In Japan, where Zen Buddhism is a normal part of the culture, “once monks return to their local village temple, lay-oriented ceremonies, especially funeral services, occupy their energies to the total exclusion of either Zen art or Zen meditation.” 8 Culturally in Japan people visit the temples for funerals and death 6 Ibid., 2.

• Historical development

At the age of 28, he came back to Japan to establish and spread Caodong Buddhism, which would become known in Japan as Soto Zen. In 1246, he founded Eihei-Ji (that I visited in 2015!), the main temple of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, in Echizen. He spent the remaining years of his life teaching and writing in Eihei-Ji. Zen is closely associated with many Japanese arts. Nowadays, this word is known all over the world. However, its real meaning is often misunderstood. Recently, it became easier to discover in Japan this branch of Mahayana Buddhism, including the sitting meditation that comes with it, known as zazen. Additionally, temples all around Japan are opening their doors to foreign visitors. Of the subject outside Japan, for except for Kaiten Nukariya's Religion of the Samurai (Luzac and Co., 1913) nothing was known of Zen as a living experience, save to the readers of The Eastern Buddhist (1921-1939), until the publication of Essays in Zen Buddhism (Volume I) in 1927. Suzuki writes with authority. Zen in Japan Buddhism was introduced in Japan in about the 5 th century. Different schools of Korean or Chinese origin rapidly sprang up and developed alongside the existing religion of Shinto (the ‘way of the gods.’) Around the 13th century, Japanese Buddhism, which had become wealthy, was completely overhauled by several notable reformers.

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Zen, Chinese Chan, Korean Sŏn, also spelled Seon, Vietnamese Thien, important school of East Asian Buddhism that constitutes the mainstream monastic form of Mahayana Buddhism in China, Korea, and Vietnam and accounts for approximately 20 percent of the Buddhist temples in Japan. The word derives from the Sanskritdhyana, meaning “meditation.” Central to Zen teaching is the belief that awakening can be achieved by anyone but requires instruction in the proper forms of spiritual cultivation by a master. In modern times, Zen has been identified especially with the secular arts of medieval Japan (such as the tea ceremony, ink painting, and gardening) and with any spontaneous expression of artistic or spiritual vitality regardless of context. In popular usage, the modern non-Buddhist connotations of the word Zen have become so prominent that in many cases the term is used as a label for phenomena that lack any relationship to Zen or are even antithetical to its teachings and practices.

Origins and nature

Compiled by the Chinese Buddhist monk Daoyun in 1004, Records of the Transmission of the Lamp (Chingde chongdeng lu) offers an authoritative introduction to the origins and nature of Zen Buddhism. The work describes the Zen school as consisting of the authentic Buddhism practiced by monks and nuns who belong to a large religious family with five main branches, each branch of which demonstrates its legitimacy by performing Confucian-style ancestor rites for its spiritual ancestors or patriarchs. The genealogical tree of this spiritual lineage begins with the seven buddhas, consisting of six mythological Buddhas of previous eons as well as Siddhartha Gautama, or Shakyamuni, the historical Buddha of the current age. The spiritual awakening and wisdom realized by these buddhas then was transmitted from master to disciple across 28 generations of semi-historical or mythological Buddhist teachers in India, concluding with Bodhidharma, the monk who supposedly introduced true Buddhism to China in the 5th century. This true Buddhism held that its practitioners could achieve a sudden awakening to spiritual truth, which they could not accomplish by a mere reading of Buddhist scriptures. As Bodhidharma asserted in a verse attributed to him,

A special transmission outside the scriptures, not relying on words or letters; pointing directly to the human mind, seeing true nature is becoming a Buddha.

From the time of Bodhidharma to the present, each generation of the Zen lineage claimed to have attained the same spiritual awakening as its predecessors, thereby preserving the Buddha’s “lamp of wisdom.” This genealogical ethos confers religious authority on present-day Zen teachers as the legitimate heirs and living representatives of all previous Buddhas and patriarchs. It also provides the context of belief for various Zen rituals, such as funeral services performed by Zen priests and ancestral memorial rites for the families of laypeople who patronize the temples. Dameware driver download.

