Becoming Soto Zen: a brief denominational history

We know who we are as a sangha and as a dharma family, and what characterizes our particular style, attitude or focus.  We also need to know where that fits in the larger picture and also how what we do here relates to what others are doing in North America and the world.  It can be difficult for us to get sense of that context here, where we don’t encounter 800 year old temples and we don’t see the day to day functioning of the denomination.  We may feel detached from the rest of the tradition or not even be aware of it.  Yet it’s really important for us to know that we’re not doing this alone.  Teachers aren’t making this stuff up and it’s not about our personal preferences.  We’re part of a much larger global community that’s agreed to carry and transmit the tradition in a certain way.

Like all of our practice themes, this one is aimed at investigating the question: Why do we practice this way?  Why do we do what we do?

We need context in order to work with that question: historical, cultural, political, geographic, religious.  Without context, we risk looking to wrong reference point when we have questions about practice.  We might be confused and say, Well, the Buddha didn’t do it this way and therefore it must be wrong or the practice has  been corrupted.  Instead, Soto Zen has had to respond to conditions.  It isn’t only about pure teachings that arise from someone’s enlightened heart and mind.

Here we begin to tell story of how Soto Zen came to be Soto Zen.  It's a long story, too long to cover in its entirety here, but we can call out some milestones, names and places and simply say that these are important turning points in the way we understand and carry out practice.

To begin with, what is Sotoshu and what is a denomination?  Sotoshu 曹洞宗 is the Soto Zen sect, and Shumucho is the administrative headquarters.  If we’re talking about where regulations are set, for instance, it’s done by Sotoshu Shumucho,  the Administrative Headquarters of the Soto Zen sect.

In English we call this thing a denomination, not different from Christian denominations like Catholics or Baptists.  It’s a large group of congregations (or sanghas) sharing common doctrines, leadership, and traditions.  A denomination is also a particular group within a larger faith tradition based on differing interpretations or practices.  The Soto Zen denomination sits within the Japanese Buddhist tradition and is different from other Buddhist sects.

It’s important to know that there are legal IRS requirements for being a denomination, as opposed to a sort of loose association of people in a special interest group.  You have to have affiliated churches or temples, not only individuals.  There has to be overall governance, with affiliated communities getting centralized direction.  There have to be consistent teachings and practices and, usually standardized training and credentialling of clergy.  In North America there are various Zen and Soto Zen-related organizations, and there are dharma centers that would say they’re affiliated with each other in some way, but these are not denominations.

Sotoshu has a constitution stating all the regulations for things like vestments, training, and what constitutes a temple.  As part of the denomination, Sanshin agrees to abide by certain rules and to do things in a certain way, and the clergy go through a standardized process of being authorized not only to lead practice and teach the dharma but also to represent Sotoshu.  They're not leading simply as individuals; they're accountable to something much bigger.

Now we know that the Soto Zen sect in Japan is said to have begun with Dogen, who lived from 1200 - 1223, in the Kamakura period.  He went to China looking for a way to study true dharma and went to many temples looking for a teacher.  When he was 26, he finally met Tendo Nyojo.  Practicing with his teacher for several years was really a formative time for Dogen, and he brought two important things back to Japan.  One was the dharma that he learned from Tendo Nyojo, and the other was the monastic container, the forms and activities that make up what we most frequently encounter in the training temple today.  He had several temples over the course of time, but the one we associate most with him today is Eiheiji.

Dogen considered that the dharma he received from his teacher in China was the authentically transmitted buddhadharma that had been passed down from Shakyamuni, and this would become a central element of the identity of Sotoshu.  

Not everyone liked what he was doing and teaching, particularly the older established sects of Buddhism including the Tendai monks from Mt Hiei, where he originally trained.  However, he thought it was really important to cultivate people who were sincerely looking for the dharma in order to maintain that authentic transmission.  He didn’t care whether that was one person or 100.  Numbers were less important than the wholeheartedness and dedication, as opposed to people who enrolled in the temple just looking for free meals or some kind of social status.

