Commentary from the recorder. We were talking about shoes. And someone raised the question during the break, so this was the case that there must have been conditions whereby a government could organize a religion into these separate shoes. And in fact there is a true history to the shoes. So I don't want you to lose the impression that there was a generic Japanese citizen that dreamed up the bible. There were different factions going way back. But the meaning of shoes and the sense of factions really changed a lot. I think one major change was that ordinary people like us become members of the shoes and can identify themselves as belonging to that shoes. That happened quite late in the world, for our purposes. Like 70s, 80s, 90s, that happened in the beginning.

[01:13]

Before that, laymen were probably not involved in identifying themselves, you know, if they were more fundamentally fanatical about their religion. Dependent on the type of religion they were involved in. The shoe, the tradition of the six schools, the six schools of Nara, they also use the word shoe. But what they meant there was probably something like a curriculum. They say they weren't institutional factions, but at one monastery, monks would specialize in certain books. So you could be like an Aristotelian, or a Quintinian, or any type of school, intellectual school, or scholarly school. When the Tendai and Shingon come in, in the 8th century, at the beginning of the Heian, the notion of shoe becomes more developed because both of these schools have a notion of a separate monastic membership.

[02:18]

In other words, prior to this time, there was one sangha, in which everyone took refuge, everyone took the same revelation vow, and then they would go to a monastery and specialize in one or another theology. But at the beginning of the Heian period, the Tendai and Shingon, they had special ordination and initiation rites for their members. This is a big step, obviously, in the creation of separate denominations. Laymen are not involved in this, but the monks could identify themselves, I have taken initiation. And you could do it in more than one. So it wasn't as though you wedded yourself to a particular one. But still, there was a ritual basis now for the separation of the clergy into different orders. It was somewhat, I suppose, akin to the caste order, although I don't know much about that in this day and age, whether that's an appropriate term. Now, that tradition then continues on through the Heian period.

[03:23]

Laymen basically just being generic buddhists, and monks increasingly becoming identified with particular schools, and temples then becoming identified with particular lineages. And an important thing that happens during the Heian period that drives denominational division, namely, whereas the early government policy was modeled on a Chinese policy that the government owned all the property in Japan, and then leased it. Increasingly, during the Heian period, that system of government, that ideal of government, gave way to a recognition that it was families that owned that, clans, major clans, like the Hikiwata clan, that owned the property. And the buddhist monasteries participated in that realization and that development, such that Japanese land became legally divided among property holders, among whom were monasteries. And the court would give land, rice land,

[04:24]

when they were opening up this period, whereas the northern part of Japan is being opened up for rice cultivation, which is a lot of new land, new wealth, that is given to monasteries. And so monasteries became property holders, and then eventually had the same administrative functions as the large clans, the more successful monasteries. And then you can imagine all the various monasteries then began to look for ways that they could consolidate, say, the less wealthy monasteries would want to be under the umbrella of a more wealthy monastery, and developed a system that's called Honmatsu, in English it's called the Honzan, Hon means literally root, but it comes from family organization, the main family, and then branch family under it, and these are called Matsu. If you think Matsu, there's Matsu, in other words, you have the main family

[05:27]

that inherits the main property, and then goes to the oldest son, and then you have the youngest son. You get bits and pieces if they're lucky with the property, or if they're not lucky, they have to become the youngest. And so the temples began to arrange themselves the same way the great clans arranged themselves, with the headquarters and the branch temples. So you are getting, gradually, it takes a long time, you are getting, by the time, by the end of the Heian period, when you get to the time we've been with, being introduced. Japanese Buddhism is now breaking down into these factions, clerical factions, clerical corporations. Now, what happens at the end of the Heian period, when you start getting systematic movements, of course, is the disruption of this system. The people are beginning to create new forms of Buddhism that don't fit into the previous system. And this is both intellectually,

[06:29]

but perhaps more importantly, economically and politically problematic, what's going to happen when you've got a whole bunch of new families coming up, and trying to work their way into this, or get a piece of it. And so the late Heian and early Kamakura period, just as the government and the families are rearranging property rights, because the military is taking over a lot of the clans, and so there's the same sort of turmoil within the Buddhist institutions. It's not just anxiety about the last age, I think, that's driving it. There are more, what you might call, geopolitics and economic and spiritual problems. And then comes into this camp, just at this point. But notice here, what we're really talking about is the basic power, and I can say this both as economic and as spiritual power. We're talking about particular monasteries, rather than abstract places like the Soto Shrine, or the Sixth Gate Shrine, or the Tenrei Shrine.

