Mottainai: a Japanese sense of anima mundi

The Japanese expression 'Mottainai!' can be translated as 'What a waste!' or 'Don't be wasteful!' However, mottainai means much more than that. It expresses a sense of concern or regret for whatever is wasted because its intrinsic value is not properly utilized. Buddhism and Japan's indigenous religion, Shinto, are integral to the Japanese psyche, accordingly the other-than-human world is also experienced and lived in daily life. In the Japanese worldview everything in nature is endowed with spirit, every individual existence is dependent on others and all are connected in an ever-changing world. Mottainai offers a glimpse of the anima mundi inherent in this worldview. This contrasts with our anthropocentric Zeitgeist, which manifests outwardly as environmental crisis and inwardly as fixation upon social interactions, especially through communication technologies, to the exclusion of all else. Jung's statement, 'The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life', has never been more pertinent. Encounters beyond the human world could be understood as touching this 'something infinite', and the apparent benefits of such experiences in the analytical process are illustrated with clinical vignettes from the author's practice.