From here on, the theme becomes: How can we keep this denomination together in the midst of internal disagreement and rivalry?  These disputes have a big impact on the way we practice today.  Dogen had three important dharma descendents.  One was Koun Ejo,  the second abbot of Eiheiji who wrote the Shobogenzo Zuimonki based on the notes he took on Dogen’s teachings.  Another was Tettsu Gikai, and the third was Gikai’s dharma heir Keizan Jokin, now considered the second founder of Sotoshu.  Keizan had two important dharma heirs: Meiho Sotetsu, who inherited an important temple called Yokoji, and Gasan Joseki. who inherited Sojiji.  Sojiji and Eiheiji are now the two head temples of Sotoshu.

After Dogen’s death in 1253 internal conflicts sprang up in his immediate group that led to a split.  Ejo and Gikai went go back and forth as abbot of Eiheiji.  Dogen had liked Gikai, but Gikai introduced esoteric elements like prayers and incantations into the practice, and Ejo believed in trying to keep to central beliefs and practices of Zen and resisted efforts to bring in elements of other traditions.

By 1280, Ejo has died, Gikai is back in power and he has the support of the military for magical practices that protect the state.  Ultimately Gikai is forced out and goes into exile, and in 1293 he took over the Shingon temple Daijoji, south of Kanazawa, which became an important Soto Zen temple.  Many of the ancestors in our direct lineage were abbots of Daijoji.

A guy called Gien took over Eiheiji and his followers claimed he was Ejo’s real successor, not Gikai; Ejo hadn’t clearly designated a successor.  This dispute that goes on across three generations is known as the sandai soron, or third generation differentiation and the central question is: who is authentically in charge?

Meanwhile, already a “Dogen brand” was developing.  The three main early biographies of Dogen are all written more than a hundred years after his death and aren’t necessarily the best sources of factual information on Dogen’s life.  The problem is that they’ve been around for such a long time, created and promoted by the sect itself, that even modern scholarship has been influenced by them.  We’re only just now starting to look critically at what we really know about Dogen’s life, and there are some questions and gaps that we’re probably never going to be able to resolve.

Overall today, Sotoshu considers Dogen to be the founder who looked inward and established the central set of teachings, and Keizan is considered the founder who looked outward and disseminated and popularized those teachings and practices with people.  Sometimes Dogen is seen as the father and Keizan as the mother, or Dogen is inside the training temple and Keizan is outside in the world.  This is why we have the phrase ichibutsu ryoso, one Buddha and two founders.  (Here is Sotoshu's page.)

Soto was not the only form of Zen that came from China to Japan.  There was also Rinzaishu, which came from a different lineage.  The Japanese government and nobility supported Rinzai, mainly in urban areas, but wealthy rural families and ordinary people supported Sotoshu, so Soto Zen spread mainly in the countryside.  There was a strong Rinzai influence on education,  government and cultural arts such as calligraphy, painting, literature, tea ceremony, Japanese garden design, architecture and even martial arts.  This sort of thing is not what Soto Zen did.  That’s not to say that none of our ancestors wrote poems or did calligraphy -- we know they did -- but Soto Zen’s connections were not with central power structures but with common people, so there wasn’t the same centralized influence.  The teachings spread slowly and steadily, and eventually, there were more Soto temples than Rinzai temples.

One important development in the relationship between temples and laypeople was a change to the jidan seido or danka seido system.  This system had been around since the 9th century as a voluntary long-term affiliation between temples and households (danka).  The danka provide financial support to the temples and the temples provide for their spiritual needs.  Beginning in the 17th century, the government made the affiliation mandatory for everyone.  The point was to register all citizens in order to be sure they weren’t secretly Christian, but it became a system of government control of the population that was run by the temples, so it went on long after anyone was worried about Christians.  Jidan seido registration stopped being mandatory with the Meiji restoration in 1868 and now it’s voluntary again, and it’s a major part of the income of most temples.

The Soto sect had more than 17,500 temples, grouped into networks identifed with particular prominent lineages.  The government ordered that temples in the lineage of Giin and Meiho Sotetsu affiliate with Eiheiji; that was about 1300 temples.  The remaining 16,200 temples went to Sojiji.  Today Eiheiji has only 148 affiliated temples and most are minor temples in the north.  Thus most Soto temples are not affiliated with Eiheiji, Dogen’s temple; Eiheiji is kind of a figurehead.  It's positioned as the holder or embodiment of our collective memory of Dogen, and our spiritual authority is inherited from Dogen even if our temples aren’t actually branch temples of Eiheiji.

