S11 #02 - The Prayer of the Lord as a “dove that ventured outside”—The Lord’s Prayer’s journey into Japanese and back to English - A thought for the day

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Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation  

 —o0o—

“Dove that Ventured Outside”—Rainer Maria Rilke
(trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote: 

housed and protected again, one with the day, the night, 

knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings

 pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss, 

innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness; 

only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,

 through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself over the vast abyss. 

Ah, the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space, 

doesn’t it fill our hands differently upon its return: 

heavier by the weight of where it has been.

During my sabbatical, whilst working on translations of various writings by Nishida Tenkō-san, especially those composed for his Ittōen community in Kyoto [see HERE and HERE and HERE], I came across a Japanese translation of the Lord’s Prayer (主の祈り), which continues to hold an honoured place in the Diligent Daily Practice of Ittōen. 

The text Tenkō-san used was from the standard Protestant Meiji Version (明治共同訳聖書)—New Testament 1880, Old Testament 1887—and this was mostly translated from the English of the King James Version (1611), although, in the case of the NT, a Greek text was also consulted. Given this lineage, I was at first tempted not to translate the Japanese text at all, but simply to use one of the English versions found in the KJV. However, it soon became clear that the more revealing task would be to see how this seventeenth-century British Christian text was rendered into the idiom of classical Japanese religious language during the Meiji period (1868-1912).

Although, as Christians, the translators were not consciously aiming to reference Shintō or Buddhist theology—in fact they were probably trying to push against it—the sacred language available to them was profoundly shaped by those traditions. Consequently, their translation inevitably fused Christian meaning with Japanese ritual forms and Shintō and Buddhist meaning.

So before going on, let’s now read through a fairly literal translation of the Japanese Lord’s Prayer, and I’ll follow that with just a few reflections on its Shintō and Buddhist resonances. Not being myself a competent, fluent reader of Japanese, or, indeed, someone who has been to Japan and knows its culture really deeply, I will, of course, have missed many subtleties, forgive me; yet for my present purpose—one that will return us to Rilke’s “dove that ventured outside”—it is enough simply to notice just a few of the most obvious resonances.

The Lord’s Prayer (主の祈り)

O our Father in the heavens, 

ten ni mashimasu warera no chichi yo 

天にまします我らの父よ

we ask that your august name [み名] be revered. 

negawaku wa mi-na o agamesase tamae

 願わくはみ名をあがめさせたまえ

Please cause your august realm [み国] to come. 

Mi-kuni o korase tamae 

み国を来らせたまえ

As your august will [みこころ] is in the heavens, 

Mi-kokoro no ten ni naru gotoku 

みこころの天になるごとく

please cause it also to be done on the earth. 

chi ni mo nasase tamae

 地にもなさせたまえ

Please also give us today our food for daily use [日用の糧]. 

Warera no nichiyō no kate o kyō mo atae tamae 

我らの日用の糧を今日も与えたまえ

Those who commit offences [罪をおかす者] against us, 

Warera ni tsumi o okasu mono o 

我らに罪をおかす者を

as we forgive them, 

warera ga yurusu gotoku

 我らがゆるすごとく

please forgive our offences [罪] also.

 warera no tsumi o mo yurushi tamae

 我らの罪をもゆるしたまえ

Do not bring us into trial [こころみ],

 Warera o kokoromi ni awasezu 

我らをこころみにあわせず

but please deliver us from what is harmful [悪]. 

aku yori sukuidashi tamae

 悪より救い出したまえ

The realm [国], and the strength [力], and the splendour [栄え] 

kuni to chikara to sakae to wa 

国と力と栄えとは

are yours [なんじのもの] without limit [限りなく], for it is so [なればなり]. 

kagirinaku nanji no mono nareba nari 

限りなくなんじのものなればなり

Amen [アーメン]. 

Āmen

 アーメン

Let’s begin with some of the Shintō resonances.

The first feature to notice is the honorific prefix み [mi-] meaning “honoured” or “august”, which recurs throughout Shintō ritual language when addressing kami (gods) or imperial personages—examples of this are: mi-mitama (august spirit) ; mi-hikari (august light);; mi-kuni (divine realm), and so on

Another notable feature is the honorific verb まします [mashimasu] in the opening line, traditionally rendered “who art in heaven.” This verb appears both in norito prayers (that is to say Shintō ritual prayers) and in imperial proclamations, meaning “to dwell,” “to be present,” or “to reign.” Its use gives the line the solemn tone of a Shintō invocation to an ancestral or cosmic deity.