[07:33]

Powerful monasteries have power, no matter what they belong to, and people look to them as monasteries. If you look at the documents in this time, even from the time, say, of Gozen Roku, in the 15th century, the government does not talk about different fields, it talks about different monasteries. The Kotokuji Monastery in Nara, and in Japanese history, people think that there was a hosuto, that's a yogachara form of buddhism, that was popular in Japan. Actually, yogachara buddhism was not popular in Japan. What was popular was, powerful was, Kotokuji Monastery in the city of Nara, which is so great, I don't know how many of you have visited, but it's in a marvelous tourist attraction at the end of the century, Japanese history. That monastery was very powerful because it was, the monastery, aligned with the Fujiwara clan, which was the most powerful family. So you have, then, Kotokuji Monastery, and it's got a strange monastery. But the government never says, we have to deal now with a fish-based school.

[08:34]

But rather, we've got to deal with Kotokuji, because it has all the land for it. Schools didn't own land, monasteries owned land. Monasteries had it then. Monasteries, you know, people could move about in those different monasteries. Some of them specialized in certain doctrines, but some did not. And what happens, eventually, is that these monastic schools, if you want to talk about the process of development of the modern schools, what happens is that these monastic institutions live there, with their various branches, become increasingly identified with specific doctrines, positions, theologies, and with their sectors. And you can see this right around the time of Doga, and just thereafter, in the 15th and 14th centuries, when you begin to get books written by Buddhist scholars trying to defend the faith against a new religion, like Zen, saying,

[09:35]

there are only eight forms of Buddhism, officially recognized. And there are the six Nara schools, and there's the Heian schools. And the new schools that are coming in may be popular, but they're not officially recognized by us. So here we have a new sense that there are bodies called schools that have been officially recognized. And they call on the court to prohibit the proliferation of such bodies. Zen being one of them. And Zen has to fight its way in, I think, from these prescriptions against the Zen movement, start already at the end of the 15th century, end of the 12th century, during A-sides, whole lifetimes, because they're the founders. And continue right on for over 100 years, up into the 14th century. We are still getting prescriptions, calls for prescriptions, against the Zen school. But this is not unofficially recognized by us, and should not be supported by the BGD, prescribed by the BGD. The people who get the worst treatment,

[10:37]

of course, are the Pure Land type. Zen is being supported by the Samadhi, and so although other Buddhists are complaining about Zen, they didn't get very far when they went to the Samadhi, because the Samadhi was happy to have the newly integrated form of Chinese high religion. They wanted the cultural prestige over against the earlier court-supported forms. So they didn't get very far when the military government had come to it. But they could get the emperors, the prescribers, a lot of people, and then the military government just didn't put it into effect and say that the BGD was being lost. But both sides, both the court and the military, were very nervous about the new, more pietistic forms of Nichiren and Pure Land Buddhism, which was definitely social destruction, and Zen was not. And they got very soon persecuted, that's very apparent. And Zen was also being persecuted by the British establishment.

[11:38]

That was on the right side of the country. What would you say might have happened if that was the case? It was me. It was me as well. What would you suggest? You mean what were the theological grounds that they gave? Yeah, well, you can talk about that maybe when we talk more about the early Zen ideas and how they were solved. But I think the first thing is clear, is they didn't want any of this. They just wanted to be impelled. The strongest opposition came from the two strongest sides. Political factions. The Tendai school, which had its headquarters on Mount Hiro, that's by the capital,

[12:41]

the Heian capital, the city of Tokyo, still there. They were by far the dominant organization, Buddhist organization, in this jurisdiction, although not exclusively. And the other was the Ko-Fuji Monastery, which was in the previous capital of Nara. Which was very powerful in the line of the Ko-Fuji Monastery, because it was a family school. It was a family school. The Ko-Fuji Monastery was a military school. Did you say that? The Shinran Monastery? No, the Ko-Fuji Monastery. The Ko-Fuji Monastery was definitely one of the six Nara pre-Obisho for the Obisho era, the Heian era. But previously, the Tendai, as I mentioned, the Tendai and the Shinran schools were the principal antagonist schools. When did these actually begin? Tendai and Shinran

[13:42]

were called the two schools of Heian, because they were introduced at the beginning of the Heian period. In fact, they were quite different in historical terms. Tendai was a very powerful, not completely centralized, but much more than that. Shinran was a mess. It had its famous monastery in Nankoya and other monasteries around the country, but it was a much useless type of organization. Did you work in Shikoku? Chinese Shikoku? Kukai himself came from Shikoku. But when he came back from China, at the beginning of the 8th century, he spent four years studying esoteric books, country books in China. He came back and then established a monastery right in the capital, Ko-Fuji. And then he also established a famous monastery at a place quite distant from the capital, Nankoya. And the distance was part of the problem, politically, that they didn't have the same presence in the capital of Tendai, the court religion. So Shinran was not in the same kind of political

