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Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan
... However, activities that provide students with an opportunity to directly experience these qualities are even more essential. For example, one of the central components of education in a Zen training facility is work that benefits the community (e.g., Collcutt, 1981;Nishimura, 1973;Sato, 1972;Suzuki, 1934). Activities such as maintaining the grounds, growing and harvesting crops, and cooking are as integral to Zen training as meditation and words from the Zen master. ...
Current theories of motivation provide insightful discussions of why people behave as they do. In addition, the research studies surrounding these theories provide insights that can help people move toward the goals of greater competence, autonomy, and relatedness. However, these theories cannot lead to realization of what is widely considered the most fundamental goal of humanity: underlying contentment. In this article, a Zen Buddhist perspective is presented that illuminates some problematic aspects of current theories of motivation. The article also presents the way in which Zen Buddhism avoids these problems and points toward contentment (whether linked to Buddhist doctrine or not). The article closes with educational implications of a Zen Buddhist perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Chan monks had a language problem. They needed to deal with at least four registers; the language of the street in their district, the Chan koine with its colloquialisms and argot, the guanhua or official language, and the elite formal language in Literary Sinitic that was packed with allusions. Zen monks in Japan had to deal with registers of Japanese, plus the Chan koine and the formal Literary Chinese. One response was philological, glosses on vocabulary that were likely to be misunderstood, such as dialect words and words that had changed meaning over time. Notably, most of these responses originated in or were connected to the greater Hangzhou region and its Wu language. After discussing whether there was a “standard” or common language used by elites throughout China, this article contends that the awareness of language differences between the “standard” or Mandarin Chinese and the Wu language by native Wu speakers contributed to the rise of Chan philology and then Zen philology. A few key examples of specialized Chan philological texts will be examined, but it should be kept in mind that examples of Chan philology may be embedded in other Chan works.
Prior to the Tokugawa period, Buddhism was an elitist religion in Japan. It was practiced by government officials and was part of the state cult. After the Tokugawa shogunate took power, Buddhism was separated from the state cult and forced to fend for itself. As a way to prevent the spread of Christianity, the Tokugawa shogunate forced the populace to register within the Buddhist temple system, bringing the working class into the Rinzai Zen temples. Zen master Hakuin Ekaku developed a form of teaching using koan and calligraphy in order to bring Rinzai Zen to the everyday people. He turned Rinzai Zen Buddhism into a more universal practice that would accept anyone who was willing to devote themselves to Zen, regardless of social class. This essay follows a chronological structure, discussing the political movement of Rinzai Buddhism from its entrance into Japan during the Kamakura Period to the Ashikaga Period and then the Tokugawa shogunate. Hakuin Ekaku used his new koan based practice to revitalize the elitist Rinzai tradition through the percolation of Zen into the common populace. The practices he developed are still used today, and have helped hundreds of students attain new levels of enlightenment.
The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures are a prime example of the use of calligraphy as a teaching tool in Zen Buddhist practice. Each school of Zen Buddhism interprets their depiction of practice differently. Within their practices, certain schools of Zen Buddhism maintain a tradition of chanting the direct transmission of the dharma from the historical Buddha to their most recently deceased master. These dharma lineages are a window into the development of practice and philosophy for Zen schools and communities. Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji (DBZ), a Rinzai Zen Buddhist training monastery in the Catskill Mountains, follows this tradition of dharma lineage chanting and provides access to the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures. An examination into the DBZ lineage and its commentaries of the pictures reveals a tailored, personalized, and experiential presentation of the themes that directly relates to North American practitioners.
The transplantation of Zen from China to Japan during the Kamakura period (1185–1333) depended on a series of intrepid seekers, who journeyed beyond conventional geographical and societal boundaries to discover and appropriate religious customs and beliefs while staying on the mainland that spread and eventually thrived on the islands. The only way to learn the intricate ways of Zen theory was to experience first-hand the relevant people, practices, places, and ritual performances in the Hangzhou/Ningbo region of the northern Zhejiang province. This article first provides a brief synopsis of travelers to and from Hangzhou, including Japanese pilgrims and Chinese émigré monks in addition to some prominent teachers and learners who did not journey but nevertheless exerted a tremendous impact on the transmission process. Then, it analyzes elements of Chinese Chan that were brought across the waters by Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), who ventured to gain enlightenment in the 1220s. He later claimed that he implemented “for the first time in Japan” 日本国最始 practical and conceptual religious techniques, including diverse personal, material, ritual, textual, rhetorical, and societal components. Although a major transmitter of Chan, Dōgen made significant innovations based on his vision of the ideal Zen community, recast for the structures of medieval Japanese society.