Clearly it’s been important for Eiheiji to manage Dogen’s image and memory as the source of its own legitimacy.  Its strategies have included getting the endorsement and patronage of the royal court; requiring attendance at larger and larger Dogen memorial services; organizing celebrations of his birthday (including setting January 26 as his birthdate); and including giving lay precepts to cement it ties with the laity.  These are activities that continue to make the case that only Eiheiji maintains the traditional practices that Dogen advocated.

Eiheiji put its name or brand on publications of Dogen’s writings and encouraged Dogen scholarship, both by publishing his biography and by promoting study of the Shobogenzo, which was not well known.  The first annual genzo-e was held in 1905, attended by academics, popular writers, laity and monks.  “Today," notes scholar William Bodiford, "every Soto Zen teacher lectures on Dogen’s Shobogenzo.”

At the same time that jidan seido was being implemented, there was a reform movement within Soto Zen at the end of the 1600s and first half of 1700s, roughly.  The reformation effort had two major objectives: reform the institutions of Soto Zen, and clarify the bases of its doctrines.  Manzan Dohaku (1634-1714) and his student Menzan Zuiho (1683-1769) and others started working on gathering and organizing everything about Dogen and his writings and putting together his story.  Menzan in particular was concerned about what he saw as deviations from Dogen’s teaching  and was convinced that important elements were being lost.  He said that only Soto Zen was preserving the teaching that zazen itself is “the treasury of the true dharma eye and mystic mind of Nirvana.”  (Of course, this was a dig at Rinzai Zen.)  Menzan said that only Tendo Nyojo had preserved and taught it in China, and only Dogen had carried it forward, and that in later generations, too many Soto monks had gone off to train at the various important Kamakura temples and drifted over into Rinzai practice, losing the dharma of their own house.  There were a lot of practices going by the name of zazen, he said, but these were not what Dogen really taught.  They were actually Daoist, Confucian, Shinto, contemplations of sutras, or just stuff people made up.  On the other hand, Dogen’s zazen was unique because it was about nonthinking (beyond thinking and not thinking).  It wasn’t a psychological exercise, it wasn’t like Rinzai koan practice, and it didn’t have any expectations about achieving enlightenment.  It was a direct expression of reality.

This is the start of establishing Soto Zen orthodoxy and enshrining Dogen as the ultimate authority.  Earlier, in 1615, the government had declared that “Eiheiji’s standards must be rule for all Sōtō monks.”  In time these standards came to mean all the writings of Dōgen; thus all Soto doctrines and the organization are based on them, and it also means that texts become the authority, rather than practices handed down from teacher to student.

There’s an even greater emphasis on studying Dōgen when Menzan comes along about 80 or 90 years later.  He wrote more than a hundred works, including many commentaries on Dōgen’s writings, and he promoted reforms of monastic regulations and practice based on his reading of Dōgen.  These reformers are looking for the basis of Soto doctrine and establishing where the teachings and practice come from.  

An important element of the work of reforming the institions had to do with succession.  There were two kinds of dharma:  garan-bo (temple or monastic dharma) and nin-bo (individual dharma).  If you were in charge of one temple and you moved to another temple, you dropped your current lineage and adopted the lineage of the new temple, which allowed you to claim descent from more than one lineage and to change your lineage when you changed temples.  Manzan says this is all wrong: real transmission is what you get from the Buddha through your teacher.  He created a set of arguments for changing the rules for dharma transmission based on Dogen’s writings, and he needs Dogen as an indisputable authority, because he got a lot of pushback on this.  In the course of the debate, Manzan and Menzan are pushed into an even more radical position: that dharma transmission didn’t depend on the state of mind of the recipient (awakening) but only on the formal certification by a teacher.  Once you were transmitted, your lineage was fixed and you couldn’t have two official teachers.  Today, this is the official Sotoshu position.

