Zen

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Zen

The Sanskrit word dhyana (generally referring to an emptying or stilling form of meditation) was transliterated into Chinese as chan-na and abbreviated to chan; zen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character chan. Dhyana, chan, and zen, however, need to be considered separately. As an Indian word, dhyana refers to a meditation practice, not a sect of Buddhism. The practice of dhyana in America may or may not have any connection with the Chinese or Japanese sects known as Chan and Zen. Conversely, the American assimilation of Asian cultural elements associated with Chan and Zen may have nothing to do with any systematic meditation practice. Furthermore, despite the scholarly use of the terms chan and zen as if they were interchangeable, Chan and Zen in America need to be considered as distinct because China and Japan have distinct positions in American culture. Because of differences in the political histories of China and Japan in the last two hundred years, Zen has been much better known in America than Chan, and even Chan has been seen through the lens of Japanese sectarian scholarship. Chan is sometimes described as Chinese Zen, whereas historically it would be slightly more accurate to say that Zen is Japanese Chan.

Dhyana has been practiced at least since the beginning of Buddhism in India, and some monks were famous for their meditation skills, but the term identified no particular group. Buddhist ideas and practices began filtering into China in the first century c.e., but the "Chan lineage" emerged as a sectarian category much later. Efforts to date the birth of Chan have produced widely varying answers, ranging from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries c.e., depending on what is meant by "Chan." Its mythical lineage identifies the obscure figure of Bodhidharma as bringing Chan to China in the fifth century, but the full articulation of Chan was a very gradual process. Most scholars locate the birth of the Chan lineage in debates during the eighth century c.e., followed by significant elaboration and the creation of lineage records in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In China, Chan became more or less identified with mainstream monastic Buddhism, but Zen in Japan became a sect among sects, continuing to compete with other monastic forms of Buddhism, such as Shingon and Tendai. Actually, two main subsects developed within Zen itself: Rinzai and Soto, dating from the thirteenth century.

Because of severe anti-Buddhist persecution in the early Meiji period (1868–1872) in Japan, and as a response to westernization, Japanese Buddhist leaders made efforts to redefine Buddhism as scientific and modern (in more or less Western terms). Because of the prestige of Western recognition, Zen leaders were much more oriented toward missionary work than were their Chinese counterparts. The contours of this newly redefined Zen owe much to the increasing nationalism and militarization of Japan from the late nineteenth century through to 1945. Zen in Japan was redefined as useful to the imperialist ideology, and identical to Japanese identity itself. This "Japanese exceptionalism" was the background to the early dissemination of Zen in America, starting with the Japanese delegation to the 1893 World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago, through the teaching and writing of D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966) and others. Suzuki, for example, claimed late in his life that he had never met a single Caucasian American who truly understood Zen. Even Westerners who had some inkling, such as Henry David Thoreau, had glimpsed only a reflection of Asian wisdom. These rather provocative claims are understandable when one sees that for a whole generation of Japanese Zen scholars, Zen was inseparable from Japaneseness. Furthermore, Japanese Zen leaders promoted the widespread perception of the association (or even identity) of Zen and the elite arts, especially calligraphy, martial arts, painting, landscaping, and poetry, arts that were by no means monopolized by Zen monks in Asia.

In the mid-nineteenth century Chinese immigrants to California established temples, usually blending Chan Buddhist elements with popular religion, Taoism, and Confucianism. Chinese communities in California have supported a number of Chan monasteries, such as the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (Wan Fo Cheng) founded by Hsan-Hua (1918–1995), and the Hsi-lai Temple led by Hsing-Yun. Japanese immigration, around the turn of the century, introduced other sectarian forms of Buddhism. The Pure Land sect Jodo Shinshu was especially active, establishing the Buddhist Church of America in 1899. Though Zen is the best known, there have certainly been many other forms of Buddhism in America. Zen in America has been marked by a tension (sometimes fruitful) between Japanese traditional orthodoxy and American nativization.

