow between 1645 and 1662,[17] with only a few changes.[18] This edition was greatly admired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake. Law had found some illustrations made by the German early Böhme exegetist Dionysius Andreas Freher (1649–1728) which had been included in this edition. Upon seeing these symbolic drawings Blake said during a dinner party in 1825 "Michel Angelo could not have surpassed them".[19]

Law's Admiration for Isaac Newton and Jakob Böhme[edit]

Law greatly admired both Isaac Newton, whom he called "this great philosopher" and Jakob Böhme, "the illuminated instrument of God". In part I of The Spirit of Love (1752) Law wrote that in the three properties of desire one can see the "Ground and Reason" of the three great "laws of matter and motion lately discovered [by Sir Isaac Newton]". Law added that he "need[ed] no more to be told that the illustrious Sir Isaac [had] ploughed with Behmen's heifer" which had led to the discovery of these laws.[20]

Law added that in the mathematical system of Newton these three properties of desire, i.e. "attraction, equal resistance, and the orbicular motion of the planets as the effect of them", are treated as facts and appearances, whose ground appears not to be known. However, Law wrote, it is in "our Behmen, the illuminated Instrument of God" that:


Their Birth and Power in Eternity are opened; their eternal Beginning is shown, and how and why all Worlds, and every Life of every Creature, whether it be heavenly, earthly, or hellish, must be in them, and from them, and can have no Nature, either spiritual or material, no kind of Happiness or Misery, but according to the working Power and State of these Properties. All outward Nature, all inward Life, is what it is, and works as it works, from this unceasing powerful Attraction, Resistance, and Whirling."[21]

Aldous Huxley quotes admiringly and at length from Law's writings on mysticism in his anthology The Perennial Philosophy, pointing out remarkable parallels between his ( Law's ) mystical insights and those of Mahayana Buddhism, Vedanta, Sufism, Taoism and other traditions encompassed by Leibniz's concept of the Philosophia Perennis. 

Huxley wrote:

Granted that the ground of the individual soul is akin to...the divine Ground of all existence...what is the ultimate nature of good and evil, and what the true purpose and end of life? The answers to these questions will be given to a great extent in the words of that most surprising product of the English eighteenth century, William Law...a man who was not only a master of English prose, but also one of the most interesting thinkers of his period and one of the most endearingly saintly figures in the whole history of Anglicanism.[22]

Veneration[edit]

Law is honoured on 10 April with a feast day on the Calendar of saints, the Calendar of saints (Episcopal Church in the United States of America) and other Anglican churches.

William is remembered in the Church of England with a Lesser Festival on 10 April.[23]

List of works[edit]

-----
Notes[edit]

^ "BBC - Religions - Christianity: William Wilberforce".
^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Chisholm 1911.
^ In A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life Law urges that every day should be viewed as a day of humility by learning to serve others. Foster, Richard J., Celebration Of Discipline, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, p.131.
^ "I became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not think much against it; and this lasted until I went to Oxford, where it would not be suffered. When at Oxford, I took up Law's Serious Call, expecting to find it a dull book (as such books generally are), and perhaps to laugh at it. But I found Law quite an overmatch for me; and this was the first occasion of my thinking in earnest of religion after I became capable of rational inquiry.", Samuel Johnson, recounted in James Boswell's, Life of Johnson, ch. 1.
^ Murray, Andrew (1896). The Power of the Spirit. London: James Nisbet. pp. ix.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 112–113.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 442–465.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 120 ff.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 454–456.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 448–452.
^ J. Wesley, Works, Vol. IX, pp. 477-478.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2006, pp. 460–463.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 138 ff.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 118–120, 138.
^ This edition is the Theosophia Revelata. Das isst: Alle Göttliche Schriften des Gottseligen und hocherleuchteten Deutschen Theosophi Jacob Böhmens, 2 Vols., Johann Otto Glüssing, Hamburg, 1715.
^ This William Law edition is available online, see http://www.jacobboehmeonline.com/william_law.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, p. 144.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, pp. 138–141.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, p. 140.
^ Joling-van der Sar 2003, p. 133.
^ William Law, Works, 9 volumes, (reprint of the Moreton ed., Brockenhurst, Setley, 1892-93 which was a reprint of London edition of 1762), Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon, U.S.A., 2001, Vol. VIII, pp. 19-20.
^ Huxley, Aldous 'The Perennial Philosophy', first edition pub. Chatto and Windus 1946.
^ "The Calendar". The Church of England. Retrieved 27 March 2021.


References[edit]

Abby, Charles J., The English Church in the 18th Century, 1887.
Foster, Richard J., Celebration Of Discipline, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988.
Huxley, Aldous, The Perennial Philosophy, 1945.
Joling-van der Sar, Gerda J. (2006). "The controversy between William Law and John Wesley". English Studies. Informa UK Limited. 87 (4): 442–465. doi:10.1080/00138380600757810. ISSN 0013-838X.
Joling-van der Sar, Gerda J. (2003). The spiritual side of Samuel Richardson : mysticism, Behmenism and millenarianism in an eighteenth-century English novelist (Thesis). University of Leiden. ISBN 90-90-17087-1. OCLC 783182681. Retrieved 28 June 2020.
Lecky, W.E.H, History of England in the 18th Century, 1878–90.
Overton, John Henry, William Law, Nonjuror and Mystic, 1881.
Stephen, Leslie, English Thought in the 18th century.
Stephen, Leslie (1892). "Law, William" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Tighe, Richard, A Short Account of the Life and Writings of the Late Rev. William Law, 1813.
Walker, A.Keith. William Law: His Life and Work SPCK, 1973.
Walton, Christopher, Notes and Materials for a Complete Biography of W Law, 1848.

Attribution:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Law, William". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
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2021/09/14

The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism | Purity of Heart cf Huxley Perennialism

The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism | Purity of Heart   cf Huxley Perennialism

The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism

NAVIGATIONBooks/Purity of Heart/The Roots of Buddhist Romanticism

Many Westerners, when new to Buddhism, are struck by the uncanny familiarity of what seem to be its central concepts: interconnectedness, wholeness, ego-transcendence. But what they may not realize is that the concepts sound familiar because they are familiar. To a large extent, they come not from the Buddha’s teachings but from the Dharma gate of Western psychology, through which the Buddha’s words have been filtered. They draw less from the root sources of the Dharma than from their own hidden roots in Western culture: the thought of the German Romantics.

The German Romantics may be dead and almost forgotten, but their ideas are still very much alive. Their thought has survived because they were the first to tackle the problem of how it feels to grow up in a modern society. Their analysis of the problem, together with their proposed solution, still rings true.

Modern society, they saw, is dehumanizing in that it denies human beings their wholeness. The specialization of labor leads to feelings of fragmentation and isolation; the bureaucratic state, to feelings of regimentation and constriction. The only cure for these feelings, the Romantics proposed, is the creative artistic act. This act integrates the divided self and dissolves its boundaries in an enlarged sense of identity and interconnectedness with other human beings and nature at large. Human beings are most fully human when free to create spontaneously from the heart. The heart’s creations are what allow people to connect. Although many Romantics regarded religious institutions and doctrines as dehumanizing, some of them turned to religious experience—a direct feeling of oneness with the whole of nature—as a primary source for re-humanization.

When psychology and psychotherapy developed as disciplines in the West, they absorbed many of the Romantics’ ideas and broadcast them into the culture at large. As a result, concepts such as integration of the personality, self-fulfillment, and interconnectedness, together with the healing powers of wholeness, spontaneity, playfulness, and fluidity have long been part of the air we breathe. So has the idea that religion is a primarily a quest for a feeling-experience, and religious doctrines are a creative response to that experience.

In addition to influencing psychology, these conceptions inspired liberal Christianity and reform Judaism, which proposed that traditional doctrines had to be creatively recast to speak to each new generation in order to keep religious experience vital and alive. So it was only natural that when the Dharma came west, people interpreted it in line with these conceptions as well. Asian teachers—many of whom had absorbed Romantic ideas through Westernized education before coming here—found they could connect with Western audiences by stressing themes of spontaneity and fluidity in opposition to the “bureaucracy of the ego.” Western students discovered that they could relate to the doctrine of dependent co-arising when it was interpreted as a variation on interconnectedness; and they could embrace the doctrine of not-self as a denial of the separate self in favor of a larger, more encompassing identity with the entire cosmos.

In fact, the Romantic view of religious life has shaped more than just isolated Dharma teachings. It colors the Western view of the purpose of Dharma practice as a whole. Western teachers from all traditions maintain that the aim of Buddhist practice is to gain the creative fluidity that overcomes dualities. As one author has put it, the Buddha taught that “dissolving the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world is the best use of our human lives ….[Egolessness] manifests as inquisitiveness, as adaptability, as humor, as playfulness… our capacity to relax with not knowing.” Or as another has said, “When our identity expands to include everything, we find a peace with the dance of the world.” Adds a third: “Our job for the rest of our life is to open up into that immensity and to express it.”

