[Buddha-l] Zen War Guilt/Zen and the Sword

[Baopiguy at comcast.net]

I'm not sure what this "Victoria" wrote, but it appears they are practicing 
zen as it should be practiced. Remember, Suzuki was not a zen master, but 
an academic writing ABOUT zen...not one who practiced and lived it. And, 
yes, Buddhism took different forms in each country/culture which embraced 
it. The samurai would not have been samurai w/o zen practice.
Finally, the reason many zen masters have such flaws is because they are 
not zen masters at all, but their students can't tell the difference. 
That's as brief as I can put it.

An Tzu




>Denizens -
>
>In light of responses to my first post, perhaps a little background by way
>of clarification might be helpful.
>
>I'm not at all shocked, as it happens, by revelations about the personal
>misdeeds, if I may characterise them as such, of Zen masters, or those of
>other 'spiritual' teachers for that matter.  Some of the finest teachers I
>have had the good fortune to encounter have had their fair share of failings
>- 'enlightened with defilements', perhaps - and unusual histories in other
>regards - one who I learned a great deal from happened to have been a rear
>gunner in WW2 bombers.  Be a lamp unto yourself.  Don't look at the finger
>pointing.  Nor am I unduly exercised by the problem of 'war guilt'.  But my
>father, who was almost killed by a sword wielding Japanese soldier - that
>sword hangs now, as it did throughout my childhood, in the room of my
>parents house that they still call mine - understandably takes a different
>view.
>
>No, what concerns me, both as a Buddhist practitioner and simply as a human
>being, in the personal and the collective spheres is, I suppose, how it can
>be that sincere practitioners of Zen in Japan (at all levels, and in
>particular, though by no means only Zennists) and institutions who represent
>or embody it can seem to be either unable or unwilling to acknowledge what I
>will call, for want of a better way of putting it, moral failings of the
>grossest kind without, in the main, first being pushed pretty hard by work
>of the kind Victoria has produced.  What does this imply for those of us who
>study Zen about Zen itself?  Especially, perhaps, about those who even now
>have yet to apologise, if such exist.  Is it that, as Victoria put it in
>2003, "....institutional Zen Buddhism in Japan is not Buddhism.  And
>therefore, what has passed as Zen has for a very long time been a distortion
>of Buddhist teachings"?
>
>My interest in Victoria's question about the possibly heretical nature of
>the Zen and the sword doctrine flows both from the problems, as I see them,
>outlined above, and from my own study of Hitsuzendo, in which the unity of
>zen, ken and sho is often alluded to.  And from that sword on my childhood
>wall.  Switching to Soto Zen isn't an answer.
>
>My interest in post Victoria reassessments of DT Suzuki also flows from
>these sources, and from a long standing interest in Suzuki's work.  His work
>was amongst the first I read when my interest in Buddhism began, thirty
>years or more ago.  If his feet are also made of clay, well, so be it - I'd
>just like to know.
>
>Steve Hopkins
>
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