The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

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curtstein
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The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by curtstein »

I recently ran across this quote by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi:
For many of you, Zen is some special teaching. But for us, Zen is Buddhism and not a special teaching distinct from the other schools of Buddhism. So, if you ask me to talk about our teaching, I will talk mostly about the teaching of Buddhism, which started with Buddha and was developed by various teachers in India, China and Japan.
The source is here: https://berkeleyzencenter.org/2015/05/3 ... uki-roshi/
(non-mangled url: berkeleyzencenter.org/2015/05/30/from-a-lecture-by-suzuki-roshi/)

I wish there was some more context provided, especially: who does Roshi intend when he says "For many of you", and who is he referring to when he says "But for us"?

Informally, one comes across the kind of talk that Roshi is referring to all the time, that is, people who blithely proclaim that Zen has little or nothing to do with Buddhism. But it is less common to find people making this case in any kind of systematic way. To do so would require answering questions such as: (1) Has Zen always been separate from Buddhism? And, if so, was (the Buddhist priest) Bodhidharma aware of this separation? How about (the Buddhis priest) Hui Neng, or (the Buddhist priest) Lin Chi? Etc. And: (2) If Zen started out as Buddhist but is now separate (or at least separable?) from Buddhism, when did this transition occur?

I have found one source that addresses the issue a little more fulsomely than Suzuki Roshi:
[F]rankly, I think that many people involved with Zen in the West are confused about the relationship between "Zen" and "Buddhism." In general, we are too quick to proclaim the independence and uniqueness of the former and all too ignorant of the ways in which it has been embedded in the latter in East Asian cultures. We imagine that Zen is somehow a complete doctrinal, ethical, and spiritual system, and do not avail ourselves of the broader Buddhist resources -- scriptural, ritual, and institutional -- that Zen monks in Japan have always taken for granted. In fairness, it must be said that this "tunnel vision" that afflicts Western Zen is largely a product of modern Japanese Zen historiography, which (for social and historical reasons of its own) has tended to stress the "independence" and "purity" of the Zen school at certain times, such as the "golden age" of the T'ang dynasty patriarchs and that of the founder Dogen.
This is from History of the Soto Zen School by T. Griffith Foulk (link: https://terebess.hu/english/zenschool.html/)
(non-mangled url: terebess.hu/english/zenschool.html)

A little further on from the part quoted above, Foulk very helpfully refers to Dogen's essay "Butsudo" in the Shobogenzo, where we find the following:
The Seven Buddhas’ and twenty-eight patriarchs’ experience of
the truth should not necessarily be limited to dhyana. Therefore the master of the past
says, “Dhyana is only one of many practices; how could it be all there was to the Saint?” This
master of the past has seen a little of people and has entered the inner sanctum of the
ancestral patriarchs, and so he has these words. Throughout the great kingdom of Sung
these days [such a person] might be difficult to find and might hardly exist at all. Even
if [the important thing is] dhyana we should never use the name “Zen Sect.” Still more,
dhyana is never the whole importance of the Buddha-Dharma. Those who, nevertheless,
willfully call the great truth that is authentically transmitted from buddha to buddha
“the Zen Sect” have never seen the Buddha’s truth even in a dream, have never
heard it even in a dream, and have never received its transmission even in a dream. Do
not concede that the Buddha-Dharma might even exist among people who claim to be
“the Zen Sect.” Who has invented the name “Zen Sect”? None of the buddhas and ancestral
masters has ever used the name “Zen Sect.” Remember, the name “Zen Sect” has been devised
by demons and devils. People who have called themselves a name used by demons and devils
may themselves be a band of demons; they are not the children and grandchildren of the Buddhist
patriarchs.
Personally I think Dogen might be overstating things a bit to make his point. Obviously the point is not what things are called, but rather what they are. To call something "Zen", it seems to me, is not the real problem. The problem is when this "Zen" is claimed to be anything other than, or separated (or separable) from "the great truth that is authentically transmitted from buddha to buddha", that is, "Buddhism".
"there's no one here. there's only you and me." leonard cohen
https://www.mindisbuddha.org/
reiun
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by reiun »

