public education by temple priests. With its Chinese roots Zen was well suited to promote the prevailing Neo-Confucianism. The connection was reinforced in 1654 by the arrival of a Chinese immigrant known in Japan as Ingen Ryuki (1592–1673), who not only introduced Obaku Zen but prompted an invigorating influx of Ming arts and crafts.
For Rinzai, the major development of these years was the work of Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1768), seen in hindsight as almost single-handedly reviving the moribund sect. He lived in a modest temple near the foot of Mt Fuji, turning down offers from Kyoto temples and devoting himself to the training of monks. He made a point of preaching to commoners and his drawing skills won him wide attention, particularly the idiosyncratic portraits of Daruma which he freely gave away. Such was his influence that it is said all contemporary Rinzai priests can trace their lineage back to him.
Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the new government was eager to establish a state religion as in the West. They chose the indigenous religion of Shinto and imposed its separation from Buddhism, to which it had been conjoined for over a thousand years. As a pillar of the discredited Tokugawa, Buddhism found itself in disfavor and its funding was cut. With the loss of their estates, temples became financially insolvent and had to sell off valuable assets, including parts of their precincts. As a result, some of Kyoto’s Zen temples are barely a third or a quarter of their former size. Tenryu-ji is just one-tenth.
Buddhism was too deeply rooted to be eradicated, however, and it soon made a comeback. Priests became dependent to a large extent on funeral rites for their income. For many Japanese, the only encounter with Buddhism is through the death of a family member, when the elaborate obsequies involved in securing a safe passage into the afterworld can cost millions of yen. However, this too has come under threat in recent years as Japan’s population shrinks, particularly in rural areas. It is said that in the next couple of decades as many as a third of Japan’s 77,000 Buddhist temples are expected to close down.
To some extent, Zen in Kyoto has been shielded against the downward trend because of the tourist trade, which has seen a dramatic rise in numbers. Kyoto, a city of a million and a half, now attracts over 50 million visitors a year. For a religious sect that values silent contemplation, the revenue from tourists is a mixed blessing, as indicated by this notice posted publicly at Shokoku-ji: “Please respect the temple precincts, garden and environment as a religious space and keep all noise to a minimum. You will acquire Buddha’s providence from the bottom of our heart.”
Zen Spreads to the West
During the course of the twentieth century, as knowledge of Zen spread to the West, Kyoto played a prominent part. D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966) is a case in point. Born in Kanazawa, Suzuki studied Zen in Kamakura before working for eleven years in America. After returning to Japan and teaching English in Tokyo, he took up a professorship at Kyoto’s Otani University in 1921, where he continued teaching until the age of 89. He founded the influential Eastern Buddhist Society, and in 1927 published the first series of his ground-breaking Essays in BuddhismOther books followed, among them An Introduction to Zen Buddhism in 1934 and Zen and Japanese Culture in 1959. Over the years, Suzuki gave several lecture tours in the West, described as more like Buddhist sermons than academic talks. Although he has been hailed for his pioneering work, he has also proved a controversial figure who has come under criticism for espousing essentialism.
Among Western intellectuals to take an early interest in Zen were such notables as Satre, Heisenberg, Huxley, Jung and Heidegger. The Beat Generation of the 1950s looked East for inspiration, with Kerouac dubbing his book Dharma Bums (1958) and Gary Snyder coming to Kyoto to study Zen. (Other poets to have found inspiration in Kyoto include Kenneth Rexroth, Cid Corman and Edith Shiffert.) But perhaps the most influential figure of all was Ruth Fuller Sasaki (1892–1967), whose pioneering work played a vital role in opening up Zen to the West.
