1. Karen Armstrong, Buddha (London: Penguin, 2001), xviii.
2. For a good discussion of the “braided river” theory, see Linda Heuman, “Whose Buddhism Is Truest?” Tricycle, Summer 2011. https://tricycle.org/magazine/whose-buddhism-truest/ .
3. See, for example, the Kalama Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 65) in the Pali Suttapitaka.
4. David McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 50.
5. Armstrong, Buddha , xxi.
6. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: HarperCollins Perennial Classics, 1957), 1, 4.
7. Wumenguan, or Gateless Barrier, case 21.
1. I am aware of the popular theory that the Buddha was Scythian, which is largely based on the similarity between Shakya (or Śakya), the name of the Buddha’s clan, and Saka (or Śaka), the Sanskrit name for the Indo-Scythians. Let’s just say this seems farfetched to me, but anything is possible.
2. See, for example, Gil Frondsdal, The Buddha before Buddhism: Wisdom from the Early Teachings (Boulder: Shambhala, 2016), which compares the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad to the “Book of Eights” (Aṭṭhakanipāto) from the Anguttara Nikaya of the Pali Suttapitaka. See also Richard F. Gombrich, How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings , 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006).
3. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans., Adittapariyaya Sutta (Pali Suttapitaka, Samyutta Nikaya 35.28). Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), November 30, 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn35/sn35.028.than.html .
4. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, “Nibbana,” in Noble Strategy: Essays on the Buddhist Path (Valley Center, CA: Metta Forest Monastery, 2011). http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/nibbana.html .
5. Rendered in English by Ven. S. Dhammika, “The Edicts of King Asoka.” Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), November 30, 2013. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/dhammika/wheel386.html .
6. See, for example, the Pratisarga Parva of the Bhavishya Purana.
7. Milindapanha 3, 5.5. http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/milinda.pdf .
8. See the Vajira Sutta, Samyutta Nikaya 5.10.
9. Edward Conze, trans., Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra, The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, chap. 1, verse 13. https://huntingtonarchive.org/resources/downloads/sutras/02Prajnaparamita/Astasahasrika.pdf .
10. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans., Bodhi Sutta, Udana 1.3.
11. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992), loc. 46. Kindle.
12. Red Pine, The Heart Sutra (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2004), 130.
13. Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna’s “Mūlamadhyamakakārikā” Translation and Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 90.
14. Pabhassara Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 1.49–52.
15. Koten Benson, “Prajnatara: Bodhidharma’s Master,” Sakyadhita 16, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 8. http://sakyadhita.org/docs/resources/newsletters/16-2-2008.pdf .
1. John Keay, China: A History (London: HarperPress, 2009), loc. 4083, Kindle.
2. Walter Liebenthal, Chao Lun: The Treatises of Seng-chao (Hong Kong University Press, 1968), 56–57.
3. “Song of Precious Mirror Samadhi,” or “Baojing Sanmeige,” is a poem by Dongshan Liangjie that is part of Soto Zen liturgy and which will be discussed in chapter 4. For more on the poem, see Taigen Dan Leighton, Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness (Boston: Shambhala, 2015). You can find a version of the poem as chanted in Soto Zen online at https://global.sotozen-net.or.jp/eng/practice/sutra/pdf/01/06.pdf .
4. Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, vol. 1, India and China (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005), 72.
5. Bernard Faure, Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 130–31.
6. See, for example, Roy Hamric, “Dancing with Words: Red Pine’s Path into the Heart of Buddhism,” Kyoto Journal, July 19, 2011, http://www.kyotojournal.org/the-journal/fiction-poetry/dancing-with-words/ .
7. The robes of early monastics in India consisted of three or more separate garments, one of which was the samghati, or “great robe.” All the garments together were called the kasaya . By the time Buddhism reached Japan the great robe by itself had come to be called kasaya, or kesa in Japanese.
8. Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary, trans., The Blue Cliff Record (Boulder: Shambhala, 2005), 1.
9. John R. McRae, The Northern School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), 101.
10. Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 286.
11. James Ishmael Ford, “Two Entrances, Four Practices: A Meditation on Bodhidharma’s Way and Ours,” Monkey Mind (blog), Patheos, February 4, 2012, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2012/02/two-entrances-four-practices-a-meditation-on-bodhidharmas-way-and-ours.html .
12. McRae, Northern School, 104.
13. For more on the “layers” of the Xu gaoseng zhuan, see Jeffrey L. Broughton, The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 55–65.
