Zen Buddhism and Western Culture: How its practices affect its culture and are mirrored in many Western ideas
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social sciences
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published 19/02/2008
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SummaryThere has always been a fascination with the contrast between Eastern and Western philosophies, culture and ideas. And nowhere is this fact more prominent than in religion and religious practices. More specifically, the Asian religion of Buddhism, though seeing its tenets blossom through Western culture at times, is in a variety of ways significantly different than most Western religions. These differences are expressed in the worldviews that as a philosophy of the macro and microcosm of human experience represent a rather distinct sentiment. Naturally these worldviews are rooted in its parent religion Hinduism. As such, Buddhism, with its many sects, has one which is of interest here; that is Zen Buddhism. This unique approach to Buddha’s philosophy and religious practices, with its paradoxical koans and meditations, is an abrupt abasement to the Western cultural tradition of theorizing and appeals to formal logic. However, in spite of these contrarieties, the two apparent opposed perspectives reserve a more profound set of questions which both puzzle and probe the Zen teacher and Western thinker. In this paper, we will examine the effects that debates within Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy and religion have had on their respective cultures with particular attention paid to how Zen principles are derived from the more basic principles of Buddhism.
Table of Contents
- Zen Buddhism is of the Mahayana branch.
- In so much as this approach developed as a clarification of some obscure doctrines found in basic Buddhism
- Dogen, and latter students of the school, would be introduced to a series of dilemmas.
- As one can see, the Sotoist dilemma of received and interactive dharma can be said to demonstrate similarities to our own dilemmas in the West.
- The unresolved dilemmas present in Zen Buddhism in regards to its paradoxical practices.
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