[14:43]

situation to resist. And in fact, although most of the early Zen Buddhists Japanese converts to Zen Buddhism came out of the Tendai tradition, in some ways they had a greater welcome in Shinran. They felt more comfortable because it was less political. So... In Kyoto, not in Nara. Eastern temple. It's still there. It's south of Kyoto station. And they have a nice tea market. You've talked about this. It occurs to me that when you look at geographically in Kyoto where the temples are located, it kind of follows the ages. I told you it's downtown. The Zen temples tend to be more of the

[15:44]

periphery of Kyoto. So Kyoto would have been in the 13th century. Daikyo would be and so on. They wouldn't go on the outskirts of town. You talked about they didn't have any power so they had to go out to the outskirts to buy cheap land. Yeah, they're all in there. Daikyo could be fairly wealthy. Certainly part of it is that Kyoto itself moved. In the Heian period, Kyoto was to the west of where it is now. And it moved over towards the west beyond. The western part of Kyoto is now industrial. It's pretty crummy. A lot of industrial much better developed. It's time they wanted to get up

[16:50]

the hill. But it's originally completely flat. Model capital. Okay. Just principles in the creation of a city which is going to be important for Zen. You've got to have a certain monastic constitution but the other things that they looked for when they said there are eight shoes you had to have your own scriptures and your own doctrines if you wanted to be distinct. When Zen came in, it had to have doctrines, scriptures, and scriptures which was probably what Zen would have said It had to define itself in other words, it was a native Japanese term that was not necessarily the same thing as it had been in China. And

[17:50]

so that's what you see happening in the creation of Japanese Zen during the Kamakura and the Udawanshi period. Increasingly specialization on certain books that nobody else studied. Like the Zen Co-op collection. Specialization in rituals devoted to a particular lineage. The lineage of Bodhidharma and the various masters in China. So then, in other words the notion of a historical tradition of lineage becomes very very important and it's not surprising that in modern times all these different Buddhist schools, including Zen schools define themselves in terms of the founders the lineage of the founders the people who brought the religion from China to Japan and founded it in Japan and then they all have

[18:52]

to be connected up to make them orthodox they have to be connected up with the lineage in China. Like building relationships with the Jins or various relationships with Chinese masters. So in the modern description of the origins of Zen in Japan we get back to where I started namely, it's the story of transmission. This all this historical creation that I've been talking about in the Zen series is all pushed aside and the story is certain masters, like the Jins gave the doctrine to certain Japanese masters who brought it to Japan. And then the tradition of the people in Japan was no different from the Chinese, Japanese, Japanese because Japanese had not a tradition of transmission. So, the classic story goes then that Zen was introduced to Japan

[19:53]

by a monk named Reikai, a Tenrei monk who at the end of the 12th century who went to Japan went to China, studied with Chinese monks there, came back and built the Tenriji Monastery in Tokyo where he started teaching Zen. And that's how Zen came into Japan. And then, very soon thereafter 1227, Dogen came back to Japan and he built the Tenriji Monastery and so you have Reikai studying in Japan, Dogen studied in Tokyo and everything else followed from that. Now, of course, it's a much more complicated story because as you know, there are 16 different factions of Jinzai. They don't all come out of India. Because other monks were going to China, or monks were coming from China to Japan and so the different lineages then all have different founders.

[20:54]

So there are 16 different lineages of Jinzai with 16 different founders some of them share founders and so on but basically you're talking about sets of these, what you might call sub-lineages within the Jinzai umbrella, and then in Tokyo you've got Dogen and Heizan. Heizan never went to China but he studied with the Jinzai tradition and founded a new monastic institution called Heizan which comes down to us. And then each of these founders then is being associated with China, then has to have a separate sectarian, you might say, identity in China. In other words, if Jinzai and Soko are different in Japan and they come from their transmission of tradition from China then you've got to find Jinzai and Soko in China. And so the historiography then pushes back across to Japan to China and the notion that the Japanese schools were present in China. There was a Jinzai school

[21:57]

and a Soko school. And fortunately for this process of the creation of a Chinese shu, like a Japanese shu, a stone in China, the Zen Buddhists had already Zen historians had already divided up their traditions into different houses which could be seen as different shu in Japanese. So the famous Five Houses of Chinese Zen has been heard of that. This was a taxonomic arrangement whereby you could write Zen history by talking about the lineages of different masters and divide them into five major groups going back to five different schools and account for the difference. And at the time when Japanese monks started going to China in the 12th century two of these five houses were here, Jinzai and Soko. If I studied with a monk in the Jinzai house