14. Broughton, Bodhidharma Anthology , 62.
15. See Alan Cole, Fathering Your Father: The Zen of Fabrication in Tang Buddhism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 137–38. However, Cole is openly derisive toward Zen, which makes it difficult to take him seriously as a scholar.
16. John R. McRae, Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism (Berkeley: University of California Press), 35.
17. Bill Porter, Zen Baggage: A Pilgrimage to China (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2009), loc. 2921, Kindle.
18. McRae, Seeing through Zen, 34.
19. Broughton, Bodhidharma Anthology, 110–11.
20. McRae, Northern School, 130–31.
21. McRae, Northern School , 85.
22. Cole, Fathering Your Father, 73ff.
23. Bernard Faure, The Will to Orthodoxy: A Critical Genealogy of Northern Chan Buddhism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 28ff.
24. For more on Shenxiu’s doctrinal background, see Faure, Will to Orthodoxy, 37–74.
25. Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 1:137.
26. Cole, Fathering Your Father, 214ff.
27. Red Pine, The Platform Sutra: The Zen Teaching of Hui-neng (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2006), commentary to part 2 (sec. 12–37).
28. McRae, Seeing through Zen , loc. 1608, Kindle.
1. Han Shan, Cold Mountain Poems, trans. J. P. Seaton (Boston: Shambhala, 2011).
2. I am using the translation by Yoshito S. Hakedas, available online at The Zensite, http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Translations/Awakening_of_faith.html . There is a widely available translation by D. T. Suzuki that I cannot recommend. For example, Suzuki translates “suchness” as “soul,” which obviously is wrong. This was one of Suzuki’s first published translations into English; one suspects he was not as skilled with the language as he became later.
3. Several sources place Youqisi in modern-day Jiangsu Province, near Nanjing. A present-day Mount Niutou is in Zhejiang Province, however.
4. Sheng Yen, Song of Mind: Wisdom from the Zen Classic Xin Ming (Boston: Shambhala, 2004), loc. 144, Kindle.
5. Sheng Yen, The Infinite Mirror (Elmhurst, NY: Dharma Drum Communications, 1990), 84.
6. McRae, Seeing through Zen, loc. 1434, Kindle.
7. Several translations can be compared here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/zen/fm/fm.htm .
8. For a good discussion of the “Tang or Song?” question, plus an analysis of the possible sources for the Mazu yulu , see Mario Poceski, “Mazu yulu and the Creation of the Chan Record of Sayings,” chap. 2 in The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
9. From the Mazu yulu , translated by Mario Poceski in Ordinary Mind as the Way: The Hongzhou School and the Growth of Chan Buddhism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 183.
10. For discussion, see Poceski, Ordinary Mind, 169–70.
11. Guo Gu, Passing Through the Gateless Barrier (Boulder: Shambhala, 2016), 286.
12. For more details on where Mazu’s students eventually established their own temples, see Poceski, Ordinary Mind , 46–47.
13. John Blofeld, trans., The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On the Transmission of Mind (New York: Grove, 1958), 29.
14. “Inquiry into Matching Halves” is the title used by Master Sheng Yen in his book The Infinite Mirror (Elmhurst, NY: Dharma Drum Communications, 1990).
15. There are several fine translations of the “Identity of Relative and Absolute” and the Heart Sutra on the web. In this section, I have borrowed from versions of both texts as they are chanted in Western Zen centers.
16. No single translation is used here, but I encourage readers who wish to explore the Heart Sutra in depth to read Red Pine, The Heart Sutra, and Thich Nhat Hanh, The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2017).
17. Readers who wish to explore “The Identity of Relative and Absolute” in more detail are encouraged to read Shunryu Suzuki, Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) and Master Sheng Yen, The Infinite Mirror (Elmhurst, NY: Dharma Drum, 1990).
18. James Mitchell, Soto Zen Ancestors in China: The Recorded Teachings of Shitou Xiqian, Yaoshan Weiyan and Yunyan Tansheng (San Francisco: Ithuriel’s Spear, 2015), 34.
19. Suzuki, Branching Streams , 111.
20. Suzuki, Branching Streams, 115.
21. For a discussion of Oxhead influence on the Platform Sutra, see McRae, Seeing through Zen, beginning at loc. 1488, Kindle.
22. Philip B. Yampolsky, The Planform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967, 2012).
23. Red Pine, The Platform Sutra (Berkeley: Counterpoint Press, 2004).
24. Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch , 130.
