Jjiyū Shūkyō (a creative, free spirituality) as a Silken Tent
As some of you will know, last Sunday, Easter Sunday, I had occasion to cite some lines from William Blake’s “Augeries of Innoncence” in which he spoke about a joy with silken twine that runs through every grief and pine. If you were here you will also know that we had a couple of visitors from New Unity, Newington Green, one of whom — a retired teacher of English and American literature — took the opportunity, in the conversation immediately following the address, to recall a line or two which also mentioned silken twines, taken from a sonnet by Robert Frost.
Well, after the service I got out my copy of Frost’s poems from my study and our visitor — alas, and forgive me, whose name I cannot recall — found the poem and read it to me. It is called “The Silken Tent” and it goes like this:
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one’s going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
Our visitor concluded that, perhaps, here was the seed of another thought for the day. And, as this address proves, she was right, and I thank her for it.
A cursory dive into the poem’s history reveals that the original subject — the unnamed “She” of the first line — was a real woman, namely, Frost’s friend, secretary and lover, Kay Morrison. This was a relationship that created more than a few upsetting waves in Frost’s life. [If you want to follow up that story here’s a link to an essay by Jeffrey Meyers called “An Earring for Erring: Robert Frost and Kay Morrison” (The American Scholar 65, no. 2 (1996): 219–41).]
However, the value of any great piece of literature is that it is always able to offer each new reader more meanings than the initial meaning that was in the mind of the author. Indeed, as the philosopher Iain Thomson, reminds us:
“. . . what makes the great texts ‘great’ is not that they continually offer the same ‘eternal truths’ for each generation to discover but, rather, that they remain deep enough — meaning-full enough — to continue to generate new readings, even revolutionary re-readings which radically reorient the sense of the work that previously guided us” (Figure/Ground Communication interview).
And so, when I first read it in the context of the Cambridge community’s life together, the “She” immediately struck me as also speaking about jiyū shūkyō — the kind of creative, free spirituality or free-religion espoused by Imaoka Shin’ichirō (1881-1988) that we here in Cambridge are currently exploring together as our own community’s centre of gravity.
So, just how is jiyū shūkyō like a silken tent in a field at midday, when the sunny summer breeze has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, so that within its guy ropes it gently sways at ease?
Well, let me try to show you by pointing straight away to what I think is jiyū shūkyō’s supporting central cedar pole, namely, Imaoka-sensei’s (1881-1988) “My Principles of Living.” To remind you:
Now, these seven principles, acting as a supporting, central, cedar pole, simultaneously points heavenward and earthward towards what Imaoka-sensei calls a universal co-operative society. And, over the past couple of years, I have increasingly come to feel that for any community which chooses to adopt these Principles of Living, it signifies about it a characteristic sureness of the soul. Another way of putting this idea is to say that this heavenward and earthward pointing cedar pole — this jiyū shūkyō — provides a community with a firm but always flexing centre of gravity around which it can gather, and which enables its canvas, i.e. the broad swathe of its members, to touch every thing on earth the compass around about it.
But, as befits a genuinely creative spirituality or religion that is fundamentally characterised by the adjective “free”, jiyū shūkyō’s sureness of soul seems to owe naught to any single cord because, strictly speaking, it is held by none. It’s important to see that in jiyū shūkyō there is no single, inflexible doctrinal cord that gives it its strength and character because its sureness of the soul exists thanks to its central pole being held heavenward by being loosely bound by countless silken ties of love and thought. This is a vital image to get into one’s imagination because, the term “loosely bound” is an excellent way of defining what is meant by one of the possible English translations of jiyū shūkyō, namely, “free-religion.” One of the root meanings of “religio” is, remember, “to bind” and so, keeping to the language of the poem, “free-religion” may be unfolded as meaning that, that which keeps this community sure and yet freely moving around its central pole, is that which binds us in community, namely, the countless, flexible, but strong, silken ties of love and thought we each individually bring to our meetings.
Depending on local circumstances, as the wind blows from this or that direction, or as the sun moves around the horizon drying out this or that silken tie in turn, or when, from the inside, we lean against one side of the tent or the other, one of those silken ties will become slightly taut as it does its gentle, but vital work of holding-up our tent, and keeping our centre of gravity pointing simultaneously earthward and heavenward. Only in these moments of slight tautness are we made aware of the slightest bondage which is necessary to keep a community free, open, upright and living with an appropriate sureness of the soul.
And, finally, surely the metaphor of such a tent is a perfect one for a creative, free spirituality such as jiyū shūkyō, which is always-already a pilgrim faith for the open road; and every free spirit who has decided to seek out and claim our liberal religious tradition’s central gift, namely, the freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today, will always need just such an effective, strong but lightweight shelter for the journey.
And that is why for me:
[Jiyū shūkyō] is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one’s going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
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