North Americans are sometimes dismayed to find that novices go to the training temple for licensing, not because of bodhicitta, and that dharma transmission is a sort of administrative event, not a romantic magical acknowledgement of awakening as its sometimes portrayed in legends.  They think that “real” practice has been lost or corrupted by a modern idea that clergy and temples are out to make money and operate as businesses.  Actually this approach goes all the way back to a doctrinal disagreement in the 17th century. 

It’s still true today that clergy can only have one official teacher, and that teacher needs to be recognized by Sotoshu for the  transmission to be legitimate within the denomination.  This was a useful position for Sotoshu during the Tokugawa, when Soto Zen was competing with Rinzai Zen and other traditions and people were moving back and forth from one to another.  If you were transmitted in the Soto Zen tradition, now you could only be that.  You couldn’t claim to be transmitting the dharma of more than one teacher or sect.

Reform continues in the 18th century with Gentō Sokuchū (1729–1807), the 11th abbot of Eihei-ji; his contribution was in de-emphasizing use of kōans, which historically had been widely practiced in Soto Zen.  Gentō started the elevation of Dōgen to the status he has nowadays when he implemented new regulations based on what he perceived Dōgen had done in own temples.  We can see this continuing pulling in toward whatever-you-think-Dogen-taught over the course of many years and the beginning of the creation of the systems and structures that we see today.

With everyone combing through the Shobogenzo for ammunition to back up whatever reforms they wanted to make and changes they wanted to implement, Sotoshu authorities got worried.  People could use Dogen’s writings for whatever they wanted; they're certainly open to interpretation.  Sotoshu asked the government to restrict copying and publication of any part of the Shobogenzo in 1722.  

Again time goes by until the Meiji Restoration (1868–1912).  This is where Japan abandons the feudal system and begins opening to the West and absorbing modernist ideas.  It’s not a great time for Buddhism in Japan.  The new government rested on the authority of the Emperor and his divinity as it was supported by Shinto teachings.  Because of this close relationship between the emperor system and Shinto, the government tried to separate Buddhist elements and get rid of Buddhism altogether.  Shinto was indigenous to Japan; Buddhism was positioned as foreign religion.  The resulting Buddhist persecution was called haibutsu-kishaku (廃仏毀釈) (literally “abolish Buddhism and destroy Shākyamuni”), and Sotoshu had to adapt and position itself in order to survive.

During this period, Sotoshu starts reappraising Dōgen and Eiheiji uses his “brand” to make sure it is at center of the organization and to create closer ties with the laity; the first modern jukai-e was organized at Eiheiji in 1899.  Eiheiji promoted Dogen study, particularly the Shobogenzo, and this is also when the Shushogi (The Meaning of Practice and Verification) was created.  The Shushogi is an edited collection of Dogen’s teachings designed for use with laypeople to spread Soto Zen teachings.

Overall, an image of Dogen gets constructed that serves Eiheiji’s interests.  It brings in financial support that helps with the upkeep of the place, attracts monks and laypeople who feel inspired by Dogen to study and practice there , and most important, it shores up Eiheiji as Dogen’s place in its competition and rivalry with Sojiji.  By 1589, the imperial court had recognized Sōjiji as the head temple of the Sōtō school, above Eihei-ji, but remember that in 1615, 26 years later, the government decreed that Eiheiji rules are the house rules for all of Soto Zen; that was a victory over Sojiji.  These two temples remained rivals for the support of the emperor, but by the time of the Meiji Restoration they had arrived at a truce.  Everyone agreed that the Sōtō school followed “the maxims of the founding Patriarch, Dōgen, and the aspirations of the late teacher, Keizan.”  Sotoshu is at pains today to emphasize that they were teaching same thing, just in different ways.

Holding this denomination together hasn’t been easy, and compromises have had to be made.  One dispute between Eiheiji and Sojiji was over whether or not robes should have rings.  Sojiji argued that Keizan had established the use of the ring, while Eiheiji said the ring was Chinese and not in accord with Dogen’s teachings, and also that the rakusu wasn’t really an abbreviated robe and was also not in accord with Dogen’s teachings.  The eventual compromise said both styles were permissable.  The need not to jeopardize the integrity of the sect as an institution has driven a lot of way we practice today.