Japanese Zen Culture, and American Zen Culture

I wanted to write a bit on this piece I found by Koun Franz on Zen Culture, from my perspective as a guy who's been doing Rinzai Zen practice for more than a couple of decades or so now, and as a guy who's practiced at temples in China, Japan, and the US, although not regularly outside of the US.

I don't think Franz's piece is necessarily wrong, but rather that it's self referential in kind of a way.  The blog Speculative Non-Buddhism might have more to say about this topic from their perspective than I would (but see self-referentiality with respect to them as well.)

Franz writes:

... I’ve noticed, especially recently, that one of the defining characteristics of Zen culture is a tendency to speak negatively about Zen. It’s built in. It’s fashionable. I cannot count how many conversations I’ve heard in Japan in which priests lament the state of the tradition, of the priesthood, of the monasteries. Someone I know once asked her teacher (a very high-ranking and respected Japanese monk in his own right, a teacher of teachers), “Are there any Zen masters in Japan?” He thought about it and replied, “No, I guess not. Well, maybe that guy in…. No, well, no. Maybe not right now.” Older monks love to talk about how the young monks just don’t get it, and the young monks can see that a lot of the old monks seem to be all talk and no action*. Everyone knows that the monastic standards have gone lax — again, there are exceptions, but one doesn’t have to look far to find an authorized training monastery that is a monastery in name only, where even zazen practice is maintained at only the most basic, basic level (once a day, maybe). 

If you’re new to Zen, this may all sound a bit shocking (or just sad), but it goes way, way back. 800 years ago, Dōgen (the founder of the Soto school in Japan) spent a good amount of ink complaining about how Buddhism has gone down the drain, how the people in authority have no idea what they’re talking about. Of course, Dōgen believed that the teachings he had received from his teacher, at least, were authentic; he just felt that he was more or less alone in what he was carrying. 

Some of these complaints about Japanese Zen are absolutely real — I am deeply pessimistic about the trends I see here. But some of this way of talking is also cultural — in a country where self-deprecation is as fundamental as gravity, one shouldn’t be surprised that so few people are prepared to say, “This is the real deal.” I suspect that in his time, a lot of Dōgen’s enemies despised him not for what he was teaching, but for the unapologetic confidence with which he taught it.

First of all, the * in the quoted text references a piece by Noriyuki Ueda-san on Zen in Japan (page 8).   I will make a few comments about that piece, too.  But, as I live in America, and Sweeping Zen has a wish to be somewhat authoritative in on-line Zen matters, I'll deal with them first.

There's a tendency amongst American Sōtō Zen oshos and practitioners to view Sōtō Zen as the Zen and Dōgen as the guy, the authority from which argument can be justified.  It's kind of strange from my vantage point, because from that vantage point Dōgen is not separate from the Buddha or the ten thousand things.  Dōgen was a pretty brilliant guy, but a lot of people want to make an icon out of him it seems to me.

Moreover,  when it comes to the bit about how "Dōgen's enemies despised him not for what he was teaching..." this needs a bit of unpacking because it's a bit oblivious to history.  Dōgen lived during the Kamakura shogunate.  The "official" Buddhism during that period was originally Tendai Buddhism, but Shingon Buddhism was also in Japan for quite a while as well.  However, as Wikipedia helpfully points out, during the Kamakura period other schools started to flourish as well, and the Zen schools arose in part from the Tendai school. 

Moreover, the Tendai school during this time was politically connected to the Shogunate, so naturally Dōgen (as well as Nichiren) wouldn't fare well challenging the status quo, especially, in Dōgen's case, because Zen would challenge the ecosystem wherein Tendai Buddhism was accommodationist with respect to Shinto.  Which is another way of saying it wasn't Dōgen's confidence that was the issue,  but rather the status quo, and Dōgen being the "nail that sticks out."

Next though, let's get to the main point of the quoted text: Is Japanese Zen "in decline?"  I don't know about Soto Zen, other than to say that at Sengakuji, they only have sitting for lay people once a month, and if you go to Sengakuji during a weekday, you'll find that most of the visitors are older people (because, duh, people are working during the day generally).  I'm also told it's a place to go for school field trips. Yet if you go during a weekend, you'll find that yes, there are younger people there. 

