Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism : Myōshinji, a living religion / by Jørn Borup.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Borup, Jørn.

Series:

Studies in the history of religions ; 119.

Studies in the history of religions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rinzai (Sect).

Myōshinji (Kyoto, Japan).

Physical Description:

xii, 314 pages, 14 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2008.

Summary:

Zen Buddhist ideas and practices in many ways are unique within the study of religion, and artists, poets and Buddhists practitioners worldwide have found inspiration from this tradition. Until recent years, representations of Zen Buddhism have focussed almost entirely on philosophical, historical or "spiritual" aspects. This book investigates the contemporary living reality of the largest Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist group, Myoshinji. Drawing on textual studies and ethnographic fieldwork, Jorn Borup analyses how its practitioners use and understand their religion, how they practice their religiosity and how different kinds of Zen Buddhists (monks, nuns, priest, lay people) interact and define themselves within the religious organization. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism portrays a living Zen Buddhism being both uniquely interesting and interestingly typical for common Buddhist and Japanese religiosity.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Myoshinji: Institution, history, and structure 7

1.1 Ideology, lineage, and premodern history 7

Legendary beginnings 7

Tradition, transmission, and sacred kinship 9

Myoshinji, gozan, and Muromachi 13

Tokugawa: Bakufu, honmatsu seido, and danka seido 17

1.2 Meiji Zen: Modernization and invented traditions 20

Buddhist responses 23

Zen and Myoshinji developments 24

Lay Zen 26

1.3 Postwar and contemporary Myoshinji Zen 28

Judicial and institutional and structure of religious organizations 29

Myoshinji institutional structure 31

Zen temples 33

Economy 39

Social, laicized, and international Zen 42

Chapter 2 Zen Buddhists 49

2.1 Men with or without rank: shukke, zaike, and a discussion of terminology 49

2.2 The clergy 51

Shukke: "Leaving home" and returning as a ritual process 52

Shukke as returning soryo 54

Dharma rank and hierarchy; status and stratified clerical systems 56

Alternative career mobility: ango-e 59

Clerical offices 60

The priest 62

The priest wife and the Zen family 70

Temple sons 74

Nuns 76

2.3 The laity 79

Householder or believer: zaike, danka and danshinto 79

Sect-transcending laity; users, clients, and occasional Buddhists 84

Religious confraternities 86

2.4 Mixed categories 88

Intellectuals, critics, and enlightened laymen 88

Foreigners 96

Chapter 3 Zen religious practice 101

3.1 Rituals and ritualization 101

Myoshinji categories and classifying as religious practice 103

Categories of religious practice 105

3.2 Zen ideas and practice 107

3.2.1 Objects of belief and religious practice 108

Superhuman agency, powers, and ideal states 108

Cultural ideal values 120

3.2.2 Subjective qualities and practices 123

Some theoretical remarks on "belief" 123

Belief, commitment, and "meaning to mean it" in the Myoshinji context 125

Ritual practice and how to do it right 129

3.3 Religious education 134

Education, training, cultivation, and mission 134

Cultivating the clergy 136

Cultivating the laity 144

The strategy and reality of training and cultivation 154

3.4 Monastic practice 159

Ritualized monastic life 159

Alms-begging and exchange 168

3.5 Ritualized events; clerical rites of passage 174

Ordaining the monk 175

Installing the master 177

Installing the priest 179

Initiating the dead 183

Structure and semantics of clerical rites of passage 184

3.6 Lay and clerical rituals 186

3.6.1 Daily service and rituals of worship 186

Reihai: Temple and domestic worship 186

Worship as ideal ethical and soteriological practice 191

3.6.2 Ritual texts and doing things with words 195

Rhetoric, semantics, and magic 195

Myoshinji texts 198

Ritualization of texts 201

3.6.3 Rituals of realization: zazen and zazenkai 205

Meanings, structures, and ideals of meditation 205

Meditation practice 209

3.6.4 Calendrical rituals 216

Seasonal rituals 217

Pilgrimage 222

Sectarian and Buddhist calendrical rituals 224

Memorial days of patriarchs and sect founders 226

Statistics and semantics of calendrical rituals 230

3.6.5 Local Zen folk rituals 234

Daruma-cults and festivals 234

Manninko kojusai: dining, healing, and circumambulating toilets 239

Local folk Zen, an interpretation 243

3.6.6 Rites of passage 246

Lay ordination; jukai-e and receiving the precepts 246

Rituals of sociocultural and biological order 253

Rituals of death and dying 254

Funeral rituals 255

Structure and meaning of the traditional Zen Buddhist funeral 262

Ideas and ideals of death 263

Modernization, institutionalization, and ritual context 266

Plural Zen 277

Umbrella Zen 278

Hierarchical Zen 280

Power play and exchange 283

Zen rituals and practical meaning 285

Zen and the study of religion 288.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [299]-312) and index.

ISBN:

9789004165571

9004165576

OCLC:

181142173