25. Red Pine, The Diamond Sutra (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2001), 343.
26. Thich Nhat Hanh, The Diamond That Cuts Through Illusion (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1992), loc. 412. Kindle.
27. Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, 162–63.
1. Or, at least, according to Sallie Tisdale, Women of the Way (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2006), 136–37.
2. Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary, trans., The Blue Cliff Record (Boston: Shambhala, 2005), 160.
3. There are several records called the “transmission of the lamp”; it’s a genre of Zen literature unto itself.
4. Albert Welter, The Linji lu and the Creation of Chan Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1.
5. Ruth Fuller Sasaki, trans. and commentary, The Record of Linji , ed. Thomas Yuho Kirchner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 4–5.
6. Welter, Linji lu , 87.
7. Sasaki, Record of Linji , 17.
8. Sasaki, Record of Linji , 30.
9. Sasaki, Record of Linji , 30.
10. Sasaki, Record of Linji, 8.
11. Leighton, Just This Is It, 168–69.
12. Leighton, Just This Is It, loc. 2721, Kindle.
13. Sheng Yen, Infinite Mirror, 97.
14. If you want to explore the Five Ranks further, I recommend a book by the Zen teacher Ross Bolleter, Dongshan’s Five Ranks: Keys to Enlightenment (Boston: Wisdom, 2014). See also the chapter on the Five Ranks in James Ishmael Ford, Introduction to Zen Koans: Learning the Language of Dragons (Boston: Wisdom, 2018).
1. John Keay, China: A History (London: HarperPress, 2009), loc. 5675, Kindle.
2. Albert Welter, “Lineage and Context in the Patriarch’s Hall Collection and the Transmission of the Lamp ,” chap. 5 in The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
3. Grace Schireson, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters (Boston: Wisdom, 2009), 99.
4. Schireson, Zen Women , 192–93.
5. Morten Schlütter, “The Record of Hongzhi and the Recorded Sayings Literature of Song Dynasty Zen,” in The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 182.
6. Morten Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen: The Dispute over Enlightenment and the Formation of Chan Buddhism in Song-Dynasty China (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010), 29.
7. Steven Heine, Opening a Mountain: Koans of the Zen Masters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 6.
8. Welter, “Lineage and Context,” 139.
9. Welter, “Lineage and Context,” 141.
10. Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 87.
11. Paraphrased from Randolph S. Whitfield, Records of the Transmission of the Lamp, vol. 2 (self-pub., 2015), 263.
12. Paraphrased from Whitfield, Records of the Transmission , 2:215.
13. Cleary and Cleary, Blue Cliff Record, 359.
14. Victor Sogen Hori, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2010), 44.
15. Hori, Zen Sand , 47.
16. Sam van Schaik, Tibetan Zen: Discovering a Lost Tradition (Boston: Snow Lion, 2015), 100.
17. Paraphrased from Whitfield, Records of the Transmission, 2:50.
18. Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, India and China (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005), 9.
19. Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 9.
20. If you want to explore the ox-herding pictures further, I recommend Yamada Mumon Roshi, Lectures on the Ten Oxherding Pictures , trans. Victor Sogen Hori (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004); and John Daido Loori, Riding the Ox Home (Boston: Shambhala, 2013). Master Sheng Yen’s comments on the pictures are available online at the Terebess Online website: https://terebess.hu/english/oxherd5.html .
21. John Daido Loori, ed., The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza (Boston: Wisdom, 2004), 14.
22. Taigen Dan Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi (Boston: Tuttle, 2000), 32.
23. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field , 51.
24. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field , 33.
25. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, trans., Bahiya Sutta, Udana 1.10.
26. Dahui, quoted in Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, 119.
27. Schlütter, How Zen Became Zen, especially chap. 6, “The Caodong Tradition as the Target of Attacks by the Linji Tradition.”
28. Samannaphala Sutta, Digha Nikaya 2.
29. Hori, Zen Sand , 6.
30. Dahui Zonggao, “Three Commentaries,” trans. J. C. Cleary in The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen’s Most Important Koan, ed. James Ishmael Ford and Melissa Myozen Blacker (Boston: Wisdom, 2011), 23–27.
31. Ford, Introduction to Zen Koans , 64.
32. Wumen Huikai in Robert Aitken Roshi, trans., The Gateless Barrier (New York: North Point, 1990), preface.
1. Jinwung Kim, A History of Korea (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 102.
2. For more on Toui and Muyom see Robert E. Buswell, The Korean Approach to Zen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), 12–14.
