Notes FOREWORD BY MASAO ABE 1. The entire Fourfold Great Vows reads: However innumerable sentient beings are, I vow to save them; However inexhaustible the binding passions are, I vow to extinguish them; However immeasurable the Dharma-teachings are, I vow to learn them; However unsurpassable the Buddha-Way is, I vow to attain it. 2. A lay study/practice group started by Hisamatsu Shin'ichi (1889-1980) and some of his students at Kyoto University. 3. The foremost Zen reformer of contemporary Japan and founder of the F.A.S. Society. INTRODUCTION 1. D. T. Suzuki, 'Ethics and Zen Buddhism', in R.N. Anshen (ed.), Moral Principles of Action (London: Harper & Brothers, 1952) p. 607. 2. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (London: Rider and Company, 1980) p. 27. Quoted by A. D. Brear, 'The nature and status of moral behavior in Zen Buddhist tradition', Philosophy East and West, 24 (October 1974) 432. 3. M. Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, tr. and ed. by H. H. Gerth and D. Martindale (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958) p. 213. 4. Although the literal meaning of 'metaphysical' is perhaps inappropri­ ate for the Buddhist world-view, the term is used guardedly through­ out this book in the sense of 'concerning the nature of reality'. Usage of 'ontological' has been avoided, for the term may connote substan­ tial, independent essences or a transcendent Being from which beings derive. 5. 'Fixation' is a rendering of the Japanese term kotei, which literally means 'set up an individual'. It refers to the psychological positioning of oneself as a subject over and against objects and as an enduring entity with set boundaries. The term does not carry any Freudian connotation of a focus of attention and energy on a specific object or on a specific psycho-sexual stage of development. 145 146 Notes to pp. 3-6 6. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1981), s.v. 'ethic'. As a doctrine or system of good conduct, 'morality' often encompasses social norms and mores, unlike 'ethics' in a strict sense, which, as indicated in the definition, designates not only a system of moral conduct but also a rational discipline that wrestles with the formulation of ethical prin­ ciples and with meta-ethical issues. Accordingly, this work primarily uses the term 'ethics' and avoids using 'morality', even though the two terms are virtually synonymous in common usage. 7. Some Western thought trickled into Japan through earlier Jesuit mis­ sionary efforts during the 'Christian century' (roughly 1549 to 1638) and restricted Dutch trade with Japan during the Tokugawa period (1600-1867) when the shoguns enforced a 'closed country' (sakoku; literally, 'chained country') policy. Much of this learning was suppressed until Japan opened up more to the outside world in the mid-nineteenth century. 8. G. K. Piovesana, Recent Japanese Philosophical Thought, 1862-1962: A Survey (Tokyo: Enderle Bookstore, 1968) p. 11. 9. The first character of this compound, shu, means essence, purport, or sect, as in Jodo-shinshu (the True Pure Land Sect). Accordingly, shukyo literally means 'teaching of the essence' or 'sect teaching'. 10. E. Norbeck, 'Religion and Society in Modem Japan: Continuity and Change', Rice University Studies, 56 (Winter 1970) 120. 11. Between father and son, ruler and subject, elder brother and younger brother, husband and wife, and friend and friend. 12. Christianity is omitted here because of its small following in Japan. 13. The 'Basket of Discourses', which constitutes one of the three 'baskets' in the Pali canon. 14. Though the Eightfold Path in large part functions developmentally, the eight 'components' are mutually supportive and often practiced simultaneously, so some Buddhists avoid using such sequential terms as 'steps' and 'stages'. 15. The Pali term, sfla (Skt., sfla), indicates morality in the sense of self-control brought about by observing precepts and other guidelines for Buddhist practice. 16. In contrast, many Zen Buddhists have regarded ethical behaviour as primarily a result or expression of Awakening. 17. Found in the Sutta Pitaka. 18. The 'Basket of Discipiine'. 19. E. Sarkisyanz, Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965) pp. 40-41. 20. W. L. King, In the Hope of Nibbana: An Essay on Theravada Buddhist Ethics (LaSalle, ~linois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1964) p. 160. 21. The passive nuance of this term led Winston King to characterise upekklui as part of the 'ethic of Nibbana' rather than the ethic of this ~orld (the 'ethic of Kamma'), as 'that quality which still retains some direct semblance of the ethical and yet in a considerable measure transcends it in the Nibbana-ward direction.' Nibbana, p. 162. 22. The 'Path of the Teaching' or 'Path of Truth'. Notes to pp. 6-9 147 23. The Dhammapada, tr. by S. Radhakrishnan (Madras: Oxford University Press, 1966) p. 120. 