Ginei（吟詠） as A Contemplative Practice: Visiting the Myriad of Souls of Lost Small Lives from the Ito-Campus “Development” of Kyushu University
Ginei（吟詠） as A Contemplative Practice: Visiting the Myriad of Souls of Lost Small Lives from the Ito-Campus “Development” of Kyushu University
Ginei (吟詠) as A Contemplative Practice: Visiting the Myriad of Souls of Lost Small Lives.
This performance is a co-project initiated by Dr. Devora Neumark and Teruhiko Honda. It aims to heal the deep grief which arises when we face the "global environmental crisis" by “Ginei（吟詠）". Ginei is a part of “Ginkenshibu”, the traditional Japanese performing art. We wish for the peace and equanimity of all beings, including Mother Earth and lost lives. Ginkenshibu-do（吟剣詩舞道） is a collective term for Japanese traditional art that consists of Gin-ei（吟詠）, Ken-bu（剣舞）, and Shi-bu（詩舞）. "Gin-ei" is reciting poem with a unique melody, "Ken-bu" is dancing to Ginei recitation using a sword and folding fan, and "Shi-bu" is dancing using folding fan. They express and represent the "Do（道）", the heart spirit of Japan in different ways.
As a performer, I (Teruhiko Honda) have practiced Ginei for 20 years and am a meditation practitioner. Additionally, I have been researching contemplative practices, including mindfulness. This project is at the crossing point where my traditional Japanese art practice and academic research meet; it can be said to be a milestone in the inquiry for the possibility of Ginkenshibu as a contemplative art.
This series of performances were done with our devout hope for healing grief, which is for the myriad small lives that have been lost because of the "development" for the huge construction of Kyushu University's Ito Campus: my grief, their grief, and Mother Earth's grief.
From 2005 to 2018, Kyushu University constructed Ito Campus, which has the largest campus area in all of Japan. While this "development" has enriched the research environment, it has had a great impact on the natural environment. Due to the large-scale construction, the natural wilderness was made "sophisticated" and small insects and animals living there lost their homes and their lives.
The new "ground" – with its rugged asphalt surface – rises in temperature during the summer, and an uncountable number of dead pill bugs and earthworms "gush out" from the ground. I always practice "walking meditation" from the parking lot to the campus; now I encounter their corpses along the way. I feel deep grief and guilt, and they keep staying in my heart. Seeing the scene of myriad small insect deaths, I felt as if the earth was sharing with me a deep grief. The message delivered to me from the earth permeated into my heart deeply and led me to think about something that can be called "the human colonization of nature."
The events surrounding the countless deaths of small living things caused by the "development" of our university have left me with a complex set of feelings that were waiting to be healed someday in my heart. But I didn’t know when that day would come. When I feel tired from my research, I find a quiet place and meditate. From time to time – perhaps when my heart would be connected to a certain channel or something – I feel something like deep sorrow for lost lives from the earth, under the campus. I had held this feeling and continued to live my daily life. I didn’t know how to deal with or treat it, but the door to possibility for healing this emotion appeared in front of me when I met Dr. Devora Neumark.
Dr. Neumark is a researcher and artist exploring the possibilities at the nexus of virtual platforms, climate justice, contemplative practice, and performative gestures. I met her at a summer session hosted by The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind) at Smith College in the United States in August 2019. At the time I was researching a type of pedagogy called "contemplative pedagogy" at Kyushu University, and I participated in this summer session to deepen my research.
Contemplative pedagogy is applying contemplative practices like mindfulness and compassion, which have recently been getting more interest, into the classroom. This education movement aims to foster student's awareness by contemplative practices in their learning experience and help to cultivate their holistic becoming a human. CMind has led the mainstreaming of this pedagogy, and various researchers participate in the annual summer session and share their experiences, wisdom, and questions for a one-week period.
During Dr. Devora's workshop, “Cultivating Environmental Emergency Responsiveness: Mindfulness and the Practice of Performance Art,” participants discussed the awareness of the global environmental crisis, as well as the healing for, and engaging in, the deep grief arising when we are faced with the phenomenon, from a contemplative art perspective.
Participants shared their own experiences of environmental crisis and grief, and generated ideas for performance art gestures or events. The sharing had various contents about water, animals etc.; we listened to everyone’s experiences mindfully with integrity, and tried to understand participant’s lived experience from their perspective. Thanks to their openness, truthfulness, and compassionate curiosity, I was encouraged to share my environmental grief for the death of myriad small insects because of the campus "development." The tears running down my new-found friends’ cheek during my sharing encouraged and help me to face and accept my grief experience, instead of continuing to avoid it.
During the week-long CMind Summer Institute, we enjoyed mindful and calm but exciting days, I demonstrated my Ginei performance, singing waka（和歌）, an old Japanese poem at Open Mic on the final day of the summer session. It was written and sang in Japanese, so I imagined that almost all my friends could not understand what I said linguistically. However, my CMind friends could experience my performance nonverbally, and "contemplate" it with their "direct" experience. Their understanding was based on "being mode," "an entirely different way of knowing from the thinking of doing mode” (Williams et al., p.46). It was irreducible to language and intellectual thinking. They gave me insightful feedback; it was a pivotal experience and confirmed for me Ginei's possibility as a contemplative practice.
