In 2008, when I was interviewed for a news program, I heard from an acquaintance that he had participated in a Santo Daime service in Nara. When I went to see him, he showed me the chant collection used in worship. In addition to the Portuguese songs such as St. Michael, which were often heard in Brazil, Japanese chants were added.
I was interested in worship in Japan, but he said that there was no activity in Nara anymore. It was not cracked down and banned. There is no membership-based organization called Santo Daime, and the activities are left to the discretion of the individual, and it is said that the activities are repeated in a rhizome-like manner in various parts of Japan. The same is true in Brazil.
Religious groups in Japan have a strong image of being closed and antisocial, but Brazil is different. Small religious groups are diverging and integrating, creating and disappearing. Going in and out of meetings of various religions has become a part of everyday life. That freedom and forgiveness is the spirit of Brazil.
Four years before that, I became a disciple of the Urasenke master and studied the tea ceremony and the Zen Buddhist ideas behind it. The teacher was an avant-garde young man, and he was asked to hold a tea ceremony called "Wabi-Ayahuasca" in Japan, but I refused. It's not a matter of law. To be able to serve Ayahuasca tea to guests, you need a pottery with a certain personality.
At this time, I was writing an essay on the tea ceremony, anthropologically discussing it from the perspective of ceremonial use of medicinal herbs such as Japanese tea ceremony, South Pacific Kava tea, or South American mate tea and Ayahuasca tea. It is. The following is an excerpt from a essay published in Japan in 2009[*1].
The ayahuasca tea used by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon for therapeutic rituals was replaced in the context of African workers and became a liberation theology. Among the Ayahuasca tea-based religious groups, Santo Daime is associated with the Indian-Buddhist boom that was widespread among the middle class in big cities such as São Paulo, in contrast to Barquinha being limited to the Amazon area. It becomes strongly tinged with the meditative color of "staring". Furthermore, it is expanding worldwide, starting from that point and expanding toward Europe, the United States, and Japan.
It is also symbolic that Santo Daime of Japan is active mainly in ancient cities such as Nara and Kyoto[*2]. The potential of Brazilian culture with unscrupulous diversity and forgiveness enables the creation of these new cultures.
The original Portuguese version of Santo Daime's chant has about 150 songs, but the Japanese version has about 20 original songs added.
In spring, the light shines and the flowers open
New life melts snow
Hot chest and hot feelings in summer
Burning that sky
Love and light are abundantly fruitful in autumn
Can be shared with everyone
Let's die quietly in winter
Snow piles up(Santo Daime Japanese version of chant No. 5 "Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter" by Shavdo)
The transformation from the vertical dynamics of Archangel Michael, who fights for righteousness, to the Japanese sensibilities of feeling the providence of the world in the horizontal cycle of the four seasons. The image of swirling vivid colors associated with the word "psychedelic" has been completely abstracted, and the aesthetics of "wabi" and "sabi", which are like Zen paintings, are beginning to sprout here.
The person with the name of Sanskrit, the god of sound that appears in Shavdo-Veda, is said to be traveling to India at one time, Japan at another time, and Brazil at another time, playing the shakuhachi. The shakuhachi is a wind instrument made from bamboo that came to be used in medieval Japan, and is a symbol of a komuso that echoes a lonely tone. Komuso, that is, "the monk of" nothing "" is a Zen monk of the Fuke-shu[*3]. who was traveling around the world while dihutanga, and sometimes Komuso also wrote poetry.
In modern Japanese culture, traditional Zen and Buddhism do not have as much influence on people's spiritual lives as Westerners imagine. Buddhist temples are tourist destinations and cemeteries, especially for those who live in cities. Therefore, I was surprised that Aoi, a younger generation who should have grown up unrelated to Buddhism, said that his activity was Buddhism, especially Rinzai Zen.
However, at present, Buddhist ideas derived from Indian philosophy are Americanized via East Asia, permeate the urban areas of Brazil, and are reimported to Japan. I am also a generation who became interested in reimported Buddhist thought and Indian philosophy.
To cross-examination of witnesses
The Kyoto Ayahuasca Tea Party case is an unprecedented trial, and its outlook is unclear. If the Kyoto District Court convicts him, Aoi says he will appeal to the Osaka High Court. Also, if the Kyoto District Court finds it innocent, the prosecution will appeal to the Osaka High Court. If no conclusion is reached there, it will be contested at the Supreme Court in Tokyo.
At trials after April, witnesses will be cross-examined by both the prosecution and the defense.
If the court orders me to appear as an expert witness, I will testify that the Ayahuasca Tea Party is a serious religious act.
Ayahuasca tea has been used for religious ceremonies by indigenous peoples in the upper Amazon basin and has not been used as a daily luxury item. In Brazil, it has been trained with Catholics, and the application of ayahuasca tea is legally used only in government-sanctioned churches and has nothing to do with antisocial organizations.
At his first trial, Aoi claimed that the Ayahuasca Analog Tea Party was a practice of natural religion and also a bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism. This corresponds to the fact that Japan's religious climate is a syncretism between nature worship as a base culture and Mahayana Buddhism transmitted from India through China. And this Japanese religious culture is similar to the indigenous society of the Amazon, and there is a parallel relationship between nature worship as a base culture and syncretism with Catholicism transmitted from Southern Europe.
Also, in his interview, Aoi told me that his idea of the tea ceremony was Rinzai sect. Tea ceremony is a ritual practice developed in Japan based on the idea of the Rinzai sect.
If asked what tea is, at the testimony stand, I would like to say that tea is a very simple and sincere once-in-a-lifetime meeting.
What tea is, boiling water, putting plants, drinking it.
24-03-2021/2564 (C) Tatsu Hirukawa
*1:Tatsu Hirukawa. (2009). "Tea Ceremony of the Dense Forest" edited by Sogo Kurokawa "Recommendation of the New Tea Ceremony".
新しい茶道のすすめ ―現代のストレス社会に本当の癒しをもたらすティー・セラピーへの招待
*2:I heard that an Ayahuasca tea party was being held in Kyoto (regardless of Defendant Aoi), but I also heard that it has a connection with Peru. If so, it is a separate activity from the Brazilian religious movement.
*3:It is a sect differentiated from the Rinzai sect, and is derived from the trickster, Puhua, of the same period as Rinzai. For details, refer to "Linji Yixuan".
