Such Largness—The Quiet Opening of Imaoka Shin’ichirō’s Free-Religion

Such Largness—The Quiet Opening of Imaoka Shin’ichirō’s Free-Religion
A draft Foreword to the Selected Essays of Imaoka Shin’ichirō (1881-1988)

A recorded version of this talk can be found at this link 

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At this link you can find a selection of newly translated essays from a book called, “One Hundred Years of Life”, published in 1981 by the influential twentieth‑century Japanese educator and inter-faith pioneer, Imaoka Shin’ichirō‑sensei (1881–1988), who developed and advocated a dynamic, creative, inquiring, free and liberative religious path he called jiyū shūkyō [自由宗教]. I consistently translate this term in these essays as “free‑religion” (note the hyphen).

Unlike most introductions of this kind, I won’t begin with a biographical sketch. Instead, I want to encourage you to discover Imaoka‑sensei’s basic life story through his own words in his short autobiographical essay called, “My Soul’s Pilgrimage—One Aspect of the History of Japanese Free‑Religion”. Please feel free to read this before continuing reading this introduction.

Here, I want to offer a preliminary sense of how embracing the path of free‑religion/jiyū shūkyō — and becoming a free‑religionist/ a jiyū shūkyōjin — might shape your own life of faith and trust. If I can do that, I hope it will inspire you to explore, with sustained and disciplined attention over the course of your whole life, the profound possibilities of this unique spiritual path.

The best way I have found to do this is through a beautiful and insightful poem by  Jane Hirshfield called, “The Supple Deer”:

The quiet opening
between fence strands
perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves,
four feet off the ground,
the deer poured through it.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don’t know how a stag turns
into a stream, an arc of water.
I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer—

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.

When I first read this poem, at the point where Hirshfield speaks of feeling “such accurate envy”, perhaps like you, I fully expected her to tell me she was envious of the supple deer. But no! Quite unexpectedly and wonderfully she reveals she is envious of the fence and its “quiet opening”, an opening so porous that, through it, “such largeness” could pass.

Put simply, I take it that Imaoka‑sensei’s free‑religion is something akin to Hirshfield’s fence. It offers a person a strong but flexible religious form and structure designed always to make a “quiet opening” through which the “supple deer” can always-already be passing freely, to and fro, unobstructed like a stream or arc of life‑giving water. That “supple deer” — the “largeness”— are, of course, but two possible ways of talking about the ineffable “no‑thing” evoked throughout human history under names such as God, Yahweh, Allah, Brahman, Amida Buddha, Buddha Nature, Kami‑sama, Great Nature, The Light (O-hikari), deus sive natura, or – as Imaoka‑sensei once called it (with more than a nod to Henri Bergson) – the “Great Life of free and unobstructed creative evolution”.

Of course, some people will immediately object and say that any kind of form and structure will always place limits upon religion, thus turning it into an unfree religion. But Imaoka‑sensei always understood that, just as life cannot exist without taking some kind of limited form and structure, neither can religion – not even free‑religion. This truth helps us begin to see how Imaoka‑sensei’s free‑religion actually works.

First, we need to remember that one possible root of the word “religion” is religare, meaning “to bind fast”, and at first glance any kind of binding might seem to be at odds with freedom. But if, as I have already noted, we hyphenate “free” and “religion” — turning it into a single word, “free‑religion” — the meaning shifts and becomes: what binds us together is precisely what frees us to live the fullest, most unobstructed, creative human life possible. 

In other words, what may appear from one point of view to be a limitation on our freedom can, from another point of view, become a freeing and enabling condition that allows us to experience, and remain open to, the “largeness”, the reality of which would otherwise be invisible and inaccessible to us. 

The point is that only by having some kind of structure and form does human life (indeed, any form of life or existence) become possible in the first place. Therefore, the great aim — and hardest task — of free‑religion is not to be free of all limitations but, rather, to ensure that free‑religion’s form and structure — if you like, the limiting “cords” that bind its members together as free‑religionists — are always of the right kind, namely, creative and ultimately liberative. At this point, it’s important to re-emphasise that, for Imaoka‑sensei, free‑religion is simultaneously individual and profoundly social.

And here we can return to the thin metal strands of Hirshfield’s fence. First, we can see that they are very thinly drawn — they’re minimalistic; and, second, we can see that although the strands are very strong, they are also capable of flexing up and down. These two characteristics make the fence strong enough to do its job (in the case of an actual fence, defining the extent of the farm and keeping its livestock from escaping and getting hopelessly lost in the wilderness) but without, at the same time, losing the porosity that allows the “supple deer” to pass freely and unobstructedly, to and fro through it.

So, in free‑religion, what are the equivalents of those thin metal strands? Well, I take it that they are Imaoka‑sensei’s “Principles of Living”, three versions of which appear in the Selected Essays that you can read HERE and HERE and HERE. But here, let me present a composite version of his Principles, so you have them in mind as I proceed. 

But, before I read them you need to know that you’ll hear a couple of untranslated Japanese terms. One you already know, jiyū shūkyō [自由宗教] — “free-religion”. The second is kyōkai [教會] which, in Imaoka-sensei’s usage is best translated, not as “church” or “congregation”, but as “gathering” — a gathering devoted to the mutual refinement of its members through communal learning, moral–ethical cultivation, and the shared exchange of ideas about a universal, dynamic, creative and liberative free-religion [自由宗教 jiyū shūkyō], rather than the transmission of fixed doctrines. 

1) I place trust in myself. 