The line “we ask that your august name [み名] be revered” (Negawaku wa mi-na o agamesase tamae) traditionally rendered “hallowed be your name”, provides an even clearer echo of norito cadence. The classical petitionary formula 願はくは…たまへ [negahaku wa … tamae]—literally “we humbly entreat that you would please [do X or Y]”—is identical in structure to ancient prayers such as: 

願はくは、某の罪咎を祓ひ清めたまへ 

Negahaku wa, soregashi no tsumi togame o harai kiyome tamae  

“We beseech you, please cleanse and purify our offences.”

In other words, the Shintō rhythm of entreaty survives almost unchanged in the Japanese Lord’s Prayer.

In the petition traditionally translated as “Thy kingdom come,” the phrase, “Please cause your august realm to come” [mi-kuni o korase tamae]—inevitably evokes the Shintō ideal of divine harmony between heaven and earth. So the Kingdom of God becomes, in the Japanese Meiji-period ear anyway, not only a Christian hope but also a vision of cosmic restoration, the rebalancing of the heavenly and earthly orders.

The word 罪 [tsumi] offers another revealing resonance. In Shintō, tsumi means not moral guilt but rather pollution, defilement, or disorder—anything that disturbs harmony with the divine. The famous Great Purification Prayer (Ōharae no Kotoba) speaks of “heavenly offences and earthly offences” [amatsu tsumi, kunitsu tsumi]. Thus the petition, traditionally rendered as “forgive us our trespasses,” carries instead the sense “please cleanse our impurities.” Now, this emphasis on purification rather than pardon is perhaps the most distinctively Shintō inflection in the Japanese Lord’s Prayer.

OK, let’s now turn to a couple of Buddhist resonances.

The first is 悪 [aku], here translated as “what is harmful.” In Buddhist usage it denotes what is unwholesome, deluded, or defiled—the opposite of 善 [zen] (wholesome). It encompasses ignorance (avidyā), craving, and hatred. The line, “Please deliver us from what is harmful” [悪より救い出したまえ
 Aku yori sukuidashi tamae], therefore resonates as “Please free us from unwholesome states, delusion, or karmic evil.”

A second resonance arises in こころみ [kokoromi], often translated “trial” or “testing,” but literally “a testing of the heart or mind.” Buddhist texts often describe the mind as being tested by delusion or by the arising of ignorance (mō). Consequently, the plea “Do not bring us into trial” [我らをこころみにあわせず Warera o kokoromi ni awasezu] can equally be heard as something like “Let us not be drawn into mental delusion or inner temptation.”

OK, having heard some of these resonances, let’s now consider what we’ve just experienced by using the imagery of Rilke’s poem. 

For a moment, try to imagine the Lord’s Prayer in English as a dove that, in the 1880s, dared to venture outside and fly nine thousand miles to Japan. When it landed in Japan during the Meiji era, it was immediately clothed in the cadence and imagery of Shintō and Buddhist liturgy, and its meaning was refracted through two spiritual languages very different from Christianity. And now, nearly one hundred and fifty years later, when we take care to translate it, as literally as possible, back into English, we find that the words return to us altered: familiar yet changed, resonant with worlds of reverence beyond those gifted to us by British Christianity. In this sense, the Lord’s Prayer in Japanese—and our re-translation of it into modern English—really is like Rilke’s “dove that ventured outside.” Having flown through another sky, it comes home again, heavier by the weight of where it has been. Of course, all this that I have said, is also true of the prayer’s initial flight to us from first-century Palestine some two millennia ago . . .

So, to conclude, what I’d like us to take away from this morning is the thought that when any word is sent out into the world—even words that seem so final, stable and venerable such as those that form the Lord’s Prayer—they are, of necessity, always transformed by their journey outside and, if and when they come back to us, they will always come back changed. And this should serve to remind us, as the British philosopher J. L. Austin once observed, that “[o]rdinary language is not the last word: in principle it can everywhere be supplemented and improved upon and superseded.” [Austin 1956a/1961, p. 185]. As liberal, free-religionists, this is surely an absolutely central thing always to bear in mind. 

*  *  * 

Austin, John L. 1956a. “A Plea for Excuses.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 57, 1-30. Reprinted in 1961, James O. Urmson and Geoffrey J. Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers (pp. 175-204). Oxford: Clarendon Press.