The Zen ethos that people in each new generation can and must attain spiritual awakening does not imply any rejection of the usual forms of Buddhist spiritual cultivation, such as the study of scriptures, the performance of good deeds, and the practice of rites and ceremonies, image worship, and ritualized forms of meditation. Zen teachers typically assert rather that all of these practices must be performed correctly as authentic expressions of awakening, as exemplified by previous generations of Zen teachers. For this reason, the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp attributes the development of the standard format and liturgy of the Chinese Buddhist monastic institution to early Zen patriarchs, even though there is no historical evidence to support this claim. Beginning at the time of the Song dynasty (960–1279), Chinese monks composed strict regulations to govern behaviour at all publicly recognized Buddhist monasteries. Known as “rules of purity” (Chinese: qinggui; Japanese: shingi), these rules were frequently seen as unique expressions of Chinese Zen. In fact, however, the monks largely codified traditional Buddhist priestly norms of behaviour, and, at least in China, the rules were applied to residents of all authorized monasteries, whether affiliated with the Zen school or not.

Zen monks and nuns typically study Buddhist scriptures, Chinese classics, poetics, and Zen literature. Special emphasis traditionally has been placed on the study of “public cases” (Chinese: gongan; Japanese: kōan), or accounts of episodes in which Zen patriarchs reportedly attained awakening or expressed their awakening in novel and iconoclastic ways, using enigmatic language or gestures. Included in the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp and in other hagiographic compendia, the public cases are likened to legal precedents that are designed to guide the followers of Zen.

Historical development

China

Although Zen Buddhism in China is traditionally dated to the 5th century, it actually first came to prominence in the early 8th century, when Wuhou (625–705), who seized power from the ruling Tangdynasty (618–907) to become empress of the short-lived Zhou dynasty (690–705), patronized Zen teachers as her court priests. After Empress Wuhou died and the Tang dynasty was restored to power, rival sects of Zen appeared whose members claimed to be more legitimate and more orthodox than the Zen teachers who had been associated with the discredited empress. These sectarian rivalries continued until the Song dynasty, when a more inclusive form of Zen became associated with almost all of the official state-sponsored Buddhist monasteries. As the official form of Chinese Buddhism, the Song dynasty version of Zen subsequently spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.

During the reign of the Song, Zen mythology, Zen literature, and Zen forms of Buddhist spiritual cultivation underwent important growth. Since that time, Zen teachings have skillfully combined the seemingly opposing elements of mythology and history, iconoclasm and pious worship, freedom and strict monastic discipline, and sudden awakening (Sanskrit: bodhi; Chinese: wu; Japanese: satori) and long master-disciple apprenticeships.

During the Song dynasty the study of public cases became very sophisticated, as Zen monks arranged them into various categories, wrote verse commentaries on them, and advocated new techniques for meditating on their key words. Commentaries such as The Blue Cliff Record (c. 1125; Chinese: Biyan lu; Japanese Heikigan roku) and The Gateless Barrier (1229; Chinese: Wumen guan; Japanese: Mumon kan) remain basic textbooks for Zen students to the present day. The public-case literature validates the sense of liberation and freedom felt by those experiencing spiritual awakening while, at the same time, placing the expression of those impulses under the supervision of well-disciplined senior monks. For this reason, Zen texts frequently assert that genuine awakening cannot be acquired through individual study alone but must be realized through the guidance of an authentic Zen teacher.

Japan

During Japan’s medieval period (roughly the 12th through 15th centuries), Zen monks played a major role in introducing the arts and literature of Song-dynasty China to Japanese leaders. The Five Mountain (Japanese: Gozan) Zen temples, which were sponsored by the Japanese imperial family and military rulers, housed many monks who had visited China and had mastered the latest trends of Chinese learning. Monks from these temples were selected to lead trade missions to China, to administer governmental estates, and to teach neo-Confucianism, a form of Confucianism developed under the Song dynasty that combined cultivation of the self with concerns for social ethics and metaphysics. In this way, wealthy Zen monasteries, especially those located in the Japanese capital city of Kyōto, became centres for the importation and dissemination of Chinese techniques of printing, painting, calligraphy, poetics, ceramics, and garden design—the so-called Zen arts, or (in China) Song-dynasty arts.

