Dan74 wrote:Bankei wrote:I too started off in Zen and still love it, but as it is now it is far removed from the teachings of the Buddha. I could never understand those later mahayana sutras and was disappointed with the state of modern Zen discipline - no Bhikkhu lineage in Japan at all. So I just take the idealised aspects of Zen/Chan from books. Similar with Theravada - it is also far removed from what the Buddha taught, but perhaps closer to it than modern Zen.
Though there is no Bhikkhu lineage in Japan due to some historic events, some priests do live very exemplary lives and there is certainly a Bhikkhu lineage in China and Korea where Chan/Son is very much alive and kicking.
If you go and stay in some of these monasteries or even study with a monastic trained there, perhaps you may change your mind about it being "far removed from the teachings of the Buddha."
And if you throw such a accusation, you should at least as Tilt says "Back it up."
_/|\_
Hi Dan
I don't want to split hairs just for the sake of it, but there is still some difference between the Japanese Zen, Korean Son and Chinese Chan, though, and how they are practiced in the West is not always identical, either. Of course, this doesn't mean that there are not great teachers in any tradition, for there are! But I wouldn't be too quick to put Chan and Zen in the same category for a lot of stuff (except some historical connections, obviously).
For example, Bankei also states:
In Japanese Zen there has been a development of ordination of a person after death - Kaimyou. Family members pay an outrageous amount of money to some Zen priests for a little ceremony to ordain their dead relative and give him/her an ordination name. This is one modern practice that is far removed, in my opinion, from the teachings of the Buddha.
As far as I know, this never happens in Chan.
Another modern practice (or maybe not so modern) is the passing of the temple down from the father priest to the son. Temples in Japan are usually run by a male priest and his wife. This includes Zen temples.
This certainly is not the case in China, and may happen only is some Korean traditions, but not all.
However, there are a few good training monasteries there, such as Eiheiji one of the head temples of Soto Zen. But most of the monks here are usually sons of a family temple doing a 1 or 2 year stint before going back home to run the temple, get married and earn a large tax free income.
As above.
On the doctrinal side there are many teachings which are far removed from the teachings of the Buddha - this doesn't necessarily mean they are not Buddhism. Examples are:
Hongaku Shiso = inherent/original enlightenment thought
Tathagatagarbha (womb of the Buddha) thought
Busshou Buddha nature
All of these theories arose long after the death of the Buddha.
These are all originally from Chinese schools, but because most of the Japanese schools have a much heavier dose of Tendai - which is where a lot of these ideas got developed in depth - than China, some of the arguments about "inherent enlightenment" that you'll hear from Soto and Dogen in particular, are just nowhere near as important in China.
Chinese Chan has basically never heard of Dogen, and is not that interested on the whole. And considering most Soto Zen forms in the West - which is what the OP is referring to - rely a lot on Dogen, then obviously this shows a difference. There also seems to be a lot of Theravada influence in Western Zen, at least, and I haven't seen this really happen in Chan.