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Think of the whole of Buddhism as a tree, where the individual sects and schools are branches. When we often look at a tree, particularly metaphorically, we see it as a static, unchanging thing. But this Bodhi tree is alive and growing. When examining a branch, we can't disconnect it from the earlier branches, the trunk, or the roots. They're all part of the whole. A Bodhi tree (ficus religiosa) is also a stringy looking fig tree, with branches that sometimes weave into each other, then back out again.
Okay, with that metaphor in place: The two biggest branches near the base of our tree are the Theravada and Mahayana schools. Zen is a sub-branch off of the big Mahayana branch.
The Theravada perspective on nirvana seems to be about a personal journey towards ending the cycle of rebirth, in a somewhat literal sense. Mahayana (and thus Zen) says we're already Buddhas, but we forget this very early in life. As bodhisattvas, we practice to uncover our enlightened state for the benefit of all beings. In Zen, the notion of rebirth, when it's discussed at all, is about the continuous birth and death of our selves in the present moment. For the Zen Buddhist, we observe our lives in zazen to awaken to the evidence that there is no self to be reborn in future lives. This self exists only in the present moment. Wups! There it goes...
The Mahayana branch forked into a number of "single practice" schools. The Nichiren school chants a single phrase ("Namu Myoho Renge Kyo") for the attainment of enlightenment. The Zen branch grew out of an emphasis on meditation, aka zazen, which literally means "seated meditation." The Japanese word Zen comes from Chinese Ch'an, which comes from the Sanskrit word Dhyana, which means concentration or focus - effectively, "meditation." Meditation is seen as the core practice because that's what Siddhartha Gautama did on the night he Awakened, becoming the Buddha. So, it probably seemed a pretty good bet to Bodhidharma.
To provide more perspective on the differences, I'll cover what attracted me specifically to Zen. I was in college studying Physics, Philosophy, and World Religions. I met a Zen Buddhist who gave me some books to read. What "resonated" with me, above all others, was the simplicity. I don't refer to surface simplicity, or "easy": Not the Japanese aesthetics (e.g., rock gardens), not the single-practice, not even the emphasis on wordless learning which implied less study - a good thing for a college student!
Instead, it was the simple, unvarnished clarity about topics of truth, reality, time, mind/body dichotomy, subjective/objective perspective, and so on. For example:
Mindfulness: The present moment contains the whole of reality. All of the events of the past universe led up to *this*. And within *this* moment, all potential futures are held. This notion of time still fits so nicely into my study of Physics.
Ethics: "Avoid doing harm, strive to do good, and clarify your thoughts." Behave as a Buddha--an Awakened being--would behave, based on wisdom, compassion, and current circumstances. In essence, you know how to be good, and you already know when you're being bad. (Particularly when your brain fully matures, which is now estimated to occur around 25 years of age ;-). Beyond that, ethical truths are cultural and provisional. (*Not* personally relative, though! I cannot justify killing by referencing shunyata--emptiness--as the Samurai were taught to do. This was a devastatingly foolish delusion, and a horrific misrepresentation of the Buddha Tao.)
Look at today's cultural norms that were unthinkable a hundred years ago: Internet privacy issues, gay marriage, or WMDs, for example. "Who Would the Buddha Bomb?" We can instead ask ourselves, "What would an Awakened person do in this situation? Will my actions be for the benefit of the greater good? Will my hasty actions have worse long-term ramifications?" Obviously, we have to practice to get good at making such calls without spending three hours deliberating. Practice helps us dance with the whole Universe in the here and now.
Humor: Somewhere between taking life too seriously, and taking it too frivolously, lies that dance of wisdom.
Back to branching Zen...
There are two truths that stand out as being nearly universal. Perhaps even they are not ultimate, timeless, objective truths; but they have been with us since the Big Bang, and human life would end completely if they become untrue. They are very important in the Zen school, and they may be like the bark and sap of the whole Buddhist tree. These are:
1. Impermanence: Nothing lasts forever. So much so, that all objects, beings, concepts, and our Universe, itself, do not have any abiding existence. For the Zen Buddhist, this is informative as we go seeking the "self." It exists, because we exist, but there is nothing about *me* that will continue as *me* for all time. In Zen, the self is not the enemy, to be extinguished. You cannot live without one. Better to say we strive not to cling to notions of the self. For the physicist/mathematician in me, I think of the self as an "emergent property" of human evolution: As real as anything else, and useful, but entirely defined and created by the rest of the system (genetics, culture, experience, and environment).
2. Interdependence: Imagine you are an astronaut. You took all the air, food, water, and heat you would need from the shining blue ball that hovers outside one viewport. You lose a fuel cell (part of your warmth, and part of your drinking water). Still think you are independent of others? When you eat, you become what you ate. When you inhale, that's now part of you, when you exhale, it becomes part of your co-pilot. Where do you start and end? In a real, tangible way, we are much more than these bags of skin: We are the farms, the atmosphere, the plants, the oceans, the sun. We are male, we are female. Take anything away, and the whole system has to re-balance (or die trying). The ancient hermits realized this. They could live alone for years, but were dependent upon the forests, the rain, the government that kept enemy armies from wiping them out.
To wrap up the tree metaphor: Even Zen went through a few branching phases. There were once five schools in Japan, and there are now two "major" schools, Soto and Rinzai. These branches are tightly intertwined, often acting as one: Many teachers provide wisdom from both schools. Robert Aitken Roshi, whom I consider one of America's greatest Zen Masters, came from a lineage that was both Soto and Rinzai.
Last time I visited the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center on Lake Calhoun, the talk was on "metta" practices, from Tibetan Buddhism (a Mahayana cousin). I was moved to add a short, silent metta practice to the first few minutes of my zazen practice. So, a new branch may have emerged naturally, and easily, through that teacher. My hope is that American Zen Buddhism will emphasize both zazen and metta, so we have a clear practice for both aspects of Awakening: wisdom, and compassion.