Just as the Chinese had Taoism as their Dharma gate—the home-grown tradition providing concepts that helped them understand the Dharma—we in the West have Romanticism as ours. The Chinese experience with Dharma gates, though, contains an important lesson that is often overlooked. After three centuries of interest in Buddhist teachings, they began to realize that Buddhism and Taoism were asking different questions. As they rooted out these differences, they started using Buddhist ideas to question their Taoist presuppositions. This was how Buddhism, instead of turning into a drop in the Taoist sea, was able to inject something genuinely new into Chinese culture. The question here in the West is whether we will learn from the Chinese example and start using Buddhist ideas to question our Dharma gate, to see exactly how far the similarities between the gate and the actual Dharma go. If we don’t, we run the danger of mistaking the gate for the Dharma itself, and of never going through it to the other side.

Taken broadly, Romanticism and the Dharma view spiritual life in a similar light. Both regard religion as a product of human activity, rather than divine intervention. Both regard the essence of religion as experiential and pragmatic; and its role as therapeutic, aimed at curing the diseases of the human mind. But if you examine the historical roots of both traditions, you find that they disagree sharply not only on the nature of religious experience, but also on the nature of the mental diseases it can treat and on the nature of what it means to be cured.

These differences aren’t just historical curiosities. They shape the presuppositions that meditators bring to the practice. Even when fully present, the mind carries along its past presuppositions, using them to judge which experiences—if any—should be valued. This is one of the implications of the Buddhist doctrine on karma. As long as these presuppositions remain unexamined, they hold an unknown power. So to break that power, we need to examine the roots of the Buddhist Romanticism—the Dharma as seen through the Romantic gate. And for the examination to jibe with Buddhist ideas of causality, we have to look for those roots in two directions: into the past for the origin of Romantic ideas, and into the present for the conditions that keep Romantic ideas attractive in the here and now.


The Romantics took their original inspiration from an unexpected source: Kant, the wizened old professor whose daily walks were so punctual that his neighbors could set their clocks by him. In his Critique of Judgment he taught that aesthetic creation and feeling were the highest activities of the human mind, in that they alone could heal the dichotomies of human experience. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), perhaps the most influential Romantic philosopher, elaborated on this thesis with his notion of the aesthetic “play drive” as the ultimate expression of human freedom, beyond both the compulsions of animal existence and the laws of reason, bringing both into integration. Man, he said, “is fully a human being only when he plays.”

In Schiller’s eyes, this play drive not only integrated the self, but also helped dissolve one’s separation from other human beings and the natural environment as a whole. A person with the internal freedom needed for self-integration would instinctively want others to experience the same freedom as well. This connection explains the Romantic political program of offering help and sympathy for the oppressed of all nations in overthrowing their oppressors. The value of internal unity, in their eyes, was proven by its ability to create bonds of unity in the world of social and political action.

Schiller saw the process of integration as unending: perfect unity could never be achieved. A meaningful life was one continually engaged in the process of integration. The path was the goal.

It was also totally unpatterned and unconstrained. Given the free nature of the play drive, each person’s path to integration was individual and unique.

Schiller’s colleague, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), applied these ideas to religion, concluding that it, like any other art form, was a human creation, and that its greatest function lay in healing the splits both within the human personality and in human society at large. He defined the essence of religion as “the sensibility and taste for the infinite,” which begins in the receptive mind state where awareness opens to the infinite. This feeling for the infinite is followed by an act of the creative imagination, which articulates that feeling to oneself and others. Because these creative acts—and thus all religious doctrines—are a step removed from the reality of the experience, they are constantly open to improvement and change.

A few quotations from his essays, On Religion, will give a sense of Schleiermacher’s thought.

“The individual is not just part of a whole, but an exhibition of it. The mind, like the universe is creative, not just receptive. Whoever has learned to be more than himself knows that he loses little when he loses himself. Rather than align themselves with a belief of personal immortality after death, the truly religious would prefer to strive to annihilate their personality and live in the one and in the all.”

“Where is religion chiefly to be sought? Where the living contact of a human being with the world fashions itself as feeling. Truly religious people are tolerant of different translations of this feeling, even the hesitation of atheism. Not to have the divine immediately present in one’s feelings has always seemed to them more irreligious than such a hesitation. To insist on one particular conception of the divine to be true is far from religion.”

Schiller and Schleiermacher both had a strong influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson, which can easily be seen in the latter’s writings. We’re sometimes told that Emerson was influenced by Eastern religions, but actually his readings in Buddhism and Hinduism simply provided chapter and verse for the lessons he had already learned from the European Romantics.

“Bring the past into the 1000-eyed present and live ever in a new day. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. The essence of genius, of virtue, and of life is what is called Spontaneity or Instinct. Every man knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due.”

“The reason why the world lacks unity is because man is disunited with himself…. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meanwhile, within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related, the eternal One. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one.”

At present, the Romantics and Transcendentalists are rarely read outside of literature or theology classes. Their ideas have lived on in the general culture largely because they were adopted by the discipline of psychology and translated into a vocabulary that was both more scientific and more accessible to the public at large. One of the most crucial translators was William James, who gave the psychological study of religion its modern form a century ago, in 1902, with the publication of The Varieties of Religious Experience. James’ broad sympathies extended beyond Western culture to include Buddhism and Hinduism, and beyond the “acceptable” religions of his time to include the Mental Culture movement, the 19th century’s version of the New Age. His interest in diversity makes him seem amazingly post-modern.

Still, James was influenced by the intellectual currents alive in his time, which shaped the way he converted his large mass of data into a psychology of religion. Although he spoke as a scientist, the current with the deepest influence on his thought was Romanticism.

He followed the Romantics in saying that the function of religious experience was to heal the sense of “divided self,” creating a more integrated self-identity better able to function in society. However, to be scientific, the psychology of religion must not side for or against any truth claims concerning the content of religious experiences. For instance, many religious experiences produce a strong conviction in the oneness of the cosmos as a whole. Although scientific observers should accept the feeling of oneness as a fact, they shouldn’t take it as proof that the cosmos is indeed one. Instead, they should judge each experience by its effects on the personality. James was not disturbed by the many mutually contradictory truth-claims that religious experiences have produced over the centuries. In his eyes, different temperaments need different truths as medicine to heal their psychological wounds.

Drawing on Methodism to provide two categories for classifying all religious experiences—conversion and sanctification—James gave a Romantic interpretation to both. For the Methodists, these categories applied specifically to the soul’s relationship to God. Conversion was the turning of the soul to God’s will; sanctification, the attunement of the soul to God’s will in all its actions. To apply these categories to other religions, James removed the references to God, leaving a more Romantic definition: conversion unifies the personality; sanctification represents the on-going integration of that unification into daily life.

Also, James followed the Romantics in judging the effects of both types of experiences in this-worldly terms. Conversion experiences are healthy when they foster healthy sanctification: the ability to maintain one’s integrity in the rough and tumble of daily life, acting as a moral and responsible member of human society. In psychological terms, James saw conversion as simply an extreme example of the breakthroughs ordinarily encountered in adolescence. And he agreed with the Romantics that personal integration was a process to be pursued throughout life, rather than a goal to be achieved.

Other writers who took up the psychology of religion after James devised a more scientific vocabulary to analyze their data. Still, they maintained many of the Romantic notions that James had introduced into the field.

For example, in Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), Carl Jung agreed that religion’s proper role lay in healing of divisions within the personality, although he saw the same basic split in everyone: the narrow, fearful ego vs. the wiser, more spacious unconscious. Thus he regarded religion as a primitive form of psychotherapy. In fact, he actually lay closer than James to the Romantics in his definition of psychic health. Quoting Schiller’s assertion that human beings are most human when they are at play, Jung saw the cultivation of spontaneity and fluidity both as a means for integrating the divided personality and as an expression of the healthy personality engaged in the unending process of integration, internal and external, throughout life.

Unlike James, Jung saw the integrated personality as lying above the rigid confines of morality. And, although he didn’t use the term, he extolled what Keats called “negative capability”: the ability to deal comfortably with uncertainties and mysteries without trying to impose confining certainties on them. Thus Jung recommended borrowing from religions any teachings that assist the process of integration, while rejecting any teachings that would inhibit the spontaneity of the integrated self.

In Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences (1970), Abraham Maslow, the American “father of transpersonal psychology,” divided religious experiences into the same two categories used by James. But in an attempt to divorce these categories from any particular tradition, he named them after the shape they would assume if graphed over time: peak-experiences and plateau-experiences. These terms have now entered the common vernacular. Peak-experiences are short-lived feelings of oneness and integration that can come, not only in the area of religion, but also in sport, sex, and art. Plateau-experiences exhibit a more stable sense of integration and last much longer.

Maslow had little use for traditional interpretations of peak experiences, regarding them as cultural overlays that obscured the true nature of the experience. Assuming all peak experiences, regardless of cause or context, to be basically the same, he reduced them to their common psychological features, such as feelings of wholeness, dichotomy-transcendence, playfulness, and effortlessness. Thus reduced, he found, they weren’t of lasting value unless they could be transformed into plateau experiences. To this end he saw psychotherapy as necessary for their perfection: integrating them into a regime of counseling and education that would actualize the full potential of the human being—intellectual, physical, social, sexual—in a society where all areas of life are sacred, and plateau-experiences commonplace for all.

These three writers on the psychology of religion, despite their differences, kept Romantic ideas about religion alive in the West by giving them the scientific stamp of approval. Through their influence, these ideas have shaped humanistic psychology and—through humanistic psychology—the expectations many Americans bring to the Dharma.

