GRANITE FALLS, Wash.— The road from Seattle to the Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America winds past cities, strip malls and suburban sprawl, past old farms, mobile homes and lawns decorated with junk cars. It does not feel like a sacred pilgrimage.
But here, about an hour northeast of Seattle, the Rev. Koichi Barrish -- a former California surfer turned aikido teacher and Shinto priest -- prays, performs purification ceremonies, and teaches aikido, a Japanese martial art. The shrine itself consists mainly of a large open and airy hall with wooden floors, Japanese style doors, and windows that open out onto a statue garden. Beyond that is the Pilchuck River, which borders the 25-acre property.
The shine is a product of what initially began as Barrish’s fascination with human beings’ relationship to nature and blossomed into a full-scale Japanese style shrine, complete with fountains, stone archways, lions and Japanese lanterns.
“I was really interested in the idea of human beings in harmony with nature, that whole thing. Really being a part of stuff, really acting appropriately and not feeling a dichotomy between oneself and nature was really kind of a pretty big deal to me as a young person, and still is today,” Barrish, 57, said, explaining how he got from growing up surfing in 1960s California to Shinto.
In a sense, the American Tsubaki shrine and Barrish are examples of East meets West, of Western sensibilities turning toward Eastern philosophy, religion and thought and appropriating them alongside of other religious traditions. According to his website, Barrish, a Caucasian, is the first American to become a Shinto priest.
Barrish says he did not grow up in any particular religious tradition but turned toward Shinto as a natural progression of his relationship with nature and with the martial art aikido.
“The most important part of Shinto is to be very, very grateful for connections of life,” he says. “Human beings come from nature, return to nature. In Shinto thinking, it’s come from the sun, return to the sun.”
Shinto’s connection to the natural world is probably closest to that found in Native American spirituality, he says. “Shinto is a kind of thinking of original blessing,” explains Barrish.
Human beings are “children of the divine world. As children of the divine world, people begin very close to the divine but through our own actions and the actions of others, the obscuring vibration comes,” Barrish says. “We become concerned about something in the future or something in the past, and pretty soon we don’t have our real vitality.”
Purification, such as the daily morning worship at Shinto shrines, removes those obstructions so that human beings can exist more fully in the present.
Being in touch with nature brings a person in harmony with what Barrish calls the force behind all life. He calls this life force “the big beat, it’s what’s going on.”
Here he finds his own faith. “I have faith in life,” says Barrish.
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Comments (6)
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January 2, 2008 8:49 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 2, 2008 20:49
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January 2, 2008 8:18 PM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 2, 2008 20:18
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Posted on January 2, 2008 14:09
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January 2, 2008 8:58 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 2, 2008 08:58
In my studies and journey, I have found that all, have the spark of the divine within and we would do well to remember that.
My journey has been one of spiritual and moral exercise, yet I have not found that one faith, that one rite or way of worshiping that meets all my needs. We must recognize that every faith and every way of seeing has within it something of the truth and recognize that all have within them the divine spark of life and holiness that is G-d.
We must speak out against the drive for fundamental and root faiths, the reason is quite clear these days; we have now many theocracies, which have removed from the people the drive to find within themselves the ineffable and divine.
Can we as people of reason and faith, come together and learn from one another? If we do not then, we as human beings will be lost to the fundamentalists, who would invoke the past as a way of seeing the world and G-d. Raise your voices and do not let the discourse be driven by the ones who would impost their world-view on us.
January 2, 2008 6:48 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 2, 2008 06:48
sounds like the typical story of a deracinated nice jewish guy/gal who ends up taking refuge in a seemingly very foreign spiritual path.
January 1, 2008 10:04 AM | Report Offensive Comments
Posted on January 1, 2008 10:04