The 1893 World's Parliament of Religions was a pivotal event in connecting Japanese Zen monks (such as the Rinzai monk Shaku Soen, who made later visits as well) with American Transcendentalists and Theosophists. Paul Carus attended the Parliament and became instrumental in keeping open lines of communication between Zen and American culture. Other Japanese Zen teachers, disciples of Shaku Soen, arrived in America: Daisetsu Teitaro (D. T.) Suzuki in 1899, Shaku Sokatsu in 1906, and Senzaki Nyogen in 1905. A number of meditation halls were founded in California in the 1920s and after. In 1931, one of Shaku Sokatsu's disciples, Sasaki Shigetsu (also known as Sokei-an) founded the Buddhist Society of America in New York. D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966) worked at Paul Carus's Open Court Publishing Company from 1897 to 1909. He visited again in the 1930s and 1950s. One of Suzuki's enduring legacies is the widespread assertion that Zen in not a "religion." He steadfastly refused to reduce Zen to any particular form, organization, historical movement, or set of dogmas. Rather, Zen was the indefinable quality of enlightened experience itself, the pure basis of all other religions.

World War II undoubtedly stifled the development of Zen in America, with Japan a military enemy and Japanese-Americans subjected to discrimination and forced confinement in internment camps. However, in the 1950s Zen (and in particular D. T. Suzuki's work) enjoyed a revived interest and numerous Zen centers were established. These Zen centers were headed by Japanese Zen monks, but in the 1970s a generation of white American monks received full initiation and leadership, including Richard Baker, Philip Kapleau, and Robert Aitken.

Soto Zen developed in America after World War II, with, for example, the founding of the Chicago Buddhist Temple by Soyu Matsuoka Roshi, and the founding of the San Francisco Zen Center in 1961 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi had arrived in America in 1959. After his death the Zen Center was administered by his successor, Richard Baker. Attached to this center are the Zen Mountain Center (Tassajara) and the farm Green Gulch. Another Causasian Zen leader was Jiyu Kennett, who founded the Mount Shasta Zen monastery in 1969.

A form of Zen that claimed to embrace both Rinzai and Soto was founded in Japan by Sogaku Harada. Taizan Maezumi Roshi established the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1956. Another disciple, Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, visited in 1962 to promote his master's version of Zen. An American-born disciple, Philip Kapleau, founded the Zen Meditation Center in Rochester, New York, after thirteen years of training in Japan. Kapleau's best-known book, The Three Pillars of Zen (1966), remains popular and authoritative, though his willingness to nativize Zen in America led to a break with Harada.

Popular awareness of Buddhism after World War II benefited from the development of Asian studies and Buddhist studies programs in universities nationwide, and from the popularization of some elements of Buddhism by the "Beat generation." The literary work of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and others produced a Buddhism that was aesthetic, experiential, ecstatic, and philosophically antinomian. It was also largely their own invention.

Picked up later by the counterculture and various consciousness-expanding movements in the 1960s, and still perennially popular, this romantic "Beat Zen" had little to do with Zen in Japan. Whereas Zen in Japan emphasized monasticism, American Zen remains predominantly lay-oriented. Whereas Zen monks in Asia do not necessarily meditate on any regular basis, American Zen has emphasized meditation as the sine qua non of legitimate Buddhism. A whole series of stereotypes of Zen and Zen monks have been thoroughly deconstructed by scholars such as Bernard Faure and Robert Buswell, Jr., and serious practitioners today are usually realistic about Asian Zen mythology and its American twists. Still, in popular usage the word Zen can still mean almost anything: a carefree sentiment, an experience of intense focus, a label for Chinese landscape painting, empty-headedness, or a brand name on T-shirts and tea. The popular imagination of Zen owes much to the best-selling book by Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and the works of Alan Watts (e.g., The Way of Zen). Given the individualistic voluntarism of the American Zen community, it is impossible to number American Zen Buddhists with any precision. American Zen Buddhists of non-Asian ancestry tend to be white, middle-class, urban, and often well-educated, though not necessarily: Zen meditation has become popular, for example, in prisons as well.