However, when we compare these expectations with the original principles of the Dharma, we find radical differences. The contrast between them is especially strong around the three most central issues of spiritual life: What is the essence of religious experience? What is the basic illness that religious experience can cure? And what does it mean to be cured?

The nature of religious experience. For humanistic psychology, as for the Romantics, religious experience is a direct feeling, rather than the discovery of objective truths. The essential feeling is a oneness overcoming all inner and outer divisions. These experiences come in two sorts: peak experiences, in which the sense of oneness breaks through divisions and dualities; and plateau experiences, where—through training—the sense of oneness creates as healthy sense of self, informing all of one’s activities in everyday life.

However, the Dharma as expounded in its earliest records places training in oneness and a healthy sense of self prior to the most dramatic religious experiences. A healthy sense of self is fostered through training in generosity and virtue. A sense of oneness—peak or plateau—is attained in mundane levels of concentration (jhana) that constitute the path, rather than the goal of practice. The ultimate religious experience, Awakening, is something else entirely. It is described, not in terms of feeling, but of knowledge: skillful mastery of the principles of causality underlying actions and their results, followed by direct knowledge of the dimension beyond causality where all suffering stops.

The basic spiritual illness. Romantic/humanistic psychology states that the root of suffering is a sense of divided self, which creates not only inner boundaries—between reason and emotion, body and mind, ego and shadow—but also outer ones, separating us from other people and from nature and the cosmos as a whole. The Dharma, however, teaches that the essence of suffering is clinging, and that the most basic form of clinging is self-identification, regardless of whether one’s sense of self is finite or infinite, fluid or static, unitary or not.

The successful spiritual cure. Romantic/humanistic psychology maintains that a total, final cure is unattainable. Instead, the cure is an ongoing process of personal integration. The enlightened person is marked by an enlarged, fluid sense of self, unencumbered by moral rigidity. Guided primarily by what feels right in the context of interconnectedness, one negotiates with ease—like a dancer—the roles and rhythms of life. Having learned the creative answer to the question, “What is my true identity?”, one is freed from the need for certainties about any of life’s other mysteries.

The Dharma, however, teaches that full Awakening achieves a total cure, opening to the unconditioned beyond time and space, at which point the task is done. The awakened person then follows a path “that can’t be traced,” but is incapable of transgressing the basic principles of morality. Such a person realizes that the question, “What is my true identity?” was ill-conceived, and knows from direct experience the total release from time and space that will happen at death.


When these two traditions are compared point-by-point, it’s obvious that—from the perspective of early Buddhism—Romantic/humanistic psychology gives only a partial and limited view of the potentials of spiritual practice. This means that Buddhist Romanticism, in translating the Dharma into Romantic principles, gives only a partial and limited view of what Buddhism has to offer.

Now, for many people, these limitations don’t matter, because they come to Buddhist Romanticism for reasons rooted more in the present than in the past. Modern society is now even more schizoid than anything the Romantics ever knew. It has made us more and more dependent on wider and wider circles of other people, yet keeps most of those dependencies hidden. Our food and clothing come from the store, but how they got there, or who is responsible for ensuring a continual supply, we don’t know. When investigative reporters track down the web of connections from field to final product in our hands, the bare facts read like an exposé. Our sweatshirts, for example, come from Uzbekistani cotton woven in Iran, sewn in South Korea, and stored in Kentucky—an unstable web of interdependencies that involve not a little suffering both for the producers and for those pushed out of the production web by cheaper labor.

Whether or not we know these details, we intuitively sense the fragmentation and uncertainty created by the entire system. Thus many of us feel a need for a sense of wholeness. For those who benefit from the hidden dependencies of modern life, a corollary need is a sense of reassurance that interconnectedness is reliable and benign—or, if not yet benign, that feasible reforms can make it that way. They want to hear that they can safely place their trust in the principle of interconnectedness without fear that it will turn on them or let them down. When Buddhist Romanticism speaks to these needs, it opens the gate to areas of Dharma that can help many people find the solace they’re looking for. In doing so, it augments the work of psychotherapy, which may explain why so many psychotherapists have embraced Dharma practice for their own needs and for their patients, and why some have become Dharma teachers themselves.

However, Buddhist Romanticism also helps close the gate to areas of the Dharma that would challenge people in their hope for an ultimate happiness based on interconnectedness. Traditional Dharma calls for renunciation and sacrifice, on the grounds that all interconnectedness is essentially unstable, and any happiness based on this instability is an invitation to suffering. True happiness has to go beyond interdependence and interconnectedness to the unconditioned. In response, the Romantic argument brands these teachings as dualistic: either inessential to the religious experience or inadequate expressions of it. Thus, it concludes, they can safely be ignored. In this way, the gate closes off radical areas of the Dharma designed to address levels of suffering remaining even when a sense of wholeness has been mastered.

It also closes off two groups of people who would otherwise benefit greatly from Dharma practice.

1) Those who see that interconnectedness won’t end the problem of suffering and are looking for a more radical cure.

2) Those from disillusioned and disadvantaged sectors of society, who have less invested in the continuation of modern interconnectedness and have abandoned hope for meaningful reform or happiness within the system.

For both of these groups, the concepts of Buddhist Romanticism seem Pollyannaish; the cure it offers, too facile. As a Dharma gate, it’s more like a door shut in their faces.

Like so many other products of modern life, the root sources of Buddhist Romanticism have for too long remained hidden. This is why we haven’t recognized it for what it is or realized the price we pay in mistaking the part for the whole. Barring major changes in American society, Buddhist Romanticism is sure to survive. What’s needed is for more windows and doors to throw light onto the radical aspects of the Dharma that Buddhist Romanticism has so far left in the dark.

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2021/09/13

Pilgrimage - Wikipedia 巡礼

Pilgrimage - Wikipedia

Pilgrimage

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For other uses, see Pilgrimage (disambiguation).
David Teniers the Younger: Flemish Pilgrim

A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life.[1][2][3]

Background[edit source]

Further information: Religious tourism

Pilgrimages frequently involve a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey into someone's own beliefs.

Many religions attach spiritual importance to particular places: the place of birth or death of founders or saints, or to the place of their "calling" or spiritual awakening, or of their connection (visual or verbal) with the divine, to locations where miracles were performed or witnessed, or locations where a deity is said to live or be "housed", or any site that is seen to have special spiritual powers. Such sites may be commemorated with shrines or temples that devotees are encouraged to visit for their own spiritual benefit: to be healed or have questions answered or to achieve some other spiritual benefit.

A person who makes such a journey is called a pilgrim. As a common human experience, pilgrimage has been proposed as a Jungian archetype by Wallace Clift and Jean Dalby Clift.[4]

The Holy Land acts as a focal point for the pilgrimages of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to a Stockholm University study in 2011, these pilgrims visit the Holy Land to touch and see physical manifestations of their faith, confirm their beliefs in the holy context with collective excitation, and connect personally to the Holy Land.[5]

The Christian priest Frank Fahey writes that a pilgrim is "always in danger of becoming a tourist", and vice versa since travel always in his view upsets the fixed order of life at home, and identifies eight differences between the two:[6]

Distinguishing pilgrimage from tourism, according to Frank Fahey[6]
ElementPilgrimageTourism
Faithalways contains "faith expectancy"not required
Penancesearch for wholenessnot required
Communityoften solitary, but should be open to alloften with friends and family, or a chosen interest group
Sacred spacesilence to create an internal sacred spacenot present
Ritualexternalizes the change withinnot present
Votive offeringleaving behind a part of oneself, letting go, in search of a better lifenot present; the travel is the good life
Celebration"victory over self", celebrating to rememberdrinking to forget
Perseverancecommitment; "pilgrimage is never over"holidays soon end

Bahá'í Faith[edit source]

Main article: Bahá'í pilgrimage

Bahá'u'lláh decreed pilgrimage to two places in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: the House of Bahá'u'lláh in Baghdad, Iraq, and the House of the Báb in Shiraz, Iran. Later, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá designated the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh at Bahji, Israel as a site of pilgrimage.[7] The designated sites for pilgrimage are currently not accessible to the majority of Bahá'ís, as they are in Iraq and Iran respectively, and thus when Bahá'ís currently refer to pilgrimage, it refers to a nine-day pilgrimage which consists of visiting the holy places at the Bahá'í World Centre in northwest Israel in Haifa, Acre, and Bahjí.[7]

Buddhism[edit source]

Main article: Buddhist pilgrimage
Ancient excavated Buddha-image at the Mahaparinirvana Temple, Kushinagar
Tibetans on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, doing full-body prostrations, often for the entire length of the journey

There are four places that Buddhists pilgrimage to:

Other pilgrimage places in India and Nepal connected to the life of Gautama Buddha are: Savatthi, Pataliputta, Nalanda, Gaya, Vesali, Sankasia, Kapilavastu, Kosambi, Rajagaha.

Other famous places for Buddhist pilgrimage include:

Christianity[edit source]

Main article: Christian pilgrimage
Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Israel according to tradition is the site where Jesus was crucified and resurrected
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima is one of the largest pilgrimage sites (Marian shrine) in the world.

