Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism: Myōshinji, a Living Religion (review)

Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism is a welcome addition to the nascent field of the study of contemporary Japanese Temple Buddhism. The book is comprehensive and presents in one volume a rich source for anyone wishing to learn about contemporary Japanese Zen. Much of the material the author presents can be applied more broadly to other denominations, making it a useful window onto modern Japanese Temple Buddhism. It is only in the last decade or so that scholars have begun to turn their attention to the study of Temple Buddhism in its contemporary forms. The field of Buddhist studies instead has focused most frequently on the distant past and sacred texts, leaving the contemporary Buddhist world to anthropologists who until very recently have worked primarily on new Buddhist movements such as Sōka Gakkai and Reiyūkai. The dearth of material in this field is not limited to Western scholarship. In a recent meeting, one of Japan's top religious studies scholars reminded me that still today in Japan there is very little research being done on contemporary Temple Buddhism. Jørn Borup's detailed study of the Rinzai denomination of Buddhism gives us the opportunity to see Temple Buddhism as a multidimensional phenomenon in contemporary Japan and should be read by anyone with an interest in modern or contemporary Japanese Buddhism. In order to better understand the many dimensions of contemporary Rinzai Zen, Borup brings to bear an array of methodologies from participant-observation to historical studies to ritual studies. As such, his work reflects a new and growing trend to move beyond traditional approaches and make use of interdisciplinary methodologies.

The book is divided into four chapters, but the third chapter, at over 170 pages, is a behemoth. The introduction serves to set the tone. Here Borup describes how he was nurtured in the world of idealized Zen and, like many before him who have traveled to Japan in search of that "true" Zen, he was left at a loss. He notes that having not found it at first glance, he kept pushing forward, delving deeper and deeper, "presuming gems and true treasures never reveal themselves for surface riders and doubtful agnostics" (p. 1). In the end, as this book makes clear, he found that truth takes on many forms, just as the Rinzai Zen he came to examine is made up of many, often competing or conflicting, parts.

In the first chapter, Borup provides a detailed overview of Rinzai Zen institutions and structures. Here we find covered everything from legendary founders to the gozan system to postwar lay Buddhist movements. One section of particular interest is the exhaustive look at the many ways temples might be classified. This is in keeping with Borup's goal of breaking up monolithic views of Zen. He closes the chapter with a series of questions that he seeks to answer in the following chapters. "How should it continue to be a shukke [world-renouncer] religion when most of its priests are married? How can it in an increasingly individualistic modern society justify itself as a traditional religion? How should it balance between the image of being a funeral religion and a progressive organization… ?" (p. 48). These questions point to a tension in the book between the search for understanding how modern Rinzai Zen will meet key challenges to its authority or even its existence while delineating what those challenges are (something along the line of my own work on Tendai) and a clear desire on Borup's part to provide a detailed examination of ritual and ceremony (the topic of chapter 3). Borup comes back to the questions he raises here from time to time, pointing out worries within Rinzai about its funeral image, about maintaining enough clergy to keep all its temples intact, and about how to promote its self-proclaimed identity as a "meditation" school. He alludes to some of the attempts at the institutional level to address...