3. Robert E. Buswell, trans., Tracing Back the Radiance (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 14.
4. See the entry “Chodang chip” in Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism.
5. For more on the role of women in Korean Buddhism, I recommend Eun-su Cho, ed., Korean Buddhist Nuns and Laywomen: Hidden Histories, Enduring Vitality (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011).
6. J. Kim, History of Korea, 149.
7. Buswell, Tracing Back the Radiance, 18.
8. Buswell, Tracing Back the Radiance, 21.
9. This is according to Robert Buswell; some other sources say Jinul first lived in a temple near Pyongyang.
10. Translation in Buswell, Tracing Back the Radiance, 23. This passage can be found in sec. 4 of the Zonghao edition of the Platform Sutra. I couldn’t find quite the same passage in the Yampolsky or Red Pine translations of the older Platform Sutra.
11. Buswell, Tracing Back the Radiance, 25.
12. Buswell, Korean Approach to Zen , 96.
13. See, for example, Anguttara Nikaya 8.51 in the Pali Suttapitaka.
14. Taego, “How to Study Zen,” in J. C. Cleary, A Buddha from Korea: The Zen Teachings of T’aego (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988), 130.
15. J. Kim, History of Korea, 186.
16. James Huntley Grayson, Korea: A Religious History (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 1989), 123.
17. Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, “Thien” entry.
18. Cuong Tu Nguyen, Zen in Medieval Vietnam: A Study and Translation of the Thiền Uyển Tập Anh (Honolulu, HI: Kuroda Institute, 1997), 10.
19. Yampolsky, Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch , 137.
20. Thich Thien-An, Buddhism in Vietnam (Rutland, VT: Charles Tuttle, 1975), chap. 2.
21. Cuong Tu Nguyen, Zen in Medieval Vietnam, 20–21.
22. Cuong Tu Nguyen, Zen in Medieval Vietnam, 51–55.
1. Schireson, Zen Women , 56–57.
2. See, for example, the Abhisanda Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 8.39).
3. As explained earlier, the “Cao” in Caodong probably originally referred to Caoxi, an alternate name for Huineng.
4. See, for example, Hee-Jin Kim, Eihei Dōgen: Mystical Realist (Boston: Wisdom, 2000), 21ff. Hee-Jin Kim is a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Oregon.
5. Jacqueline Stone, “Medieval Tendai Hongaku Thought and the New Kamakura Buddhism: A Reconsideration,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22, no. 1/2 (Spring 1995): 17–48.
6. See, for example, Steven Heine, Did Dōgen Go to China? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Professor Heine says yes, he did.
7. Eihei Dogen, “Tenzo Kyōkun,” trans. Anzan Hoshin and Yasuda Joshu Dainen, https://wwzc.org/dharma-text/tenzo-kyokun-instructions-tenzo .
8. See, for example, Heine, Did Dōgen Go to China?, 45, 118–19.
9. See, for example, the Zen teacher Dosho Port, “Did Dogen Drop and What?,” Wild Fox Zen (blog), Patheos, July 6, 2017, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildfoxzen/2017/07/dogen-was-he-enlightened-and-what-did-he-drop.html .
10. H.-J. Kim, Eihei Dōgen, 38.
11. Dogen, “Fukanzazengi,” trans. Norman Waddell and Abe Masao, https://sanfranciscozencenter.blob.core.windows.net/assets/21_Fukanzazengi.pdf .
12. Dogen, “Sansui Kyo,” trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi, https://www.upaya.org/uploads/pdfs/MountainsRiversSutra.pdf .
13. Dogen, “Genjokoan,” trans. Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi, http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/GenjoKoan_Aitken.htm .
14. Dogen, “Genjokoan,” trans. Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi.
15. Shohaku Okumura, “About the Title Bendowa,” in The Wholehearted Way (Tokyo: Tuttle, 1997).
16. Brad Warner, “Dōgen’s Zen FAQ,” chap. 1 in Don’t Be a Jerk (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2016).
17. Kazuaki Tanahashi, Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen (Boston: Shambhala, 1999), xxviii.
18. Taigen Dan Leighton, “Hongzhi, Dogen, and the Background of Shikantaza,” in The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza , ed. John Daido Loori (Boston: Wisdom, 2004), 1.
19. Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice (Boston: Wisdom, 2005), loc. 488, Kindle.
