Zazen and Ajikan (and some Soto Zen History Too)

[Jundo]

Correction to my above paragraph ...

Keizan was much more into magic, spiritual visitations in his dreams, premonitions and beliefs in "ki" energy and such than appears in the writings of Dogen.

[Bion]

MUCH more about Keizan than most folks probably want or ever really need to know, so for the Zen history wonks among us ...

https://terebess.hu/zen/Keizan_Study.pdf

Gassho, J

STLah

Well, OF COURSE I downloaded and saved that to start reading! [emoji1] Thanks!

[emoji1374] Sat Today (offering the merit to everyone in war torn places of this world)

[Stewart]

Wasn't the Daruma Sect banned by the government because they didn't see any point in keeping the Precepts? Hence many looked for a new home and some found their way to Dogen / Eiheiji. Not an easy job to absorb converts who might have come to you with mixed motives.

Stewart
Sat

[Jundo]

Wasn't the Daruma Sect banned by the government because they didn't see any point in keeping the Precepts? Hence many looked for a new home and some found their way to Dogen / Eiheiji. Not an easy job to absorb converts who might have come to you with mixed motives.

Stewart
Sat

A fairly recent scholar's Phd thesis on the Daruma sect (Daruma-shu) describes that as a bit exaggerated, that it was a much more traditional Rinzai Zen group (with some Pure Land mixed in) than rumored, and there was a good deal of religious politics involved in what happened. It was "antinomian" and rule breaking because, as a Zen group, some of the teachings seemed so to the eyes of the more conservative Tendai folks (and mixed Tendai-Zen folks like Essai), but they were still a pretty traditional group. Here is more than most need or want to know about the Daruma sect, again for Zen history wonks ...

https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/19051

Dogen's teachings in Shobogenzo are often very clearly his attempt to re-educate his new monks who were formerly with the Daruma-shu, by emphasizing Soto ways rather than the Daruma-shu's Rinzai/Koan Introspection ways, and the greater legitimacy of his Lineage (because the founder of the Daruma-shu had never actually travelled to China to receive Dharma Transmission like Dogen did, instead sending representatives to a noted Chinese teacher).

But, actually, the Daruma sect was actually a rather serious group engaged in serious Zen practice.

Gassho, J

STLah

Sorry to run long

[Wabo]

Wow. This explains a lot. I love the history of Buddhism and Zen. Thank you

I heard that Zen in its modern form is a product of the 20th century, and for many centuries Dogen was forgotten. In which form, then, the Soto school was exist by all this years?

Gassho
Wabo
ST

Sorry to run long

[Jundo]

Wow. This explains a lot. I love the history of Buddhism and Zen. Thank you

I heard that Zen in its modern form is a product of the 20th century, and for many centuries Dogen was forgotten. In which form, then, the Soto school was exist by all this years?

Hi Wabo,

Well, more history: Dogen was not really forgotten in the centuries after his death, but interest in his writings was primarily limited to the more intellectual/sophisticated (?? sorry, looking for the best term) ranks of Soto Zen. One of Dogen historian Dr. Steven Heine's books talks about this. Really, commentarial work and fascination with Dogen never ended:

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?18632-BOOK-REVIEW-For-Dogen-Fans-Prof-Heine-s-Flowers-Blooming-on-a-Withered-Tree&p=281945&viewfull=1#post281945

But, on the "parish" level of local temples and popular practices, Soto Zen was pretty much like all the sects of Japanese (really, Asian) Buddhism in catering much more to people's wishes to pray to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as deities, have ceremonies for good health and good crops, and that kind of thing. Another excellent history book on Soto Zen during the Edo period is this one:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691144290/the-other-side-of-zen

Popular understanding of Zen Buddhism typically involves a stereotyped image of isolated individuals in meditation, contemplating nothingness. This book presents the “other side of Zen,” by examining the movement’s explosive growth during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) in Japan and by shedding light on the broader Japanese religious landscape during the era. Using newly-discovered manuscripts, Duncan Ryuken Williams argues that the success of Soto Zen was due neither to what is most often associated with the sect, Zen meditation, nor to the teachings of its medieval founder Dogen, but rather to the social benefits it conveyed.

Zen Buddhism promised followers many tangible and attractive rewards, including the bestowal of such perquisites as healing, rain-making, and fire protection, as well as “funerary Zen” rites that assured salvation in the next world. Zen temples also provided for the orderly registration of the entire Japanese populace, as ordered by the Tokugawa government, which led to stable parish membership.