Christian pilgrimage was first made to sites connected with the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Aside from the early example of Origen in the third century, surviving descriptions of Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land date from the 4th century, when pilgrimage was encouraged by church fathers including Saint Jerome, and established by Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great.[8]

The purpose of Christian pilgrimage was summarized by Pope Benedict XVI in this way:

To go on pilgrimage is not simply to visit a place to admire its treasures of nature, art or history. To go on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves in order to encounter God where he has revealed himself, where his grace has shone with particular splendour and produced rich fruits of conversion and holiness among those who believe. Above all, Christians go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to the places associated with the Lord's passion, death and resurrection. They go to Rome, the city of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul, and also to Compostela, which, associated with the memory of Saint James, has welcomed pilgrims from throughout the world who desire to strengthen their spirit with the Apostle's witness of faith and love.[9]

Pilgrimages were, and are, also made to Rome and other sites associated with the apostles, saints and Christian martyrs, as well as to places where there have been apparitions of the Virgin Mary. A popular pilgrimage journey is along the Way of St. James to the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, in Galicia, Spain, where the shrine of the apostle James is located. A combined pilgrimage was held every seven years in the three nearby towns of Maastricht, Aachen and Kornelimünster where many important relics could be seen (see: Pilgrimage of the Relics, Maastricht). Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales recounts tales told by Christian pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Thomas Becket. Marian pilgrimages remain very popular in Latin America.

Hinduism[edit source]

See also: Tirtha (Hinduism), Hindu pilgrimage sites, Hinduism § Pilgrimage, and Yatra
Kumbh Mela

According to Karel Werner's Popular Dictionary of Hinduism, "most Hindu places of pilgrimage are associated with legendary events from the lives of various gods.... Almost any place can become a focus for pilgrimage, but in most cases they are sacred cities, rivers, lakes, and mountains."[10] Hindus are encouraged to undertake pilgrimages during their lifetime, though this practice is not considered absolutely mandatory. Most Hindus visit sites within their region or locale.

Islam[edit source]

Main articles: Hajj and Umrah
See also: Holiest sites in Islam, Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem
Muslim pilgrims circumambulate the black cube of the Kaaba in the Al-Haram Mosque

The Ḥajj (Arabic: حَـجّ‎, main pilgrimage to Mecca) is one of the five pillars of Islam and a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and can support their family during their absence.[15][16][17] The gathering during the Hajj is considered the largest annual gathering of people in the world.[18][19][20] Since 2014, two or three million people have participated the Hajj annually.[21] The mosques in Mecca and Medina were closed in February 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the hajj was permitted for only a very limited number of Saudi nationals and foreigners living in Saudi Arabia starting on 29 July.[22]

Another important place for Muslims is the city of Medina, the second holiest site in Islam, in Saudi Arabia, the final resting place of Muhammad in Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (The Mosque of the Prophet).[23]

The Ihram (white robe of pilgrimage) is meant to show equality of all Muslim pilgrims in the eyes of Allah. 'A white has no superiority over a black, nor a black over a white. Nor does an Arab have superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab - except through piety' - statement of the Prophet Muhammad.

Arba'een pilgrims in Mehran

About four million pilgrims participate in the Grand Magal of Touba, 200 kilometres (120 mi) east of Dakar, Senegal. The pilgrimage celebrates the life and teachings of Cheikh Amadou Bamba, who founded the Mouride brotherhood in 1883 and begins on the 18th of Safar.[24]

Shia[edit source]

Main articles: Arba'een, Ashura, and Imam Reza

Al-Arba‘īn (Arabic: ٱلْأَرْبَـعِـيْـن‎, "The Forty"), Chehelom (Persian: چهلم‎, Urdu: چہلم‎, "the fortieth [day]") or Qirkhī, Imāmīn Qirkhī (Azerbaijani: İmamın qırxı (Arabic: إمامین قیرخی‎), "the fortieth of Imam") is a Shia Muslim religious observance that occurs forty days after the Day of Ashura. It commemorates the martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, which falls on the 20th or 21st day of the month of Safar. Imam Husayn ibn Ali and 72 companions were killed by Yazid I's army in the Battle of Karbala in 61 AH (680 CE). Arba'een or forty days is also the usual length of mourning after the death of a family member or loved one in many Muslim traditions. Arba'een is one of the largest pilgrimage gatherings on Earth, in which up to 31 million people go to the city of Karbala in Iraq.[25][26][27][28]

The second largest holy city in the world, Mashhad, Iran, attracts more than 20 million tourists and pilgrims every year, many of whom come to pay homage to Imam Reza (the eighth Shi'ite Imam). It has been a magnet for travelers since medieval times.[29] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran, worshippers were encouraged to stay at home rather than visit the cities of Najaf and Karbala. Smaller than usual crowds gathered for Ashura, but many did not wear facemasks or practice social distancing, and the number of cases of viral infections in Iran grew sharply.[21]

Judaism[edit source]

Jews at the Western Wall in Jerusalem during the Ottoman period, 1867
See also: Temple in Jerusalem, Jerusalem in Judaism, and Three Pilgrimage Festivals

While Solomon's Temple stood, Jerusalem was the centre of the Jewish religious life and the site of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, and all adult men who were able were required to visit and offer sacrifices (korbanot) at the Temple. After the destruction of the Temple, the obligation to visit Jerusalem and to make sacrifices no longer applied. The obligation was restored with the rebuilding of the Temple, but following its destruction in 70 CE, the obligation to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and offer sacrifices again went into abeyance.[30]

The western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, known as the Western Wall or "Wailing" Wall, is the remaining part of Second Jewish Temple in the Old City of Jerusalem is the most sacred and visited site for Jews. Pilgrimage to this area was off-limits to Jews from 1948 to 1967, when East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control.[31][32]

There are numerous lesser Jewish pilgrimage destinations, mainly tombs of tzadikim, throughout the Land of Israel and all over the world, including: Hebron; Bethlehem; Mount Meron; Netivot; Uman, Ukraine; Silistra, Bulgaria; Damanhur, Egypt; and many others.[33]

Sikhism[edit source]

Sikh pilgrim at the Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) in Amritsar, India.

Sikhism does not consider pilgrimage as an act of spiritual merit. Guru Nanak went to places of pilgrimage to reclaim the fallen people, who had turned ritualists. He told them of the need to visit that temple of God, deep in the inner being of themselves. According to him: "He performs a pilgrimage who controls the five vices."[34][35]

Eventually, however, Amritsar and Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) became the spiritual and cultural centre of the Sikh faith, and if a Sikh goes on pilgrimage it is usually to this place.[36]

The Panj Takht (Punjabi: ਪੰਜ ਤਖ਼ਤ) are the five revered gurdwaras in India that are considered the thrones or seats of authority of Sikhism and are traditionally considered a pilgrimage.[37]

Taoism[edit source]

Baishatun Pilgrimage: Mazu and her palanquin

Mazu, also spelled as Matsu, is the most famous sea goddess in the Chinese southeastern sea area, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Mazu Pilgrimage is more likely as an event (or temple fair), pilgrims are called as "Xiang Deng Jiao" (pinyin: xiāng dēng jiǎo, it means "lantern feet" in Chinese), they would follow the Goddess's (Mazu) palanquin from her own temple to another Mazu temple. By tradition, when the village Mazu palanquin passes, the residents would offer free water and food to those pilgrims along the way.

There are 2 main Mazu pilgrimages in Taiwan, it usually hold between lunar January and April, depends on Mazu's will.

Zoroastrianism[edit source]

The Yazd Atash Behram in Iran is an Atash Bahram, the highest grade of fire temple in Zoroastrianism

In Iran, there are pilgrimage destinations called pirs in several provinces, although the most familiar ones are in the province of Yazd.[40] In addition to the traditional Yazdi shrines, new sites may be in the process of becoming pilgrimage destinations. The ruins are the ruins of ancient fire temples. One such site is the ruin of the Sassanian era Azargoshnasp fire temple in Iran's Azarbaijan Province. Other sites are the ruins of fire temples at Rey, south of the capital Tehran, and the Firouzabad ruins sixty kilometres south of Shiraz in the province of Pars.

Atash Behram ("Fire of victory") is the highest grade of fire temple in Zoroastrianism. It has 16 different "kinds of fire", that is, fires gathered from 16 different sources.[41] Currently there are 9 Atash Behram, one in Yazd, Iran and the rest in Western India. They have become a pilgrimage destination.[42]

In India the cathedral fire temple that houses the Iranshah Atash Behram, located in the small town of Udvada in the west coast province of Gujarat, is a pilgrimage destination.[42]

Other[edit source]

Meher Baba[edit source]

The main pilgrimage sites associated with the spiritual teacher Meher Baba are Meherabad, India, where Baba completed the "major portion"[43] of his work and where his tomb is now located, and Meherazad, India, where Baba resided later in his life.

