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Aum Shinrikyō Discussion Group; Fifth Meeting

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During the fourth gathering of the Aum Shinrikyō discussion group the reports submitted by the various Rinzai-Ōbaku honzan regarding their teaching activities were examined to help determine how the respective organizations are responding to the challenges posed by the Aum Affair. On this basis the conclusions reached during the fourth meeting of the Aum Shinrikyō were reassessed.
          The fundamental conclusion reached upon examining the reports was that the Rinzai-Ōbaku honzan have no clear sense of what constitutes their mission, and are thus failing to fulfill their role as religious organizations. For example, with regard to teaching activities, which should be their central concern, the honzan: (1) are almost completely uninformed about the teaching activities of the temples associated with them; (2) maintain no close communications (and thus no coordinated teaching programs) with their subordinate temples; (3) engage in no serious, long-term discussions with other honzan regarding contemporary issues in religious education, and therefore end up duplicating each other’s activities.
          The primary educational activities are, on the institutional level: (1) study groups and workshops organized for the temple priests and temple wives; (2) study groups and workshops organized for the danka; (3) formal visits to the honzan by groups from the subordinate temples; (4) formal talks at the temples by fukyōshi (priests licensed by the honzan to serve as public lecturers); (5) eika taikai (formal chanting ceremonies); (6) the publication of newsletters; etc. Individual temples offer activities such as: (1) zazen-kai and sermons for local believers and short term Zen-practice programs for universities, companies, and other organizations; (2) formal Zen practice and instruction (at the formal training monasteries); (3) zazen-kai for children and sutra-transcription gatherings for believers. Special activities include mendicancy for designated causes (aid for earthquake victims, etc.). Similar activities are no doubt organized voluntarily by individual temples and local temple organizations throughout the country, but the respective honzan remain unaware of these activities and consequently offer no support.
          Although the various honzan organizations are doing what they can with regard to educational activities, their initiatives generally remain in the realm of good ideas, with no effort made to understand the nature of the problems they are seeking to resolve and the teaching they are attempting to convey to people today. Thus we have strange situations such as the honzan dispatching fukyōshi to temples, forcing the temple priests to assemble audiences that must sit through talks more suitable for feudal times than the present era. Conversely, people interested in practicing zazen find themselves unable to obtain any information about how to meditate or where to find zazen-kai, with the honzan making only nominal efforts to popularize the available materials on these subjects. The honzans’ failure to recognize their true teaching responsibilities in the modern age is exemplified by the fact that they have yet to produce a single English text explaining the Rinzai-Ōbaku tradition or the method of zazen.
          As mentioned during the fourth meeting of the Aum Shinrikyō Discussion Group, younger priests in the respective Rinzai-Ōbaku traditions are developing alternatives to the honzans’ ad-hoc, maintain-the-status-quo approach to educational activities. These young priests are forming regional groups that operate without help from the honzan and include priests from all of the Rinzai-Ōbaku organizations. However, as private associations dependent on the voluntary participation of interested individuals, these groups are limited in scale both financially and organizationally, and many are experiencing difficulties maintaining movements that they have initiated. As a result several have devolved into little more than friendship societies.
          
          As we can see, the Rinzai-Ōbaku organizations have reached an impasse with regard to their teaching activities. In order to overcome this situation it is necessary not only for individual priests to reflect on their religious responsibilities but also for the Zen organizations to recognize their responsibilities as institutions that exist within the context of society.  During the fourth meeting of the Aum Shinrikyō Discussion Group we proposed a number of practical steps that the Zen institutions might take to help fulfill these responsibilities, but here let us look into the underlying qualities of Zen that make it so important for modern society.
          The fundamental objective of Zen is koji kyūmei, “the investigation and clarification of self,” and thus its practice does not depend upon the acceptance of a fundamental article of faith, such as the living presence of Jesus Christ as Savior or the existence of Amida Buddha and his Pure Land. In that sense Zen is free of dogma. Zen’s distinctive quality of “direct pointing at the human mind” makes it uniquely available to those in the modern world for whom it is no longer possible to place simple faith in a god or a buddha. Each and every individual—Americans as Americans, Japanese as Japanese—can contact the essence of Zen by turning his or her light inwards and illuminating the source of the mind. Owing to this quality, the Zen school is presently metamorphosing from an East Asian tradition to a worldwide movement. How the Japanese Zen tradition deals with these developments will be central to its role in modern society and to its development of new approaches to spreading its message.
          It is important that all of the Zen honzan cooperate in making information on zazen-kai easily accessible to all those who wish to practice Zen, regardless of where those people might be in Japan. Practically speaking, the respective Zen organizations should (1) work together to make guidance available to those seeking to practice Zen; (2) work together to direct those seeking to practice Zen to appropriate places of practice, according to their interests and experience; (3) work together to make basic Zen texts and zazen instruction manuals available to the public.
          Most Zen monks have networks of personal relationships through the Zen honzan they are associated with and through the temples at which they did their training (sometimes these two are the same, of course). These relationships, deeply rooted in the traditional modes of Zen training and practice, offer rich resources for overcoming sectarian stagnation and developing new approaches to teaching Zen. The respective Zen organizations should take advantage of these resources, particularly the “lateral” ties developed during monastic training, to transcend honzan organizational boundaries and offer support to the young priests’ groups that are active at the regional level.
          In modern Japan it is common for people to change their places of residence. Following such moves people often have difficulty finding new temples to associate themselves with, a situation that the Rinzai-Ōbaku organizations have no system in place to deal with. This is another concrete issue that the respective organizations must address as soon as possible.