Zen Buddhism

SR No.: 011121
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 58

THE BIRTH OF ZEN BUDDHISM 37 time of naturalisation suddenly broke out in active work, and Zen had almost a triumphal march through the whole land of Cathay."
Soon after the passing of Hui-neng, who appointed no successor, the Master Hyakujo founded the system, still in use, of the Meditation Hall. In all other schools of Buddhism, and in most other religions, an image of the Founder is the central feature of a temple or a monastery. Only in Zen is the Meditation Hall of paramount importance, and when by the tenth century the koan (for an explanation of which please wait for the chapter on Zen Technique) had come to be the recognised means or "device” for attaining satori, Enlightenment, all the main features of Zen Buddhism were in being, and have hardly varied in the thousand years which separate that period from today. It was in Japan, however, that the tradition was best carried on, for by the thirteenth century Zen Buddhism in China had begun to lose its initial impulse. As early as the seventh century Zen had reached Japan, but it was not until the twelfth century that a Tendai monk called Eisai crossed into China to study Zen, and returned to found a Zen monastery in Kyoto. But Kyoto was the headquarters of Shingon and Tendai Buddhism, and it was in Kamakura, under the powerful wing of the Hojo family, that Zen took root in Japan. Eisai founded the Japanese branch of Rinzai Zen. Soto Zen arrived a few years later, in the hands of his pupil, Dogen, while the third of the three sects of Zen, the Obaku, was introduced by Ingen in the seventeenth century, and is now but a part of Rinzai Zen. The difference between the schools is chiefly the importance given to the koan exercises.