Ancient Greece[edit source]

The Eleusinian mysteries included a pilgrimage. The procession to Eleusis began at the Athenian cemetery Kerameikos and from there the participants walked to Eleusis, along the Sacred Way (Ἱερὰ Ὁδός, Hierá Hodós).[44]

See also[edit source]

References[edit source]

  1. ^ Reader, Ian; Walter, Tony, eds. (2014). Pilgrimage in popular culture. [Place of publication not identified]: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1349126392. OCLC 935188979.
  2. ^ Reframing pilgrimage : cultures in motion. Coleman, Simon, 1963-, Eade, John, 1946-, European Association of Social Anthropologists. London: Routledge. 2004. ISBN 9780203643693. OCLC 56559960.
  3. ^ Plate, S. Brent (September 2009). "The Varieties of Contemporary Pilgrimage". CrossCurrents. 59 (3): 260–267. doi:10.1111/j.1939-3881.2009.00078.x.
  4. ^ Cleft, Jean Darby; Cleft, Wallace (1996). The Archetype of Pilgrimage: Outer Action With Inner Meaning. The Paulist Press. ISBN 0-8091-3599-X.
  5. ^ Metti, Michael Sebastian (1 June 2011). "Jerusalem – the most powerful brand in history" (PDF). Stockholm University School of Business. Archived from the original (PDF) on 26 January 2020. Retrieved 1 July 2011.
  6. ^ Jump up to:a b Fahey, Frank (April 2002). "Pilgrims or Tourists?". The Furrow. 53 (4): 213–218. JSTOR 27664505.
  7. ^ Jump up to:a b Smith, Peter (2000). "Pilgrimage". A concise encyclopedia of the Bahá'í Faith. Oxford: eworld Publications. pp. 269. ISBN 1-85168-184-1.
  8. ^ Cain, A. (2010). Jerome's epitaphium paulae: Hagiography, pilgrimage, and the cult of Saint Paula. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 18(1), 105-139. https://doi.org/10.1353/earl.0.0310
  9. ^ "Apostolic Journey to Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona: Visit to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (November 6, 2010) | BENEDICT XVI".
  10. ^ Werner, Karel (1994). A popular dictionary of Hinduism. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. ISBN 0700702792. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  11. ^ Thangham, Chris V. (3 January 2007). "Photo from Space of the Largest Human Gathering in India". Digital Journal. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  12. ^ Banerjee, Biswajeet (15 January 2007). "Millions of Hindus Wash Away Their Sins". The Washington Post. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  13. ^ "Millions bathe at Hindu festival". BBC News. 3 January 2007. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  14. ^ Singh, Vikas (2017). Uprising of the Fools: Pilgrimage as Moral Protest in Contemporary India. Stanford University Press.
  15. ^ Long, Matthew (2011). Islamic Beliefs, Practices, and Cultures. Marshall Cavendish Corporation. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-7614-7926-0. Retrieved 2 September 2014.
  16. ^ Nigosian, S. A. (2004). Islam: Its History, Teaching, and Practices. Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 110. ISBN 0-253-21627-3.
  17. ^ "Islamic Practices". Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. Retrieved 7 April 2017.
  18. ^ Mosher, Lucinda (2005). Praying: The Rituals of Faith. Church Publishing, Inc. p. 155. ISBN 9781596270169. Retrieved 18 September 2014.
  19. ^ Ruiz, Enrique (2009). Discriminate Or Diversify. PositivePsyche.Biz Corp. p. 279. ISBN 9780578017341.
  20. ^ Katz, Andrew (16 October 2013). "As the Hajj Unfolds in Saudi Arabia, A Deep Look Inside the Battle Against MERS". Time. Retrieved 17 October 2013.
  21. ^ Jump up to:a b "The world's largest Muslim pilgrimage site? Not Mecca, but the Shiite shrine in Karbala". Religion News Service. 9 September 2020. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  22. ^ "Hajj Begins in Saudi Arabia Under Historic COVID Imposed Restrictions | Voice of America - English". www.voanews.com. VOA. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  23. ^ Ariffin, Syed Ahmad Iskandar Syed (2005). Architectural conservation in Islam: case study of the Prophet's Mosque(1st ed.). Skudai, Johor Darul Ta'zim, Malaysia: Penerbit Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. ISBN 9835203733. Retrieved 30 October2016.
  24. ^ Holloway, Beetle. "Senegal's Grand Magal of Touba: A Pilgrimage of Celebration". Culture Trip. Retrieved 14 September 2020.
  25. ^ uberVU – social comments (5 February 2010). "Friday: 46 Iraqis, 1 Syrian Killed; 169 Iraqis Wounded - Antiwar.com". Original.antiwar.com. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
  26. ^ Aljazeera. "alJazeera Magazine – 41 Martyrs as More than Million People Mark 'Arbaeen' in Holy Karbala". Aljazeera.com. Retrieved 30 June 2010.
  27. ^ "Powerful Explosions Kill More Than 40 Shi'ite Pilgrims in Karbala". Voanews.com. 5 February 2010. Retrieved 30 June2010.
  28. ^ Hanun, Abdelamir (5 February 2010). "Blast in crowd kills 41 Shiite pilgrims in Iraq". News.smh.com.au. Retrieved 30 June2010.
  29. ^ "Sacred Sites: Mashhad, Iran". sacredsites.com. Archived from the original on 27 November 2010. Retrieved 13 March2006.
  30. ^ Williams, Margaret, 1947- (2013). Jews in a Graeco-Roman environment. Tübingen, Germany. p. 42. ISBN 978-3-16-151901-7. OCLC 855531272.
  31. ^ "The Western Wall". mosaic.lk.net. Retrieved 6 June 2017.
  32. ^ "The Western Wall: History & Overview". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 27 March 2018.
  33. ^ See David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson, Pilgrimage and the Jews (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006) for history and data on several pilgrimages to both Ashkenazi and Sephardic holy sites.
  34. ^ Mansukhani, Gobind Singh (1968). Introduction to Sikhism: 100 Basic Questions and Answers on Sikh Religion and History. India Book House. p. 60.
  35. ^ Myrvold, Kristina (2012). Sikhs Across Borders: Transnational Practices of European Sikhs. A&C Black. p. 178. ISBN 9781441103581.
  36. ^ "Sikhism". Archived from the original on 23 November 2001.
  37. ^ "Special train to connect all five Takhats, first run on February 16". Retrieved 5 February 2014.
  38. ^ "沒固定路線、全憑神轎指引徒步400里...白沙屯媽祖進香有何秘密？他爆出這些「神蹟」超驚奇". The Storm Media (in Chinese). Central News Agency (published 19 April 2018). 21 May 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2018.
  39. ^ "~ 大甲媽祖遶境進香歷史沿革、陣頭、典禮、禁忌的介紹~". 淨 空 禪 林 (in Chinese). 21 May 2018.
  40. ^ Aspandyar Sohrab Gotla (2000). "Guide to Zarthoshtrian historical places in Iran." University of Michigan Press. LCCN 2005388611 pg. 164
  41. ^ Hartman, Sven S. (1980). Parsism: The Religions of Zoroaster. BRILL. p. 20. ISBN 9004062084.
  42. ^ Jump up to:a b Shelar, Jyoti (1 December 2017). "Pilgrimage or mela? Parsis split on Udvada festival". The Hindu. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
  43. ^ Deshmukh, Indumati (1961). "Address in Marathi." The Awakener 7 (3): 29.
  44. ^ Nielsen, Inge (2017). "Collective mysteries and Greek pilgrimage: The cases of Eleusis, Thebes and Andania, in: Excavating Pilgrimage".

Further reading[edit source]

  • al-Naqar, Umar. 1972. The Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. [includes a map 'African Pilgrimage Routes to Mecca, ca. 1300–1900']
  • Coleman, Simon and John Elsner (1995), Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
  • Coleman, Simon & John Eade (eds) (2005), Reframing Pilgrimage. Cultures in Motion. London: Routledge.
  • Davidson, Linda Kay and David M. Gitlitz (2002), Pilgrimage: From the Ganges to Graceland: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Ca.: ABC-CLIO.
  • Gitlitz, David M. and Linda Kay Davidson (2006). Pilgrimage and the Jews. Westport, CT: Praeger.
  • Jackowski, Antoni. 1998. Pielgrzymowanie [Pilgrimage]. Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie.
  • Kerschbaum & Gattinger, Via Francigena – DVD – Documentation, of a modern pilgrimage to Rome, ISBN 3-200-00500-9, Verlag EUROVIA, Vienna 2005
  • Margry, Peter Jan (ed.) (2008), Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World. New Itineraries into the Sacred. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
  • Okamoto, Ryosuke (2019). Pilgrimages in the Secular Age: From El Camino to Anime. Tokyo: Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture.
  • Sumption, Jonathan. 2002. Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
  • Wolfe, Michael (ed.). 1997. One Thousands Roads to Mecca. New York: Grove Press.
  • Zarnecki, George (1985), The Monastic World: The Contributions of The Orders. pp. 36–66, in Evans, Joan (ed.). 1985. The Flowering of the Middle Ages. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
  • Zwissler, Laurel (2011). "Pagan Pilgrimage: New Religious Movements Research on Sacred Travel within Pagan and New Age Communities". Religion Compass. Wiley. 5 (7): 326–342. doi:10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00282.x. ISSN 1749-8171.

External links[edit source]

Library resources about
Pilgrimage
  •  Media related to Pilgrimage at Wikimedia Commons



===

순례

위키백과, 우리 모두의 백과사전.
둘러보기로 이동검색으로 이동
 이 문서는 종교적인 의미의 성지 순례에 관한 것입니다. 인터넷상의 속어에 대해서는 성지 순례 (인터넷) 문서를 참고하십시오.

순례(巡禮, 영어: pilgrimage)는 종교적 의무 또는 신앙 고취의 목적으로 하는 여행을 말한다.

