Shugendo (lit. "The way of power") is a Japanese syncretistic religion of mountain asceticism, combining elements from Shinto, Shamanism, Taoist magic, Confucian ethics, and above all Mahayana Buddhism. Its proclaimed purposes are to achieve enlightenment in this life, to gain magical powers through ascetic practices in the mountains, and to use those powers to benefit the people. Shugendo integrates a complex of ascetic practices through which practitioners attain and enhance spiritual power for soteriological and pragmatic purposes. This project elucidates the process of empowerment, specifically how practitioners conceptualize, appropriate, and enact spiritual power in contemporary society. This research combines symbolic analysis with an investigation of the experiences that participants identify as integral to their practices. Fieldwork was conducted from March 2009 to August 2010 in the Omine-Kumano mountain regions. Ethnographic data was collected through participant observation and interviews. I used literary sources to contextualize the project, examining how broader sociocultural dynamics structure the cultural categories of experience. In this dissertation, I combine Peircian semiotics and radical empiricism in order to elucidate the fluid relationship between experience and symbolic processes in Shugendo. My argument is that experience is the means for practitioners to enter into new symbolic realities wherein one achieves harmony or communication with a sacred landscape and its divine powers. Through experience in austerities, participants first dissolve and then reconstitute their symbolic constructs of reality. In doing so, they facilitate a mode of symbolic "embeingment" where sacred modes of perception are experienced as real and immediate. Experience is a pathway towards Shugendo constructs of empowerment (reiryoku, goriyaku), enlightenment (satori, kaigan) and meaningful being (yuigi inochi). Within Japanese cultural logic, empowerment and meaningful being are beneficial in discourses of health and illness. This dissertation offers a perspective on the experiences that cultivate a change of being in the world, the benefits that emerge from this religious system, and how the range of meanings for participants intersects with contemporary Japanese culture. Throughout this text I selectively use Peirce's semiotic model to illustrate the complex interrelationship between experiencing Shugendo and its rich symbolic system. In so doing, I shed light on the experience of a religious system that lies at the heart of Japanese religiosity. The combination of Peirce and radical empiricism expands the range of theoretical approaches towards religious experience and provide a unique lens into the world of Shugendo as it is understood by the participants themselves. Rather than presenting meaning as a collective understanding, my research explicates the range and diversity of interpretations that make Shugendo meaningful. This report introduces the varying types of participants and practices, their motivations, experiences, and how they think of, feel, and manage spiritual power in their lives. Drawing upon localized body subjectivities, I provide a unique perspective on health and illness in Japan. Contrasting approaches that reduce healing to a psychosomatic process, ascetic practices in Shugendo contribute towards a holistic form of healing. Healing efficacy is not a process of response to a particular ailment. Rather, Shugendo intersects with health in the social, religious, and medical domains. Health is closely related to Shugendo discourses of meaningful being and empowerment. These facilitate a harmonic balance both with individuals and between people and their environments. This study is an empirical one; and is promising for a more general meditation on ritual because Shugendo undermines distinctions between mind and body, tradition and modernity, and ritual and everyday life in contemporary Japan. The results of this project are valuable to Japanese studies, anthropology, and cross-disciplinary examination of religious healing. It meets the needs for localized studies reflecting the variation within specific regions of practice. It offers a realistic account of training, local theories of efficacy, and its applications in everyday life. From this material we can revisit broader notions of health and illness, not only within the religious context, but also more generally in culture. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2011. / August 1, 2011. / asceticism, Health, Japan, Shugendo, Spiritual Power / Includes bibliographical references. / Michael Uzendoski, Professor Directing Dissertation; Kathleen Erndl, University Representative; Glen Doran, Committee Member; Bruce Grindal, Committee Member; Joseph Hellweg, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_253255 |
| Contributors | Rill, Bryan R. (authoraut), Uzendoski, Michael (professor directing dissertation), Erndl, Kathleen (university representative), Doran, Glen (committee member), Grindal, Bruce (committee member), Hellweg, Joseph (committee member), Department of Anthropology (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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