Between 839 and 1403 CE, there was a six-century lapse in diplomatic relations between present-day China and Japan. This hiatus in what is known as the tribute system has led to an assumption that there was little contact between the two countries in this period. Yiwen Li debunks this assumption, arguing instead that a vibrant Sino-Japanese trade network flourished in this period as Buddhist monks and merchants fostered connections across maritime East Asia. Based on a close examination of sources in multiple languages, including poems and letters, transmitted images and objects, and archaeological discoveries, Li presents a vivid and dynamic picture of the East Asian maritime world. She shows how this Buddhist trade network operated outside of the framework of the tribute system and, through novel interpretations of Buddhist records, provides a new understanding of the relationship between Buddhism and commerce.
The Japanese provincial city of Ichijōdani was destroyed in the civil wars of the late sixteenth century but never rebuilt. Archaeological excavations have since uncovered the most detailed late medieval urban site in the country. Drawing on analysis of specific excavated objects and decades of archaeological evidence to study daily life in Ichijōdani, Reading Medieval Ruins in Sixteenth-Century Japan illuminates the city's layout, the possessions and houses of its residents, its politics and experience of war, and religious and cultural networks. Morgan Pitelka demonstrates how provincial centers could be dynamic and vibrant nodes of industrial, cultural, economic, and political entrepreneurship and sophistication. In this study a new and vital understanding of late medieval society is revealed, one in which Ichijôdani played a central role in the vibrant age of Japan's sixteenth century.
Current theories of motivation provide insightful discussions of why people behave as they do. In addition, the research studies surrounding these theories provide insights that can help people move toward the goals of greater competence, autonomy, and relatedness. However, these theories cannot lead to realization of what is widely considered the most fundamental goal of humanity: underlying contentment. In this article, a Zen Buddhist perspective is presented that illuminates some problematic aspects of current theories of motivation. The article also presents the way in which Zen Buddhism avoids these problems and points toward contentment (whether linked to Buddhist doctrine or not). The article closes with educational implications of a Zen Buddhist perspective.
On account of the collective fascination for it prevailing in the West, Japan is mostly seen in terms of a dichotomy between age-old aspects (the past, hence tradition) and technological excellence (the present, hence modernity). The first of these two cognitive macro-categories includes references to a people that is ‘genetically disciplined’ as only the descendants of the samurai can be, to a spontaneously understated aesthetics of everyday life bearing the distinctive mark of zen, to an innate inclination for contemplation, while the second cognitive macrocategory encompasses futuristic urban spaces, robotics experiments as well as a multifarious variety of fashionable trends and products. However, it would be naive to think that Japan may have been, and still be, the merely passive object of a ‘romantic’ need for consolatory exoticism. This introductory foreword to this special issue of LCM on the commonplaces of Japan provides an overview of some crucial historical stages in which Japan, finding itself in a position to conquer (or re-conquer) international consent (as an acknowledgement of its ethnic, political, economic dignity), deliberately made recourse to cultural tòpoi regarding its own distinctive way of being and thinking.
In this paper I discuss the characteristics and meaning of the abbot’s sermon in the Japanese Rinzai Zen tradition. Using ethnographic data, viewed in light of performance theory, I contend that it is possible to go beyond the boundaries that have characterized previous scholarly understandings of Zen ritual (action/insight, social/mental, and formalism/authenticity). Accordingly, I demonstrate that the sermon serves as an arena for social interaction, and enforces institutional order, but at the same time, it also serves as a transformative medium that changes the participant's state of being. Finally, I contend that performance theory articulates an inherent connection between realization and enactment, as well as awakening and its manifestation; thus, it has the potential to shed new light on our current understanding of Zen practice.
