A secular spiritual pilgrimage around the Res publica
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| L. to r. Andrew James Brown, Caterina Berbenni-Rehm and Satinder Gill |
At the recent AI & Society International Conference in Cambridge in October 2024, I was invited to take part in a dialogue with Caterina Berbenni-Rehm on the ways we conduct ourselves in life in connection with the “Res publica”, i.e. the things we all share, and what are sometimes referred to as being society’s “public good/s” and the published version of the talk I gave can be read at this link.
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Caterina brought to the conversation some of the important insights of her brother Father Gianfranco Berbenni a Franciscan Capucin monk (1950-2024) [see n. 1 below], and I was there to bring some of the insights of the 20th-century Japanese Unitarian, advocate of free/liberative-religion (自由宗教 jiyū shūkyō), educator and interfaith pioneer, Imaoka Shin’ichirō [今岡信一良] (1881-1988) [see n. 2 below]. Since this was a genuine dialogue, I was not absolutely sure what I was going to say about Imaoka-sensei’s thinking on this subject until I had first heard Caterina’s presentation about her brother’s thinking. The particular passage of Padre Gianfranco’s which powerfully struck me, and led to my own contribution, was his recognition that
“…the person is at the centre of the political and social order because he or she is an end and not a means. The person is a social being by nature, not by choice or by virtue of a pure contractual convention. To realise himself as a person, he/she needs the interweaving of relationships that he/she establishes with other persons. He thus finds himself at the centre of a network formed by concentric circles: the family, the environment in which he lives and works, the neighbourhood community, the nation and finally humanity. The person draws from each of these circles the necessary elements for his or her own growth and at the same time contribute to their refinement.”
Hearing these words, I then chose to talk about Imaoka-sensei’s creation of a secular pilgrimage designed to manifest, in tangible, practical ways, something very similar to Padre Gianfranco’s “network of concentric circles” in order to help his “pilgrim” students become responsible and engaged citizens, filled with a deep understanding of, passion for and commitment to, the public good.
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| Map of Tokyo (1930) |
In 1934, Imaoka-sensei was principle of an important private school in Tokyo, the Seisoku Academy,
and he was looking for ways to encourage his students, not only to be
creative, free and enquiring individuals, but also to be people who
would be motivated and able to go out into the world to create, and
indeed serve and maintain, the Res publica, the public good or public
things. The question was, how was he to go about encouraging the latter
and so truly offer his students what he called an “integrated education”
(綜合教育 sōgō kyōiku).
Clearly, a lot of this education
could be done in the school itself but Imaoka realised that Greater
Tokyo could utilised as an extension of the school’s own facilities.
Now, a less imaginative person might simply have instigated a programme
of school trips to various places in Tokyo, but Imaoka-sensei saw that
these excursions and visits could easily “degenerate into mere
sightseeing.” And his genius was to realise there was a way of emulating
“the beautiful custom” of the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage (西国三十三所, Saigoku Sanjūsan-sho), a pilgrimage to thirty-three Buddhist temples throughout the Kansai region of Japan. The principal image in each temple is Kannon, better known to us in the West as the Bodhisattva of Compassion (sometimes called the “Goddess of Mercy”).
It is traditional for pilgrims to wear white clothing and conical straw
hats and to carry walking sticks. This was, of course, because in the
past the route was followed on foot, but today most pilgrims travel by
cars or train. Pilgrims record their progress in a stamp book (集印帳 shūinchō),
which the temple staff marked with red stamps and Japanese calligraphy
indicating the temple number, the temple name, and the specific name of
the Kannon image.
Imaoka-sensei began, therefore, to develop for
his students a new pilgrimage consisting of thirty-three sites in
Greater Tokyo that would not only take in traditional sacred religious
sites, both Buddhist and Shinto, but would take in places connected with
the wider history of Japan as well as more modern sites that would
normally be considered secular. What some of those were I’ll come back
to in a moment.
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| A stamp book (集印帳 shūinchō) |
So, where did they go? Naturally, they were to visit various temples, both Buddhist and Shinto and well as various important Imperial sites and those connected with the nation’s military history (not that Imaoka-sensei was, himself, a supporter of military action of any kind). Also on the list are various famous sites/memorials to important religious, political and artistic figures, both ancient and modern. But in addition these, perhaps obvious sites, we find Imaoka-sensei adding the following, less obvious sites: the Prefectural City Hall, the Bank of Japan, the Stock Exchange, the Rice Exchange, the Imperial University, the Diet Building, the Prime Minister’s Residence, various Government Offices and Statues, the Red Cross Society, the Broadcasting Station, the Science Museum, the Zoo, the Botanic Garden, cemeteries and the city’s crematorium, newspaper companies and department stores, St. Luke’s Hospital, the Central Market, the Sumida and Tama Rivers with their various factories and industrial sites, the various foreign embassies, the observatory in Mitaka Village, water reservoirs, the Sewage Treatment Plant, the port, and lastly, the International Airport.