(A similar dynamic exists in Chinese temples whether they're more Pure Land or more Zen, though I don't know if schools have field trips to them; I sort of doubt they do.)

As for my recent visit to Engakuji, as I wrote elsewhere,  there were scores of practitioners, many beginners on the Sunday on which I visited.   That temples like Engakuji are also tourist meccas makes it somewhat wrong to me to conclude that Rinzai Zen is dying out in Japan faster than the decline of population of Japan in general (though that's a serious issue.)

And to me, the very question of the "decline of Zen in Japan" is irrelevant.  Why oh why, in a practice which purports to be one "not founded on words and letters, but pointing directly to one's mind," is so much verbiage spent on "whether they're doing it well," and "is it in decline?"  It seems to me to go there in thought is to self-confirm the decline itself! 

Moreover, even though the narrative of Zen in America as a reboot of "real" Japanese Zen, was definitely a narrative that was used,  it seems to have been problematic to even make that narrative as it was a bit of a case of adding another head to one's own.

I don't entirely disagree with Franz, but I would offer that the way Rinzai Zen has evolved in Japan (and its presence in Korea as well) has been "tuned" so that this non-reliance on words and letters and direct pointing to the mind is kind of baked into the practices in my experience, despite the variations from temple to temple and school to school.

Don't get me wrong; there are indeed mediocre oshos in Zen schools, and there are still the real history of scandals in the US, especially in Rinzai Zen in the US.  But that doesn't indicate a "decline of Zen practice" in either Japan or the US. (For some reason, probably because it's an example of what I'm trying to point out, but for whatever reason I want to note that although I didn't understand the teisho given at Engakuji except for words here and there, the osho who gave it gave it in such a way that various sections of it were chanted, and done with great energy.)

With regard to Ueda-san's piece, yes, there's such a thing as Funeral Buddhism in Japan, and because of Funeral Buddhism, there's a critical view of Japanese Buddhist clergy amongst Japanese.  That is definitely true.  But that's more an issue with Japanese culture than Japanese Buddhism actually.  There is so much that Japanese culture has evolved through that they've kind of forgotten how Japanese Buddhism - and Japanese Zen Buddhism in particular informs their culture.  And in those areas I'd cite: 

• The way Japanese use personal space - and space in general - compared to other cultures
• The way in which Japanese language tends to avoidance of conflict, and promotion of the "flow" of conversation
• The continued existence of Japanese arts related to Zen

But at the same time there have been trends in their culture that have stifled growth (via excessive bureaucracy)  and trivialized aspects about life.  There's a place for trivializing aspects of life, of course.   But the kind of thing I'm trying to talk about here you can see at Sengakuji: Lord Asano's death was avenged by having his antagonist's head placed upon his grave at Sengakuji.  In the museum you can see the receipt they got for giving back his head.   Even then, Japanese culture required receipts for such things. 

In addition, I should note that Funeral Buddhism in Japan is closely tied to the Confucian notions of family;  families having ancestral burial grounds going back ten generations is not unheard of, to say the least, so that kind of bakes in a necessity of Funeral Buddhism culturally.

And finally, all of that said, we in America, whether convert Buddhist or Buddhists by ethnic heritage have our own problems, and one answer to those problems is to transmit Buddhism with and without words in our daily lives.

It's very difficult as Japanese might say, but still must be attempted because of endemic suffering.

Even in academia, this is a pretty serious offense, isn't it?

Despite what some denialists say,  even in the corporate world, there's a lot of effort made to get the science right, because the company wants to be able to make informed decisions.  It may not propagate the right science to the world at large, but at least it tries to figure out what's going on my experience  of my career of working at over 4 companies.  (Yes, that's 5.)

Seriously, if someone working in my organization was found to be deliberately making results up, results that were defining our company's future  he'd be fired. 

So I had to scratch my head when I read Jundo Cohen's piece on Brian Victoria the other day, and asked myself, "Where is that guy?"  And I read it again when I saw Jundo had sent me an e-mail asking me about his piece at Sweeping Zen.  But, Jundo, truth be told, I really started asking that when I read this at the Zen site: D. T. Suzuki and the Question of War by one Kemmyō Taira Satō, translated in collaboration with Thomas W. Kirchner.  Satō is a Shin Buddhist priest; unfortunately (I'm a bit pressed for time especially today) I wasn't able to look up further credentials of Satō  other than being a "scholar."  But as I'll explain shortly that doesn't matter so much.