Apart from the elite Five Mountain institutions, Japanese Zen monks and nuns founded many monasteries and temples in the rural countryside. Unlike their urban counterparts, monks and nuns in rural Zen monasteries devoted more energy to religious matters than to Chinese arts and learning. Their daily lives focused on worship ceremonies, ritual periods of “sitting Zen” (Japanese: zazen) meditation, the study of public cases, and the performance of religious services for lower-status merchants, warriors, and peasants. Rural Zen monks helped to popularize many Buddhist rituals now common in Japan, such as prayer rites for worldly benefits, conferment of precept lineages on lay people, funerals, ancestral memorials, and exorcisms. After the political upheavals of the 15th and 16th centuries, when much of the city of Kyōto was destroyed in a widespread civil war, monks from rural Zen lineages came to dominate all Zen institutions in Japan, including the urban ones that formerly enjoyed Five Mountain status.

After the Tokugawa rulers of the Edo period (1603–1867) restored peace, Zen monasteries and all other religious institutions in Japan cooperated in the government’s efforts to regulate society. In this new political environment, Zen monks and other religious leaders taught a form of conventional morality (Japanese: tsūzoku dōtoku) that owed more to Confucian than to Buddhist traditions; indeed, Buddhist teachings were used to justify the strict social hierarchy enforced by the government. Many Confucian teachers in turn adapted Zen Buddhist meditation techniques to “quiet sitting” (Japanese: seiza), a Confucian contemplative practice. As a result of these developments, the social and religious distinctions between Zen practice and Confucianism became blurred.

When the Ming dynasty (1368–1661) in China began to collapse, many Chinese Zen monks sought refuge in Japan. Their arrival caused Japanese Zen monks to question whether their Japanese teachers or the new Chinese arrivals had more faithfully maintained the traditions of the ancient buddhas and patriarchs. The resultant search for authentic Zen roots prompted the development of sectarianism, not just between Japanese and Chinese Zen leaders but also within the existing Japanese Zen community. Eventually sectarian rivalry led to the emergence of three separate Japanese Zen lineages: Ōbaku (Chinese: Huanbo), Rinzai (Chinese: Linji), and Sōtō (Chinese: Caodong). Ignoring their similarities, each lineage exaggerated its distinctive features. Thus, both Rinzai and Sōtō emphasized their adherence to certain Song-dynasty practices, in contrast to the Ōbaku monasteries, which favoured Ming traditions, especially in such areas as ritual language, musical instruments, clothing, and temple architecture. People affiliated with Sōtō, by far the largest of the Japanese Zen lineages, stressed the accomplishments of their patriarch Dōgen (1200–53), whose chief work, Shōbōgenzō (1231–53; “Treasury of the True Dharma Eye”), is widely regarded as one of the great classics of Japanese Buddhism.

• Category :Heritage

Zen Buddhism, or Ch’an Buddhism as is came to be known in China before its spread to Japan, is derived from ‘Dhyan’ or Sanskrit word for meditation. Just as the name suggests, meditation, which was an essential part of all Indian traditions of ‘Dharma’, focuses on introspection, mental peace and tranquility and social harmony. It is this harmony and lack of conflict, combined with self-discipline, which has come to be imbibed permanently in Japanese psyche.

Zen Buddhism is an integral part of Japanese culture and social life even today, in spite of the fact that modern day Japanese people are not very religious. It is an example of how religious philosophies are not always about dogmas, rituals and fanaticism, and how instead, they can and should become part of parcel of one’s life and being. The Japanese owe their harmony, serenity and the ability to calmly withstand the greatest of natural calamities to the impact of Zen.

Introduction

Even in today's globalized society, if there is one developed country, whose people stand out as significantly distinct and unlike anybody else on this planet, it is Japan. In spite of the prosperity, highly industrialized economy which is inseparably integrated with the rest of the developed world, any first hand interaction with Japanese society and people will immediately make you feel that you are in a different place. One of the reasons for this uniqueness is the influence of Zen Buddhism.