At each of these sites
Imaoka-sensei hoped that his students would begin to get the integrated
education he desired for all people which would break down the
arbitrary distinction between what we call the sacred and what we call
the secular, what we call the self and what we call society. In other
words, it as a project to help people see all these things and
themselves as being part of one extraordinary, integrated whole, a
co-operative society. Now, obviously, I haven’t got the space to
illustrate every integrated lesson he hoped his students would learn, so
here are just three.
“For those seeking to transcend reality and
yearn for the eternal world” he felt that a visit to the crematorium
“provides a profound lesson.”
In the garden in front of the
treasure hall at the Meiji Shrine he tells his students to pay attention
to the “exemplary view that takes advantage of the illusion created by
limited visual fields.” Imoaka-sensei then observes that by visiting
this site “we can also study practical physics (物理学).”
At two of
the Government sites he also encourages students to look at the three
standards of measurement for the metre and the kilogram, and he notes
that “[t]he need for precision in measuring instruments is absolute from
both the standpoint of mathematics and physics and in practical life.
In this sense, although these standards are merely alloys of platinum
and iridium, they even give us a sense of sacredness and inviolability
(神聖不可侵)” and an ability to “comprehend the profound sanctity and
solemnity of rules and standards.”
I hope you can see that
Imaoka-sensei created a real-world secular religious — or perhaps
better, a secular spiritual — pilgrimage around the Res publica. It took
students not only to physical places, to sites, but as you have already
heard, to meet with and collect the signatures of those who were
actually running and maintaining those sites, from grand ministers of
state, priests and professors, to those working in factories, the sewage
treatment plant and the crematorium. All of them were sacred, all of
them were holy, all of them were worthy of honour as secular
Bodhisattvas of Compassion serving the Res publica.
Imaoka-sensei
could see — as I think we are all also now beginning to see — that a
modern secular, democratic society is in great need for something like
this spiritual practice if its citizens are to become properly educated,
passionate about and willing to uphold and maintain the Res publica,
the public good and public things.
And, you know what,
immediately upon finishing I was approached by three genuinely excited
delegates who told me they were going to see if they could do something
similar in their own contexts, in Turkey, Portland Oregon, and York here
in the UK — and I’ve already been contacted again by two of them to see
how we can take that forward. New pilgrimages are, it seems, just
beginning. So, perhaps we, too, should try to initiate something like
that here in Cambridge ourselves? Any volunteers to help me out?
All quotations are from my, as yet, unpublished English translation of an essay called, “Greater Tokyo as an Educational Environment” (教育環境としての大東京), published in Shōwa 9 (1934) by the Tokyo Prefecture School Affairs Section (東京府学務課).
End Notes
n. 1 Father Gianfranco Berbenni studied History of the Church/es (Magna cum Laude) at the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome and Psychology of communication (Laude) at the Università Pontificia Salesiana, Turin, Italy. His additional expertise spanned from Mathematics, Chemistry, Geopolitical Analysis, Nanotechnology, Methodologies for Multicultural Psychology, Cognitive Science, Science of Communication, Ethics, Music. He elaborated global strategies focused on the methods of application of advanced technologies and their consequences in remote regions and the minor civilizations. From 1975 onwards, he became involved in the scientific studies of the Holy Shroud of Turin in the Centro Romano di Sindonologia working with internationally renowned NASA scientists. Thanks to the long years’ experience with new technologies used to study such famous historical piece, he was involved in some important research projects, among which ITER-Isotopic Technologies Applied on the Analysis of Ancient Roman Mortars, one of the 20 success stories of the European Commission DG Research, finished in 2005 with excellent scientific results of high importance for various applications on the territories. Studying the Tabula Peutingeriana (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_Peutingeriana) he reiterated the importance of the availability to the public of all the knowledge concerning our cultural heritage, which is embodied in non-tangible issues (cultural landscape, languages, ethnics, traditions, philosophy, religions, inter- and cross-cultural issues), as well as tangible artefacts (archaeological sites, monuments, paintings, sculptures, etc), as an essential element in the quality of human life. He was the founder of the MultiUniversus® Foundation (https://multiuniversus.org/).
n.2 Imaoka Shin’ichirō (1881-1988) was a pioneering Japanese religious leader and educator, deeply involved in the development of a creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion/spirituality (jiyū shūkyō 自由宗教), and the promotion of interfaith dialogue, especially through his involvement with the International Association for Free Religion (IARF). Born into a Shin Buddhist farming family, he first became a Congregationalist Christian pastor, but he eventually left traditional Christianity to embrace a broader, more inclusive spiritual path. Influenced by Quaker mysticism, liberal Buddhism, liberal Shintoism, Seiza meditation (Quiet Sitting), John Haynes Holmes’ Community Church movement and the philosophy of Henri Bergson, he played a key role in the Japanese Unitarian Mission and the Japanese Free Religious movement and the promotion of the idea that there is no fundamental distinction between the sacred and the secular, and that all human activities — politics, economy, education, art, labour and even domestic affairs — can also be expressions of free religion. As principal of Seisoku High School in Tokyo between 1925 and 1960, he promoted academic excellence and progressive values, receiving multiple honours for his educational work. Throughout his life he tirelessly promoted the idea that learning is a lifelong journey — one that transcends formal education and embraces the continuous pursuit of understanding across religious traditions, cultures, and philosophies.
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