Zen Buddhism is a form of Buddhism that has evolved over many years, starting in India and travelling all the way to Japan. The origins of Zen Buddhism are deeply grounded in the realizations made by the original Buddha but are modified by many great masters over the course of history. The evolution of Buddhism to Zen Buddhism is an ongoing contemplation of attaining enlightenment and the meaning of enlightenment itself. There are clear distinctions that separate Zen Buddhism from its original faith and from other spiritual practices, which make it very appealing for new practitioners.
Teachings of Zen Buddhism trace back its origins to the teaching of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (566-486 B.C.E.) and its journey from India to China to Korea before it finally reached Japan. The most common story is that Siddhartha was the son of Suddhodana, one of the rajas, or rulers of a powerful warrior clan. As a privileged child, he was sheltered from the outside world and misery until, as a young man, he saw an elderly man, a sick man, and a corpse. Realizing that humanities fate was to suffer old age, disease and death, he determined to devote his life to freeing humankind from the cycle of death and rebirth. Then they could all achieve enlightenment, satori or nirvana. Abandoning wealth, status, and family he first studied the Vedas, the holy text of Hinduism, under the foremost scholars of the day. He realized that salvation could not be reached through the intellect alone. He became a yogi ascetic and posed his body in excruciating positions for weeks on end. But after six years of intensive practice that almost killed him, he understood that manipulating his body would not bring him the answers he was after. Being very disappointed and discouraged, he decided to make one last attempt to gain enlightenment. For three days and nights, he meditated under a bodhi tree, where he finally achieved enlightenment at the age of 35. After a lifetime of preaching he died at Kushinagara, now in the Indian state of Uttar Predesh (Chaline, 2003, 15).In his first sermon he presented the doctrine of the
Four Noble Truths:
Life is suffering.
Suffering is caused by selfish craving
Selfish craving can be overcome
Follow the Eightfold Noble Path
He said the world is transient, some things within it are pleasurable but they too must pass. Our suffering is not only caused externally by agents such as disease, famine and death, but also internally by our own slavish pursuit of material and physical happiness. When our desires are not met we are disappointed, leading to pain and sorrow. To overcome this illusion, the Buddha taught his disciples to follow the Eightfold Noble Path:
Correct Thought
Correct Action
Correct Effort
Correct Speech
Correct Livelihood
Correct Attention
Correct Concentration
Correct Understanding
The Eightfold Noble Path is also known as the Middle Way because it rejects all extremes of behaviour. The path embodies both moral injunctions, such as correct speech (not telling lies or spreading gossip), and correct livelihood (not pursuing an occupation that will do harm to other living beings). It also included teaching on how to pursue enlightenment through study and meditation (Humphreys, 2003, 12).
Buddhism was adopted as the official religion of several powerful Indian states. Indian missionaries took Buddhism south to the island of Sri Lanka and to Southeast Asia. Buddhism reached China in the first century C.E., where it was then taken to Korea. It reached Japan in the sixth century, soon surpassing the native Shinto as the official religion (Chaline, 2003, 12). Buddhism declined in India after the Islamic invasion of northern India in the tenth century C.E., and a Hindu revival in southern India (Hooker, 1996).
In early Buddhism, it was thought only ordained monks and nuns of the Sangha (community of believers) could achieve enlightenment. In subsequent interpretations of Buddhism, including Zen, regular men and women are also believed to be able to achieve enlightenment (Chaline, 2003, 16).
Buddhism is divided into two major vehicles which offer different interpretations of what a person chooses to do once enlightenment has been attained. They are called the Greater (Mahayana) and Lesser (Hinayana) traditions (Dumoulin, 1988, 27). Followers of Hinayana are said to pursue only their own liberation, stopping when they are enlightened, the followers of Mahayana work to become bodhisattvas (enlightened beings) whose aim is the liberation of all human beings (Chaline, 2003, 16). The Mahayana tradition, which includes Zen, teaches that all beings are composed of Buddha-nature, thus all of us have the same access to enlightenment. It does not matter what spiritual state we are in, only the fog created by our own illusions prevents us from realizing it (Dumoulin, 1988, 40).
