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

[Stephen Hopkins]

I should, of course, know better than to use language at all loosely on
Buddha-l. 

At the risk of digging the (first) hole a little deeper, I offer a brief
quote from Michael Downing's 2001 book about the shenaningans at San
Francisco Zen Center, "Shoes Outside The Door":

"...by any common-sense standard, the most seasoned meditators at Zen Center
repeatedly flunked simple tests of self-awareness. 'I wonder,' wrote a
former ZC student.....'if in some cases doing zazen doesn't augment or
aggravate the dissociative process - as if in some ways it cauterizes the
personality and seals it off, encapsulates it, widens the breach between
heart and mind."

For help with the second hole, I should like to thank Richard Nance, who in
pointing me toward David Loy's online article, "Is Zen Buddhism"

 http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-ENG/loy7.htm

caused me to look again at Loy's "The Great Awakening", where, of course,
that article is reprinted (in a revised form) as "Zen and the Art of War".
Both versions contain much useful information about both Zen and the sword
and Suzuki.   Dr Nance's recommendation of "Pruning The Bodhi Tree" is
similarly valuable, for which many thanks.

Steve Hopkins

> From: "Gad Horowitz" <horowitz at chass.utoronto.ca>
> Reply-To: Buddhist discussion forum <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 12:15:03 -0700
> To: "Buddhist discussion forum" <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
> Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Zen War Guilt/Zen and the Sword
> 
> what could "zen itself" possibly be?
> 
> and whose feet are not made of clay?
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stephen Hopkins" <stephen.hopkins at ukonline.co.uk>
> To: <buddha-l at mailman.swcp.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 6:27 PM
> Subject: [Buddha-l] Zen War Guilt/Zen and the Sword
> 
> 
>> 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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