July–September 2015, Volume 42
Features
Religious Rituals and Their Meaning for Today
The Penguin Dictionary of Religions offers a broadly applicable description of the often contested category of ritual, defining it as “patterned behavior, often communal, consisting of prescribed actions performed periodically and/or repetitively.” While the study of rituals has served as a cornerstone in anthropological approaches to various cultures, rituals are integral to the social life of vast numbers of people.
Rituals are essential to religion and religious institutions. Rituals empower and integrate members of religious communities, encode and communicate religious ideals, and accompany or illuminate many kinds of religious experience. Rituals are also ways of showing reverence for the sacred.
As many societies become increasingly secular, however, religion plays a less important role in people’s lives, and persisting forms of religion undergo substantial change. Japan is a case in point. Have religious rituals lost social relevance, and are they also becoming a less visible part of religion?
In Japan, where form holds special importance for many types of traditional arts, rituals continue to be important in the training and performance of artists. Rituals are still an essential part of many rites of passage and festivals, even if their religious origins are often forgotten. However, do rituals continue to be a path to religious truth?
We hope to examine four aspects of religious rituals in modern societies, not only in Japan but other countries with different religious and cultural backgrounds: (1) forms, (2) meanings (3) role in personal religious experience or expression, and (4) framing of social experience and relevance. We hope this approach will achieve a broad overview of the role of religious ritual in modern societies.
Features
The Right Way to Hold Rituals
by Hideyuki Kobayashi
The Heritage of Ritual Activity for Contemporary Society
by John Nelson
It is part of our heritage as human beings to enact performances and promote beliefs that ensure order, stability, prosperity, and comfort while, at the same time, addressing the forces of chaos and disruption.
The Buddhist Critique of Ritualism
by David R. Loy
Ritualism is “the belief that it is necessary for rites to be carried out,” because the ritual accomplishes something in and of itself, apart from our attitude as we perform it. In contrast, rituals . . . can be extraordinarily valuable if and when we undertake them in the proper spirit, because they can help to nurture and embody the mental transformation that is the most important goal.
Catholic Celebration of the Eucharist
by Leo D. Lefebure
For Catholics, the Eucharist interprets the meaning of life, shapes personal and communal identity, and calls for lifegiving action in the world. In many contexts the Eucharist is intimately linked to work for social, political, and economic justice.
Performance, Asceticism, and the Power of Ritual: The Repentance Liturgy of Tōdaiji
by Lucia Dolce
Repentance in Japanese Buddhism was not conceived as a mental process of individual awareness but was enacted in a set of ritual actions, including physical movements, melodic chanting, and recitations.
The Voices of the Ancestors and Ritual Change in Mount Ontake Pilgrimage Confraternities
by Dominick Scarangello
Ontake confraternity rituals draw on both Shintō and Buddhism, epitomize many of the common characteristics of Japanese religiosity, and also include shamanic rites. These confraternities have always been highly independent, with each group possessing its own unique elements, but the veneration of confraternity ancestors is a widely shared practice.
Essay
Make This an Era of Respect for Other Faiths
by Noriyuki Ueda
Respect for another’s faith is part and parcel of one’s own faith. I believe that this is what our twenty-first-century civilization should be aiming for.
Niwano Peace Prize
Bringing Down the Walls
by Esther Abimiku Ibanga
The Niwano Peace Foundation awarded the thirty-second Niwano Peace Prize on May 14 of this year to Esther Abimiku Ibanga, a Pentecostal pastor in Jos, Nigeria, and founder of the Women Without Walls Initiative (WOWWI). Pastor Ibanga was honored for working extensively to foster and facilitate dialogue and mediation between warring religious and tribal communities in her country, advocating for the rights of the socially vulnerable, and promoting women’s empowerment through skills acquisition. By uniting the voices of women arising from their individual religious faiths, she has encouraged and guided women’s actions to build peace not only in Nigeria but all over the world. The presentation ceremony took place in Tokyo. In addition to an award certificate, Pastor Ibanga received a medal and twenty million Japanese yen. The following is her acceptance speech.
Essay
Buddhism and Social Engagement (1) A History of Engagement
by Ranjana Mukhopadhyaya
A further important theme for Engaged Buddhism is the links made with the society as a whole by Buddhists and Buddhist organizations as they pursue their social activities.