Many people widely separated both geographically and in time have had the same “mystical” experience, even though they have expressed their understanding of it in a variety of ways – resulting in the various religions and cults we have access to in the world today. What these people independently discovered is the psychology of the common human goal – conventionally called happiness
. Inhis book “Zen Flesh Zen Bones” Paul Reps gives us a quote taken from a compilation from the Vigyan Bhairava and Sochanda Tantra.{written 4000 years ago] and the Malini Vijaya Tantra [probably written 1000 years before that]. “thinking no thing, will limited – self unlimit.”
Of course religions include much more than references to that experience. They try to explain the world and tell us how to best live our lives to get the most out of them..
Zen comes closest to a clinically rational and accurate view of the experience that these religions have their taproots into. The Zen Masters have stripped away all the “religious”material and promoted the psychology itself. They understood that the essence of what the Buddha Gotama preached was that psychology. He said, “Nirvana is the extinction of Dukkha.” If you interpret “dukkha” as“suffering” you merely get the tautology, “Happiness is the extinction of unhappiness.” I doubt he would have impressed his contemporaries with that rendering .
In his book on"The Buddha." Dr M. Carrithers researches the meaning of Dukkha in the Samyutta NIkaya and finds the definition of it to be "all aspects of experience in the mind and body", which unfortunately rules out all the good experiences , like happiness.
A more meaningfu linterpretation of the word would be “all conscious mental activity” - all data processing in the mind [ the arenaof the awareness.] This is what the Zen Masters say when they advise us to abstain from “discrimination”, “mentation” and , “intellection” . The Master Dogen is more direct; he uses the phrase “without thinking”.
Even Christianity employs the psychology in a subtle way when it advises us to put our faith in a caring father figure and delegate all our worries to him. If we do that, whether he exists or not, we do less thinking for our selves and therefore are automatically happier.
If I were asked to select the most meaningful and helpful answer a Zen Master ever gave to the question, “How do you meditate?” I would recommend the answer, “There really isn’t anything to do.” Juststay awake.
If you want to see an attempt at re-expressing that psychology, take a look at 21st Century Zen on my web page: Introduction
In my mind, it's very simple: Buddhism + Taoism = Zen.
When Bodhidharma developed his stripped down form of Buddhism, he called it Dhyana, which is a Sanskrit word. This word can either refer to levels of attainment or meditation in general. It is my understanding that he chose it to mean meditation. He brought it to China where they called it Chan. It later spread to Japan, where they called it Zen.
It is in China where it intermingled with Taoism. The Chinese say that Buddhism is Chan's father and Taoism is Chan's mother.
It is here that Chan picks up koan practice (I do not know why the Soto sect of Zen downplays koan practice). Rightly or wrongly, anything I find quirky in Zen, I attribute to Taoism. I consider a sense of humor to be one of Taoism's strengths.
As Taoism also emphasizes simplicity. I see Taoism in the simplicity of Zen.
Zen rock garden, Portland Japanese Gardens, Portland, OR
Strictly speaking Zen is not Buddhism. Gautama incorporated it into Buddhism about 550 B.C. but Bodhidharma [died 536 C.E [the first Chinese Patriarch; “the blue eyed barbarian”; the 28th Indian Patriarch.] took Zen out of Buddhism and exported it to China. He declared Zen to be: “a special transmission outside religion. Not founded on words and letters. By pointing to [one’s] mind, it lets one see into the mind and attain Buddhahood.”
Zen is unique because it is a psychology not a religion. It offers no moral codes, views on our mortality or anything else religions offer their adherents.
Some religions do have their taproots into the experience meditation produces. Even Christianity uses the psychology. If you delegate all your worries to a caring father figure, [whether he exists or not] you do less thinking for yourself so are happier.
If you want to see my attempt at explaining that psychology, look up “21st Century Zen” on my website: Introduction
Realization within you.
[Adding some superfluous text because the unenlightened quora bot has dogmatic expectations and cannot understand the transmission of subtle wisdom which is sometimes possible with the right few words to a ripe human mind. The dogma of quora is that answers should be logically consistent, complete and "make sense" when to some extent this is the anti-thesis of zen where the ultimate understanding is beyond the map of dualistic word worlds to realization within oneself of the underlying territory.]
Originally answered: What makes Zen Buddhism different from other Buddhist traditions?
Buddhism describes itself as a jewel with 84,000 facets. No matter which one you look through, you see the same heart of the jewel.
The various schools of Buddhism are different ways of interesting people in the truth. Their outward forms are not the truth itself. Neither are they apart from the truth.
All paths lead to the goal. Walk which one you choose.
Zen Buddhism is different because it was uniquely developed with Japanese approach and Japanese philosophy.
Two major differences:
- Zen monks marry
- Zen Buddhism is also political Buddhism
Compare with how the Buddha left His palace to the jungle alone in search of the cure for aging, disease and death. Compare with Theravada Buddhism.
Buddha grabs a beautiful flower and holds it up, smiling. Monks not sure how to respond remain silent. One monk responds with a smile, he's the one who is said to understood the teaching.
This monk, wise as he was, saw right away what others take a long time to comprehend. Just a simple experiment: grab a flower from the garden on a hot day and look at it. Now, in a couple of minutes, in a couple of hours. What will you see except 'when this ceases, that ceases'?
Zen is not unique. All forms of Buddhism point to this same reality. Zen just uses fewer words in this process. Still, the ignorant will take the moon in the water for the real moon and point their finger towards it in vain where others misunderstand the finger for the real thing. Sometimes it's better to speak.
Or to throw a rock in the water. That what is undisturbed will remain undisturbed.
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