20. This is a famous koan. Along with being in the Jingde Lamp Record , it is featured in the “Zazenshin” fascicle in Dogen’s Shobogenzo. It also appears as Yaoshan’s “Nonthinking,” case 129 in The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s 300 Kōans, trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori (Boston: Shambhala, 2011).
21. H.-J. Kim, Eihei Dogen, 41.
22. Dogen, “Raihai tokuzui,” trans. Anzan Hoshin and Yasuda Joshu Dainen, https://wwzc.org/dharma-text/raihai-tokuzui-bowing-and-acquiring-essence .
23. See verse 193 of the Dhammapada (Khuddaka Nikaya, Pali Suttapitaka).
24. Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: A History, vol. 2, Japan (New York: Macmillan, 1990), 133.
25. Heine, Did Dōgen Go to China?, 238. See also Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism, 2:130–37.
26. Note that Soji-ji originally was built on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture in western Japan. After a devastating fire it was rebuilt in Yokohama early in the twentieth century.
27. Frances Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo (Boston: Wisdom, 2002), 2.
1. Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 104.
2. See, for example, Brian Daizen Victoria, “Zen as a Cult of Death in the Wartime Writings of D.T. Suzuki,” The Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 4 (August 2, 2013), https://apjjf.org/2013/11/30/Brian-Victoria/3973/article.html .
3. Schireson, Zen Women , 109–14.
4. Donald Keene, Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 93.
5. R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger, A History of Japan, rev. ed. (Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1997), 144.
6. Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), 319.
7. Duncan Williams, “The Purple Robe Incident and the Formation of the Early Modern Sōtō Zen Institution,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, no. 1: 27–43.
8. Takuan Sōhō, “Fudochi shinmyoroku,” trans. Wm. Theodore De Bary, Sources of East Asian Tradition: The Modern Period , vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 303.
9. For more on the life of Tetsugen Doko, see Helen J. Baroni, Iron Eyes: The Life and Teachings of Obaku Zen Master Tetsugen Doko (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006).
10. Norman Waddell, The Unborn: Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei (New York: North Point, 1984), 59.
11. Perle Besserman and Manfred B. Steger, Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers (Boston: Wisdom, 2011), 112.
12. Norman Waddell, Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave: A Zen Miscellany (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009), 31.
13. Hakuin Ekaku, Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin, trans. Norman Waddell (Boulder: Shambhala, 2010), xxx–xxxi.
14. Besserman and Steger, Zen Radicals, 140.
15. Ken Johnson, “Spiritual Seeker with a Taste for the Satirical,” New York Times, December 24, 2010, C25, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/arts/design/24paintings.html .
16. Hidemoto Makise, “Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Japanese Zen (Hakuin Zen): The Relation Between ‘The Impossible Thing,’ Drawings, and Topology,” Annual Review of Critical Psychology 13 (2017), https://thediscourseunit.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/arcphidemotom.pdf .
17. Hakuin, quoted in Besserman and Steger, Zen Radicals, 141.
18. Waddell, Hakuin’s Precious Mirror Cave, 10.
19. Victor Sogen Hori, “The Nature of the Rinzai (Linji) Koan Practice,” in Sitting with Koans: Essential Writings on the Practice of Zen Koan Introspection, ed. John Daido Loori (Boston: Wisdom, 2006), 121.
20. Hakuin, quoted in Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki, The Zen Koan (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965), 68.
21. Miura and Sasaki, Zen Koan, 69.
22. Miura and Sasaki, Zen Koan, 70.
23. Buswell and Lopez, Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, “Sotoshu” entry.
24. Mason and Caiger, History of Japan, 263.
25. For more detail, see Richard Jaffe, “Meiji Religious Policy, Sōtō Zen, and the Clerical Marriage Problem,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 25, no. 1/2 (Spring 1998): 45–85.
1. Swami Vivekananda, The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda (Oregon Publishing: 2018), loc. 19819, Kindle.
2. John Henry Barrows, ed., The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions, Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, vol. 2 (Chicago: R. R. Donnelly and Sons, 1893), 831.
3. Rev. Sumangala, “Orthodox Southern Buddhism,” in The World’s Parliament of Religions , 2:893.
4. J. Kim, History of Korea, 321–22.
5. Grayson, Korea, 184.
6. Rick Fields, How the Swans Came to the Lake (Boston: Shambhala, 1992).
7. Helen Tworkov, “The Mushroom Monk: Nyogen Senzaki,” Tricycle, Spring 1993, https://tricycle.org/magazine/the-mushroom-monk-nyogen-senzaki/ .
8. Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen at War, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 137.
9. Victoria, Zen at War , 138.
10. Stephen Heine, “Heine on Victoria, ‘Zen War Stories,’ ” H-Buddhism, H-Net Reviews, August 2005, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10817 .
11. Brian Daizen Victoria, Zen War Stories (London: Routledge, 2003), 68.
12. Lozang Jamspal, trans., The Range of the Bodhisattva: A Mahayana Sutra (New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, 2010). This sutra was the subject of the essay by Stephen Jenkins, “Making Merit through Warfare and Torture,” chap. 2 in Buddhist Warfare, ed. Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), which claimed the sutra advocated war and torture as a means of making spiritual merit. Having read the sutra myself, I can say that this analysis is grotesquely deceptive and dishonest. It is through the exercise of restraint and compassion in the face of aggression that one makes merit, the sutra says, very clearly. But this is a good example of the current practice of academic “objectivity” regarding Buddhism.
13. See, for example, Allan M. Jalon, “Meditating on War and Guilt, Zen Says It’s Sorry,” New York Times, January 11, 2003, B9, National edition, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/books/meditating-on-war-and-guilt-zen-says-it-s-sorry.html .
14. For a synopsis of some robust criticism of Daizen Victoria’s books, see James Jundo Cohen, “ ‘Zen at War’ Author Brian Victoria’s War on Zen,” originally at Sweeping Zen , September 21, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20170825205518/http://sweepingzen.com/zen-war-author-brian-victorias-unethical-bahavior-jundo-cohen/ . See also Nelson Foster and Gary Snyder, “The Fog of World War II: Setting the Record Straight on D. T. Suzuki,” Tricycle , Summer 2010, https://tricycle.org/magazine/fog-world-war-ii/ .
15. Christopher Ives, Imperial-Way Zen (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009).
16. See Jonathan Clements, A Brief History of Japan: Samurai, Shoguns and Zen: The Extraordinary Story of the Land of the Rising Sun (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2017), 209.
17. Janica Anderson and Steven Zahavi Schwartz, Zen Odyssey: The Story of Sokei-an, Ruth Fuller Sasaki, and the Birth of Zen in America (Boston: Wisdom, 2018), 188. Avalokiteshvara is the bodhisattva of compassion.
18. “Zen: Beat & Square,” Time (July 21, 1958), 65–66.
19. The history of the San Francisco Zen Center is detailed in David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki (New York: Random House, 1999).
20. One of Katagiri Roshi’s dharma heirs, Dosho Port, wrote a lovely book in tribute to his teacher that I recommend: Keep Me in Your Heart Awhile: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri (Boston: Wisdom, 2008).
21. The complex issues surrounding Zentatsu Baker are detailed in Michael Downing, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2001).
22. The scandal surrounding Eido Shimano is detailed in Mark Oppenheimer, The Zen Predator of the Upper East Side (Washington, DC: Atlantic, 2013). For more background on Joshu Sasaki, see Mark Oppenheimer and Ian Lovett, “Zen Groups Distressed by Accusations against Teacher,” New York Times, February 11, 2013, A13, New York edition, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/asia/zen-buddhists-roiled-by-accusations-against-teacher.html?ref=us&_r=0 .
23. Yang Siqi, “Life in Purgatory: Buddhism Is Growing in China, but Remains in Legal Limbo,” Time, March 16, 2016, http://time.com/4260593/china-buddhism-religion-religious-freedom/ .
24. Porter, Zen Baggage.
25. I did a quick survey of Japanese Zen temple websites. Most aren’t that helpful to English speakers, but Eihei-ji has a lovely English-language website that was very informative; visit daihonzan-eiheiji.com and click on “English.”
1. Metta Sutta, Sutta Nipata 1.8 of the Pali Suttapitaka.
2. James Ford, “A Small Meditation on Zen in North America after the Great Die Off of Boomer Practitioners,” Monkey Mind (blog), Patheos, August 19, 2018, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2018/08/a-small-meditation-on-zen-in-north-america-after-the-great-die-off-of-boomer-practitioners.html .
3. Robert Aitken, The Practice of Perfection: The Paramitas from a Zen Buddhist Perspective (New York: Pantheon, 1994), 72.
4. Anderson and Schwartz, Zen Odyssey , 28.
5. Blanche Hartman, “Living a Life of Vow,” Shambhala Sun, May 1, 2003, https://www.lionsroar.com/living-a-life-of-vow/ .