One year later, Dr. Devora invited me to this co-performance project that aims to explore “Environmental Trauma: Mindfulness, Resilience, and Performative Gestures.” I began to practically create a plan to go about healing the deep environmental grief by enacting Ginei as a contemplative practice, which I had been committing to consider it with the philosophy of Mu-shin(無心, wú xīn, no-mind) from mainly Japanese spiritual tradition. Having some dialogues with Dr. Neumark, I began to understand that this grief does not only occur in the humans and myriad of lost small insects who experienced it, but also in Mother Earth. The feelings I got when I encountered the dead insects at the parking lot were the grief message from the earth, I believe. It is a phenomenon that occurred within my consciousness, but it is my phenomenological “truth.” In this contemplative art project, I needed to open my existence fully and heal not only my grief and "stiffness" from that experience in my heart, but also the lost beings and Mother Earth. It was necessary to surrender myself, my whole existence to something and to let go, then to embrace all suffering in a cradle of compassion.
However, this was very difficult for me. To create space, cradle of compassion, I need to let go of anger in my mind. It is embarrassing, but I as a human being, “inevitably" have the energy emotion of anger. To approach to heal the environmental grief, I had to engage with letting go of my anger above all else. This project had to start by accepting and facing my feelings of anger without avoiding them, and then healing myself. In this process, the barriers within my heart were loosened; what appeared then was something that could be said to be "bare vulnerability." Engaging deconstruction of the "ego" again and again, I felt that the framework of the ego loosens with each passing day. I kept patience and contemplative practice as much as possible, hoping a new "self" would be born there. To design the Ginei performance, I had to select the poems in parallel with the process of letting go. I researched various poems, but I could not find suitable one. My teacher of Japanese calligraphy, Kayō Kimura, who is also a yoga practitioner, told me this poem.
“Kimi ga yuki, ke nagaku narinu, yama tazune, mukae ka yukan, machini ka matan”
（It's been a long time since you had gone. Should I visit the mountain to go to meet you, or still wait here?）
Generally, it is said that this poem was written by Iwanohime no Ōkisaki(磐姫皇后).This poem attributed to Iwanohime is collected in the "Man'yōshū(『万葉集』)", which is the oldest existing collection of Japanese poetry by Ōtomo no Yakamochi(大伴家持). In dominant interpretation, her four songs she expressed love and longing for her husband. However, some researchers show different explanations. According to Dr. Shinobu Orikuchi who was a famous Japanese ethnologist, the phrase "yama tazune"(「山尋ね」, yama(mountain) tazune(visiting)) is related to "Tama goi"(「魂乞い」, (tama(soul) goi(begging): To draw the soul of irreplaceable person to near my existence. This "Goi(Koi)" is related to "Koi"(「恋(love, miss) 」: I miss/love you. Accurately, it is said that both "koi" are different in its pronunciation. So, it could be interpreted as visiting the soul for the higher mountain. Aside from the academic discussions on this, I felt that finally I could find the last piece of the puzzle! I decided to cherish this intuition and choose it as my performance theme. This decision was obeying the spontaneous "truth of my heart" and "情緒 (jōcho),” which is a nuanced word that I cannot easily translate in English. The closest I might come would be something like an emotion or atmosphere.
Until the day of the performance, the weather in my mind was far from the tranquility I aimed at. At that time, powerful typhoons 9 and 10 caused heavy damages in Japan. It seemed as if it reflected my mind because I had so complex problems in my life. I sometimes lost mindfulness, and I was worried "Can I accomplish my work contemplatively?"
However, on the day of our performance, I wore the Japanese "Kimono" and stood at the very place where I experienced the “environmental grief” and quietly join my palms together and prayed. Then I felt changing texture of mind, from rough to subtle. I noticed that compassion naturally arose with in each intake of breath, and gradually enhanced my entire being. At first, the energy was rough but was converted into subtle as performance deepened. At last, the peaceful calmness appeared instead of distractive thoughts, and I was filled with pure redemption and mourning for lost all beings, healing for us all human beings and Mother Earth, and wishes for peace and tranquility to all living beings. These energies were softly expanding from inward to outward. At the end of the praying and Ginei performance, what strongly manifested was not the guilty of the "development" but loving-kindness, compassion for all beings "existing" in any dimensions. The compassion and equanimity were beyond "I”, and “I" witnessed the process, phenomena.
After the contemplative performance, I returned to my daily life and found that my mind was far from subtle. Writing this essay, I observe my mind and I notice the feelings, compassion and equanimity that I had felt in that day, have already disappeared. Instead, I know the rough waves of mind and seeds of anger vibrating at the bottom my consciousness. Like this, the performance and compassionate experiences have not dramatically transformed myself or Mother Earth completely. It did not cause magical miracles to the world. However, at that moment during my performance, I realized and witnessed that healing and redemption were brought to me. Additionally, I believe that Mother Earth would have felt the same peace.
In closing, I am deeply grateful to Dr. Devora Neumark for inviting me to this fascinating project. I appreciate my research led me to her and the summer session of CMind that connected me with Dr. Neumark and other friends. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my professor, Dr. Anton SEVILLA-LIU who led me to the summer session! I would like to send my graditude to Kayō Kimura-sensei who told me about the poem that I sang. I would also like to thank my Master, Yūkō Saitō-sensei who raised me into an artist from my young age, and thank the Grand Master, Kōseki Itō-sensei. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my friends Ms. Soo Yeon Han and Mr. Ma who translate this essay into several languages. Thanks to Mr. Yōhei Toyoshima, DESIGN COMMUNICATION producer, who cooperated in the video editing. And I want to say "arigatō", thank my family supporting my contemplative journey... especially my mother.
May this co-project and co-performance be good seeds for the great future in the world.
May all living beings be healthy, safe, peace and happy! I always pray for you!
Contemplatively yours,
Teruhiko Honda
