Review: Schlutter's How Zen Became Zen, Chpt 3, Monasteries

1. Basically, a very long chapter about monasteries. Schlutter points out that there were lots of purges, to the point of around only 6% of monasteries survived the 10th century (900-1000 CE).

2. Schlutter speculates a good deal and is mostly honest about that, admitting that while there was a great deal of government attempt at regulation it was mostly ineffective in the vast majority of monasteries.

3. Schlutter continues to refer to Dogen as a Zen Master though, so there's that.

4. While this is a solid and informative chapter, it doesn't have any Zen scholarship in it. I suspect that Schlutter is laying the ground work for discussions about Zen based on this history, as if anyone who ever claimed to be a Zen Master, anyone appointed to a position in a monastery designated by the State as "Zen", or anyone ever using the title "Zen Master", would all be equally a part of the lineage along with Wumen, Wansong, and Yuanwu.

• When you think about it, if history were treated that way, then Jesus really might be considered to have a virgin mother. Right? Because if anybody can claim to be a Zen Master then anybody can claim to be a historian.

1. This chapter does highlight the real wasteland of Zen scholarship in the West. For example, in religious studies departments we have lots of people looking at government records from China from a thousand plus years ago. We don't have anybody writing about what sort of audience this produced for those preaching the Dharma.

Submitted August 04, 2016 at 05:28AM by ewk http://ift.tt/2aTgadP