[Buddha-l] Query--forest tradition monks in Japan today?

Bankei bankei at gmail.com
Thu Nov 9 23:20:36 MST 2006


Hello Franz

There is at least one work on the Darumashu in English:



Faure, Bernard

1987, "The Daruma-shû, Dôgen, and Sôtô Zen."

Monumenta Nipponica, Vol 42/1, pp. 25-55

Bankei

On 10/11/06, Franz Metcalf <franzmetcalf at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Joanna and gang,
>
> You wrote,
>
> > Franz-please say more about the Daruma-Shu Zen school---did they build
> > hermitages or just hang out and camp?
>
> My knowledge of the Daruma-shu is surpassingly scant and entirely
> indirect, having been gained in the study of Dogen and other
> institutional figures of early Japanese Zen. So what they *really*
> taught and practiced I'm not sure of. What I do know, is they were a
> very early Zen school in Japan, with temples and all that jazz, and
> that both Dogen and Yosai/Eisei--in other words both mainline Soto and
> Rinzai founders--excoriated them and anathematized them for
> antinomianism. Whether they were really antinomian, I'm not sure, but
> they did argue that the precepts were not fundamentally important, as
> the original mind was pure and unstained by afflictions. Not so
> different from Tendai, but somehow they got themselves branded as
> unworthy and proscribed by the government (along with Honen and Shinran
> and that ragged lot). The interesting thing to me about the Daruma-shu,
> though, is there is some record of them surviving at least until the
> 15th century. Who did they minister to, if anyone? Who supported them?
> Where did they practice? How did they transmit the dharma--and the
> authority of the school? Theirs has got to be a fascinating story. I
> don't know if anyone has studied this stuff in English. In fact, I
> don't know if anyone has studied it in Japanese, but surely someone
> has.
>
> So there you are: the more eccentric the Buddhism, the less we know
> about it. (Except modern Western Buddhism, which is indeed marginal,
> but is also practiced by successful, educated, white people and so is
> exhaustively studied.)
>
> With metta,
>
> Franz
>
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