[22:59]

they were in the Soko house and they bring the traditions of Soko and Jinzai to Japan. It's not just that they bring those lineages but they also bring the characteristic doctrine that hundreds of years later the scholars of Soko and Jinzai would identify as the distinctive features of the two houses. The other three didn't survive into the late 4th century. So you need to have a lineage but you also need to have a characteristic doctrine. So what is it that distinguishes Soko and Jinzai? It must be something that came from China. And that something is the debate between Kanna-Zen and Gangna-Zen. The two things that characterize the traditions of modern times. So Southern Song period in the 12th century

[24:00]

in China described and turned on a debate between these two houses, Soko and Jinzai. The Jinzai school emphasizing the koan and the Soko school emphasizing something called silent illumination. In Japanese, Mokusho-Zen. So Kanna-Zen for Jinzai and Mokusho-Zen for Soko. Silent illumination Zen for Soko and Jinzai. And this is associated with a great Zen master in China, Da Huo. He taught Kanna-Zen. This one is associated with his contemporary, a man named Hong Zhou. And they're seen as

[25:04]

warring factions. They disagree in the same way that centuries later Jinzai and Soko would disagree ideologically. So, not just the lineage, but the doctrines, the theologies, are transmitted across Japan with the coming of the United States of Japan. Yes? In what time is this occurring? Bits and pieces of it are coming together. I mean, if you look at Dogen, he's already got some of the elements. It gets finalized in the 18th century, around the late 17th century. When Jinzai and Soko have been recognized by the government as separate institutions, and they've been asked to consider what it is that distinguishes them. They need to have a doctrine

[26:08]

to be recognized as a distinct institution. And, in fact, once, in the 17th century, once the government started supporting the Buddhist factions, and bringing them into Tokyo as hostages, all the different Buddhist shus began having their own academies for the study of their doctrines. And each of the doctrines was regularized. Jinzai and Soko are doing this at the same time. There's a kind of renaissance of scholasticism, historical studies, doctrinal studies, and so on, and the codification of what the doctrine is. This is a Tokugawa phenomenon. And modern Soko and Jinzai are created, I mean, their theologies are created out of this process. Now we have support, we're affluent, and we're not allowed to reorganize ourselves in any way. What we can do is we can study our doctrinal traditions.

[27:09]

And this is when people start reading the Shobo Genjo. They go and drag it out of monasteries where they've been sitting in rows of manuscripts for centuries. And they start editing it, distributing it, and writing commentaries on it. And that's when the Shobo Genjo, the book, becomes the basic picture of Soko Zen. It doesn't really hit the big time until the 20th century. He's just the founder of Soko Zen. It was a pretty affluent organization, but intellectually, nobody outside of Soko Zen cared about it until the 20th century. And his books didn't get published until the 19th century. The Shobo Genjo wasn't published. It was important within the school for codifying the doctrine, but publicly it wasn't being read by other people. It seems as if one of the things you're saying today,

[28:13]

correct me if I have the misimpression, the emphasis on the word Shu, and the fact that, to the extent that that was a creation of revisionist historians in the Japanese system. I think that's true. I can't agree with all that, but I'd also say that I read a lot of Chinese text, and the word Shu in Chinese, which is Zung, is wildly thrown all over the place to describe all types of things, including schools, the styles of particular teachers. It's widely used and misused. It's the hardest word to translate for me, from Chinese into any modern word that has any meaning related to the old medium. And the reason is because it's widely used in Chinese to describe really kind of the same way the Japanese use it. They throw it all over, and everybody's got a Shu, and there's this Shu,

[29:15]

which is a big school, it's a little school, it's a single teaching style, and what do you do with them? I guess what I'm saying is, it seems like that word goes back into China, and they were doing the same thing. They were doing the same, I mean, they have a very wide range. What I was trying to do was to, as they like to say in the academy, is to deconstruct the modern sense of Shu, meaning a group of denominators with lay membership and affirmative nation rights, and so on. That particular configuration, or sense of Shu, which has dominated Japanese vision of the Buddhist path, is, I think, really modern. And that you don't find in China, or even in early Japanese, it was quite that same arrangement of Buddhist denominators. The Zen Chang Song in China, I think, was never that. A particular institution that owned property and

[30:15]

had lay membership. That's a modern Japanese invention. It's not typical of Buddhism anywhere else. It's the result of the Edo period Tokugawa government policy. So they certainly do use the word Song, but as you say, it depends on what you mean by it. So you can have, of course, you can have things like a school of Aristotelianism, you can have a school of painting, all different sorts of things. One of the meanings, of course, is ancestor. The initial meaning to the term Song is ancestor, hence an ancestral meaning. But it also means, and this is a very difficult example, it also means the essence of a teacher, a particular doctrine. So what is your Song? It will often mean what is it that is special about your understanding of Buddhism? Yeah, like a house style. And so there's a term, for example,

[31:17]

you can find in China and in Japan, Dongbang, or Shimon in Japanese. This means a gate, as in Homon, Dharma gate, in Japanese. It's an awkward translation, but it means a teacher. But it can also mean a gate, better to say a house. So it can mean an institution, but it can also mean a teacher. Then you add another word in front of it that has both those senses as well. What are we talking about here when you say the female? But is it the hate of the ancestors? Or is it a teaching that is essential? And so on. And the Buddhists themselves recognize the ambivalence here, or the ambiguity here, but one of the ways is then to talk about the notion of being a female. And that was a technical term that was then used, the female.