To defend Dogen, his rejoinder is consistent with a Zen tradition of exaggeration or irony to make a point. The thread title is no service to Zen.
HePo
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by HePo »

It might be from a lecture at the Esalen Institute in1968.

https://suzukiroshi.engagewisdom.com/ta ... o-lectures
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curtstein
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by curtstein »

HePo wrote: Sat Oct 29, 2022 9:50 am It might be from a lecture at the Esalen Institute in1968.

https://suzukiroshi.engagewisdom.com/ta ... o-lectures
Thanks! That does appear to be the source. And it definitely helps to answer who this is addressed to (as well as providing the date: June 28, 1968).
"there's no one here. there's only you and me." leonard cohen
https://www.mindisbuddha.org/
ronnymarsh
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by ronnymarsh »

curtstein wrote: Fri Oct 28, 2022 10:19 pm Personally I think Dogen might be overstating things a bit to make his point. Obviously the point is not what things are called, but rather what they are. To call something "Zen", it seems to me, is not the real problem. The problem is when this "Zen" is claimed to be anything other than, or separated (or separable) from "the great truth that is authentically transmitted from buddha to buddha", that is, "Buddhism".
Zen/Ch'an is the Sino-Japanese translation for Sanskrit Dhyana, which is one of the terms used for meditation (or a specific type of meditation). However, even though the lineages are commonly called the "Zen sect", this does not mean that they teach the meditation methods for attaining the four levels of Dhyana of classical Buddhism.

Thus, Dogen has the Mahayana awareness of the Lotus Sutra that Dhyana is only a provisional method used by the Buddha to teach his disciples the path of Sravakas (hearers), used as a "metric" for his own realizations.

So, in his time, Dogen was referring to the misunderstanding in believing that the Zen school taught Dhyana. In his thought there is the notion of "Non-duality between practice and enlightenment". The core activity of Dogen's thinking is Shikantaza, just sitting. This Shikan (only) is a curious pun on another Buddhist term used in Tendai context: Shi Kan, which is Shamata Vipassana occurring at the same instant.

The central idea is that simply "sitting" with the heart-mind fully concentrated is the manifestation of innate Buddhahood. Therefore, one would not need to attain the stages of Dhyana to merit and attain awakening. Thus, the Zen school is not a Dhyana school (even reaching the stages of Dhyana can lead to ignorance by believing that they are enlightenment itself, and may be Mara's traps with the aim of preventing the emancipation of beings).

As for the words of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, it concerns another phenomenon.

Here in the West, the term Zen has gained meanings that are totally unrelated to Buddhism. The late Steve Jobs, for example, was theoretically a practitioner of Zen Buddhism and with that began the association of this element with his business success, which generated a flood of articles, books, and common sense theories linking Zen to business world.

Before, there was already a relationship between Zen and the altered state of consciousness promoted by drugs among the Hippie community (which is Steve's background). There are video game companies that call themselves "Zen" focusing on this "surrealistic" aspect, etc.

Thus, in the West, the term Zen gained a special meaning, as something that represents a superior experience, and people end up relating this meaning to the practice of Zen Buddhism. That is, these people see "Zen" as a "quality" that can be attributed to anything, including (but not only) Buddhism.
Anders
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by Anders »

The intention of Zen Buddhism is that of a living lineage that, I feel, is still succinctly summarised by Bodhidharma as

A special transmission outside the scriptures
Without reliance on words and letters
Pointing directly to the human mind
Seeing into one's nature and becoming a Buddha

It is easy of course to then think of Zen as something distinct from the scriptures, with its associated religious structures, that we call Buddhism. And certainly, there was an appeal to such a thought in the encounter with the west, of taking a universally true, living authentic message, and cutting it loose from the fabric of its inherited institutionalism and arcane historicity and applying it directly to our own modernist situation.