기독교[편집]

기독교에서는 4세기 경 예수 그리스도가 태어나고 활동했던 이스라엘을 순례한 사람의 기록이 있으며, 로마나 초기 교회의 사도들이 활동했던 터키·그리스 등도 기독교 성지 순례의 대상이다. 한국에서는 로마 가톨릭교회에서 순교성지, 최초의 사제인 김대건 신부가 유년시절을 보낸 미리내성지등 천주교와 관련된 지역들을 성지로 본다.

이슬람교[편집]

이슬람교에서는 일생에 한 번 메카에 들르는 것을 하즈라 하여 이슬람의 다섯 기둥 가운데 하나이다.

같이 보기[편집]

외부 링크[편집]

  •  위키미디어 공용에 순례 관련 미디어 분류가 있습니다.
ReligionSymbol.svg이 글은 종교에 관한 토막글입니다. 여러분의 지식으로 알차게 문서를 완성해 갑시다.



===

巡礼

出典: フリー百科事典『ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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曖昧さ回避この項目では、宗教に基づく行為について説明しています。小説、映画、漫画、アニメなどのファンが作品の舞台になった場所を訪れる行為については「巡礼 (通俗)」を、その他の用法については「巡礼 (曖昧さ回避)」をご覧ください。
サンティアゴ・デ・コンポステーラの巡礼路（世界遺産）

巡礼（じゅんれい、英: pilgrimage）とは、 日常的な生活空間を一時的に離れて、宗教の聖地や聖域に参詣し、聖なるものにより接近しようとする宗教的行動のこと[1]。 巡礼は世界の多くの宗教で重要な宗教儀礼と見なされており、特にその宗教の信者が特定の地域や文化圏を超えて広域に分布している宗教においてはとりわけ大切なものと位置付けられている[1]。したがって巡礼は、未開宗教よりも歴史的な宗教や世界宗教において、より一層さかんに行われている[1]。

呼称、表現、基本概念[編集]

ヨーロッパ諸語での呼びかたは、例えばフランス語では「pèlerinage ペルリナージュ」、英語では「pilgrimage ピルグリミッジ」、ドイツ語では「Pilgerfahrt ピルゲルファールト」である[1] が、 これらは基本的にラテン語の「peregrinus ペレグリーヌス」を語源としており、その基本的な意味は「通過者」とか「異邦人」である[1]。このラテン語の基本的な意味でも明らかなように、巡礼の根本的なかたちというのは、遠方の聖地に赴く、というところにある[1]。各信者の居住地にも宗教施設（教会堂、仏閣、神社など）は存在するのだが、それらに赴く行為のことを「巡礼」と呼ぶことは無い[1]。したがって、巡礼というのは、我々の居住地、つまり日常空間あるいは俗空間から離脱して、非日常空間あるいは聖空間に入り、そこで聖なるものに接近・接触し、その後ふたたび もとの日常空間・俗空間に復帰する行為、と言うこともできる[1]。 [注 1]

分類、類型[編集]

世界には様々な巡礼があるが、その特色で様々に分類することも可能である[1]。

まずは集団型と個人型である[1]。あらかじめ集団を組んで巡礼に赴く型と、個々人がおのおのの発意によって個々に巡礼に赴く型があるのである[1]。聖地は多くが辺鄙（へんぴ）な場所にあるので、交通手段が未発達の時代においては個人で行うのは困難であった[1]（つまりその時代、ほとんどが集団型であった）。また、巡礼は長日数におよび金銭的な準備も必要なので、（今日でも）世界中で集団型巡礼はきわめて盛んである[1]。（なお、大勢でにぎやかに行く巡礼と 独りで黙々と行く巡礼では、その巡礼体験（体験の質）が大きく異なっている[1]。）

他の分類として、巡礼の目的や巡拝者の資格に関して「限定型」と「開放型」がある[1]。たとえばイスラームのメッカ巡礼は聖典コーランに定められておりイスラム教徒以外の立ち入りは厳しく禁止されており[1]、またたとえば比叡山の回峰行は数十キロメートルの行程に散在する聖所を1日で参拝する荒行であるが、これは天台宗の僧侶の資格がある者にだけ許可されている巡礼である[1]。これに対して、信者であっても観光客であっても受け入れ、特に巡拝者を限定しない巡礼もあり、たとえば四国のお遍路がその一例である[1]。

「キリスト教やイスラム教に見られる一つの聖地を訪れる直線型と、インドや東洋で見られる複数の聖地を巡る回国型に分類されている」とも言われる。

ユダヤ教の巡礼[編集]

ソロモン神殿が存在していた時代（紀元前9世紀ころ～紀元前586年）では、ユダヤ教徒にとってエルサレムのソロモン神殿が最も重要な聖地であり、三大巡礼祭（英語版）、すなわちペサハ（過越）、シャブオット（七週の祭り）、スコット（仮庵の祭り）の時、成人男性で巡礼可能な人は皆、その地の同神殿を訪れコルバン（英語版）（供物の一種）をささげることが求められた。

「嘆きの壁」の前のユダヤ教巡礼者たち

その後、ソロモン神殿は破壊され、それでもその神殿は第二神殿、ヘロデ神殿と再建・拡張されたが、紀元70年に再度ローマ帝国軍（英語版）やアグリッパ2世の軍によって破壊された後は（再建が熱心なユダヤ教徒の切なる願いではあるが）再建は果たされておらず、わずかに残されたかつてのヘロデ神殿周囲の（西側の）外壁の一部分（「嘆きの壁」と呼ばれるもの）が、現在のユダヤ教徒の最も重要な巡礼の場所となっている。

現在のユダヤ教では、嘆きの壁以外にも多くの巡礼の地はあり、たとえばマクペラの洞穴（アブラハムなどが埋葬されているとされる場所）、またツァッディークたちの墓（ベツレヘム、メロン山、ネティヴォ（英語版） 等々にあるもの）などが巡礼の地となっている。

キリスト教の巡礼[編集]

キリスト教は、当初から殉教者を出したが、その墓所に詣でて敬意を表する信者がいた。これをmartyrium マルティリウムと言う。そうした場所は礼拝の場である教会堂と並び、教会（＝キリスト教コミュニティ）にとって重要な場所となった。

4世紀にキリスト教が公認されると、キリスト教発祥の地であるパレスチナ、ことにイエス・キリストの生地であるベツレヘム、受難の地であるエルサレムの遺構に参拝するために信者が旅をするようになった。また各地の殉教者記念堂も巡礼の対象となった。

巡礼者を描いた1500年ころの絵画。（ヒエロニムス・ボッシュ画）
巡礼者のシンボルとして用いられているホタテの貝殻。リュックなどにぶら下げる。

キリスト教における巡礼は聖地への礼拝だけでなく、巡礼旅の過程も重要視されている。すなわち聖地への旅の過程において、人々は「神との繋がり」を再認識し信仰を強化するのである。ルイス・ブニュエルの映画『銀河』は（en:The Milky Way (1969 film)／fr:La Voie lactée (film, 1969)）、サンティアゴ・デ・コンポステーラへの巡礼を、「時間と空間を越える神の存在への問いかけの物語」として描いている。

地中海沿岸からヨーロッパ各地に諸聖人の遺骨（聖遺物または不朽体）または十字架、ノアの箱舟の跡などの遺物を祭ったとされる教会、聖堂などが多数あり、そのような地への巡礼が行われた。巡礼は多くの旅人を集めた（『カンタベリー物語』など）。もっとも有名なものには、エレナが発見したとされる十字架の遺物、アルメニア王アブガルス3世enに贈られ、エデッサ（en:Edessa）からコンスタンティノポリスにもたらされた自印聖像（マンドリオン、手で描かれたのではない聖像）、コンスタンティノポリスの聖母マリアの衣、洗礼者ヨハネの首などがある。これらの宝物は中世後期に失われた。また、巡礼者を惹きつけるために他の教会から聖遺物を盗んできたり、偽造するということもあったとされる。また西方では、中世中期からミラノのキリストの聖骸布、聖杯（聖杯伝説や騎士道物語を生み出す元になった）などの伝承が生まれた。

古代後期から、殉教者の遺骨によって奇跡がおき、参拝した巡礼者の中に病気が治癒したり歩けなかった足が動くようになったなどの事例が報告されるようになった。こうした奇跡が起こったということから巡礼者が集まるようになったというものも多い。たとえばピレネー山中のルルドや、カトリックの三大巡礼地の1つサンティアゴ・デ・コンポステーラなどである。麦角病（四肢が壊疽したり、精神錯乱を招く）は「巡礼に赴くことで癒える」とされた[注 2]

こうした巡礼の旅で病に倒れた人、宿を求める人を宿泊させた巡礼教会、その小さなものを「hospice ホスピス」と呼んだが、そこでのもてなしから「hospitality ホスピタリティ（歓待）」の語がうまれ、病人の看護などの仕事をする部門が教会の中に作られるようになって今日の英語でいう「hospital ホスピタル」が派生した。ゆえに「hospital ホスピタル」は、「病院」だけではなく、「老人ホーム」「孤児院」の意味も持つ。またhospiceは、現代では終末期の患者が残りの時を過ごす近代的な「ホスピス」の語源となっている。

カトリック（西方教会）の三大巡礼地

カトリックの三大巡礼地は、ローマのサンピエトロ大聖堂（＝聖ペトロが眠る場所）、サンティアゴ・デ・コンポステーラ（＝9世紀に羊飼いが聖ヤコブの墓を見つけとされる場所）、そしてエルサレムともされる。

