The student who takes his stand at a popular shrine and watches the worshipers come and go will be rewarded by the growing conviction that, although many are manifestly ceremonialists, others are clearly subjects of profound feeling.  See that mother leading her toddling child to the image of Binzuru, the god of healing, and teaching it to rub the eyes and face of the god and then its own eyes and face.  See that pilgrim before a bare shrine repeating in rapt devotion the prayer he has known from his childhood, and in virtue of which he has already received numberless blessings.  Behold that leper pleading with merciful Kwannon of the thousand hands to heal his disease.  Hear that pitiful wail of a score of fox-possessed victims for deliverance from their oppressor.  Watch that tearful maiden performing the hundred circuits of the temple while she prays for a specific blessing for herself or some loved one.  Observe that merchant solemnly worshiping the god of the sea, with offering of rice and wine.  Count those hundreds of votive pictures, thanksgiving remembrances of the sick who have been healed, in answer, as they firmly believe, to their prayers to the god of this particular shrine.  These are not imaginary cases.  The writer has seen these and scores more like them.  Here is a serious side to Japanese religious life easily overlooked by a casual or unsympathetic observer.

In addition to these simpler religious phenomena, we find in Japan, as in other lands, the practice of ecstatic union with the deity.  In Shinto it is called “Kami-oroshi,” the bringing down of the gods.  It is doubtless some form of hypnotic trance, yet the popular interpretation of the phenomenon is that of divine possession.

Among Buddhists, the practice of ecstasy takes a different form.  The aim is to attain absolute vacuity of mind and thus complete union with the Absolute.  When attained, the soul becomes conscious of blissful superiority to all the concerns of this mundane life, a foretaste of the Nirvana awaiting those who shall attain to Buddhahood.  The actual attainment of this experience is practically limited to the priesthood, who alone have the time and freedom from the cares of the world needful for its practice.  For it is induced only by long and profound “meditation.”  Especially is this experience the desire of the Zen sect, which makes it a leading aim, taking its name “zen” (to sit) from this practice.  To sit in religious abstraction is the height of religious bliss.

The practical business man of the West may perhaps find some difficulty in seeing anything particularly religious in ecstasy or mental vacuity.  But if I mistake not, this religious phenomenon of the Orient does not differ in essence from the mystical religious experience so common in the middle and subsequent ages in Europe, and represented to-day by mystical Christians.  Indeed, some of the finest religious souls of Western lands have been mystics.  Mystic Christianity finds ready acceptance with certain of the Japanese.