In the Mahayana tradition itself, there are many schools. The Tibetan Vajrayana School is based on its own sacred texts, the Tantras. The Tibetans claim their superior discipline and spirituality is due to the complexity of its philosophical system and elaborate rituals. The West has become familiar with this especially since the expulsion of the Dalai Lama from Tibet by the Chinese in 1959. To make it even more complex Tibetan Buddhism is divided into four major schools (BuddhaNet, 2008).
The Chinese, Korean and Japanese schools are from the second major stream of Mahayana Buddhism. The main schools of Chinese Buddhism include Ch’an, Teintai, and Pure Land, which would eventually be transplanted to Japan as Zen, Tendai, and Jodo respectively. Japan was the last of the great East Asian cultures to receive Buddhism. The Japanese use the following image to explain why Zen Buddhism is a better, evolved version of Buddhism: “if India is the root of Buddhism and China is its stem, Japan is then the flower, the culmination of a long process of development that has led from the historical Buddha to Zen“ (Chaline, 2003, 19).
After the historical Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), one figure towers above all other in the development of Zen Buddhism (Ch’an in Chinese): the wandering Indian monk Bodhidharma (470-534 C.E.). He left India in 517 C.E. and arrived in South China in 520 C.E. Many scholars have argued that the Bodhidharma never lived, but rather that he is a symbolic figure constructed from the lives and works of many Indian missionaries who brought the teachings of the Mahayana to China (Humphreys, 2003, 68).
After Bodhidharma, Ch’an Buddhism was at an all time high and was being spread by the sixth and last patriarch, Dajian Huineng (638-713 C.E.), who was also responsible for a division within Ch’an. This division led to the emergence of the Northern and Southern schools (Chaline, 2003, 30). The fifth patriarch appointed Dajian Huineng as his successor but many of the fifth`s devotees wished to follow a senior monk named, Shen-hsiu. Fearing his life from Shen-hsiu’s supporters, Huineng fled back to southern China where he began his own ministry (Chaline, 2003, 31). A northern school was established around Sehn-Hsiu, and a Southern school around Hui-neng. The main difference between the two schools rested in the achievement of enlightenment. The Northern school was associated with gradual enlightenment and the Southern with sudden enlightenment.
An early Zen master, from Hui-neng`s Southern school of Ch’an had an intimidating presence and became the model for future Zen masters. Mat-tsu was the first Ch’an master to shout and use the stick as part of his teaching style. The ear-numbing “Ho!” not only serves to awaken the student to enlightenment at a critical moment, but also represents the unspoken transmission of Dharma (correct understanding of nature) between master and pupil (Humphreys, 2003, 85). Ma-tsu had a number of outstanding followers. The succession of the southern school of enlightenment would be taken over by Lin-chi. Lin-Chi’s Ch’an highlighted that enlightenment is an experience to be lived on a daily basis.
The father of Japanese Zen is Eisai (1141-1215 C.E.) founding the Rinzaishu and build the first Zen temples and monasteries in Japan. Eisai first went to China in 1168 where he studied Chinese Buddhism and collected Tendai scriptures. He visited China a second time in 1187, this time to study Ch’an at Lin-Chi’s southern school. After a couple years of training, he achieved enlightenment and received official recognition, which gave him the authority to teach (Chaline, 2003, 44).
Rinzaishu, like other Southern-style schools laid great emphasis on the use of shouting, the stick and dynamic exchanges between master and student. They utilized paradoxical statements called koans, and questions used to derail the rational thought process. All these methods are designed to bring the student to a mental crisis, at which point the master can push the student into the experience of enlightenment (Kraft, 1988, 125). There is no clever answer to a koan, and for many students, there may be no answer at all. Students will contemplate on koans during zazen (meditation), or they may contemplate them during every day activities (Chaline, 2003, 76).
