Going with the Way of the Kami

Kannagara, fully, kannagara no michi, "the way in accordance with the kami", is the Shinto ideal of living in harmony with the divine as it shows itself in nature and in the natural course of life. Behind it lies the deep Shinto intuition that the sacred is not somewhere else, above or beyond the world, but within it: in the mountain and the old tree, the waterfall and the rice field, the growth of things and the turning seasons. To live kannagara is to move with that sacred order rather than against it, spontaneously, and with the pure, sincere heart the tradition calls makoto, rather than to follow a set of commandments. This is why Shinto has produced so little in the way of formal doctrine or moral law: its ideal is attunement, not obedience, a going-along with the life-affirming flow of the kami. The word gathered special weight in later Shinto thought, where it was used to name the very essence of the tradition, the way that is simply the way things divinely are.