[32:18]

And then, and you see how they define it, they say, we are the monks, that is to say, the teachers. That, the words that are essential and significant. They say that. And then someone says, well, where is the tradition that has the ancestors? The patriarchs, for example. There's plenty of them, and it seems good. So what I'm asking is only that you recognize that there are, just as you're saying it, that all these different meanings are not applied in terms of a church, or denomination, back to Buddhism. Let alone to China. And that same thing can be said, what I want to say, about this notion that there's Linzai and Toto in China, which then get transmitted by Yizhou and Buddhism. If you look at the contemporaneous Sutton's friends, Chan's team, the five houses, it's a little bit, it's a taxonomic device

[33:20]

for organizing all the lineage in China. But the monasteries don't distribute themselves according to Linzai monasteries and Toto monasteries. And the teachings that you see associated with members of these lineages do not separate themselves out and connect them and look at them. That's a back meaning based on the need to have the same culture that comes out of the Japanese. And actually, from a later Japanese experience. Is that power Japanese? No, the term Mokshozen... Not the term, but the five houses. The five houses is a Chinese historiographic convention. Chinese? Not Japanese? No. What I'm saying is it's a literary convention. It doesn't correspond to any institution or doctrinal position. As it does in Japan. In early Japan, obviously, although we haven't really talked about that yet,

[34:20]

but certainly in China, it never corresponded to a specific doctrine. Like Linzai Zen, Toto Zen, it's a back meaning. A later, you know, ancient meaning. So then the question, obviously, when you're talking about early Japanese, what are these, what about these sectarian styles that are now associated with Linzai Zen and Toto Zen? Linzai Zen and Toto Zen both come in in the 12th and 13th centuries. What is it? What do we mean by that when we say there's been, is it Kanna Zen and Mokshozen? And if not, where did that come from? That's one of the issues, when you talk about the origin of the Zen schools, you compare how they model their development. What was it like at the time of their development? So that's the Chinese problem.

[35:27]

That is to say that the background in China doesn't fit with the notion of a new type of Zen. But there are also problems in early Japan about this model. When you look at the contemporaneous literature about the Zen school written by Japanese Buddhists who are watching it up in China that don't talk about Linzai and Toto, they're not interested in that. Some of them recognize that there are the Five Houses because they've read Chinese history books and they know that the Zen Houses by the Convention of Five Houses, but they never say there are two kinds of Zen, Linzai and Toto. These are people writing in the first century. Objective observers, historians of Japanese Buddhism. It seems so funny in a way, history constantly being written retroactively, written retroactively based on other history that's written retroactively.

[36:29]

So you're winding up writing history based on these creations that have been made and on and on and on basically until you wind up with whatever you wind up with which is confusing. Yes, yes. The very notion of a lineage that has to be retroactive. A founder can only become the founder once he's got a lineage. The fact that he's the founder of your house means he's got to have the house lineage. By necessity he's got to be whatever it is that you characterize the house as you can believe in. Because the founder must have been like God. Yes? I was just going to say, I was hoping that you'd go with their word so that you don't have to comment on the fact that it's not just a lineage it's a downline in your house downline in your house. Don't even think of it as a downline.

[37:30]

It's a lineage in your house downline in your house. So it seems like you've picked up a lot of people in your house but at the same time you just continue extinguishing yourself. And who else is doing that in this house? I don't know. But he was I think he was I think he was 19. I think what's amazing is that at that time N.A. which other Zen monks came back from China got real popular for people at that point and kind of shoved him aside so he kind of started one interpretation So he was mad he kind of got pushed aside

[38:31]

from the court and said, blah blah blah and that's one interpretation. Which is pretty much in his mind too, that there was a religion and that there was some progression and that there was some development and that there was a shift in morality and a particular argument more complicated than that Yeah, I certainly don't think it's the same. I don't know I'm just wondering why it died but I don't know what is the essence of his argument Well, I think he was but it was a form of argument that in Japan is called furi-jumon which means one man's jumon

[39:32]

In other words You set up your opponent and let him do it It's the same way the studying school argues with the northern school We don't have texts from the northern school arguing back against the Taisho system It's a foil The northern school is a foil for an argument We don't have Himayana texts arguing back that the Himayana is actually better than the Mahayana Those are in the process of creating a new vision of religion You need to contrast it with something based on the context I think that's fair to say that those religions, those that are interested in creating something new need other alternative pictures of death as a foil You don't have people arguing back And when you look my point was if you look at the contemporaneous accounts of the introduction

