Japanese Buddhism
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Caution! Under Construction
Please be aware that this tag is still under construction and as such is missing information and may be changed or removed at any time. For all the content under consideration for this tag, see the “Japanese Buddhism” folder on Google Drive.
Table of Contents
Books (2)
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236 pages[recommended but under copyright]
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Readings (29)
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There is little in Kapleau’s book to suggest that his teachers were anything but respected members of orthodox Zen monastic orders. Yet such was not the case, for in 1954 Yasutani Hakuun 安谷白雲 (1885-1973), the Zen priest whose teachings are featured in The Three Pillars of Zen, severed his formal ties to the Soto school in order to establish an independent Zen organization called the Sanbokyodan 三宝教団, or “Three Treasures Association.”
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Insisting that cremation was sanitary and that it also saved grave space while facilitating- ancestor worship, cremation supporters appropriated state-sanctioned values and aims to win repeal of the ban only two years after it went into effect. Ironically, the end result of the ban was a widely accepted rationale for cremation, which was transformed from a minority practice into a majority one. By the end of the twentieth century, cremation had become the fate of nearly every Japanese.
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… unlike other Buddhist traditions based on teachings contained in one or more Buddhist sūtras, the Zen school validates itself on the basis of being “a transmission outside the sutras” (kyōge betsuden). That is to say, a transmission of the Buddha-dharma from the enlightened mind of a Zen master to his/her disciple(s). But what happens in those cases when the “enlightened master” isn’t truly enlightened?
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This [Meiji Era] movement resulted in the destruction of tens of thousands of Buddhist temples throughout the country together with their statuary, the forced laicization of large numbers of Buddhist priests and widespread attacks on Buddhist doctrine and praxis, among other repressive measures. In short, Buddhism was attacked as a superstitious, foreign religion that had no place in a Japan modernizing at breakneck speed.
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Without a coercive village structure to enforce giving, the low-tension temples found themselves without their effective retainer. With the first-best contract unavailable, many temples have turned to fee-for-service arrangements of which the abortion-related ritual is merely the most notorious. Ironically, the new environment presents an entirely different challenge: temples now find themselves competing with internet-based priest-dispatch services.
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Only in one area was Tokugawa Buddhism innovative and successful: the development of a complete liturgical system for funeral services and remembrance of ancestors. For better or for worse, this feature henceforth became central in popular Buddhist piety.
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When explaining their reasons for using such peculiar statues at their temples, the abbots state that these images brighten the atmosphere…
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contemporary Buddhist women actively work through ritual to create meaningful relationships with one another.
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The essay asks what an enlightened moral sensitivity might require, and concludes in challenging the Zen tradition to consider reengaging the Mahayana Buddhist practices of reflection out of which Zen originated in order to assess the possible role of morality in its thought and practice
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Victoria is probably right in asserting that Makiguchi was not exactly the anti-war zealot described by the Soka Gakkai today, but Victoria misreads and misinterprets Makiguchi’s writing in his mistaken portrait of him as a pro-militarist figure.
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Through a study of three monks, Tōjū Reisō, Tairyū Bun’i, and Seishū Shusetsu, strategies employed to preserve Rinzai Zen spiritual legacy in the face of the turmoil of Meiji are highlighted. These monks did their best to continue their eremetic existence and to pick up the pieces left by the widespread destruction of Buddhist temples and monasteries in early Meiji Japan.
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For most of the history of Buddhism, “devotional” practices like prayer, invocation, and offerings have not been at odds or even very distinctly separated from “contempla- tive” practices such as meditation, sutra copying, and sutra recitation.
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Audio/Video (5)
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The 500-year history of world maps in Buddhist Japan and what these maps tell us about the Japanese, Buddhist identity.
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4 min
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