オルトドクス（正教会、東方教会）の巡礼地

正教会の巡礼地としては、アヤ・ソフィア大聖堂（＝かつてのビザンティン帝国の首都コンスタンティノープル、つまり現在のイスタンブールにある大聖堂）、アトス山（＝東方正教の一大中心地）、聖カタリナ修道院（＝モーセが十戒を授けられたとされるシナイ山にある修道院）、エルサレムなどが挙げられる。またロシア内、ロシア正教会に限ると、至聖三者聖セルギイ大修道院（＝ラドネジの聖セルギイの不朽体のある場所）なども挙げられる。

プロテスタントの巡礼に対する態度

宗教改革後、プロテスタントは、巡礼に対して（も）冷淡な態度をとっている[1]。[注 3]

イスラム教の巡礼[編集]

ハッジの期間やそうでないウムラの時期にメッカのマスジド・ハラームにやってきて、カアバ神殿でタワーフ（＝周囲を反時計まわりで7周まわること）を行う巡礼者たち。
詳細は「ハッジ」、「ウムラ」、および「en:Ziyarat」を参照

メッカ（マッカ）にあるカアバ神殿へ歩いて向かうこと。アラビア語で「ハッジ」。イスラム教の五行のひとつ。行程に若干異なる点があるが、巡礼にはイスラム教各宗派の信徒が共に参加する。

ヒジュラ暦で12番目の月を「ハッジの月（巡礼月）」と呼び、この月にメッカのカアバへ巡礼することは、特に奨励されている。これを大巡礼と言う。対して、これ以外の月に巡礼することは小巡礼（ウムラ）と言う。例年、ハッジの月には数百万人の巡礼者がメッカに集まる。

巡礼は、体力的、経済的に可能な者に、一生に一度は行なうよう義務付けられている行為であるが、巡礼を果たしたムスリム（イスラム教徒）は、「ハーッジー」と呼ばれ、特に尊敬される。

現在ハッジの希望者数は受け入れ可能人数を超えており、ハッジに参加するにはメッカを管理するサウジアラビア政府の発給する特別ビザが必要。ビザ発給枠はムスリム人口を考慮し各国に割り当てられる。サウジアラビア政府は巡礼地での礼拝時の宗教的興奮において起こると危惧される政治的混乱を恐れている。

聖者の廟への参詣はズィヤーラ(アラビア語: زيارة‎)と呼ばれてハッジ（巡礼）とは厳格に区別されるが、ズィヤーラの方がむしろ日本でいう巡礼に近い[2]。ズィヤーラははじめシーア派によって体系化され、歴代のイマーム、とくにカルバラーのフサイン廟への参詣が奨励された（アルバイーンも参照）。後にイスラーム世界全体に広がり、各地の聖廟を巡歴する形式や、集団参詣も行われるようになったが、近代になって急激に衰退した[2]。

バハイ教の巡礼[編集]

詳細は「バハイ教#巡礼」を参照

バハイ教では本来バグダードのバハー・ウッラーの家とシーラーズのバーブの家が巡礼地とされていたが、現在ではこの巡礼は実行不可能である。現在バハイ教で巡礼といった場合、イスラエルのハイファ、アッコ、バフジーへの九日間の巡礼を指す。

ヒンドゥー教の巡礼[編集]

ハリドワールのクンブ・メーラ。ガンジス河を訪れて沐浴する
ケーダールナートの巡礼者たち

ヒンドゥー教で聖地をティールタ(तीर्थ tīrtha)と呼び、山や川、高名なリシの住居などが巡礼の対象となる。

ヴァーラーナシーのガートはもっとも有名であり、聖なるガンジス河で沐浴をする。ヴァーラーナシーはヒンドゥー教徒にとってもっとも重要な7つの聖都（サプタプリー）のひとつである。サプタプリーの他の6つはアヨーディヤー、マトゥラー、ハリドワール、カーンチープラム、ウッジャイン、ドワールカーである。

インドの東西南北4端にある巡礼地をチャールダーム（英語版）と呼んで重視する。伝説によると、8世紀のシャンカラがこの4つの巡礼地をまわって寺院を建設したと伝える。チャールダームは北のバドリーナート、南のラーメーシュワラム、東のプリー、西のドワールカーがある。4つの巡礼地は遠く離れているためにすべてを巡礼するのは困難だが、多くのヒンドゥー教徒は一生に一度はこの4か所を巡りたいと望んでいる[3]。より容易な巡礼地としてチョーターチャールダーム（英語版）があり、ヒマラヤ地方のヤムノートリー（ヤムナー川の水源とされる）、ガンゴートリー（ガンジス川の水源とされる）、ケーダールナート、バドリーナートを巡る[3]。

クンブ・メーラを行うプラヤーグ（イラーハーバード）、ハリドワール、ナーシク、ウッジャインの4か所も重要な巡礼地である[3]。

ジャイナ教の巡礼[編集]

ジャイナ教ではヒンドゥー教のような沐浴を否定した。いっぽうジャイナ教の聖地は山の中にあり、24人のティールタンカラが滞在して重要な事績を残した地と伝えられる[4]。

主要な巡礼地にラージギル（ビハール州）、パーラスナート山脈（ジャールカンド州）のシカルジー、アーブー山（ラージャスターン州）、ギルナール山（グジャラート州）、パーリーターナー（英語版）（グジャラート州）のシャトルンジャヤ山、シュラバナベラゴラ（カルナータカ州）などがある。

仏教の巡礼[編集]

インド（およびネパール）[編集]

釈迦の生誕の地であるカピラバストゥは釈迦晩年に毘瑠璃王により破壊され廃城となった状態であったが、釈迦の死後数百年後には、仏教の僧によって釈迦生誕の地とされるカピラヴァストゥやルンビニ地域への巡礼が行われるようになっていたことが知られている。有名な僧ではたとえば5世紀に法顕、7世紀に玄奘などもカピラバストゥに巡礼で訪れそれを文書に残した。だが,やがて同地域で仏教にかわってヒンドゥー教やイスラム教が信仰されるようになった結果、仏僧による巡礼も途絶えるようになり、14世紀ころにはカピラヴァストゥの場所が分からなくなってしまい、（UNESCOの調査によると）15世紀ころにはルンビニ地域への巡礼も途絶えてしまったようだ、という。

ルンビニへの巡礼を行っている仏僧たちや仏教徒たち（2016年）

（1956年にビームラーオ・ラームジー・アンベードカルらが始めた仏教復興運動（新仏教運動）によってインドに数十万人の仏教徒が登場し、その結果 仏教の巡礼が再び行われるようになっていった。）

現在の仏僧や仏教徒の巡礼地として有名なところとしては、ルンビニ（生誕地）、ブッダガヤ（成道、つまり悟りに至った地）、サールナート（説法を開始した地）、クシナガラ（入滅した地）の「仏教四大聖地」がある。熱心な仏教徒が世界各地からやって来る。またそれにさらに4カ所を加えた「仏教八大聖地」へ巡礼する人もいる。

チベット[編集]

五体投地で巡礼を行うチベットの人々

チベットでは、聖地とされるカイラス山への巡礼が行われる。 12年に一度、「神々が集う」とされる聖なる年、巡礼年を迎える[5]。カイラス山の周囲の巡礼路を、チベット仏教徒は右回りに巡礼する（右繞[6][7]）。ボン教徒は左回りに巡礼する（左繞[8]）。近年は歩いて巡礼する人が多いが、熱心な人は五体投地によって進む。1回の五体投地で身長分しか進まないので、一周するのに3万5千回ほど五体投地を行うことになる[5]。

「コルラ (巡礼)」も参照

メソアメリカの巡礼[編集]

メソアメリカ文明では、洞窟、山岳、湖、泉、川などが、古代から現代にいたるまで信仰の対象になった。人々は聖地を巡礼して、コパル（香）をたき、七面鳥や酒などの捧げ物をする[9]。

16世紀のスペイン人の記録によれば、ユカタン半島のマヤ人はチチェン・イッツァのようなかつての都市、コスメルのような島を巡礼した。また、ナフ・トゥニッチの洞窟は特に重要であり、カラコル、カラクムル、ドス・ピラスなどの遠くの都市から巡礼が訪れたことが洞窟の壁に記されている[10]。

日本における巡礼[編集]

日本の仏教の巡礼[編集]

日本の仏教における巡礼について説明する。

養老2年（718年）、長谷寺の徳道の病の床での夢に閻魔大王が現れ、「世の苦しむ人々のために三十三箇所の観音霊場を作って巡礼を勧めよ」と言い、起請文と三十三の宝印を授けた。夢から覚めた徳道は宝印に従い三十三箇所の霊場を設けるが、世の信仰を得ることが出来ず発展しなかったため、宝印を摂津中山寺で石棺に収めたと伝えられる。

四国八十八箇所の巡礼（青龍寺）

空海（774年-835年）の入定後、修行僧らが空海の足跡を辿って遍歴の旅を始めた。時代が経つにつれ、空海ゆかりの地に加え、修験道の修行地や足摺岬のような補陀洛渡海の出発点となった地などが加わり、四国全体を「修行の場」とみなすような修行を、修行僧や修験者が実行した。こうして密教の修行僧などによって「修行として巡礼」が行われていたわけだが、室町時代にこれが庶民にも広がったと云われている。