In May 2000, at the very dawn of the twenty-first century, the then Prime Minister of Japan, Mori Yoshirō, caused a storm of protest, both domestically and internationally, with his declaration before a meeting of lawmakers belonging to the Shintō Seiji Renmei (Shinto Political League) that ‘We [have to make efforts to] make the public realize that Japan is a divine nation centering on the Emperor. It’s been thirty years since we started our activities based on this thought’.1 Although some foreign observers may have been genuinely shocked by Mori’s reactionary, ‘atavistic’ stance, no one who knew Japan or Japanese politics well was particularly surprised. Indeed, members of his own party generally did not challenge the validity of his remark; they merely regretted its indiscretion as a public pronouncement. As the unintentionally revealing excuse offered by the Secretary General of the party explained: ‘the comment was probably a platitude for the religious group’.2 In other words, in the circles in which Mori and his colleagues moved, the belief that ‘Japan is a divine nation centering on the Emperor’ was merely an accepted truism, so that nothing much should be read into the Prime Minister’s remark – in the context in which it was given, it certainly did not represent any revolutionary departure from the norm. As Klaus Antoni has pointed out, despite the Emperor Hirohito’s renunciation of his ‘divine status’ in 1946, ‘the Japanese emperorship receives its whole spiritual and religious authority, now as before, from the religious-political ideology of Shintō’.3
Although it is clear that Zen played some role in the medieval waka tradition (and vice versa), textual uncertainties and controversies have long complicated scholarly efforts to determine the extent. While a considerable amount of scholarly ink has been spilled on the topic in Japanese, the mysteries of waka and Zen have yet to be taken up in any systematic fashion in English. In seeking to remedy this lacuna, this article introduces scholarship and debates on the topic (especially in Japanese), identifies areas for future research, and offers annotated translations of select poems. Topics introduced include: Zen in the imperial anthologies; waka attributed to Zen monks and nuns, such as Dōgen, Mugai Nyodai, Musō Soseki, and Ikkyū; waka and Zen practice; recent scholarship on the 1543 kōan collection Shōnan Kattō Roku (translated by Trevor Leggett as The Warrior Koans or Samurai Zen), which contains waka; and dedicatory sequences featuring Zen monks.
This chapter deals with history and historiography, and provides a basic chronological survey of Japanese Buddhism. It comments on how that history has been and continues to be written. Buddhism in Japan has been inclusive in orientation and practice. The chapter considers how the interdependence—or perhaps better, the non-duality—of Buddhism and indigenous religions has worked out in Japan. Buddhism entered Japan from the continent in the sixth century as part of long-term cultural flows in which immigrants, traders, and diplomats brought new technologies and ideas to the Japanese archipelago from the Korean and Chinese cultural spheres. One of the most pressing tasks facing the Buddhist community at the end of the twelfth century was reconstruction after the traumatic Genpei War. In the future, Japanese Buddhism will surely continue to change, both within Japan and around the world.
Based on the monastic code entitled Chixiu Baizhang qinggui (Imperial Edition of Baizhang’s Rule of Purity), this article discusses the relations between Chan-monasteries and the state during the Yuan dynasty. The first chapter shows the state’s attitude towards religion and the ranking of the different Buddhist schools as well as the liturgical ceremonies for the emperor and the State and their rewards in form of financial and land donations. The second chapter explores to what extent the state’s veto in the elections of an abbot, its financial restrictions, and limited edition of ordination certificates could have been part of a repressive policy towards Buddhism. Conclusively, the inability of the monastic management to cope with their increased social and financial responsibilities impaired the Essential Teaching and further development of Chan-Buddhism.
In considering the role of language in Zen Buddhism, a basic conundrum is immediately confronted. Historical studies demonstrate that in Zen there has been a very large and fundamental role for verbal communication via poetry and prose narratives included in commentaries on enigmatic koans. During Song dynasty China, Zen masters produced an abundant volume of writings that originally were based on the spontaneous and deliberately eccentric oral teachings of Tang dynasty patriarchs. This literature forms the heart of the modes of textual study and ritual practice used in Zen today. Silence has always been highlighted in Zen. Zen's language of non-language, or vice versa, leaves open the possibility for inventive expression and productive silence to intermingle and to be alternatively used or discarded, as appropriate for particular discursive contexts and pedagogical situations.