As Ruth Fuller, she had met Suzuki in 1930 while on a trip to Japan, and she returned to Kyoto the following year to do zazen meditation at a Nanzen-ji subtemple. As a wealthy widow following the death of her husband, she had continued her Zen practice in America, marrying the Japanese master Sokei Sasaki shortly before his death. In accordance with his wishes, she set up the First Zen Institute of America and traveled on its behalf to Kyoto in 1949. She was given use of a house in Daitoku-ji, and used her wealth to develop the site into the subtemple of Ryosen-an. Here she entertained such luminaries as Joseph Campbell, R. H. Blyth and her son-in-law Alan Watts. She was a formidable woman, at one time sitting zazen eighteen hours a day, and she dedicated herself to making Zen writings available to the English-speaking world. To that end, she created a research team, which included Gary Snyder, Burton Watson and Philip Yampolsky.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Zen experienced a cultish boom in the West fueled by books as disparate as The Way of Zen (1957) and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). The spiritually displaced headed for ‘a golden triangle’ of Kathmandu, Kuta and Kyoto, and the streets of the city began to fill with seekers of satori (‘awakening’). Some returned home none the wiser, though others stayed on in the city to pursue their interest long term. Some even qualified as priests. Figures like ‘Shakuhachi Bob’ were prominent among the foreign community, and the appeal of studying Zen in the city was poetically caught by Pico Iyer in The Lady and the Monk (1991).
The diffusion to the West has been compared by commentators to the movement of Zen from China to Japan. Among the Kyoto priests facilitating the westward spread were Zenkei Shibayama at Nanzen-ji, a follower of D. T. Suzuki; the abbot of Tofuku-ji, Keido Fukushima, who was unusually open to teaching Western students; and Soko Morinaga, head of Hanazono University, who was the inspiration behind Daishu-in West in northern California and the Zen Centre in London. Through the work of such figures, Kyoto’s reputation as a citadel of Zen has been spread around the world. Eight hundred years after its establishment in the city, a religion based on sitting has proved remarkably mobile.
Incense serves as a purifying agent in Buddhism and is offered at times of worship. Since an incense stick burns on average for 30–40 minutes, it is used in Zen to measure the length of meditation sessions.
WAYS TO STILLNESS:
THE THREE SECTS OF ZEN
Contrary to the perceptions of many in the West, Zen is not the dominant strand of Buddhism in Japan. In terms of followers, the Pure Land and Nichiren faiths (if one includes the lay organization Soka Gakkai) are bigger, as is the esoteric Shingon sect. Moreover, within Zen there are three different schools: Rinzai, Soto and Obaku. Rinzai is the oldest, Soto the biggest, Obaku the smallest.
Of the 20,000 Zen temples in Japan, Soto has about 75 percent, yet in Kyoto it is Rinzai that is dominant. Indeed, of the 35 temples and subtemples included in this book, only three are Soto (Kosho-ji, Shisendo and Genko-an) while just two are Obaku (Manpuku-ji and Kanga-an). How is this explained? An old saying suggests the answer: “Rinzai for warriors, Soto for commoners.” While Rinzai appealed to the élite of Kyoto, Soto spread in the provinces with the support of regional lords. (Obaku was a latecomer.)
Of the three Zen sects, Rinzai and Obaku are the closest in thinking, for both trace their lineage back to the Chinese master Linji Yixuan (d. 866; Rinzai in Japanese). The difference can best be understood in terms of history. Rinzai arrived from Song China in the late twelfth century and subsequently became Japanized. Obaku arrived from Ming China in the mid-seventeenth century and retained many of its Chinese forms and regulations. The doctrinal differences are slight, however, and in recent times they have joined together in an association in which Obaku stands alongside Rinzai’s fourteen schools (which are mainly a matter of lineage).
The difference between Rinzai and Soto is more substantial. Rinzai sees meditation as a means to awakening, whereas Soto sees it as an end in itself. “Practice and enlightenment are one,” said Eihei Dogen, founder of the sect. For Soto, just sitting (shikantaza) is in itself transformative, and the striving of Rinzai is seen as counterproductive. In its attempt to trigger awakening, Rinzai makes more use of koan than Soto, which looks rather to intensity of meditation. Rinzai is known as the rough school, using a sudden sharp shock to jolt the sitter into enlightenment. Soto is known as the gentle school,