「四国八十八箇所」も参照

寛和2年（986年）、19歳で出家した花山法皇は比叡山で修行の後、三十三箇所観音霊場巡礼を発願し、書写山円教寺の性空と共に中山寺で石棺の宝印を捜し出して永延2年（988年）に紀州熊野から宝印の三十三箇所霊場を巡礼し再興を祈願した。これが現在の西国三十三所の起源といわれている。

源頼朝（1147年 - 1199年）が深い観音信仰を持っていたことから、西国に倣って坂東三十三箇所霊場を発願、実朝の代になって成立したものと考えられている。福島県の八槻都々古別神社観音像の墨書銘に、「僧成弁が三十三箇所巡礼中に八溝山観音堂での三百日参篭中別当の求めによって天福2年（1234年）に観音像を作った」とある。このことからこれ以前に坂東三十三箇所が成立していたとみられる。

平安時代末期には、日本では飢饉が頻繁に起きたり疫病が流行し非常に多くの人々が死に、社会は乱れに乱れ、おまけに日本の仏教も次第に変質し、宗派の僧侶の多くも堕落して戒律を守らなくなってしまったり、人々の心を救うことはなおざりにするようになってしまっていた。まさに仏教で古くから「末法」として予言されていた通りのことが日本で起きてしまっていた。かくして末法思想が人々に支持されるようになった。「末法」になってしまったこの世でどうしたらよいのか？ 人々は悩み苦しんだ。末法という悲惨な状況を前にして日本の仏教では、大きく二つの潮流が生じた。

一方の浄土信仰をする人々は、（もうこの世では救われることは絶対に無い、と考えてしまい）遥か西方に「浄土」があると信じ、死後にそこに行けることで救われると信じ、極楽往生を願う巡礼が行われた（後白河法皇（1127年 - 1192年）の熊野詣でなど）。熊野を「極楽浄土の地」としてとらえ、熊野への巡礼がさかんになった。その理由として『日本書紀』の一書に「イザナミノミコトが紀伊国の熊野に葬られた」とされていること、熊野の語源説の一つに「クマ＝こもる」で「死者が籠る地」があることで、熊野を「死者の国」とみる考え方がもともとあったため、ともされる。奈良時代より修験道の修行地となっていた熊野三山の本宮を阿弥陀如来の西方極楽浄土、新宮を薬師如来の東方浄瑠璃浄土そして那智大社を「千手観音の南方補陀落浄土」として「現世の浄土の地」と考えることでその信仰が深まったと考えられる。

他方、日蓮（1222年 - 1282年)は「『法華経』二十八品、「妙法蓮華経」こそ釈迦が衆生救済の為に説いた真実の教えであり、この末法の世を正すものである」と説き、この世を諦めてしまって死後の西方浄土を願ったり念仏を唱えたりしてしまうのではなく、法華経を根本にすることで自分の生命のありかたを変えて、この世で実際に幸福を築くべきだと説いた。日蓮は弟子のひとりの（そして役人の仕事をし、仕事上の悩みをかかえた）四条頼基に対して「御みやづかいを法華経とをぼしめせ」つまり「あなたの普段の仕事の場こそが、法華経の行者であるあなたにとっての修行の場だと思いなさい」といった意味の内容を手紙で書いて諭したとされ、日蓮の弟子やその後の信者たちは「普段の仕事の場や普段の生活の場や普段の人間関係の場こそが修行の場である」と考える。そして世界は決して"俗なる場所"と"聖なる場所"に分けられているわけではない、と基本的に考え、巡礼という"聖なる場所"へ行く行為で自分が変われるなどとは期待しておらず、（日蓮の信徒は、本当に大切なのは巡礼ではなくて、普段の自分自身、つまりたとえば普段から自分の根底にある想いをよく選び、普段から全ての人々の幸福を願う想いを持ち、普段から良い言葉を選び周囲の人々に幸福をもたらすような言葉をかけ、普段から 幸福を皆にもたらすような良い行動をすることだ、などと考えているので）、結果として日蓮の信徒はいわゆる「巡礼」に熱中するようなことはあまりない。ただそれでも日蓮宗の多くの宗派では、法華経には「末法の世を救う上行菩薩世が出現する」「末法にこそ本仏が出現する」と予証されていた（予言されていた）と考えはするので、その本仏である日蓮ゆかりの久遠寺、池上本門寺、清澄寺、誕生寺（「日蓮宗四霊場」とも）のほか、鎌倉の地にある日蓮ゆかりの諸寺（安国論寺、長勝寺など）などへ巡礼を行なう人も（若干は）いる。

かくして日本では観音信仰、密教信仰（大師信仰）、浄土信仰、法華経信仰、日蓮への信仰 等々 それぞれの立場で巡礼が行われていたわけであるが、近世に入ると平和な世の中を反映して、庶民が信仰上の巡礼を目的としつつも旅行としても楽しむようになり、巡礼は大衆化した。

富士講の巡礼[編集]

江戸時代にさかんになった富士講では、富士山への巡礼（富士登山）を行い、また富士五湖や白糸の滝などを巡った。富士山までなかなか行くことができない人々は、住まいの近くに富士塚をつくりそこを登った。

お伊勢参り（伊勢講、お蔭参り）[編集]

台湾や韓国での、仏教の日本風巡礼[編集]

寺院に「札所」を定めて行う巡礼は日本固有のもので中国や朝鮮では見られない習慣だが、日本の西国三十三所を写した霊場が20世紀後半から21世紀初頭にかけて韓国や台湾で開創されている。

1984年には日本の楊谷寺の住職により韓国観音霊場が、1997年には同じく日本の永昌寺の住職により台湾三十三観音霊場 が開創されている。更に2008年には韓国の曹渓宗と韓国観光公社が協力して韓の国三十三観音聖地が開創されている。

なお、日本統治時代の朝鮮には寺院統制を目的に主要寺刹として朝鮮三十一本山を指定した他、独立後の韓国の曹渓宗が25教区を定めそれぞれ本寺を置いているが、これらを信仰の対象として巡礼が行われている（いた）かは確認出来ない。

主な霊場や巡礼地[編集]

詳細は「霊場」を参照
日本

ギャラリー[編集]

脚注[編集]

注

  1. ^ 明治以降、日本語の「巡禮（巡礼）」も各宗教の聖地を訪ねること全般を指している。そもそも「巡禮」という言葉自体にもともと、「神社や寺院でなければならない」などという意味はまったく込められていない。。 なお日本語では類語に「巡拝（じゅんぱい）」もあるが、「巡礼」は宗教色が強く、「巡拝」はどちらかと言えば観光や娯楽の意味合いが強い[要出典]と言う人もいる。
  2. ^ 麦角病はライ麦につく麦角菌に起因する病気であるが、巡礼中の断食により、汚染したライ麦を食べなくなったため治ったとも言う。このように「奇跡」とされるものには、科学的に説明がつく例もある。
  3. ^ プロテスタントの立場としては、そもそも聖書に神ヤハウェやイエスの命令として「（カトリックやオルトドクスの聖地への）巡礼を行え」とは全然書いていないので、聖書に本当に書かれていること（だけ）を重視するプロテスタントの大半の教派としては、巡礼は（/も）人間が勝手に作りだした習慣だと判断され、（カトリックが熱心に巡礼を行っていた歴史を知っているが）それを行ってきたことも間違いなのだ、と判断しているわけである。カトリック教会（や正教会）の幹部の人間の都合で勝手に作りだした諸習慣（悪名高き免罪符や、その他の無数の、教会組織の幹部が（自分に都合よく）勝手に作りだした根拠の無い（奇妙な）習慣）による悪影響を取り除くために命がけで抗議し その間違いを命がけで正した、という起源を持つプロテスタントの立場としては、「巡礼」という習慣（聖書に照らすと、そもそもそれを行なわなければならない根拠が不明で、聖書的には かなり怪しい習慣）に対しても冷淡にならざるを得ないわけである。

出典

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s {スーパーニッポニカ「巡礼」星野英紀 執筆
  2. ^ a b 大稔哲也「イスラームの巡礼・参詣―エジプトの聖墓参詣を中心に―」『四国遍路と世界の巡礼』法藏館、2007年、169-183頁。ISBN 9784831856814。
  3. ^ a b c Paul Gwynne (2009). World Religions in Practice: A Comparative Introduction. Blackwell. ISBN 9781405167024
  4. ^ 渡辺研二『ジャイナ教 非暴力・非所有・非殺生―その教義と実生活』論創社、2005年、293-297頁。ISBN 4846003132。
  5. ^ a b NHK BS「チベット カイラス巡礼」2015年1月4日放送。
  6. ^ 精選版 日本国語大辞典『右繞・右遶』 - コトバンク
  7. ^ 大辞林 第三版『右繞』 - コトバンク
  8. ^ 日本大百科全書(ニッポニカ)『ボン教』 - コトバンク
  9. ^ Pilgrimage to Broken Mountain: A Nahua Ritual for Abundant Crops, Aztec Page at Mexicolore
  10. ^ Witschey, Walter R. T. (2016). “Rites and Rituals”. In Walter R. T. Witschey. Encyclopedia of the Ancient Maya. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 295-296. ISBN 0759122865

参考資料[編集]

関連書籍[編集]

関連項目[編集]

外部リンク[編集]

ウィキメディア・コモンズには、巡礼に関連するメディアがあります。
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