Love of the Contemplated

"The contemplation of the saints is fired by the love of the one contemplated..."   Saint Albert the Great of Paris

Writing about Aescetics and meditation, Thomas Aquinas, disciple of Saint Albert the Great wrote: that "our knowledge of the deus is arrived at, on this earth, by the light of burning love."
In contrast, the contemplation of philosophers is " merely intellectual speculation on the divine nature... the beauty of mental prayer and of mystical contemplation is in the soul's abandonment and total surrender of itself... to bear witness to God. The rest is silence," wrote Thomas Merton.

Other traditions also have much to say about meditation and prayerful contemplation; however in the west, it is the aescetics and the 'desert fathers' who have perhaps spoken most loudly.
Most, east and west, will likely agree with the words of Merton, "meditation does not have to be colorful or spectacular. The effectiveness of our mental prayer is not to be judged by the interior 'fireworks' that go off inside us when we pray. On the contrary, although sometimes the fruit of a good meditation [practice] may be an ardent and sensible love springing from vivid insights into truth; these so-called 'consolations of prayer' are not to be trusted without reserve, or sought for their own sake alone.'

'We should be deeply grateful when our prayer really brings us an increase of clear understanding and felt generosity, and we should by no means despise the stimulation of sensible devotion when it helps us to do whatever we have to do, with greater humility, fidelity and courage."
Thus it is quite possible that meditation practice which at times seems 'cold,' can actually be valuable because it is without feelings and this may be, for some, the most profitable. It can be a source of strength, bring us out of our immediate sense-reactions and to a point of contemplation where we may hold the idea or the contemplated up for more careful and detailed consideration. It may assist us to spiritualize our interior self, quieting the emotions, rising above the mundane, towards a place of reason and faith.

For this reason, Merton asserts that at this point, ignorance can make progress in mental prayer difficult; "those who think that their meditation must always culminate in a burst of emotion, fall into one or two errors...either they find their emotions run dry... or else they can almost always weep at prayer... in the beginning when our senses are easily attracted to created pleasures, our emotions will keep us" from turning to anything greater [more in depth], unless they themselves give continued joy and pleasure; pure, untempered emotion tends to eat itself up and we risk "resting in these things which are by no means the end of the journey." Here, Thomas Merton a Trappist monk writes in the true vein of an aescetic.

Shintoism and Japan Today

"Human beings have the potential to become Kami." --The Essence of Shinto: Japan's Spiritual Heart by Motohisa Yamakage

In the Shinto mind there are many, many symbols of heaven here in earth. Armed with no other knowledge, the casual observer while traveling in Japan may remark upon the many shrines. There are about 80,000 Torii-gated Shinto shrines in Japan. They are located throughout the countryside and in towns and cities as well. Passers-by may spontaneously pause at these little edifices for prayer and reflection, taking a moment of their busy, modern day. A few of the best known: Ise Jingu Shrine, the most sacred site of Japanese Shintoism, as it enshrines the ancestry of the Japanese Imperial family. It may be said to represent the 'grander' side of things. Shrines to the Imperial family, both old and modern, serve to strengthen the state and its core symbol, the heavenly-descended Emperor.

 Ise Jingu and Yasukuni Jinja shrines, stand as products of the modernizing influence of revolution. Ise Jingu resulted from a Chinese led coup in a seventh-century palace that altered an earlier style of loosely affiliated clan-ship into the more centralized style of the Chinese invader. Yasukuni Jinja was a result of the Meiji Revolution. Built in 1869, its original name was Kyoto Shokonsha. Today it is best known as a memorial to World War II.
Increased contacts with the West  prompted the evolution of Japanese society into a more Westernized military-industrial complex over time. While the result of  the Meiji Revolution was the restoration of the Emperor, he no longer ruled singularly or directly.

 Ise Jingu Shrine, while emphasizing the Imperial ideals within Shintoism, composed of the inner and outer buildings, Naiku and Gekku, focuses upon a remarkable ritual symbolizing the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, from whom the Emperor is traditionally thought to have descent; so it is with great importance of place many Japanese regard this shrine, an essential element of beauty. Curiously, both Naiku and Gekku portions of the Shrine are completely taken apart every 20 years, then identically rebuilt on adjacent sites. This has been going on for almost 1,500 years; it will again  occur in 2013.

Author Motohisa Yamakage writes in The Essence of Shinto, "the union of the sacred and the mundane is a distinctive feature of Shinto... Shinto is found in our relationship and interdependence with Kami... Shinto is the path with which we seek to realize ourselves fully as human beings by acquiring the noble characteristics of Kami... but we must first become attuned to Kami... the essence of Shinto..."

He writes further that in the modern, consumer world values such as the intangibles of spirit, selflessness and sacrifice are increasingly lacking. He makes reference primarily to the 'invisible' world, the world that may be felt but not seen. Many disregard, or actively disbelieve what they cannot see before them. Simply put, as a point of reference: can we believe in the winds that bring rain, though we do not see them? We may only feel the wind. So what is wind? What is Shinto or Kami? Yamakage challenges his reader to find the unseen, the Spirit in the modern world today. He writes of a lack, a hunger to reconnect with these spiritual values within a living, breathing Shintoism.