From Cat Shrines to Sacred Mountains: Teaching Shugendo in Fukushima
Teaching a Yamabushi / Shugendo Course at Fukushima University
From Monday to Wednesday I taught an intensive course on Shugendo at Fukushima University.1
Shugendo!
My initial thought was ‘if only Shayne’s upcoming book would come out a few months sooner’, because then I’d have something rather than my practice to date to base the course on.
But then again,
Shugendo!
Shugendo, what we yamabushi practice, is 100% about the experience. Theory is more of an afterthought. Unfortunately, it was a university course, and afterthought is what university courses care about the most, but I managed to balance that by taking the students out as much as I felt reasonable.
In other words, I’m pretty sure the students were happy about the structure of the course, because not only did they get credits for going outside, visiting a mountain shrine, chanting, and meditation (!), after the first day I picked up two extra students. One student in particular was so impressed on the first day they dragged along not one, but two of their cronies.
I ended up designing the course around as much practice outside as possible. This meant quite a few temple / shrine visits, and also a visit to Shinobu-yama, a mountain (in English it would be classified as a hill) right in the middle of Fukushima City.
But Shinobu-yama is not just any mountain.
