Zen and Japanese Culture

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• Zen and Japanese Culture

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The Essential spirit of Zen Buddhism

• ?? (Prajna)(?????)
• Transcendental Wisdom
  Enlightenment
• ??(Karuna) (???)
• Love and compassion

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??(?????)Transcendental Wisdom
Enlightenment
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??(???) Love and compassion

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The Essence of Zen Buddhism??(Prajna)
??(Karuna)

• Prajna ?? and Karuna ?? are Sanskrit terms.
  Prajna may be translated transcendental wisdom
  and Karuna love or compassion. Prajna makes
  us look into the reality of things beyond their
  phenomenality, and therefore, when Prajna is
  attained we have an insight into the fundamental
  significance of life and of the world, and cease
  form worrying about merely individual interests
  and sufferings. (Suzuki, 1938, p.13)

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The Essence of Zen Buddhism??(Prajna) ??(Karuna)

• Karuna ?? is then free to work its own way, which
  means that love, unobstructed by its selfish
  encumbrances, is able to spread itself over all
  things. In Buddhism it extends even to inanimate
  beings, for Buddhism believes that all beings ,
  regardless of the forms they take in their
  present states of existence, are ultimately
  destined to attain Buddhahood when love
  penetrates into them. (Suzuki, 1938, p.13)

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http//www.myoshin-zen-c.jp/report/course/course18
/1804_l.htm
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Thomas Kershnner

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Zen and Japanese Art

• Here we have an appreciation of transcendental
  aloofness in the midst of multiplicities--which
  is know as wabi in the dictionary of Japanese
  cultural terms. Wabi really means poverty or
  negatively, not to be in or with fashionable
  society of the time. To be poor, that is , not
  to be depending on things worldlywhich, power,
  and reputation, and yet to feel inwardly the
  presence in oneself of something which is of he
  highest value above time and social positionthis
  is what essentially constitutes wabi.
• (Suzuki
  1938. p. 30)

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Black White Painting??? ???????
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Haiku Moment
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Flower Arrangement
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Japanese Calligraphy
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Zen and Swordmanship
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Zen and Swordmanship

• The sword is the soul of the samuraitherefore,
  when the samurai is the subject of a talk of any
  kind, the word inevitably comes with it. The
  samurai is asked, when he wished to be faithful
  to his vocation , to rise above the question of
  birth and death, and to be ready at any moment to
  lay down his life, which means either to expose
  himself before the striking sword of the enemy or
  to direct his own towards himself. The sword thus
  comes most intimately connected with the life of
  the samaurai, and has become the symbol of
  loyalty and self-sacrifices. The reverence paid
  universally to it in various ways prove it.
  (Suzuki, 1938, p. 102)

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???Japanese Chivalry (Bushido) The seven Moral
Code

• ?????????(?)?????(???????????)????,
  ????(Consideration for enemies and the weak)
• ??????
• Rectitude ? Respect ??
• Courage ? Benevolence ?
• Honor ?? Honesty ?
• Loyalty ?
• These traditional moral codes are still highly
  estimated in Japanese society and business world
  as a universal values. (Professional Pride)

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?????????(?)?????(???????????)???The Sources of
Bushidou influenced by Zen and Shintoism.

• Bushido furnished a sense of calm trust in Fate,
  a quiet submission to the inevitable that stoic
  composure in sight of danger or calamity, that
  disdain of life and friendliness with death.
• Zen represents human effort to reach through
  meditation zones of thought beyond the range of
  verbal expressions
• To be convinced of a principle that underlies all
  phenomena, and if it can, of the Absolute
  itself, and thus to put oneself in harmony with
  the Absolute. Inazou Nitobe (1899) from Bushido

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Tea Ceremony Modesty and Reserved manner
Everyone is supposed to enter the tea room in
modest manner. WHY?
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Zen and Tea-cult

• The spirit of cha-no-yu is to cleanse the six
  senses from contamination. By seeing the
  Kakemono(a hanging picture scroll) in the
  tokonoma (alcove) and the flower in the vase,
  ones sight is cleansed by smelling the burning
  incense ones sense of odour is cleansed by
  listening to the boiling of water in the iron
  kettle and to the dripping of water from the
  bamboo pipe, ones ears are cleansed by tasting
  tea ones mouth is cleansed and by handling the
  tea utensils ones sense of touch is cleansed.
  When thus all the sense-organs are cleansed, the
  mind itself is cleansed of defilements. The
  tea-cult is after all spiritual discipline, and
  my aspiration for every hour of he day is not to
  depart from the spirit of the tea-cult, which is
  by no means a matter of mere entertainment.
  (Suzuki, 1938. p.210)

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The basic attitude of Zen Buddhism

• 1. Its concentration on the spirit leads to the
  neglect of form
• 2. It detects in form of any description the
  presence of the spirit
• 3. Deficiency or imperfection of form is held to
  be more expressive of the spirit, because
  perfection of form is likely to attract ones
  attention to form and not to the inner truth
  itself
• 4. The deprecation of formalism, conventionalism,
  or ritualism tends to make the spirit stand in
  all its nakedness or aloneness or solitariness.
• 5. This transcendental aloofness or the aloneness
  of the absolute is the spirit of asceticism,
  which means the doing-away with every possible
  trace of unessentials.
• 6. Aloneness translated in terms of the worldly
  life is non-attachment
• 7. When aloneness is absolute in the Buddhist
  sense of the word, it deposits itself in all
  things from the meanest weeds of the field to the
  highest form of nature. (Suzuki, 1938. p. 22)

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