Foulk T. Griffith, Sharf Robert H. On the Ritual Use of Ch'an Portraiture in Medieval China. In: Cahiers d'Extreme-Asie, vol. 7, 1993. Numero special sur le Chan/Zen : Special Issue on Chan/Zen. En l'honneur de Yanagida Seizan, sous la direction de Bernard Faure . pp. 149-219.
The relation between church and state, or religion and politics, has always been an uncomfortably close one in Japan, but it is only in recent years that this relationship has been seen as problematical, both from a political and a religious perspective. This article surveys two major areas of contention in particular: the present Japanese government's apparent attempts to revive an Emperor-centered State Shinto, and the lively recent debates over the role of Buddhism, especially of ‘fascist Zen’, in the Asia–Pacific War. I also consider the political implications of the new movement of so-called ‘Critical Buddhism’, as well as of the ‘religious violence’ practiced by the Aum Shinriky? ‘doomsday cult’.
This article first reviews the political, economic, and cultural context within which Japanese during the Tokugawa era (1600-1866) mastered Kanbun 漢 文 as their elite lingua franca. Sino-Japanese cultural exchanges were based on prestigious classical Chinese texts imported from Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) China via the controlled Ningbo-Nagasaki trade and Kanbun texts sent in the other direction, from Japan back to China. The role of Japanese Kanbun teachers in presenting language textbooks for instruction and the larger Japanese adaptation of Chinese studies in the eighteenth century is then contextualized within a new, socio-cultural framework to understand the local, regional, and urban role of the Confucian teacher-scholar in a rapidly changing Tokugawa society. The concluding part of the article is based on new research using rare Kanbun medical materials in the Fujikawa Bunko 富士川文庫 at Kyoto University, which show how some increasingly iconoclastic Japanese scholar-physicians (known as the Goiha 古醫派) appropriated the late Ming and early Qing revival of interest in ancient
This paper presents an examination of processes of secondary state formation that occurred during the emergence of the Ryukyu Kingdom, in southwestern Japan, from the tenth to seventeenth centuries A.D. These processes include the influx of new populations, the appearance of new subsistence strategies and political groupings, shifting patterns of long-distance trade, the development of new patterns of foreign relations with China and Japan, the creation of indigenous culture and new ideology, and the transformation of gender hierarchy. I examine these processes from the perspective of political leadership and the nature of political hierarchy, concluding that the Okinawan case is distinctive in its heterarchical organization. The corporate, collective nature of Okinawan communities was overlain by a state-level network system that developed at the time of tributary linkages with China in the fourteenth century A.D.
A garden is not an independent entity, with an autonomous existence in time and space. A garden is a unique dialectical interrelationship between human beings, nature, and sociocultural tradition.
There is no deep structural difference between modernity and so-called postmodernity. The latter is an extension of the same
trends. That means it is an extension of the same long-term processes, the same causal dynamics, although carried further
and producing new concrete manifestations. This will become clear as we look at the most important structural transformations
of societies since about 1600 in European societies. In many ways these structural transformations also developed about the
same time in Japan, which casts another light on the ways in which these processes have been global.
This thesis focuses upon the artistic and poetic subject of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang, from its origin in the Xiao-Xiang region in the Hunan province of China throughout its dispersal in East Asian countries such as Korea and Japan. Certain aesthetics and iconography were retained from the early examples, throughout the Eight Views’ transformation from the eleventh to the nineteenth century. The subject‟s close associations with poetry, atmospheric phenomena and the context of exile were reflected in the imagery of the painting and the accompanying verses. This thesis will discuss the historic, geographic and poetic origins of the Eight Views, along with a thorough investigation into the artistic styles which various East Asian artists employed in their own interpretations of the series. Furthermore, the dispersal and diaspora of the subject throughout East Asia are also investigated in this thesis. The work of Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige will serve as the concluding apogee. The Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang is an important East Asian artistic subject in both poetry and painting and contains many pervasive East Asian aesthetics.
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