Of course, such an assumption misses the fundamental point that this message is simply a condensed version of Mahayana Buddhism as a whole, and that it is the very same message and intent communicated in the very scriptures that Zen stands "outside of". So Zen Buddhism in its most fundamental aspect is simply "living applied Buddhism". A living Buddhism that is wholly harmonious with the very same scriptures it does not rely on. To separate Zen from the institutional container "Buddhism" is to remove it from its supportive and wholly harmonious container and install it in a container that has no given support or harmony with the living message of Zen/Mahayana Buddhism. Maybe it will work here and there with a realised teacher doing so (and power to those who make it work), but not in the long run I fear.

I think the notion of Zen as something one can just extract from Buddhism and have stand on its own is less of a thing today than it was in the 60s and 70s when guys like Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki were normative authors on Zen Buddhism. Where I see it most commonly reflected is in the "dogenism" trend you see sometimes in Soto Zen - that is, the tendency to take Dogen as the sine qua non of Soto Zen, and wherever a reading of Dogen conflicts with a reading of conventional Mahayana Buddhism, Buddhism is readily jettisoned in favour of the Dogen interpretation.

Such a stance would of course have been anathema to Dogen, but such interpreters seem happy to work with their own image of him being a brave underground subversive, sneaking in the truths that Buddhism are too scared to reveal, through fabulous sesquipedalian prose.
"Even if my body should be burnt to death in the fires of hell
I would endure it for myriad lifetimes
As your companion in practice"

--- Gandavyuha Sutra
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ThreeVows
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by ThreeVows »

I think when it comes to Buddhism, you can say that there is the doctrinal dharma and then there is the dharma of realization.

The doctrinal dharma, properly, is basically where a realized individual will connect with others in a particular context in a particular way. This may take various forms. In some cases, what is appropriate in one context is inappropriate in another, and vice versa.

The dharma of realization is realization of Noble Right View. It is what it is. But, this is not necessarily 'expressed' in some gross form per se.

True Buddhism, in essence, is that which is connected with Noble Right View, that which is connected with realization of the nature of mind. In essence, anything at all, regardless of form, that is connected with this - that flows from this and that leads beings to this - is Buddhism.

But, again, the doctrinal dharma, the 'container' within which this realization is expressed, may vary from place to place, time to time, etc. Even at times in such a way that there may be apparent contradictions in the eyes of those who cannot truly see the underlying intention.

Proper Zen is Buddhist in the sense that it is an expression of realization, and it leads beings to realization. That does not necessarily mean that it relies on extensive doctrinal discourse in the same manner that, say, a Theravada approach might take in studying the Suttas, or that Pure Land Buddhism might take in orienting towards Amitabha and Sukhavati, etc.
“Whoever wants to find the wisdom beyond intellect without praying to his guru is like someone waiting for the sun to shine in a cave facing the north. He will never realize appearances and his mind to be one.”
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tingdzin
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Re: The relationship between Zen and Buddhism

Post by tingdzin »

reiun wrote: Fri Oct 28, 2022 11:06 pm The thread title is no service to Zen.
:good:
Anders wrote: Thu Mar 16, 2023 4:27 pm I think the notion of Zen as something one can just extract from Buddhism and have stand on its own is less of a thing today than it was in the 60s and 70s when guys like Alan Watts and D.T. Suzuki were normative authors on Zen Buddhism.
Fortunately, this seems to be the case, although you still see such things as Jesuit "Zen Masters",etc. Unfortunately, the whole "supreme teaching that can be separated from (allegedly ordinary) Buddhism " trope seems to have been transferred over to Dzogchen.

Generally speaking, posters have well illustrated the importance of taking quotations in their proper context. Teachers trying to communicate Zen are facing a different audience from that of 50 years ago.
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