Victoria, like Cohen, are Soto Zen priests.  Victoria is well-known in our neck of the woods for writing Zen at War, which did point out that there was some pretty nasty things said by Hakuun Yasutani, who has directly or indirectly influenced much of Zen in the West, including the Maezumi White Plum folks. (Yasutani's been said - I forget where - to have created a new school of Zen apart from Soto/Rinzai but I forget where I read that, incidentally.)

Victoria has been associated with Antioch University; assuming that last link is still valid apparently he can be contacted at:  bvictoria@antioch.edu .  Time permitting, I may try to contact him in the next few days, because it behooves all concerned to come to some kind of agreement here. I encourage Jundo to do so as well.

What does Victoria think of what Satō  wrote? Why does that matter? From the Zen site:

Despite its many contributions, however, Zen at War left me with the impression that the author, in his desire to present as strong a case as possible, often allowed his political concerns to take precedence over scholarly accuracy. This was especially the case with regard to his portrayal of Daisetsu Teitarō Suzuki (1870–1966), whom Victoria depicts as an active supporter of the Japanese WWII war effort. This is a very serious accusation, given the importance of the issues raised in Zen at War.

I had the opportunity to become closely acquainted with Suzuki and his views on war when I worked at the Matsugaoka Bunko 松ヶ岡文庫 in Kama- kura under his guidance from 1964 until his death in 1966. This period of contact with Suzuki, as well as my own study of his works in the years since then, have left me with an impression of Suzuki and his thought that is far dif- ferent from the picture presented by Victoria. This disparity, combined with the desire to set the record straight, have inspired the present attempt to clarify what I regard as Suzuki’s true attitude to war.

All scholars employ quotations from relevant texts to support and develop their arguments, and are of course at liberty to select those passages that best suit their purposes. Even so, Victoria’s highly selective citations from Suzuki’s works often seem motivated less by a desire to clarify Suzuki’s actual views than by a determination to present a certain picture of the man and his work. As I read Zen at War, wondering if Suzuki had indeed taken the positions that Victoria attributes to him, I checked each and every quotation against the original Japanese texts, an experience that left me with a number of ques- tions regarding his use of Suzuki’s writings. Ideally, every position attributed to Suzuki in Zen at War deserves close reexamination, but considerations of space do not allow this. I will attempt, nevertheless, to evaluate the points Victoria raises and the evidence he presents as I clarify what I feel are Suzuki’s true views. In the process I will quote rather liberally from his works in order to provide the reader with as a full a context as possible. 

I've read most of Satō's piece and the charges he makes are pretty serious.  Either Victoria was working from highly edited texts himself, or was indeed cherry-picking quotes, but if Satō is to be believed, in any event D. T. Suzuki's not represented based on the context of what Suzuki wrote.  In particular, Suzuki's views of Japan after the war, and his views of Nazi Germany appear to be significantly misrepresented, though in the latter case,  it would not surprise me if a resurrected Suzuki would admit to harboring racist feelings in the 1930s.  But then that was the norm throughout the world then, and to a large extent is now.

One of the interesting notes in the piece was that Suzuki not only had deep connections with  Sōen Shaku (釈 宗演), the first man to bring Zen to America (and the 4th generation of myself), but also Imakita Kōsen (今北洪川)  Shaku's immediate ancestor.

Another point of contention, a serious one, in my opinion, is the idea that Zen and Buddhism should be automatically linked to pacifism.   This is absurdly ahistorical not simply considering the history of Japan, and famous Buddhists such as Suzuki Shōsan,  but geez, going all the way back to Shaolin-si, at least.

So I'm left scratching my head,  if the above is true, why would Victoria have written what he's written?  Does he plan to correct the record if  the critics are found to be true?  And how can that be done?  And what of the academic institutions linked to him? What's their position?

It is true that there was some horrible things done in the name of Buddhism in Japan during the 1930s-1940s.   But that doesn't justify faulty scholarship, if that's the case, here, which though I haven't read the Japanese, seems to be the case if the English versions of what I'm reading are accurate.

