During the Song dynasty the rise of the Caodong (J. Soto-shu) tradition in which it achieved an identity of its own is best explained by Morten Schlutter in his dissertation:
[T]he development on an approach which strongly emphasized the Buddhist teaching that all sentient beings were already endowed with perfect and untainted Buddha-nature and which taught members of the elite to devote themselves to a still meditation in which the inherent Buddha-nature in a person would spontaneously manifest. It is this approach which came to be called Silent Illumination Chan."
This seems to be also the general outline of what Dogen Zenji taught in his Soto-shu mission with some adjustment to fit Japanese culture.
The koan oriented Linji tradition or Rinzai-shu by comparison seemed to offer a despairing teaching. Schlutter observes, "[A]s long as one was not enlightened [had not attained kensho], nothing was right; life was a basically failure if one never achieved enlightenment. The Caodong teachings of Silent Illumination must have seemed an inviting alternative to the literati."
Submitted June 10, 2017 at 07:13AM by Dhammakayaram http://ift.tt/2rfE2L5
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