[Buddha-l] Query--forest tradition monks in Japan today?

[Franz Metcalf]

Joanna and gang,

You wrote,

> Franz-please say more about the Daruma-Shu Zen school---did they build 
> hermitages or just hang out and camp?

My knowledge of the Daruma-shu is surpassingly scant and entirely 
indirect, having been gained in the study of Dogen and other 
institutional figures of early Japanese Zen. So what they *really* 
taught and practiced I'm not sure of. What I do know, is they were a 
very early Zen school in Japan, with temples and all that jazz, and 
that both Dogen and Yosai/Eisei--in other words both mainline Soto and 
Rinzai founders--excoriated them and anathematized them for 
antinomianism. Whether they were really antinomian, I'm not sure, but 
they did argue that the precepts were not fundamentally important, as 
the original mind was pure and unstained by afflictions. Not so 
different from Tendai, but somehow they got themselves branded as 
unworthy and proscribed by the government (along with Honen and Shinran 
and that ragged lot). The interesting thing to me about the Daruma-shu, 
though, is there is some record of them surviving at least until the 
15th century. Who did they minister to, if anyone? Who supported them? 
Where did they practice? How did they transmit the dharma--and the 
authority of the school? Theirs has got to be a fascinating story. I 
don't know if anyone has studied this stuff in English. In fact, I 
don't know if anyone has studied it in Japanese, but surely someone 
has.

So there you are: the more eccentric the Buddhism, the less we know 
about it. (Except modern Western Buddhism, which is indeed marginal, 
but is also practiced by successful, educated, white people and so is 
exhaustively studied.)

With metta,

Franz