 

Re: Japan: Still, you don't know what's going on...at all...mostly

I'm reminded of this famous parable:

It is as if a man had been wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and his friends and kinsmen were to get a surgeon to heal him, and he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know by what man I was wounded, whether he is of the warrior caste, or a brahmin, or of the agricultural, or the lowest caste. Or if he were to say, I will not have this arrow pulled out until I know of what name or family the man is -- or whether he is tall, or short, or of middle height ...Before knowing all this, that man would die. Similarly, it is not on the view that the world is eternal, that it is finite, that body and soul are distinct, or that the Buddha exists after death that a religious life depends. 

 So much the more for our tiny opinions!

Look, everyone who does anything with Japan knew this:

TOKYO — With all the euphemistic language on display from officials handling Japan’s nuclear crisis, one commodity has been in short supply: information.

When an explosion shook one of many stricken reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday, power company officials initially offered a typically opaque, and understated, explanation.

“A big sound and white smoke” were recorded near Reactor No. 1, the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, announced in a curt memo. The matter “was under investigation,” it added.

Foreign nuclear experts, the Japanese press and an increasingly angry and rattled Japanese public are frustrated by government and power company officials’ failure to communicate clearly and promptly about the nuclear crisis. Pointing to conflicting reports, ambiguous language and a constant refusal to confirm the most basic facts, they suspect officials of withholding or fudging crucial information about the risks posed by the ravaged Daiichi plant.

 Unless you've made a concerted effort  for years  with the Japanese, they're just not going to be immediately candid; the very structure of their language carves humanity up into insiders and outsiders of varying degrees of inside and outside. And in a sense this is very honest; no American politician - or even the New York Times - is exactly candid with you either. They can't be, out of fiduciary responsibility to those that fund them.

And they're not you. Or me.  In that article they point out that the American media (among others) had misreported that workers at one point had "abandoned" the nuclear reactor.  The Japanese media, even in English, didn't actually say this; they'd just temporarily relocated to a place where they could continue their work.  Anyway, it shows skepticism is in order all around here.

Here's another example of the massive "Don't Know" that's pervading the information about Japan and this event:

Much of Japan’s industry seemed to remain in a state of suspension Wednesday, as the devastation from an earthquake and tsunami, combined with fear and uncertainty over the nuclear calamity, made it difficult for corporate Japan to think about business as usual.

And that has left many overseas customers and trading partners in something of an information vacuum, unsure how soon the effects of any supply-chain disruptions would make themselves felt — and how long they might last.

Even General Motors, a company that might seem to benefit from disruptions to Japan’s auto industry, finds itself in a period of watchful waiting. For one thing, the new Chevrolet Volt plug-in-hybrid from G.M. — whose sales could conceivably benefit from any production snags in Toyota’s popular made-in-Japan Prius — depends on a transmission from Japan.

Mark L. Reuss, G.M.’s president for North American operations, said Wednesday that he did not yet know whether his company could count on an uninterrupted flow of that Volt component from Japan.

“We just don’t know from a supply standpoint; there’s so many great things that come out of Japan for the whole industry,” he said, speaking to reporters after a speech at the University of Detroit Mercy.

Here in Tokyo, Japan’s business capital, many companies — whether Japanese or foreign — were distracted Wednesday by plans for removing their employees from the potential path of radiation from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant 140 miles north. Telephone calls and e-mails to many corporate headquarters in Tokyo simply went unanswered. 

In fact, many Japanese industries are distributed throughout Japan. If this were China - where huge industries are concentrated in a single place, with all competing companies localized, entire industries would have been devastated.  The real story is: much of Japan's industry is still functioning.  In fact, try booking a flight 2 months in advance to the Kansai area.  

Just try it.  The planes are full.  True, it's near Golden Week, and some folks might be taking extended vacations - who wouldn't? But business is really continuing in Japan.

Jake Adelstein, by the way, has really good coverage on the whole situation.

 Anyway, if you can aid Japan, please do so. That's better than trading opinions back and forth.  BTW,  Brad Warner expresses similar sentiments here, though without the business focus.  As I did say in the comments, I will make one prognostication: somebody in a high position in Tokyo Denryoku is going to commit 自殺 (jisatsu, suicide) over this. That  happened previously over an airplane crash, for example.

