feet were dancing” (Dumoulin, 1990: 408). The account is from a Zen master of
the mid-1800s.
- Preston’s (1988) ethnography of a Zen meditation center concludes that the Zen
experience is socially constructed by the focused setting and rituals of inward
attention. What is constructed, however, is not a particular “culture” but an
attitude set free from the contents of verbal cultures. The rituals of Zen practice
are, so to speak, counter-rituals, which de-reify and disenchant the objects of
ordinary social life. Buddhism recognizes a deep version of the social construction
of reality; the institutions and paramount realities of the ordinary world (samsara)
are mere “name and form.” The path pursued by Zen is not to escape into another
realm but to transform into another key; instead of living focused on cognitive
constructions, to live focused on the flow of wordless practices.
- Kitagawa (1990: 143). Ooms (1985) points out that the shogun was more inter-
ested in promoting a cult, centered on the lavishly baroque Tokugawa mausoleum
at Nikko, which elevated Ieyasu personally into a reincarnation of the national
deity, the sun goddess Amaterasu. This cult, promoted vigorously in the 1640s,
was no great success against the better-organized religious and educational insti-
tutions; indeed, Ieyasu had to rely on the Tendai abbott Tenkai to work out the
theological justification of the reincarnation doctrine. Razan’s hostility to Bud-
dhism was not a general propensity of the Tokugawas, but rather a stance in the
struggle among intellectuals, which did not shift decisively in an anti-Buddhist
direction until the opening of the successful proprietary schools in the 1660s.
- Takuan was the teacher of Hoshina Masayuki, Lord of Aizu, who became central
in the patronage network of the following generation (Ooms, 1985: 197). Takuan
represents the height of fusion between samurai culture and Zen. Takuan was
friendly with the shogun’s sword master, Yagyu Munenori, and was connected with
a very famous swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, author of A Book of Five Rings,
on the spiritual dimension of combat. Takuan wrote for Munenori a text applying
Buddhist doctrine of non-attachment to the technique of the sword fight. The
connection is not merely to show fearlessness in the face of death; it is to avoid
clinging to one’s opponent’s movements or to the sword itself, to flow through
everything without distinction and without consciously directing one’s mind (Du-
moulin, 1990: 285–287; Kammer, 1969).
- Nakamura (1967); Dumoulin (1990: 341–344). It would be more accurate to say
that Suzuki integrated Buddhist subduing of the body into the spirit of samurai
military discipline, but universalistically, without caste distinctions among social
ranks. Suzuki was close to official power and was given bakufu appointments,
including restoration of provincial temple properties as a means of exerting control
over local samurai. He was entrusted with a mission to pacify the peasants after
a major provincial rebellion in 1637–1638 (Ooms, 1985: 123–139).
- The network of tea masters in Figure 7.3 originated at the shogun’s court in the
mid-1400s. The famous iconoclast Ikkyu Sojun, though not himself a tea master,
connects this network with the religious elite, as teacher of Murata Shuko, a Zen
monk who returned to the world as a tea master. The several branches of the
lineage culminate in the most famous of all, Sen no Rikyu, in the late 1500s. Sen
Notes to Pages 346–352^ •^977
