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Aum Shinrikyō Discussion Group; Second Meeting

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At the second gathering of the Aum Shinrikyō discussion group, Rev. Uematsu Sōchū, head of the Tsunoda Zendō in Niigata, discussed his own spiritual search and the doctrine of Aum Shinrikyō gedatsu (spiritual liberation). Afterwards he accepted questions from the audience.
          Aum Shinrikyō teachings were, in Rev. Uematsu’s opinion, relatively faithful to those of Esoteric Buddhism. However, Asahara Shōkō, Aum’s founder and chief guru, never actually experienced Mahamudra, the ultimate state of Great Death that he identified as the peak of the Aum spiritual system. Although his understanding remained intellectual, Asahara nevertheless demanded of his followers absolute obedience to his orders as a form of spiritual training, leading him into self-delusion.
          During the question-and-answer period, Rev. Uematsu identified other sources of delusion, such as the beliefs that drug-induced psychedelic experience comprised a shortcut to spiritual insight and that the various visions and other extraordinary experiences forcibly induced through concentrative practices indicated progress on the path to liberation. Aum also distorted the meaning of ordination and dana by demanding the donation of large sums of money from believers who ordained as monks and nuns.
           The discussion then turned to what help the Zen school might be able to provide for Aum Shinrikyō’s ordinary believers, people who had sought in the cult a path to truth but were now set adrift. The conclusion was that, owing to the fear with which the cult was regarded among the Japanese populace as well as to the reality of the present danka-centered temple system, there was very little that the Zen school as an institution could do, despite a lingering awareness that Zen—Buddhism’s meditation school—had the responsibility to provide meaningful answers to young Aum believers who had sought in meditation practice an answer to their suffering. In that sense the entire Aum Shinrikyō affair was a wake-up call for individual Zen priests and the Zen institution as a whole, indicating both the present state of the Zen school in Japan and the need to rediscover the Way both for the Zen sangha and for those who turn to Zen for guidance.