Williams investigates both the sect’s distinctive religious and ritual practices and its nonsectarian participation in broader currents of Japanese life.

But that is true for about every sect of Buddhism from China to Korea, Tibet to Thailand. Only certain sections of even the priesthood were ever concerned with serious doctrinal issues and meditation.

In the late 19th and 20th Century, much of Asian, including Japanese, Buddhism began to modernize. Lay practice spread, as did a wider interest in Dogen among more people interested in Zen. There was a great emphasis on making Buddhism more harmonious with modern scientific understanding and discoveries (which I think was actually a good thing). Japanese clergy of all kinds (not just Zen) began to openly marry and have families (which is scandalous to most Asians on the continent, but something I also think is a good and modernizing change). Then, Zen ... and Tibetan Buddhism and Theravada ... all came west, to America and Europe, and encountered more changes. I sometimes say that following, and SORRY TO RUN LONG ON THIS:

[O]ne thing for folks to remember is that Buddhism did change and evolve over many centuries, as it passed from culture to culture in Asia. The Buddha lived 2500 years ago in ancient India, whereupon the philosophy passed to China 1000 years later, and then to someone like Master Dogen who lived about 1000 years after that in medieval Japan. You and I live in the strange world known as the 21st century. Certainly, some changes arose along the way in some important interpretations and outer forms. For example, the Chinese made Zen Practice very Chinese, the Japanese very medieval Japanese, and now we are making it very Western.

However, the Heart of the Buddha's teachings ... the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, Non-Self, Non-Attachment, the Middle Way, etc. etc., ... All are here now as much as there then!!

How?

On the one hand some outer stuff is, well, changed. For example, when Buddhism came to China it was heavily influenced by, and pretty much merged with, Taoism (not to mention that it was already "Mahayana Buddhism" by that time, a very different flavor from the original). The result was this little thing we now call "Zen Buddhism". So, congratulations, we are already "Taoists" and "Mahayana Buddhists" ... not just "Buddhists". (In fact, the Mahayanists made a habit of 'putting down' the earlier teachings of the Suttas as the Hinayana 'lesser vehicle', though taking pains to explain that the Buddha meant the Suttas as 'remedial' teachings for spiritual slow pokes!) When it got to Japan, the Japanese added Japanese culture to it. In the West, we are now making some very good changes (although we have to, of course, try to avoid bad changes). These good changes include equality of the sexes and a greater emphasis on lay practice.

But it is still Buddhism. What Dogen taught was Buddhism. What we do around Treeleaf (I do believe) is as Buddhism as Buddhism can be.

I will even go so far as to say (and this is the kind of statement that has gotten me into all kinds of trouble on with some folks in Buddhism's own fundamentalist quarters) that maybe, just maybe, later Buddhism actually made some big and important "improvements" to the Buddha's original formulation with all those additions, and a couple of thousand years of working out the kinks and bugs (Actually, that is what the Mahayanists always thought about themselves vis-a-vis the 'lesser vehicle'). It is much like saying that Buddha was Henry Ford, who first thought up the brilliant idea of sticking 4 wheels on an internal combustion engine, but now we can drive a Prius! I even say that maybe, just maybe, the Buddha was not infallible on every darn thing. Not on the vital heart of the teachings, mind you. But while he was 90% right in his proposals, he maybe also had some klunkers and narrow ideas here and there (as fits a man who lived in a traditional, myth based society some 2500 years ago in ancient India) ... like the whole thing about an overly mechanical view of rebirth, the place of women, the need to abandon the world and family in order to Practice and to repress or extinquish (as opposed to moderate & balance & pierce) the desires and emotions, and some other elements of myth and superstition from Indian culture of the times. ... No problem, because the stuff that the Buddha was a genius about is WORTH THE WHOLE PRICE OF ADMISSION!

And Dogen was different from Shakyamuni Buddha, who are both different from all of us!

But when we are sitting a moment of Zazen ... perfectly whole, just complete unto itself, without borders and duration, not long or short, nothing to add or take away, containing all moments and no moments in "this one moment" ... piercing Dukkha, attaining non-self, non-attached ... then there is not the slightest gap between each of us and the Buddha.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Onrin]

Very interesting, thank you Jundo
Gassho,
Chris