Cleaning Floors and Sweeping the Mind: Cleaning as a Ritual Process*

Abstract

Ian Reader is Professor in Religious Studies at Lancaster University. His long-term interest in Japanese religions has resulted in a number of significant publications dealing not only with traditional religions but also with new movements in and from Japan. If obligation and formality play important roles in this argument and suggest themselves as contributing to an ability to distinguish rituals from other actions, the question of meaning and meaninglessness is also significant. In Japanese terms the apparently simple action of cleaning, whether of an external environment such as a park, or a personal one such as one's face, can incorporate a whole series of metaphors which have spiritual significance, which is, in turn, related to the conduct and nature of everyday life. The routines and life patterns of Zen temples thus traditionally incorporate periods of work—which are treated as meditations in themselves—in which all those at the temple have to participate.