Update:
Two more comments:

1. One thing we do know, those workers trying to stop the crisis at Fukushima are true heroes.  As somebody tweeted (I still do not know how to reliably link these things!) "Japanese nuclear worker on the news: 'I am prepared to die to avoid meltdown.' Say it with me--I will not complain about my job today."

2.  As an almost entirely unrelated anecdote, as  I was watching the English language feed from NHK, I heard the announcer say, as Fukushima's reactors billowed smoke, "You can now see...white smoke...coming from Fukushima Dai-ichi."   Some wag tweeted in response, "That means they've elected a pope!"

Wow. I am humbled and honored beyond words.

I often rail - or maybe it's whine? -  against celebrity Buddhism and seemingly shallow responses of Western Buddhists to what are really huge catastrophes profoundly affecting other people's lives. But these recent events in Japan, and the responses of those around me have been profound.

People I haven't communicated with in years are reaching out to me and vice versa.

The Chinese community here where I live is eager to help any way they can.

It seems that this horrible crisis has brought many people together; it has awakened some people from their slumber; it has made some people aware of what matters.

Truly it seems

When the great Tao is lost spring forth benevolence and righteousness.
When wisdom and sagacity arise, there are great hypocrites.
When family relations are no longer harmonious, we have filial children and devoted parents.
When a nation is in confusion and disorder, patriots are recognized.
Where Tao is, equilibrium is. When Tao is lost, out come all the differences of things.

 So for now it's OK for folks to rail against nuclear power, or join the latest cause, or whatever.  There are people who care, in their own crazy flawed way about what matters.

Just like me.

Also:

I've added Jake Adelstein's site to my blog roll. It's not explicitly Buddhist,  per se, but it's a great window into a Japan that is more realistic than you might ordinarily get, even if it's a different Japan than I experience.

I think this is a new urban legend, but ...it wouldn't surprise me if it were true.

On another blog I made a comment that while there may not be a Japanese national "character" there are  Japanese ways of doing things. You may or may not have heard of the Japanese concept of "nemawashi" (根回し), a way of gathering support for some change in a policy, project or whatever. As Wikipedia notes, "It is considered an important element in any major change, before any formal steps are taken, and successful nemawashi enables changes to be carried out with the consent of all sides."

My wife tells me - either from watching CNN or from Chinese media - that there was a small town that, right after the earthquake hit, whose town council was having a meeting to decide what to do about the tsunami, how to evacuate the town, etc.

You can guess how the story ends - it wasn't pretty for the town council.

Travel Reading: Tokyo Vice

Since I travel a lot, and follow my father's tradition of taking "junk reading" where I go, I often read to pass the time in Economy Class.  I heartily recommend "Tokyo Vice" by Jake Adelstein as an accurate snapshot of recent years in Japan, though, frankly, it's a Japan with which I am most decidedly not well acquainted.  I am no angel by a long shot.  But I never liked Roppongi (too much like Time Square before Mickey Mouse infested it), and as Adelstein notes, we foreigners aren't always welcomed in Kabukicho.

That said, it is an amazing read.  It follows the early career of Jake Adelstein, a Japanese language reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, culminating in his standoff with yakuza boss  Goto Tadamasa,  head of the Goto-gumi, which was affiliated with the largest Yakuza group in Japan, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

This book has it all for someone who might write a blog like mine. It has organized crime (yes, I often quote Goodfellas and Christopher Walken parts to my co-workers). It has Buddhism (Adelstein evidently studied Zen Buddhism while in college, and  Goto Tadamasa has, according to the latest info, become an osho, at least to my knowledge).

It even has the "Burning House" parable from the Lotus Sutra.

What is most important to me is the sense of loss. You cannot read Adelstein's book without sympathizing with his sense of his own wrongdoing, and his taking the responsibility for it, without hope of a "Get out of jail for free card."  Jake Adelstein moved far and wide from the temple in which he used to stay, but wound up doing great good in exposing the very real issues of human trafficking in Japan while still managing to keep himself from being whacked by the Yakuza that was not widely known. And it's written by an American with Buddhist sentiments.

Anyway this book is a great read; it's part "subculture of Japan" you probably never heard about, (OK, maybe Brad Warner did) , it's part Raymond Chandler, and it's part the honest feelings of someone with a target on his back because he knew stuff about the Yakuza

I still have a very good post about the issues of Chan and Buddhism in general in China, and the amazing story of the people involved.