Two initiatives, one Catholic and one Buddhist, breathe new life in the practice of meditation as a way to renew man's spiritual state and act as an antidote to today's turmoil. Two priests lead the faithful to the mountains; Buddhist monks bring Buddhist sutras to a tower in Tokyo.

Tokyo (AsiaNews) - Meditating "to understand life and its challenges" and "find a spiritual state that helps to cope with every day confusion" are the goals of two initiatives launched by the Catholic Church and the Tendai School of Buddhism in Japan. In both cases, meditation and detachment, even if only temporarily, are their common denominator.

The Catholic initiative comes from Munakata, Fukuoka Prefecture. A local priest, Fr Takehiro Kunii, urged the faithful to join him for a two-day retreat in a monastery in Kamakura. Here, together with the Fr Ryuichiro Hanafusa, he preached the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola at the sound of Bach's music.

According to Fr Kunii, "the music of the great German composer expresses the movements of our soul, something that cannot be described." Participants then read passages from the Bible.

"I asked the faithful to remain silent as long as possible," he explained. "If you can control the outside environment and maintain silence within, you can hear the word of God."

Unlike Zen meditation, which has strict rules of behaviour, priests urged the faithful to meditate on their own in the forest surrounding the monastery. "I deepened my faith," said one woman from Kanagawa Prefecture. "I shall definitely be back to these events."

The Tendai School opted for a different yet symmetrical approach. A group of monks left the silence of the mountains for the 634-metre Tokyo Skytree Tower, a broadcasting, restaurant, and observation building in the heart of the Japanese capital, where they brought shakyo, a form of meditation based on tracing Buddhist sutras written in classical Chinese characters with brushes and ink.

"In today's busy world, not every worshipper has the time to make the age-old pilgrimage to Mount Hiei (Hiei-zan), the Tendai sect's historic seat," the monks said. Therefore, they "brought their monastery to Tokyo to offer a chance to meditate" in one of the capital's busiest commercial spots.

• japan
• tokyo
• meditation
• catholic
• buddhist
• sutras