Zen Masters of Japan. Richard Bryan McDaniel
that had been passed down from Bodhidharma.
By the time of Doshin, the suppression of Buddhism had abated and monasteries were once again open, and a formal tradition of Zen training started to evolve. Doshin instructed his disciples to be earnest in their practice of zazen. “Zazen is basic to all else. Don’t bother reading the sutras; don’t become involved in discussions. If you can refrain from doing so and concentrate instead on zazen, for as much as thirty-five years or more, you will benefit. Just as a monkey will eat a nut still in its shell although it’s only satisfied when it has patiently extracted the nut from that shell, so there are only a few who will bring their zazen to fulfillment.”
Zazen was brought to fulfillment in the “emptiness” of which Bodhidharma had spoken to Emperor Wu. But Doshin warned, “When those who are still young in the practice see emptiness, this is seeing emptiness, but it isn’t real emptiness. To those who are mature in the practice and who have attained emptiness, they see neither emptiness nor non-emptiness.”
The Zen school was still relatively young when Doshin taught, but it was beginning to draw seekers not only from China but from the Korean peninsula as well. One of the students who sought out Doshin came from even further away, from the islands northeast of Korea that the Chinese dismissively referred to as the Land of Wa—“the land of dwarves.” (In Japanese, on the other hand, the “Land of Wa” means the “Land of Harmony.”) His name was Dosho, and he is the first Japanese recorded to have studied Zen.
Dosho came to China in 653 to study with teachers of the Hosso School of Buddhism. The Hosso School is derived from an Indian tradition known as Yogacara or “Mind Only School.” Its central tenet is that the world we perceive as real is only a product of mind. For a period, the Hosso School would be the primary form of Buddhism in Japan.
Dosho also became familiar with Doshin’s meditation school, and when he returned to Japan he opened the first meditation hall in that country, in Nara, the city that would become the capital of Japan for much of the 8th century.
With this, Zen had taken its second step east.
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| Landscape by Sesshu Toyo |
KAKUA
The earliest event to become the subject of a Zen story in Japan concerns a monk named Kakua, who made the difficult journey to China around 1172 in order to study Zen. Since Dosho had brought back the Hosso teachings, several forms of Buddhism had been established in Japan; however, the teachings of Zen (Chan) were still only to be found in the remote mountain regions of China.
After completing his training, Kakua returned to Japan. He was a recluse by nature and made no attempt to gather students. Following the example of the Zen masters of China, he lived in seclusion in the mountains of his homeland. Although he sought anonymity, stories began to circulate about him, and occasionally students would discover where he lived. They came to ask questions about what he had learned in China. Kakua would reply to their inquiries, then move further into the wilderness.
Eventually the Emperor of Japan heard about this elusive monk who had undergone numerous hardships in order to study Zen in China. Curious about how this school differed from the other branches of Buddhism with which he was familiar, the Emperor ordered Kakua to the capital to explain what wisdom he had acquired from the study of Zen. Standing before the emperor and his retinue, Kakua brought out a flute from the sleeve of his robe, blew a single note on it, then bowed and left the court.
Japan’s first encounter with Buddhism had occurred in 552, when a diplomatic delegation from King Song Myong of Korea paid a visit to the court of Emperor Kimmei. The Japanese court would have been a shabby affair judged by the standards of the royal residences of China and Korea. Conditions in Japan at that time were primitive compared with those of the great Asian powers to their west. Isolated from the mainland of Asia, Japan had been protected from invasion and conquest, but for a long while it was also cut off from contact with the technological and social advances that were occurring elsewhere. The Japanese had no written language. The first steps were just then being taken to establish a central government that would be able to exert control over the various clans and tribes who, lacking other enemies, continuously warred with one another. One clan, the Yamato, argued its right to rule the entire archipelago by virtue of its claim to be descended from the first Emperor of Japan, Jimmu, and the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu. Other clans challenged this assertion and sought ways to align themselves with the divinely descended emperor through both martial and marital alliances.
There was no organized religion on the islands. There was a folk tradition that honored the spirits (kami) associated with certain sacred places or times of year, and there was a tradition of venerating ancestors, whose ghosts needed to be propitiated. But there was no official priesthood commissioned to conduct services; it was the responsibility of individuals or families to provide the appropriate offerings. Householders maintained a family shrine, the clan or tribe a collective shrine, and there was a national shrine in honor of the imperial household. There was no organized philosophical or moral code associated with these traditions. And it was not until these native practices were challenged by the arrival of foreign traditions that this collection of practices evolved into Kannaga-no-michi, or Shinto, “The Way of the Gods.”
The Korean delegation of 552 brought with them a number of gifts including a statue of the Buddha and copies of several Buddhist sutras. After this meeting, certain factions in Japan, impressed by the sophistication of the Korean visitors, came to believe it was important to cultivate relationships with other nations; other factions sought to preserve national purity and unity through isolationism.
The progressives were in the ascendency during the reign of Empress Suiko (592-628), whose regent, Prince Shotoku, both modernized Japan and established the Buddhist faith on the islands. Shotoku was a great admirer of Chinese Tang dynasty culture, and he arranged for a number of expeditions to that country. Courtiers, scholars, craftsmen, and monks (like Dosho) made the hazardous crossing to the mainland and brought back with them Chinese ideas which the Japanese were able to assimilate and modify in their unique fashion. The forms of Buddhism these visitors encountered were those popular in the larger port cities on the Chinese coast; there was no contact at this point with the remote Zen communities still hidden in the mountains of China.
Using Chinese models, Shotoku worked aggressively to reform Japanese institutions, governance, the legal system, the calendar, and other branches of learning. The Chinese mode of writing, kanji, was adopted, with the result that while a particular character would have the same meaning in both languages, the word it represented, the sound, could be entirely different. For example, it has already been mentioned that the Japanese pronounced the characters for “Huike” as “Eka.” Over time a second and more practical writing system arose, hiragana, based on symbols that designated syllables rather than individual sounds (letters).
Shotoku established a government bureaucracy based on Chinese models and promoted a central government in which local barons owed allegiance to the divinely descended emperor. In addition to Buddhism, Shotoku also promoted Confucianism, which he considered an appropriate vehicle for instilling in youth the virtues of loyalty, self-restraint, and commitment to duty.
Today, Shotoku is recognized as the “father of Japanese Buddhism.” He composed a commentary on the Lotus Sutra, and, like the Chinese Emperor Wu, he sponsored Buddhist monasteries and temples. In popular devotional Buddhism, Shotoku is believed to be an incarnation of the Buddha; legend has it that he had been born holding a holy relic in his hand.
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