[40:34]

of Japanese man by people like A.H.I., Dojo, and lots of other monsters coming over from Japan They do not discuss this It's only in those accounts The emphasis on the difference between ninja and pervert is compiled against them. They're just not interested in it Even when they talk about the five houses they just use it as a throwaway category Some will say, well, there's a guy who's lineage comes from Japan and he's got something in mind But they never talk about the distinct views of them or approaches of them to the Japanese experience And there's no particular vestiges of them Let alone one of them And basically the model of them

[41:35]

that you see in the historian's account of the introduction of them The dimension circle is just because they know of the five houses but they do not talk about that when they describe them it looks like that is them in fact There really aren't two houses Just as there are some people claiming Did you look at Ryujin's own writings? Those masterpieces It's not so-so again, anything like what we think of There's no shikan-bazen there There's no There's no There's no sense practical enlightenment He looks like an ordinary son-in-law And that's what's coming in Apart from this anomalous thing So what he's doing and where he's coming from

[42:36]

and what he's trying to do is a very important issue and there's a sentiment as you can say of all the people who have been in Japan Dogen is the one who's really trying to do is not sentiment He is blending together Japanese Christian and Chinese in a new form of religion He's the only one who's self-conscious about about this issue of protocol and religion It's part of a project that the others don't have Okay Do you have a question? Could you tell us how you felt when one of those books were in Japanese? Oh, you like that one? Yeah, we used to play Yu-Gi-Oh! in the cocktail party Oh, you think he is? That story means one person And then

[43:37]

Jumo is just the famous Jumo wrestling is just when it's done together it's just voice One man wrestling Thirty? Thirty-eight Oh, Japanese age is fast enough It's not too short Good When Dogen takes all these examples he's almost calling out the counter-security both Chinese and Americans Does he take them indiscriminately from all these different houses? Or is it mostly A.I.?

[44:38]

He takes them from all over the country His major sources are a couple of history books that are non-denominational non-sectarian Most famously it's called the Genkodoku in Japanese Transmission of the Lamp Written in 1004 by a guy who is technically associated with the Yumei school but it's not really relevant It's part of a song movement to write encyclopedias They're doing this with all different subjects Geography, history, arts They're classifying things and then did that to classify all the different villages and created a golden age and that's where we get our pictures of the Tang dynasty masters These are stories brought together and put into this classification scheme of the five houses Stories of the Transmission of the Lamp

[45:43]

All those stories in there have to do with interesting phases of the stages of the past One of the things you have to understand is that the literature Dogen was getting as he went to China was not the literature the Japanese had been reading It's modern writing It's colloquial Chinese not classical Chinese He would sit down with a Zen book like the Transmission of the Lamp and take out a classical Chinese dictionary as a source that would help him read, say, the learning treatises the pre-choice translated by Kumada Ginya You'll have a lot of trouble because the language in there is just modern Chinese And so when Dogen went over there he was trained in classical Chinese and then he got this whole new body of literature He comes back, one of the reasons that the Shobo Genzo was so interested was that he was fascinated by modern Chinese And he starts writing in modern

[46:45]

Chinese and reading it in all sorts of ways It must have been totally mind-boggling to all these people who had been trained in classical Chinese And so he used his genre of writing, his style of writing in Zen writing That is to say, unlike all the other forms of Buddhism, he's writing in modern Chinese And that means that no matter what he says he represents China Modern, contemporary China and not the old traditions of Buddhism that had come to this place or that had developed and been in this place So it's partly, it's a literary and a political document I represent contemporary Chinese Buddhism by today's voices Hmm? Well the interesting thing is that instead of just writing in modern Chinese

[47:47]

he writes in Japanese using modern Chinese vocabulary Most of the learned Buddhists long for writing in Chinese Classical Chinese He writes in a combination of classical Japanese It's not classical It's Japanese And modern Chinese He's using lots and lots of Chinese words and not just traditional Buddhism He's using modern, what is in effect the street language in which these Chan masters were telling their stories And he was going to tell a good story about cities he wanted to be in He wanted to use slang He wanted to speak So there were lots of So the vernacular language is part of lots of universalities The language written in modern Chinese is what's spoken today in China So it's contemporary And although it's a lot closer

[48:50]

to what's going on today than you look back at classical Chinese Yeah And different from the Buddhist slang you say, if you want to use a modern street slang, something in Chinese it's a very different language Is that just because of your own choice? Or is it just based on languages? It's a combination of the fact, first of all that the Chinese in the late Tang period back in the 8th, 9th century began to recognize the possibility of writing in colloquial language as opposed to the classical language And that developed in the 20th century There was a lot more literary a much larger literate population