24. Ibid., p. 180. 25. K. Jones, The Social Face of Buddhism: An Approach to Political and Social Activism (London: Wisdom Publications, 1989) p. 238. 26. D. Lardner Carmody, Women & World Religions (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981) p. 49. Given the cultural contexts in which Buddhism devel­ oped, the positive views of women and resultant gains at the time of Sakyamuni gradually crumbled. Carmody writes, 'By the time of the canonical literature (second century B.C.E.), however, this positive view of women began to abate and one notes the beginning of a fateful theme that women are dangerous temptations. The likely source of this theme was the pressure of male celibacy' (p. 49). According to Diana Y. Paul, in many Buddhist texts 'the sacred is represented as masculine while the profane or imperfect is represented as feminine, [and here] we have a polarisation that suggests both internal psycho­ logical conflicts and external social barriers between the sexes' (Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahayana Tradition (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1979) p. xiv). Concerning Mahayana litera­ ture she writes, 'From a feminist perspective, one perceives a destruc­ tive, complex set of images preventing women from fulfillment within the Buddhist religion' (p. xiv). 27. T. W. Rhys-Davids, Pali-English Dictionary (1959), s.v. 'nibbiina'; as quoted in G. Rupp, 'The relationship between nirvaiJ.a and saQlsara: An essay on the evolution of Buddhist ethics', Philosophy East and West 31 (January 1971) 58. 28. T. Ling, Buddha, Marx, and God: Some Aspects of Religion in the Modern World (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966) p. 57. 29. G. S. P. Misra, Development of Buddhist Ethics (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 1984) p. 111. 30. R. A. F. Thurman, 'The Edicts of Ashoka', in F. Eppsteiner (eli.), The Path of Compassion: Writings on Socially Engaged Buddhism, 2nd edn (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1988) pp. 111-19. 31. W. L. King, 'Buddhist Self-World Theory and Buddhist Ethics', The Eastern Buddhist 22 (Autumn 1989) 26. 32. Sarkisyanz, Buddhist Backgrounds, p. 24. 33. D. E. Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma (Princeton: Princeton Univer­ sity Press, 1965) pp. 92-99. 34. G. Rupp, 'The relationship between nirval).a and saQlsara: An essay on the evolution of Buddhist Ethics', Philosophy East and West 21 (January 1971) 64. 35. Jones, The Social Face of Buddhism, p. 235. 36. J. Macy, Dharma and Development: Religion as a Resource in the Sarvodaya Self-Help Movement, 2nd edn (West Hartford: Kumarian Press, 1985) p. 13. 37. Winston King states, ' ... Theravada Buddhism must make up its mind in which world it expects to live and strive before it can give a clear answer to its ethical problems. For there are two worlds here with their respective 148 Notes to pp. 9-17 values and ways (:] ... the world of absolute transcendent value (Nibbana) and the world of relative mundane concerns (Kamma).' Nibbana, p. 270. 38. King sketches how, in the standard Theravada formulation of kamma, good or meritorious acts are thought of as resulting in 'hedonistic' - to use King's term - consequences, that is, nonmoral goods such as health, wealth, power or fame. 39. At times the actual attitude of the arhat and Theravada ethics in general have been obscured by those who from the Mahayana per­ spective claim that the Arhat rests satisfied with achieving his own private salvation; he is not actively interested in the welfare of others. The ideal of the Arhat smacks of selfishness; there is even a lurking fear that the world would take hold of him if he tarried here too long. The Bodhisattva makes the salvation of all his own good. T. R. V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Miidhyamika System (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980) p. 263. 40. R. A. F. Thurman, 'Guidelines for Buddhist Social Activism Based on Nagarjuna' s Jewel Garland of Royal Counsels', The Eastern Buddhist (New Series) 16 (Spring 1983) 19-51. 41. Jones, The Social Face of Buddhism, pp. 260-61. 42. Often discriminated against in the areas of employment and marriage, the burakumin are descendents of Japanese who were engaged in occupations traditionally considered impure. CHAPTER 1: THE ZEN PATH 1. The somewhat ahistorical approach taken in this chapter does not attempt to account for each of the concrete forms of Zen in specific times and places, for it aims at providing a general backdrop for later examination of specifics. 2. Seng-t'san [Sengcan], 'On Believing in Mind (Shinjin-no-Mei)', in D. T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York: Grove Press, 1960) p. 78. 3. Also referred to by Zen writers as the thinking self, the particular self, the small self, the ego, or the ego-self. 4. F. H.