14. Dogen's attitude toward women was revolutionary for his time. A
sampling is provided in Kim, Dogen Kigen--Mystical Realist, pp. 54-55:
"Some people, foolish in the extreme, also think of woman as nothing
but the object of sensual pleasures, and see her this way without ever
correcting their view. A Buddhist should not do so. If man detests
woman as the sexual object, she must detest him for the same reason.
Both man and woman become objects, thus being equally involved in
defilement. . . . What charge is there against woman? What virtue is
there in man? There are wicked men in the world; there are virtuous
women in the world. The desire to hear Dharma and the search for
enlightenment do not necessarily rely on the difference in sex."
15. Yokoi, Zen Master Dogen, pp. 35-36.
16. See Collcutt, "Zen Monastic Training in Medieval Japan," p. 59.
17. Translated in de Bary, Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 1., p.
247.
18. See Collcutt, "Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan," p. 62.
19. See Ibid., pp. 62 ff.
20.See Philip Yampolsky, trans., The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected
Writings, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 5.
19. IKKYU: ZEN ECCENTRIC
20.
1. This view is advanced convincingly by Collcutt in "Zen Monastic
Institution in Medieval Japan," p. 113 ff.
2. Ibid., p. 80.
3. This would seem to be one of the reasons for what became of a host of
emigrating Ch'an teachers as sub-sects of the Yogi branch struggled for
ascendency over each other.
4. Wu-an's strength of mind is illustrated by a story related in
Collcutt, "Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan," p. 84: "Wu-an
is said to have shocked the religious sensibilities of many warriors
and monks when, in what has been interpreted as a deliberate attempt to
sever the connection between Zen and prayer in Japanese minds, he
publicly refused to worship before the statue of Jizo in the Buddha
Hill of Kencho-ji on the grounds that whereas Jizo was merely a
Bodhisattva, he, Wu-an, was a Buddha."
5. Related in Ibid., p. 88.
6. Collcutt ("Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan," p. 114)
points out that the warrior interest in Zen and its Chinese cultural
trappings should also be credited partly to their desire to stand up to
the snobbery of the Kyoto aristocracy. By making themselves emissaries
of a prestigious foreign civilization, the warrior class achieved a bit
of cultural one-upmanship on the Kyoto snob set.
7. Collcutt ("Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan," p. 106)
reports that this conversion of temples to Zen was not always
spontaneous. There is the story of one local governor who was called to
Kamakura and in the course of a public assembly asked pointedly whether
his family had yet built a Zen monastery in their home province. The
terrified official declared he had built a monastery for a hundred Zen
monks, and then raced home to start construction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account