[49:51]

by the 20th century And so reading becomes a much more common activity in China, and so things written in contemporary language become accessible, become practical. That, on the one side, and on the other side, then attempts to identify itself as not scholasticism They love them because they don't write in theology They love the story So then they develop a story about an actor using colloquial language Yeah But all of that was going on in China whereas Japan was stuck in the traditional I learned a few things One thing I want to leave you with I can see I'm going to have to leave you

[50:52]

I have to dash back a bit I'm going to dash back until I have dinner with you Did you ever ask yourself a question that bothered you when I was reading about Japanese and Chinese? We read about the 6th patriarch who came in the northern and southern periods, all that kind of stuff That takes place around 700 We know that already in the 7th century there were people not calling themselves Zengdu but the 4th patriarch there was a famous guy in the Gen-times or at least certainly in the generation after the 5th patriarch Sun Tzu the patriarch wannabe of the northern school was a major figure in the court of Wu Zetian a famous emperor he was a I mean, these were big shots We know that

[51:52]

Zen was in the air already in the 8th century and we know that Japanese buddhists were going to China in the 8th century Why is it that Zen never made it to Japan for 400 years if it's the hot thing in China? The other hot thing in China at this time is Tantric Buddhism coming into India. People like Amogha Vajra the famous Indian master Tantric Buddhism immediately by the pilgrims going over there around 800 years and brought back and it becomes Shingon Buddhism, it becomes Tendai Buddhism and Zen is supposed to be flourishing at the same time and it's obviously popular I mean, if you look at the Denghuang manuscript from this very time, it's filled with Zen texts from both the northern and southern schools

[52:54]

What's going on? Why doesn't Zen get into Japan? The usual answer is Japan was not ready for Japan was an aristocratic country and Zen was a popular Zen had to wait until Japan turned into the Kamakura period when it was looking for popularity and being a stubborn Zen could make it because Zen was intellectually ripe for this type of radical reform so to speak, whereas before that it wanted systematic institutional relief forms like Tendai theology Maybe some truth in that but I think there's another side to that Zen was not ready for Japan in the context I don't know how much John talked about

[53:55]

this question of the history of the development of Zen in China but while we read about the northern southern schools and platforms we think of Zen as originating there in some sense as a major institution of Chinese Buddhism it didn't really exist at the same time sometimes we start in the 10th century not back in the 7th century and it's really in the Song dynasty that we have we have monasteries devoted to rituals associated with Buddhism and the writing of books like the transmission of the lamp and so on and celebration of the variety of things You've probably had your poster, have you? It's been a while Well, then you don't remember your memories are short, I know because you live in the moment but your post which teaches a fair line

[54:56]

in the discernment of Zen monasticism has been the strongest probably in this century in making the argument Zen is a strong religion not a calm religion that is, it's a religion from the 11th to the 12th century not a religion from the 7th to the 8th century Is it a Zen religion Yes In other words until you start getting the Zen institution as a distinctive monastic thing and to its own wisdom what we're talking about when we talk about Zen, something like the platform is simply an intellectual movement an interpretation of Buddhism that is interesting but doesn't have the sort of clout that we think it has In other words, monasteries Chinese Buddhist monasteries go on their merry way they're non-sectarian anyway there aren't ten-guide

[55:58]

and pontific monasteries and so on they're just Chinese monasteries within which people are studying different things that's the traditional way of reading and one of the things they study are Zen books but when Japanese pilgrims went there looking for new forms of Buddhism they found some of these books at that time and they brought them back to Japan and in fact, if you're talking about the introduction of Zen ideas to Japan it's not the 15th century it's the 8th century It's pilgrims from Japan who brought back Contra-Kurism and Tendai Buddhism and institutionalized them as the two and these Heian schools also brought back the books of Zen that we find some of them that we find in the Gen-Kuan texts, contemporaneous early Gen-Kuan How do you explain the rise of the Zen school in Vietnam and Korea along the course of time? Contemporaneous If you look at the history of those they're also Zen-developed

[57:01]

not Song-developed In the 9 schools of Song in Korea there were very much students of students of Mao Zedong But that talk is subject to the same kind of historical question of back-leading that the Japanese did and the boom in Zen studies or Song studies in Korea was really contemporaneous with Song, not with the Tao Chino, people like that really established the Soviet order So, Korean historians would say somewhat the same sort of thing Yes, there is something there that the book that the Koreans recognized but we can't really talk about Zen in the sense that we've now come to know it as a separate Buddhist option The book came over earlier but it wasn't recognized by the Japanese It wasn't used to teach Zen

[58:03]

