Buddhism had by then been known in China for about years. He was soon summoned to the emperor, who had questions for him. Norman Fischer. Photo by Laura Trippi. He repaired to a distant monastery, where, it is said, he sat facing a wall for nine years, in constant meditation.
The disciple stood outside in the snow all night long. In the morning he presented Bodhidharma with his severed arm as a token of his seriousness. So, at least, the story goes. Zen schools are more or less divisible into those that emphasize a curriculum of verbal meditation objects — like koans — and those that do not.
Emphasizing daily life practice as zazen, Soto Zen centers generally do not work with a set koan curriculum and method, though koans are studied and contemplated.
Because of this, Soto Zen has sometimes been criticized by the koan schools the best-known of which is the Rinzai school of Japan as dull, overly precious, and quietistic, in contrast to the dynamic and lively engagement of the koan path.
But the koan way also has its critics, who see the emphasis on words, meaning, and insight as working against real non-conceptual Zen living. Koan training systems also have the disadvantage of fostering competition and obsession with advancement in the system. Zen Buddhism has had a long and varied history in several different Far Eastern cultures. Each culture has produced a tradition that is recognizable as Zen, but differs slightly from all the others.
Vietnamese Zen is the one most influenced by the Theravada tradition. It tends to be gentle in expression and method, to emphasize purity and carefulness, and to combine Zen with some Theravada teaching and methodology. Especially stylized, dramatic, and austere, Korean Zen includes prostration practice repeated, energetic full-to-the-floor bows of veneration and intensive chanting practice, and has a hermit tradition, something virtually unknown in Japanese Zen.
Within each of the Asian Zen traditions there are several schools, and within schools the styles of individual teachers often differ greatly. This uncanny fact — radical individuality within the context of shared understanding — seems to be an indelible feature of Zen.
In the middle of the talk he paused and held up a flower. Everyone was silent. Only Mahakasyapa broke into a smile. Not dependent on words, it is a special transmission outside tradition. I now entrust it to Mahakasyapa. This story, however historically unverifiable, represents the beginning of the Zen transmission, said to start directly with the Buddha. The story tells us two things: first, although the Buddha taught many true and useful teachings and techniques, the essence of what he taught is simple and ineffable.
Holding up a flower is one expression of this essence. Second, the very simplicity and ineffability of this essential teaching requires that it be handed on in a lineage from master to disciple in mutual wordless understanding.
We are all familiar with the transformation that takes place in apprenticeship and mentorship relationships, processes that involve a wordless give and take between individuals, and in which something quite hard to define is passed on.
To be sure, respect for and confidence in the teacher is essential if one is to undergo the transformation in consciousness that Zen promises. But the Zen teacher is also an ordinary, conditioned human being, simply a person, however much they have realized of Zen. Through the relationship to the teacher, the student comes to embrace all beings, including himself or herself, in this way.
It was typical in the early days of the transmission of Zen to the West for teachers of different lineages to be scornful of each other. There were centuries of tradition behind this prodigious failure to communicate. In Asia, lineages through the generations tended to be separate and usually of opposing congregations.
Thankfully, in the West there is now much more sharing between the various lineages. In recent years in America, two organizations have been created to promote warm communication between the Zen lineages: the American Zen Teachers Association, which includes teachers from all lineages, and the Soto Zen Buddhist Association, which is made up of teachers of the various lineages of Soto Zen, the largest Zen tradition in the West.
A Zen wave broke on North American shores in the middle of the twentieth century. Instead it was bringing large-scale suffering and dehumanization. What was the alternative? Alan Watts , whose popular books on Zen were hugely influential, was there. Cage influenced Merce Cunningham, the dancer-choreographer, who in turn influenced many others in the performance art field.
The Zen-derived notion of spontaneous improvisation became the essence of bebop, the post-war jazz movement. For Allen Ginsberg , Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and the other Beat-generation poets, Zen was a primary source, a sharp tool for prying the lid off literary culture as they knew it. Within ten years, lively Japanese Zen masters were coming to America to settle.
The first Zen centers in America were bursting with students willing to make serious commitments right away. It was an exciting and confusing time, perhaps unprecedented in the history of world religions. In the West, however, most Zen practitioners are not monastics. Unlike Zen laypeople in Asia, whose main practice is often to support the monastic establishment, Western Zen lay practitioners wish to practice it, regardless of what their life circumstances may be.
All of them do some form of monastic-style training within the context of their lay lives: they sit meditation regularly, either at home or at a local temple, attend retreats and live their daily lives with full attention or at least coming as close to this as they possibly can. They take lay or priest vows, and even sometimes enter monastic training at one or more Zen centers for periods of time.
While there is a great deal of variety among the many American Zen centers, in general their programs are open to the public, encouraging all who want to practice Zen at whatever level they wish to practice, but emphasizing committed, ongoing practice — gradually entered into — as the main road.
For someone who is interested in taking up Zen practice in America, the approach is not difficult: surf the web or the phone book, find the location and schedule of the Zen establishment nearest to you, show up, and keep showing up as long as it suits you.
Eventually you will learn the formalities of the local Zen meditation hall most groups offer special instruction for beginners , and if you feel comfortable you will continue to attend meditation when you can. Eventually you will sign up for dokusan private, intense, formal interview with a teacher. Sesshin is a life-transforming experience, no matter what happens.
From there, if you continue, you will deepen your friendships with other practitioners. These relationships will seem to you, oddly, both closer and more distant than other relationships in your life. Closer because the feeling of doing Zen practice together bonds you deeply, and more distant because you may not exchange personal histories, opinions and gossip as you might do with other friends.
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