I didn't want to interrupt the discussion in the "word/phrase" thread, so here we are.

KanKen DS3 gave me this sentence (albeit in kana):
作文の時間に天国のおばあさんに手紙を書いた。

I get the feeling this is a cultural thing (which KanKen seems to have a lot of sentences about).

Just a thought, but is this a polite way to talk about death? The more searches I do, the more I see results for "天国の母” and "天国のおじいさん" and the like.

It seems to me to be a way to address people when you're writing to them/about them postmortem; especially so based on what I could dig up at Yahoo 知恵袋.

Wow, that made me sound heartless. :/

Yes, same as the English phrase "my grandmother in heaven"...

Although it's worth noting that there is no Japanese "heaven". The ultimate goal of Buddhism is essentially non-existance. The closest to heaven is probably the western paradise, but it's a temporary stopover before non-existance.

In Shinto-ism on the otherhand, there is just the land of the dead, which is just a land of wind and ghosts (to quote the simpsons).

skycountry ftw.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Yes, same as the English phrase "my grandmother in heaven"...

Although it's worth noting that there is no Japanese "heaven". The ultimate goal of Buddhism is essentially non-existance. The closest to heaven is probably the western paradise, but it's a temporary stopover before non-existance.

Actually, the opposite is true. The Buddhist concept of complete Enlightenment is a state where you become everyone and everything. Those who have achieved this state experience the universe through the senses of every sentient being simultaneously.
The "Western Heaven" meditated on in Japan is the Pure Land of Amida Buddha, one of an infinite number of Buddhas each with their own Pure Land. It is not an actual place though, and not permanent. A Buddhist must return to a human body to achieve full Buddhahood for the sake of each being who has been our mother in a previous life.
Buddhists believe in Heaven but voluntarily chose not to go. It is said to be a psychological creation where there is no suffering. It is experienced as a place, though it is not. The purpose of being a Buddhist is to aid suffering beings and since there are no suffering beings in Heaven, it is a waste of time. A Buddhist must get back in the trenches ASAP.

Becoming one with everything and escaping the cycle is equivalent to non-existance in my interpretation (which is why I said essentially), but I'm not enlightened of course

I did mention that the western paradise is temporary, but I didn't see the need to go into more detail. From what I've studied of Japanese buddhism, you achieve nirvana directly from the pure-land automatically, without having to return to being a human. That is the whole point of populist Buddhism in Japan. Just by having faith in Amidha you can achieve nirvana without actually having to be an upstanding lifeform. You just have to chill out with Amidha in the pureland for a few millenia first.

Yeah there are a bunch of heavens (and hells), but they are the home of vain gods that aren't worshipped and just like to have orgies and whatever amongst themselves. It's not what people think of when they say "my grandmother in heaven", unless grandma is having an orgy with zeus. In any case the heavens receive virtually no attention in Japanese populist Buddhist literature (although the hells do get a lot of attention).

I have no doubt that you know more about Buddhism than I, but I get the impression that your focus is on continental and/or non-populist belief (whereas my focus was on populist Japanese belief, through the study of noh & setsuwa).

Yea, the Pure Land form of Japanese Buddhism doesn't differ much from Christianity. Most people I have talked to who practice this don't realize the experience is impermanent. Once they become enlightened, they are expected to return to a human form again.
The Future Buddha, Maitreya, is said to be in one of these Pure Lands. Though, he may just be a fable for teaching the impermanent purpose of that realm.
What they are believing is harmless and aren't trying to evangelize so I don't try to dissuade them from this view.

I'm sorry everyone. It was a stupid question I just had a lot of trouble finding out the cultural meaning behind it. I don't know a lot about religious culture. Actually, I hesitated in asking because I was afraid it'd make me look uninformed..

That's why I love this forum, somebody somewhere will know what you're talking about (and then some).

Thanks everyone.

Although I think when you see something like 天国の母, the concept is much closer to the Christian heaven than anything Buddhist or Shinto. The Japanese concept of religion is much different from the Western one, and they generally don't see any problem in absorbing concepts from other religions into their own spiritualism -- although obviously just because someone says 天国の母 doesn't mean that they literally believe their mother is in a physical heaven somewhere.

あの世 is a religiously neutral word for the world of the dead and similar ideas. 天国 is also neutral, though it's less related to Buddhism and Shinto in my mind. I think Christians in Japan use 天, 天の王国, or 天国 for short for the place where Jesus and/or good guys live in and 楽園 for the promised paradise thing, though I could be totally wrong on this one. I don't know if 天国 has to do with Christianity in the etymological sense, but probably so and most likely it only means the Christian heaven or something if used as a technical/religious term. That said, to ordinary Japanese people, it's the other side of 三途の川 (Sanzu River), which I don't think Christians' Bible mentions.

As for absorbing ideas from various cultures/religions, it's not a Western vs. Asian thing, I guess. In fact, Christians in Japan are also notorious for refusing ideas of other religions and behaving as if other religions are evil and archenemies. I think this is due to the fact that stupids and extreme guys are always vocal, though. Anyway, it's kind of true that some people say it doesn't seem Christians in Japan respect other religions.

The Japanese word for atheism is 無神論. Your average Japanese adult person doesn't know what it means but can kind of understand its rough meaning because of kanji. The Japanese word for agnosticism is 不可知論. I bet 99% of Japanese people don't know what it means.

I often hear Westerners say the Japanese are atheists or agnostics. But it's more like your average Japanese person respects all major religions and thinks all gods and stuff are equally good and sort of divine. If he is asked whether he believes in some kind of deities, most likely his answer is "I don't know." But it doesn't mean he only believes science or claims that it's impossible to prove the existence of God. It's just he thinks it's absurd to believe that there is one unique absolutely bona fide deity and that others are all bogus. Of course there are many religious Japanese people. But if you pick a random guy on the street, most likely he's like that.

So in this sense, arguing whether 天国 is closer to the Christian heaven is a little exotic.

I read a book semi-recently about Shinto by Professor Thomas Kasulis; he argues that it's fundamentally wrong to say that Japanese are "atheists" or "agnostics" -- rather it's that the Japanese concept of religion is fundamentally different from that of Western Judeo-Christian influenced ideas of religion.

I've talked to several people who did missionary work in Japan; they all said that one of the hardest things to do was to get Japanese people to understand the concept of the exclusivity of Christianity -- that is, that you can't be Christian* and still go do "religious" stuff at shrines and temples. It does seem that the idea of monotheism and religious exclusivity is relatively rare, not just in Asian religions but even in Western religions as well -- it's pretty much just the Abrahamic tradition (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) that has that concept.

*or at least not a Christian of the fundamentalist type of Christianity that missionaries are usually operating under