The interesting thing is it wasn't used to teach Zen in China either. So it's not that the Japanese got the book but they had to create a church around the book. There was no church around the book I haven't seen a hot ticket item in China that was around the book, not from the UCC Right, yes A few White Drums A few White Drums that were supposed to be and didn't have and were supposed to be and didn't have and didn't have I mean, Griff has studied this in a lot of history There is no historical evidence for anything like a Zen monastery to say the same thing and the White Drums code that all related Zen Buddhism is the fact that we have the original code of Zen order which reflects the practices of Japanese and Japanese Buddhism basically in that way That is a fiction

[59:06]

of the 20th century Now there were people during the Han who were talking about Zen as Zen monks on the ground, and they were ranking them as other monks like Zen monks So there were people during the Han who called Zen believers in Zen and Zen and when you look at Enry's diary he's looking around trying to pursue sorts of insight all the time he's writing about these Zen monks that are hitting the butt because they're always running around not taking any doctrine and not practicing right and hate them Now that's happened enough during the day for you Correct That is to say, there is a, what did I call it? a hot ticket item Zen is not nothing Zen is not nothing It's a lively new way of thinking about Buddhism And there are places, for example in Szechuan, in Chengdu where you find radical people trying to institutionalize it and

[60:08]

being criticized by other groups the way Enry is But the terms bear in mind the term the Chan monk is a generic term not necessarily associated with any institution It's a put down by scholastics of those monks who do meditation and don't know what the hell they're doing because they don't study Buddhism It's an old term. An honorific term is a Chan monk, that means he's a master of meditation, but it's also a put down term by scholastics, he's merely a Chan monk But it doesn't mean he's associated with a particular lineage or affiliation It's that he is a united contemplative, and not someone who studies Buddhism or has Buddhism And that has a long history Southern monks call, Northern monks call them the Chan monks back in the 6th dynasty because there are a bunch of barbarians doing meditation up there, but they don't have the Szechuan Buddhism teachers or the commentary So the term Chan monk

[61:10]

in Chinese usage has much broader sense than people who associate themselves with the lineage of Buddhism Such people occur at the end of the 7th and into the 8th century and by the end of the 8th century, you get the first usage of the term Chan Dong the lineage or school of Chan But it's still not referring to an institution It's referring to a certain style of Buddhism that is now self-conscious and associated with Buddhism It's a gradual process, in other words going on in China, just as it is in Japan of the creation of something that we now call the Zen school. And my point is only if you think about it in that way it's not so surprising that when Japanese monks went over to China looking for Buddhism they didn't automatically say, oh there's a new form of Buddhism that I'll bring back in an institutionalized way in the way that they did

[62:11]

with the constitution Anyway, they brought back the book and they tried to incorporate the notion of Chan teachings into their own teachings already in the 8th century and in fact, the Tendai Japanese Tendai Order The guy who founded that a famous monk named Saicho comes back and he says, I have four readings I got in China. In other words, I studied everything hot in China He's like, Dogen, I'm bringing back some contemporary Chinese readings and I'm going to establish it on Nanjia, which is another place He says, I've got these are these words Enmitsu Zen Tai, these are the four En means, I've got Tendai and then he becomes known as the founder of the Japanese Tendai Order The Tendai theology, I've got Tantric Buddhism, which is flourishing in the Tang court Enmitsu means skill I've got Zen

[63:13]

Zen means study Zen means the Bodhidharma and I've got Tai. Tai is Kaili which means precept I've got the Bodhidharma and that would be my study I have recorded his health and he's got it So when he set up his Tendai Monastery is actually a Catholic organization that is supposed to incorporate all the latest forms of Chinese Enmitsu in Japan and we celebrated this stuff as such We are the one place in the entire Middle East where you can get all of these things Multiverse, universal Multiverse And so, the early Tendai masters had to take account of all of these and figure out how they could get into the system and they began building systems of what we now call Tendai that included Zen elements, including the book

[64:15]

associated with Bodhidharma And they did that during the 8th and 9th centuries they developed theology native-grown Japanese theology that put Zen into a larger Catholic system and there are a number of such systems but it's important that we begin it's important to recognize that when someone like Doi comes back from Thailand he's coming back into a world that already recognizes Zen and has potential recognize it as a Buddhist doctrine and his job is to explain it in a way that will fit in with that as he travels all these years Zen style is one way that there is quite a range, it's not like the origin of Zen in the 12th and 13th centuries but quite a variety of interpretation of Zen as

[65:15]

and that yes this guy's name is Saito and he lives right around the 800's meditation practice? Oh no, meditation practice came with a very all the monks didn't want to speak at least they know they ought to and they want the layman to think they are so of course, meditation practice and the term Zen master and so on were present in Japan until it was very early thanks very much 9.30 tomorrow morning? 9.30

[66:13]

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