Rethinking Ritual
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Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice, Edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright |
Reviewed by Norman Fischer
Buddhism was first introduced to the West in the late nineteenth century as a rational, iconoclastic, psychologically oriented form of spirituality. So different did Buddhism seem from Western religions that there was even some question as to whether it was a religion at all, considering there was no God, no revelation, and no supernatural element whatsoever. Educated Westerners who held this view of Buddhism had a strong Protestant, anti-magic, anti-ritual bias and an enthusiasm for the new science of psychology, which more or less debunked religion as a product of the primitive human mind. While other religions were full of superstition and mumbo-jumbo (the very concept of God as a punishing father being entirely dependent on blind belief and fear), Buddhism, in the view of these Westerners, was sober and balanced. It was an essentially rational approach to spiritual fulfillment, based on personal effort in meditation to reach exalted states of human perfection.
The British scholars who translated the early Buddhists texts were predisposed to see them in this light, and the Asian Buddhists who supplied the texts to the British were quite happy with this view as well; it’s nice, when you are a victim of colonial rule, to be praised by your master for the superiority of your religious culture. In Japan, the twentieth century saw the advent of a generation of Buddhist scholars who depicted Zen as all this and more: Zen was supra-rational, that is (in line with Heidegger and other Western philosophers of the time who were critiquing rational Western metaphysics), it possessed a reason beyond reason.
Clearly aware of the challenge the West posed to their own traditional culture, these Japanese scholars wanted to show that Zen Buddhism was not only the best of all possible religions, but also that it was a religion beyond religion. The rough-and-ready, spontaneously enlightened Zen master, beyond all piety and doctrine, was a creation of these scholars, who depicted Zen as essentially antinomian, iconoclastic, and beyond all categories.
This all sounded very good to postwar Western artists and cultural entrepreneurs, who were looking for a spirituality that fit in with their needs and preconceptions. In fact, though, these scholars were blinded by their heavy agenda. Their version of Zen, although skillfully turned out and based on brilliant textual scholarship, was never the way Zen in China or Japan had been understood or practiced—or at least this is what I learned from T. Girffith Foulk’s impressive essay, “Ritual in Japanese Zen,” presented in Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice.
Excerpted from the Spring 2008 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, available on newsstands now.
ZOKETSU NORMAN FISCHER is the founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation. He practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center for thirty years and served as co-abbot from 1995 to 2000.
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