Eisai is often regarded as the one who introduced tea to Japan. He wrote a book on tea drinking, in which he advocated tea on health grounds, to replace sake (Japanese alcohol made from rice). Green tea was used by Zen monks to keep awake during zazen practice; its making and drinking also became known as the ritual tea ceremony (Chaline, 2003, 45). In traditional schools, a monitor may patrol the room during zazen, carrying a wake-up stick. He would whack the shoulders of any sitter seen to be slouching or dozing. Sitters also often requested a blow from the monitor to help with his or her concentration (Chaline, 2003, 101).
The second major division of Zen teaching in Japan is the Soto-shu, founded by Dogen (1200-1253 C.E.). Although the interpretations of Buddhism by Eisai and Dogen are similar, the two schools approach training very differently. Where Rinzai stresses koan contemplation (A famous koan is: “Two hands clap and there is a sound; what is the sound of one hand?”) and meditation as means to enlightenment. Soto uses few koans, and teaches mokusho Zen, in which the act of zazen itself is associated with the enlightened state (Chaline, 2003, 50).
The practice of zazen is not merely sitting, it is the dropping away of the mind and body. In Dogen’s Zen, there is no need to struggle for enlightenment, actually the desire for enlightenment is itself an obstacle to its realization. According to Dogen, enlightenment will come as a natural result of meditation. The zazen technique itself is extremely simple and requires no rituals or complicated mantras. Concentration is put on breathing when first starting out but later everything becomes natural and unforced. Traditional postures for zazen are the yoga lotus, half lotus, and kneeling back and resting on your heels. Your head and spine are held upright; your hands are in your lap with the back of left hand resting on your right palm, thumbs together. Your attention follows the breath, but your mind is centered in the energy center of the body, located just below your navel. Alternate postures can be used such as sitting cross legged or in a chair (Humphries, 2003, 34).
Zen upsets our preconceived ideas about the true makeup of objects. To help explain transience and emptiness, which states that all forms or appearances in the universe are empty, an example of using a common desk can help. The common sense view is that all objects have permanent and unique natures. Common sense says, a table is always a table. However, if we take powerful microscopes to examine the table, at great magnifications the table becomes less separate from its surroundings. At the molecular level, the boundaries of the chair and the air around it, and the person on the chair become blurred. We cannot tell where one begins and the others end. Even on the macroscopic level of everyday life, a table is not always a table. If you were to look at the table in time, you would see that it was once pieces of wood from several trees. During its existence, wear and tear on the table will change is appearance and structure. In time, the table will break, the wood will decay, rot and finally fall to dust. The table was a temporary manifestation and its materials in themselves never possessed any innate table qualities (Chaline, 2003, 72). The aim of Zen training is to strip away everything to its simplest nature and make someone both know, and personally experience, emptiness.
The onset of enlightenment can occur in multiple ways. These include sudden external stimuli such as: animal noises, the ringing of a bell, a sharp blow on the head, profound words from a teacher, as well as the gradual internal process of meditation. To several non-Zen Buddhist schools, enlightenment is like the Christian paradise, a future reward for a life well lived. But in Zen, satori (enlightenment) is something to be experienced in the present. Also known as the “Great Death,” enlightenment is not the final chapter of Zen, but rather an awakening to our own and the universes true nature and the beginning of a new, richer kind of life (Chaline, 2003, 72).
Zen recognizes that there is more than one kind of enlightenment experience. While the student is meditating, he or she may experience a positive state, in which the mind balances itself, bringing great joy and energy. This is merely a state toward enlightenment. The first experience of enlightenment is known as kensho (seeing nature), and is the precursor to further experiences, which will deepen the seeker’s understanding. The ultimate experience of satori is called mujodo no taigen (the embodiment of the unsurpassable way), which is the permanent experience of satori during one’s everyday life (Kapleau, 1980, 48).
