Greg,
I turned your question into a much longer response for the Facebook folks. It expands basically on what I wrote you above.
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What and Who Dosho Leaves Out ...
Further response to Dosho Port and his article:
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/zen-...A2fqJICx9vGuL8
Dosho Port's article also contains a certain incompleteness in its recounting of history. He writes:
Dosho is right about much of that, but leaves a few key facts and people out of the story.
Most ordinary people in Japan who were parishioners of Zen temples centuries before the time of Japan's opening had no personal interest in Zazen or the intricate doctrines of Zen and Mahayana practice. Many were illiterate peasants or people attracted to easier to understand religious beliefs. The temples were a place of ancestor spirit worship primarily, or another site for asking the Buddhas and Gods for a little good fortune and blessings in life. Since the 17th century, Japanese were forcibly assigned to their neighborhood temples without regard to denomination as a method of social control to keep out Christianity and its missionaries. (Even the extent to which the samurai as a class were into Zen has been wildly exaggerated).
When Christianity again threatened to invade after Perry opened Japan, there were many proposals in the Soto world to counter this. One was to let Soto common parishioners develop a passion for chanting (similar to the practices of Pure Land Buddhism regarding Amida, but focused instead on Shakyamuni) because, it was felt, ordinary people still could not understand and maintain a Zazen practice, nor dive deeply into the depths of Zen and Mahayana teachings. That proposal was largely rejected in Soto-shu (not because of the efforts of the teachers that Dosho likes, but because the suggestion was widely disliked in most Soto circles). A related attempt to attract lay people to Zen practice was the creation of the so-called Shushogi in order to counter Christianity, a work which has been described as cutting and pasting Dogen, leaving out all mention of Zazen, and keeping primarily teachings on ethics and Karma. It is not popular in the west at all, and really not many people are interested in it in Japan either.
https://nozeninthewest.wordpress.com...-of-mushrooms/
Dosho is correct that many responses to Christianity's threat were proposed in Soto Zen, including many who called for modernizing and "Protestantizing," which was accompanied by some who called for "return to fundamentals." One small group among those reformers were those calling for Koan Introspection Zazen as the answer, as Dosho suggests.
But what Dosho leaves out of his story for some reason is that many people have been able to dive deeply into Shikantaza, Dogen and sincere, dedicated Zen practice ... in both Japan and the west ... in modern times! No, not millions of people perhaps (neither Koan Introspection nor Shikantaza will ever become a mass movement, alas), but more than ever before in Japanese history (let alone American and European history). Dosho recounts the reform movement led by Harada and Yasutani Roshis, the one that Dosho likes, with their emphasis on Koan Introspection and the big Kensho. He completely omits the even greater opportunities that became available to Soto and other lay people in modern times to truly dive into Dogen, Shikantaza practice and the power of Goalless sitting. For the first time in history, east and west, Zen teachings, teachers and the education and opportunity to truly dive deep into the meaning of "Just Sitting" became open to all, including countless people outside the monastery.
Dosho Port completely leaves out of his story folks like Homeless Kodo Sawaki, Uchiyama Roshi, Okamura Roshi and my own teacher, Nishijima, as if they did not exist or were more peddlers of some wimpy, luke warm, consumerist philosophy of watered down Zen rather than a boundless, powerful path of Just Sitting as the Buddha's and Ancestors embodied. One might say that real Soto Shinkantaza lay practice first blossomed after the country opened, and Sawaki's radical "Good for Nothing" Zazen became popular with many folks in the lay world, both in Japan and world-wide.
Dosho just leaves all that out as if, in his strawman version of Soto Practice, the only options are between some watered down sitting (sadly, Dosho is not wrong about that being around too) and what Dosho promotes. He simply omits the powerful advocates of an enlightening path of Just Sitting which Hits the Mark that arose during the 20th century, but which continues the lifeblood of Soto Zen which extends back to Dogen and beyond.
He should know better, and frankly, I suspect that he does.
