Japanese Zen
Zen is the Japanese form of the Chinese Chan school of Buddhism, which was transmitted to Japan in the 12th century.
Zen (like Chan) emphasizes direct insight into the nature of reality that is developed primarily through combining the practice of sitting meditation with a direct mind-to-mind transmission from master to disciple. While both philosophical study and good works are also emphasized in this school, these are considered of little use without the wisdom that comes from direct insight into true nature of reality. In this view, while philosophy and positive actions play in important role on the spiritual path, obstacles arise if the student becomes overly attached to these methods.
Schools of Japanese Zen
The main schools of Japanese Zen are:
The Rinzai and Soto schools both emphasize the methods of:
- Developing awareness through sessions of sitting meditation
- The use of koans to break through intellectual obscurations
Generally speaking, the Rinzai school puts more emphasis on the use of koans, while the Soto school places more emphasis on sitting meditation.
Rinzai shū
The Rinzai Zen school of Japan is based on the Linji zong branch of the Chinese Chan tradition.
Rinzai Zen formed as a distinct school when Eisai (1141-1215) introduced the practices of the Chinese Linji school in Japan. Eisai had trained as a Tendai monk, but he came to feel that the Rinzai/Linji practices were superior to the other forms of practice within Tendai.
The discipline of this form of Zen practice, along with it's indifference to death, appealed to bushi--the warrior class of feudal Japan that later came to be known as the samurai. "Eisai gained the protection of a Shogun (military dictator) at the capital Kamakura, and established the long-lasting alliance between Rinzai and the bushi/samurai."[1]
Soto shū
The Soto Zen school of Japan is based on the Caodong zong branch of the Chinese Chan tradition. While Rinzai Zen was successful among the Samurai, Soto Zen was more popular with ordinary people, and it became known as ‘farmers’ Zen’.[1]
History and founder
The Soto Zen school was founded by Dogen (1200– 53), one of the most renowned figures in Japanese Buddhism. Peter Harvey states:
- This religious genius, admired by all Japanese, gave Zen both an identity fully separate from Tendai, and a more Japanese form. As a Tendai monk, a problem which plagued him was, if people already have the Buddha-nature, why do they need to exert themselves in religious practice to attain Buddhahood? His quest for an answer took him to a Rinzai temple, and then to China. There he met a master who sparked off an awakening in him. In 1227, he returned to Japan, and though he did not want to found a new school, his single-minded advocation of Zen meant that one formed around him. He attracted many pupils, monastic and lay, male and female, and several times had to move to a bigger temple to accommodate his community. He emphasized a strict and simple life of monastic discipline and zazen, or ‘sitting meditation’, and preferred to have a few good pupils rather than a richly patronized monastery with many sham ones.[1]
Harvey also states:
- Dogen advocated zazen, or ‘sitting meditation’, as a return to the true Buddhism of the Buddha, a natural and easy method open to all and encompassing all other practices. He criticized the Rinzai reliance on the koan (see pp. 221– 2) as one-sidedly mental, and stressed the importance of also training the body by correctly using the ‘lotus’ meditation posture of the Buddhas. Zazen is not seen as a ‘method’ to ‘attain’ awakening, but is itself awakening, a way of simply exhibiting one’s innate Buddha-nature...[2]
Harvey also states:
- ... [Dogen] came to see the whole impermanent world as being the Buddha-nature, as a kind of thusly-changing-reality-flow, whose true nature needs to be known and expressed. A person must sit in zazen with constant awareness, and with faith that he is already a Buddha. The process is one of self-forgetting in which the Buddha-nature gradually unfolds its infinite potential throughout one’s life:
- To study the way of the Buddha is to study your own self.
- To study your own self is to forget yourself.
- To forget yourself is to have the objective world prevail in you [or: be enlightened by all things].
- To have the objective world prevail in you, is to let go of your ‘own’ body and mind as well as the body and mind of ‘others’. (Shobogenzo shakui, Genjokoan (BT. 371))[2]
Sitting meditation
Peter Harvey states:
- Zen, particularly in its Soto form, attaches great importance to establishing correct posture in sitting meditation. This clearly implies a very close relationship of mind and body... The lower spine should curve inwards, with the rest of the back straight and the abdomen completely relaxed. The area just below the navel, known as the tanden (Jap.), becomes a focus of attention in much Zen meditation (Sekida, 1975: 83– 90). From here, an energy develops that radiates throughout the body, which seems to parallel the importance of the navel cakra in some tantric practices.[3]
According to Harvey:
- Once the meditator has learnt how to control his or her wandering thoughts to some extent, he may go on to develop high degrees of awareness while sitting, known as ‘Just Sitting’ (Jap. Shikantaza): the approach of ‘silent illumination’ or ‘serene observation’ (Jap. moku sh). Here, the meditator cultivates nothing but sitting, in full awareness of the here-and-now of sitting, so as to be akin to Theravada ‘applications of mindfulness’ focused on the body, specifically the sitting posture.
- The attention in Just Sitting tends to rest on the movement of the respiratory muscles in the tanden area, but is not restricted to this. The meditator sets out to be in a state in which he is not trying to think, nor trying not to think; he just sits with no deliberate thought. When thoughts nevertheless arise, he just lets them pass by without comment, like watching traffic going over a bridge. He hears sounds, and notices any changes in his visual field, but does not react for or against them. If his mind begins ‘mental chatter’ on such a matter, he simply brings it back to sitting, as a Theravada samatha practitioner might bring his mind back to the breath. The emphasis is on letting the mind be uncomplicated, natural, simple, straightforward and open, yet with a bright, positive attitude, in full awareness of the body sitting and the flow of passing thoughts. Ideally, the meditator should be like both an unpretentious frog (MW. 158) and an alert swordsman faced with potential death in a sudden duel.[4]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Harvey 2012, p. 231.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Harvey 2012, p. 232.
- ↑ Harvey 2012, pp. 261-262.
- ↑ Harvey 2012, pp. 262-263.
Sources
- Allen, Percy Stafford; John de Monins Johnson (1908). Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions. Clarendon Press. OCLC 1090222.
- Baroni, Helen Josephine (2000). Obaku Zen: The Emergence of the Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa, Japan. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-2243-9.
- Baroni, Helen Josephine (2006). Iron Eyes: The Life and Teachings of the Ōbaku Zen master Tetsugen Dōko. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-6891-7.
Harvey, Peter (2013), An Introduction to Buddhism (Second ed.), Cambridge University Press
Further reading
Japanese Zen, Wikipedia
