Path: shell.portal.com!svc.portal.com!news1.best.com!news.aimnet.com!news.ossi.com!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!nwgw.infi.net!news.infi.net!usenet From: Pen Ting Newsgroups: alt.philosophy.zen,alt.zen,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.religion,alt.religion.buddhism,talk.religion.buddhism,alt.consciousness,alt.philosophy.taoism Subject: Nara Period and Zen (was Re: SOsborne: Re: Origins of Zen) Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 13:02:31 +0000 Organization: InfiNet Lines: 31 Message-ID: <315D30E7.58AD@norfolk.infi.net> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: pa4dsp16.orf.infi.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (Win95; I) Xref: shell.portal.com alt.philosophy.zen:6841 alt.zen:28113 alt.magick.tyagi:7375 alt.religion:2095 alt.religion.buddhism:249 talk.religion.buddhism:18929 alt.consciousness:25504 alt.philosophy.taoism:3282 If refering to "Zen" proper, and not "Ch'an," then we should know that six sects of Buddhist thought were imported into Japan almost simultaneously. From these six, Tendai later emerged as a very powerful school of thought (following T'ien T'ai Chih-I in China), which combined _all_ aspects of Buddhist thought currently in China. What does that have to do with "Zen"? Esai and Dogen, the disputed "founders" of "Zen," were both monks who were originally ordained in the Tendai tradition. That means that they practiced following the traditional three aspects of Buddhist teaching (dhamma): ethics (sila, moral precepts), knowledge (prajna, wisdom), and meditation (dyhana or samadhi, mindfulness). Tibetan, Thervadin, Zen, Pure Land, Ch'an ... these sects _all_ practice these teachings (dhamma), although they may present them differently. There are no Buddhist sects that I am aware of that deny these three basic teachings (dhamma). Even when Robert Aitken, Roshi of the Diamond Sangha in Hawaii, says "there are no precepts (moral codes, rules, or observances)," he does _not_ mean that "anything goes." He means that compassion, joy, peace, and friendliness are conditioned phenomena just like everything else. In other words, being a self-righteous moral prig about rules can be just as bad as being a murderer, rapist, robber, or Rush Limbaugh. =) Pen