Abstract
It is well known that ‘Zen’ (or Chan or Son) means ‘meditation’. But there is less agreement about what meditation itself meant to early Zen teachers and their students. In this talk I will look at the Zen lineage history called ‘The Masters and Students of the Lanka’, as well as well as some Zen teachings preserved in Tibetan translation, to see what light they shed on early Zen meditation teaching. I will argue that these sources show that there was a multiplicity of meditation methods in early Zen writings. Rather than meditation meaning one thing (or nothing) to these early teachers, it could mean many things. But I will also suggest that there is evidence for a developing ‘Zen approach’ to meditation, for example in statements that there is no buddha apart from the mind, and that one should not be attached to the act of meditation itself.
Sam van Schaik is the author of The Spirit of Zen (2018) and Tibetan Zen: Discovering a Lost Tradition (2015)
Submitted October 20, 2020 at 09:10AM by grass_skirt https://ift.tt/2HjQ3ga
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