Japanese Zen
[1] This practice, according to Zen proponents, gives insight into one's true nature, or the emptiness of inherent existence, which opens the way to a liberated way of living.
[1] According to tradition, Zen originated in ancient India, when Gautama Buddha held up a flower and Mahākāśyapa smiled.
), at the time when the set of Zen monastic regulations was still nonexistent and Chan masters were willing to instruct anyone regardless of buddhist ordination.
After returning home, Dōshō established the Hossō school, basing it on Yogācāra philosophy and built a Meditation Hall for the purpose of practising Zen in the Gangō-ji in Nara.
The first attempt of establishing Zen as an independent doctrine was in 815, when the Chinese monk Yikong (義空) visited Japan as the representative of Chan's Southern-school lineage, based on the teachings of the master Mazu Daoyi (馬祖道一, 709–788 C.E.
It is recorded in an inscription left at the famous Rashõmon gate protecting the southern entryway to Kyoto that, on leaving to return to China, Yikong said he was aware of the futility of his efforts due to hostility and opposition he experienced from the dominant Tendai Buddhist school.
The early phase of Japanese Zen has been labeled "syncretic" because Chan teachings and practices were initially combined with familiar Tendai and Shingon forms.
also studied Linji teachings in China before founding the Japanese Ōtōkan lineage, the most influential branch of Rinzai.
Ingen had been a member of the Linji school, the Chinese equivalent of Rinzai, which had developed separately from the Japanese branch for hundreds of years.
Thus, when Ingen journeyed to Japan following the fall of the Ming dynasty to the Manchu people, his teachings were seen as a separate school.
One of his assertions was that some Zen masters known for their post-war internationalism and promotion of "world peace" were open Japanese nationalists in the inter-war years.
[web 1] Among them as an example Hakuun Yasutani, the founder of the Sanbo Kyodan School, even voiced antisemitic and nationalistic opinions after World War II.
[citation needed] For example, the Sōtō school published statistics stating that 80 percent of laity visited temples only for reasons having to do with funerals and death.
[24] The primary goal of Rinzai Zen is kensho, seeing one's true nature, and mujodo no taigen, expression of this insight in daily life.
There are modern Zen organizations in Japan which have especially attracted Western lay followers, namely the Sanbo Kyodan and the FAS Society.
The Sanbo Kyodan is a small Japanese lay organization, established by Hakuun Yasutani, which has been very influential in the West.
It was during the late 1950s and the early 1960s that the number of Westerners pursuing a serious interest in Zen, other than descendants of Asian immigrants, reached a significant level.
The British philosopher Alan Watts took a close interest in Zen Buddhism and wrote and lectured extensively on it during the 1950s.
He understood Zen as a vehicle for a mystical transformation of consciousness, and also as a historical example of a non-Western, non-Christian way of life that had fostered both the practical and fine arts.
The Dharma Bums, a novel written by Jack Kerouac and published in 1959, gave its readers a look at how a fascination with Buddhism and Zen was being absorbed into the bohemian lifestyles of a small group of American youths, primarily on the West Coast.
The story was based on actual events taking place while Snyder prepared, in California, for the formal Zen studies that he would pursue in Japanese monasteries between 1956 and 1968.
He has stated that, despite its title, the book "should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice".
[39] In Europe, the Expressionist and Dada movements in art tend to have much in common thematically with the study of kōans and actual Zen.
Over the last fifty years mainstream forms of Zen, led by teachers who trained in East Asia and their successors, have begun to take root in the West.
Among the Zen groups in North America, Hawaii, Europe, and New Zealand which derive from Sanbo Kyodan are those associated with Kapleau, Robert Aitken, and John Tarrant.
Maezumi's successors include Susan Myoyu Andersen, John Daido Loori, Chozen Bays, Tetsugen Bernard Glassman, Dennis Merzel, Nicolee Jikyo McMahon, Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts, and Charlotte Joko Beck.
Matsuoka created several dharma heirs, three of whom are still alive and leading Zen teachers within the lineage: Hogaku ShoZen McGuire, Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston Sensei, and Kaiten John Dennis Govert.
Soen Nakagawa had personal ties to Yamada Koun, the dharma heir of Hakuun Yasutani, who founded the Sanbo Kyodan.
In Europe there is Havredal Zendo established by a Dharma Heir of Eido Shimano, Egmund Sommer (Denko Mortensen).
[citation needed] They are registered as a charity in England and Wales, but also have contacts in Europe, principally in Norway, Poland, Germany, Croatia, Switzerland and the US.
