Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd i 12/20/2007 6:19:39 PM Numen Book Series Studies in the History of Religions Series Editors Steven Engler (Mount Royal College, Canada) Richard King (Vanderbilt University, U.S.A.) Kocku von Stuckrad (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Gerard Wiegers (Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands) VOLUME 119 BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd ii 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism Myōshinji, a living religion By Jørn Borup LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd iii 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM On the cover: Myōshinji honzan in Kyoto. Photograph by Jørn Borup. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISSN 0169-8834 ISBN 978 90 04 16557 1 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd iv 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM For Marianne, Mads, and Sara BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd v 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd vi 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM CONTENTS Acknowledgements ..................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter One Myōshinji: Institution, history, and structure ... 7 1.1 Ideology, lineage, and premodern history ..................... 7 Legendary beginnings .................................................... 7 Tradition, transmission, and sacred kinship .................. 9 Myōshinji, gozan, and Muromachi ................................. 13 Tokugawa: Bakufu, honmatsu seido, and danka seido .......... 17 1.2 Meiji Zen: Modernization and invented traditions ...... 20 Buddhist responses ......................................................... 23 Zen and Myōshinji developments ................................. 24 Lay Zen .......................................................................... 26 1.3 Postwar and contemporary Myōshinji Zen .................. 28 Judicial and institutional and structure of religious organizations .............................................................. 29 Myōshinji institutional structure .................................... 31 Zen temples ................................................................... 33 Economy ........................................................................ 39 Social, laicized, and international Zen ......................... 42 1.4 Summary ........................................................................ 47 Chapter Two Zen Buddhists ................................................... 49 2.1 Men with or without rank: shukke, zaike, and a discussion of terminology .............................................. 49 2.2 The clergy ...................................................................... 51 Shukke: “Leaving home” and returning as a ritual process ........................................................................ 52 Shukke as returning sōryo ................................................. 54 Dharma rank and hierarchy; status and stratifi ed clerical systems ........................................................... 56 Alternative career mobility: ango-e ................................. 59 Clerical offi ces ................................................................ 60 BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd vii 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM viii contents The priest ....................................................................... 62 The priest wife and the Zen family .............................. 70 Temple sons ................................................................... 74 Nuns ............................................................................... 76 2.3 The laity ......................................................................... 79 Householder or believer: zaike, danka and danshinto ....... 79 Sect-transcending laity; users, clients, and occasional Buddhists .................................................................... 84 Religious confraternities ................................................ 86 2.4 Mixed categories ............................................................ 88 Intellectuals, critics, and enlightened laymen ............... 88 Foreigners ....................................................................... 96 2.5 Summary ........................................................................ 99 Chapter Three Zen religious practice ..................................... 101 3.1 Rituals and ritualization ................................................ 101 Myōshinji categories and classifying as religious practice ....................................................................... 103 Categories of religious practice ..................................... 105 3.2 Zen ideas and practice ................................................... 107 3.2.1 Objects of belief and religious practice ........... 108 Superhuman agency, powers, and ideal states ............................................................... 108 Cultural ideal values .......................................... 120 3.2.2 Subjective qualities and practices ...................... 123 Some theoretical remarks on “belief ” .............. 123 Belief, commitment, and “meaning to mean it” in the Myōshinji context .......................... 125 Ritual practice and how to do it right .............. 129 3.3 Religious education ........................................................ 134 Education, training, cultivation, and mission ............... 134 Cultivating the clergy .................................................... 136 Cultivating the laity ....................................................... 144 The strategy and reality of training and cultivation .... 154 3.4 Monastic practice ........................................................... 159 Ritualized monastic life ................................................. 159 Alms-begging and exchange .......................................... 168 3.5 Ritualized events; clerical rites of passage .................... 174 Ordaining the monk ...................................................... 175 BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd viii 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM contents ix Installing the master ...................................................... 177 Installing the priest ........................................................ 179 Initiating the dead ......................................................... 183 Structure and semantics of clerical rites of passage .... 184 3.6 Lay and clerical rituals .................................................. 186 3.6.1 Daily service and rituals of worship ................. 186 Reihai: Temple and domestic worship ............... 186 Worship as ideal ethical and soteriological practice ........................................................... 191 3.6.2 Ritual texts and doing things with words ......... 195 Rhetoric, semantics, and magic ........................ 195 Myōshinji texts ................................................... 198 Ritualization of texts ......................................... 201 3.6.3 Rituals of realization: zazen and zazenkai .......... 205 Meanings, structures, and ideals of meditation ...................................................... 205 Meditation practice ............................................ 209 3.6.4 Calendrical rituals .............................................. 216 Seasonal rituals .................................................. 217 Pilgrimage .......................................................... 222 Sectarian and Buddhist calendrical rituals ....... 224 Memorial days of patriarchs and sect founders .......................................................... 226 Statistics and semantics of calendrical rituals .............................................................. 230 3.6.5 Local Zen folk rituals ........................................ 234 Daruma-cults and festivals ................................ 234 Manninkō kōjūsai: dining, healing, and circumambulating toilets ................................ 239 Local folk Zen, an interpretation ...................... 243 3.6.6 Rites of passage ................................................. 246 Lay ordination; jukai-e and receiving the precepts .......................................................... 246 Rituals of sociocultural and biological order ... 253 Rituals of death and dying ............................... 254 Funeral rituals .................................................... 255 Structure and meaning of the traditional Zen Buddhist funeral ..................................... 262 Ideas and ideals of death .................................. 263 BORUP_f1_i-xii.indd ix 12/20/2007 6:19:40 PM x contents Modernization, institutionalization, and ritual context ............................................................ 266 3.7 Summary .......................................................................