Zen Buddhism in Japan

The word 'Zen' derives itself from the Sanskrit word 'Dhyan' which means meditation. An integral part of all ancient religious philosophies in India, meditation has always been an important means of self realization in Buddhism.
In 475 A.D., BODHIDHARMA, a Buddhist master, travelled to China and propagated Buddhism there. His teachings lead to the acceptance of 'Dhyan', which came to be called there as 'Chan', and gave rise to the Ch'an school of Buddhism that became one of the popular religious faiths in China. Around 1200 A.D., Ch'an spread to Japan, where it was called 'Zen'. In time, this school of philosophy became an essential part of Japanese religious practices. More importantly, it was embraced as a way of life, and influenced many aspects of Japanese culture and tradition.

What is Zen ?

Zen as a religious philosophy is unique, and very different from not only Western religions like Islam and Christianity, it is also quite different from other Buddhist sects because of its emphasis on self realization as the essence of Zen. Much like Sanatan Dharma, which is usually referred as Hinduism, Zen undermines the importance of words in scriptures and religious texts, with a view that words are always open to interpretation and their meaning invariably depends upon the person making use of them. As we so often observe, this is a limitation that affects all written words of law, including statutes, religious texts and other rules - they can all be interpreted differently and lead to disputes.

Zen emphasizes on developing an understanding about one’s own self and the universe, and then being able to discern the duties of the individual as well as his or her code of conduct. The initial reliance of these philosophies is derived from ancient Buddhist texts like the MAHAPRAJNAPARAMITA-SUTRA which emphasises the doctrine of emptiness, the LANKAVATARA-SUTRA which describes the doctrine of Consciousness and the teachings of the Buddha in the AVATAMSAKA-SUTRA. These teachings have been analysed and described in great detail by many Japanese Zen masters, who in the process, also developed many practices that are unique to Zen in Japan.

Another aspect of Zen is its importance on meditation, and the 'aasana' or the positions of the body to be used by those entering such meditation. While Zen can be described as being equivalent to an intuitive understanding, ZAZEN is sitting meditation referring to the different positions in which body is maintained, and includes a number of manners and etiquettes on which great emphasis is placed. These include the way one greets the master, the mannerism in entering the Zazen room, the calm and serene posture that are maintained and the ability to win over one's restlessness by way of meditation.

Influence of Zen of Japanese Culture & Life

One of the most significant influences of Zen in Japan is the tolerance to religious practices. The undermining of written texts and emphasis on self realization ensures that a practitioner or follower can never be a fanatic as he depends not on his religious identity but his self actualization as means of fulfilment. This has allowed the different religious practices like Shinto and even Christianity to easily coexist with Zen. It is not uncommon to find Japanese people who go to the Zen temple, the Shinto shrine and also the Church. During my stay in Tokyo I came across persons who got married in Church, regularly took their children to Shinto shrines as per tradition, but held funerals as per the Buddhist tradition.

The other great impact of Zen on Japanese psyche is the great emphasis on self discipline. A Zen practitioner is supposed to understand himself and have control over his actions. Actia others driver download. The kind of self discipline you can observe in Japanese workers is to some extent an offshoot of this idealism. The medieval Samurai tradition that placed a great emphasis on 'honour' of the Samurai was also influenced by the emphasis of self actualization.

The discipline and mannerism practiced in Zen and Zazen have also created a great impact on the Japanese society. The image of a cool and calm Zen master meditating in the SODO, the informal hall used for meditation and other activities has created an ideal that influences all actions in daily life. All aspirants in Japanese society respect the calmness of the Zen master and follow it one way or the other. Download bestscope driver. This has allowed the acceptance of 'harmony' as an important social virtue, not only in daily life but also in the corporate world. It may be surprising for many to know that since the mid-seventies, when the corporate practice of consultative decision making involving managements and labor unions became common, there has not been a single case of nationwide strikes in Japan.

While Zen has had many positive influences, there has also been some criticism. Many Zen masters today feel sorry for the fact that Zen is not practiced by the Japanese Buddhist with the same vigour and passion that many other religions are practiced in other countries. However, that may just be the way in which Zen is different from other religions, and also partly responsible for the fact that Japanese people remain somewhat unique even today.

Zen Buddhism And Japanese Culture

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