Zen Organisation and Institutions
Religion is not only an individual matter, but "also a collective endeavour". Though individual experience and the iconoclastic picture of Zen are emphasised in the western world, the Zen-tradition is maintained and transferred by a high degree of institutionalisation and hierarchy. In Japan, modernity has led to criticism of the formal system and the commensement of lay-oriented Zen-schools such as the Sanbo Kyodan and the Ningen Zen Kyodan. How to organize the continuity of the Zen-tradition in the west, constraining charismatic authority and the derailment it may bring on the one hand, and maintaining the legitimacy and authority by limiting the number of authorized teachers on the other hand, is a challenge for the developing Zen-communities in the west.
Read more about this topic: Zen Buddhists
Famous quotes containing the words zen, organisation and/or institutions:
“Zen ... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
—Alan Watts (1915–1973)
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“You see how this House of Commons has begun to verify all the ill prophecies that were made of it—low, vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal competency, and flattering every base passion—and sneering at everything noble refined and truly national. The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)