ON THE MID-LEVEL IN THE SOCIAL HISTORY OF THE ZEN SOTO

Stavropolsky Yuliy Vladimirovich
Saratov State University named after N. G. Chernyshevsky
Ph. D. (Sociology), Associate Professor of the General & Social Psychology Department

Abstract
Famous orthodox Zen monks of the period of Tokugawa have been queerly marginal in the sense that the rhetoric of their orthodoxy and orthopraxy shared surprisingly little with eventual practices of the majority of the Zen Soto temples. In fact neither a vast majority of the Zen Soto ordinary monks nor lay people had ever practiced a Zen meditation, performed any of the iconoclastic deeds of the Zen masters described in the hagiographic references, tilled any Zen gardens, plunged into some mystic meditative states nor ever read any Dogen’s writings. Though some monks during the period of Tokugawa, and certain contemporary scholars might have considered such an activity authentically Zen, we are interested not in the ideal objective of the original Zen Soto. but rather in what it actually was in the eventual lives of the rank-and-file priests and laymen.

Keywords: Buddhism, Japan, temple, Tokugawa, Zen


Category: Sociology

Article reference:
On the Mid-Level in the Social History of the Zen Soto // Humanities scientific researches. 2016. № 11 [Electronic journal]. URL: https://human.snauka.ru/en/2016/11/17498

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