I am aware of my own autonomous selfhood, creativity and sociality, and find life worth of living. Autonomous selfhood, creativity and sociality can also be expressed as personhood, divinity, and Buddha-nature.

2) I place trust in others. 

Others are neighbours who possess their own selves as others. By affirming myself, I inevitably place trust in others.

3) I place trust in cooperative community.

Neither self nor others exist in isolation or self-sufficiency; instead, they inevitably establish a mutual interdependency, solidarity, and a cooperative community.

4) I place trust in the trinity of self, others, and cooperative community.

The self, others, and cooperative community, while each possessing unique individualities, return-to-one. Therefore, there is no precedence or superiority among them; each always presupposes the other two.

5) I place trust in the unity of life and nature — the cosmic cooperative community.

The trinity of self, others, and the cooperative community further unites with heaven and earth and all things, to form a universal/cosmic cooperative community.

6) I place trust in the kyōkai.

The kyōkai is a microcosm of the universal/cosmic cooperative community. I can only be myself by being a member of the kyōkai.

7) I place trust in jiyū shukyō.

While placing trust in the kyōkai, the endless pursuit and improvement towards universal and ultimate truth is the core of religious life. Such a dynamic religion is called jiyū shukyō.

 I hope you can see that, like the fence strands in Hirshfield’s poem, Imaoka‑sensei’s ”Principles of Living” are also thinly drawn — minimalistic — whilst simultaneously being very strong and flexible (enough). Although they clearly delineate what is — and, therefore, what is not — free‑religion, they do not create an impervious barrier that cuts it off from everything else lying outside its current local, particular domain and expression. The Principles’ strength defines the community’s shared free‑religious path; and their openness and flexibility ensures that such “largeness” remains unobstructed, and is able to move freely, always keeping free‑religionists open to new light and new truth, and thus capable of claiming the great gift of free‑religion: the freedom to be tomorrow what we are not today.

And the role of these principles in a person’s life? Well, it is twofold. First, they help us create strong, local, coherent‑enough free‑religious co‑operative communities (kyōkai) with their own unique external flavours, customs, and ceremonies; and, secondly, they remind us constantly that the purpose of such communities is always to be working to ensure that all things are always returning‑to‑one (in Japanese the term is kiitsu [帰一]), and that, therefore, they belong to what Imaoka‑sensei comes to call the “cosmic co‑operative community.”

It is important to realise that the ”Principles of Living“ ensure that the life‑journey of each individual free‑religious person (a jiyū shūkyōjin) and each individual free‑religious community (a kiitsu kyōkai) will be unique. But, despite the differences that will exist between each person’s or community’s playing‑out of free‑religion, they are all still bound together in a wider free‑religious community by sharing the same set of underlying principles. Some individuals and communities will undertake their free‑religious journeys with a particularly Buddhist flavour; others will have flavours that are predominantly Shintō, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Humanist; whilst still others may express their free‑religion in ways that draw upon multiple traditions simultaneously. This is possible because the “Principles of Living” simply do not demand of a person or community that they all be alike in terms of their unique external flavours, customs, ceremonies and forms. Free‑religionists know, deep in their hearts and minds, the truth that we need not think alike to love and act alike.

Before I conclude, I want to address an important question that will quickly be asked by those who become enthused by the idea of free‑religion, namely: “Where can I find a free‑religious community to join?” Alas, such communities are not always easy to find, but a couple of practical suggestions can be made.

The first is to say that, in principle — and Imaoka-sensei was always saying this — it is always possible to practise free‑religion within an existing, established religious community, so long as it allows you openly to practise it in a way that is fully in alignment with the “Principles of Living.” Such a community may not itself be fully free‑religious, but if it allows you to be a genuine free‑religionist, then one can remain a member of it with a clean heart, if, perhaps, not quite full belief. Such liberal, established religious communities may be rare, but they do exist, and Imaoka‑sensei likened them to “ready‑made” clothes; if they fit, and are comfortable and serviceable enough for you, then all well and good.

But Imaoka-sensei always realised, and I fully realise, that many of you will not be able to find such an established religious community to belong to with a clean heart and full belief. And this brings me to my second suggestion — something that Imaoka‑sensei likened to a “made‑to‑order” suit of clothes. And, via this link, you can find a minimalist free-religious liturgy — a word that simply means ‘the work of the people’ — that you might consider using as a pattern or model to help set up and structure your own, “made-to-order” free‑religious community — a Kiitsu Kyōkai or a Returning‑to‑One Gathering. One that meets either face to face in your local neighbourhood or, if that is not possible, online. Naturally, the liturgy I offer is only a suggestion, a pattern but it does have the benefit of being the one I have successfully used to setting up a small, online free‑religious community that has its roots in the local Unitarian community in Cambridge where I am minister. At the very least it has the attraction of providing a way to meet together that is close to the way Imaoka‑sensei eventually came to structure his own Tokyo Kiitsu Kyōkai meetings from 1948 onwards. But, as always in free‑religion, other ways of meeting together in a free‑religious fashion are always possible. However, I feel it’s important to say that I think some time of quiet sitting/meditation, and a brief, thoughtful offering‑up of a liberative, free‑religious idea, followed by a period of free, open conversation, are indispensable fundamental elements of free‑religion.

And, with this last point made, and remembering that Imaoka-sensei once said that, at heart, free-religion is bowing to each other, I’ll now take my leave by placing my hands together and bowing towards you, and let you explore Imaoka‑sensei’s essays at your own pace.

In Gasshō, Andrew