What different sects are there? Part I

I hear a lot about the different schools of Zen.  Rinzai, Soto, Korean Zen, Western Zen.  So what’s what?  And are the differences important?

Very important.  Very, very important. Have you ever watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?

Yea, loved it.  Watched it with my dad growing up.

What happens to the Nazis when they pick the wrong cup?

They dissolve into dust.

That’s what it’s like to pick the wrong tradition.

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Explain?

It could be worse.

What could possibly be worse than dissolving into dust?

Being thrown into a wood chipper.  Being devoured alive by piranhas. Being crushed to death by a fallen building. There’s actually a some really cool books on surgery in Victorian England. I’ll spoil it for you: most of them die from horrific wounds during surgery and the rest from the infections following. Those Nazis were gone in 10 seconds. A botched surgery might have you wasting away for months before succumbing to infection.

So…am I going to get a serious answer or just a bunch of weird ways to die?

Both.

When I was training at the San Francisco Zen Center, a Soto place, many told me that I was wasting my time dozing away there.  Some of those folks warning me that I was squandering my time were respected monks within the Soto tradition itself.  I’ve had people tell me, “you’ll never get anywhere in tradition X” or “X is not real Zen.” Blah-blah-blah.

Japan was the worst.  For many of the monks, even the big teachers, it was a bunch of boy’s locker room pissing contest bullshit.  Who sits at night the longest.  Who goes the most days without sleeping.  Who hits their monks the hardest.  Who sent the most monks to the hospital that year. Who’s the greatest master.

To be fair, no one said I was going to go straight to hell for practicing in the “wrong” tradition, but it wasn’t far off.

The other extreme of the “if you’re not in my tradition, you’re practice is dog shit” attitude is the lazy “it’s just different paths leading to the same peak.” This is the fuzzy idea that every tradition’s essentially the same and, thus, there’s no real choice. They’re not. I’ve even seen Zen monks shouting at each other over doctrine. In that case, the point in question was whether practitioners develop in discrete stages or whether it’s an endless cycling of progressively deeper insight. Other monks, like some of the Chinese, are horrified at the moral laxity of the Japanese monks who drink, marry, and have no clear monastic code. Some have very different ideas of enlightenment. So there’s difference and that needs to be respected. There is a difference and those differences have consequence.

The way I think of the different traditions is through the metaphor of mountain climbing, but along different paths and up different peaks. For example, not everyone wants to climb up Everest.  It might be the highest, but it’s commercialized and lacks the adventure of other trails. Some want to climb up Mount Roraima in Brazil, trekking through vast swathes of jungle and climbing up kilometer high cliffs.  Others want to do K2 because, although shorter than Everest, it’s more technically challenging and daring.  These peaks have different terrain, locations, heights, faces, environments. There are, however, many similarities, like the challenges of altitude, risk of storms, the effect of the seasons, climbing up sheer surfaces, tools, and the logistics of supplies.

The different styles of Zen are like mountain climbing. Zen schools all share similar features, namely, the three trainings in morality, concentration, and wisdom. Morally, they all take the Five Precepts as their base, although how rigidly and central they are differs. They all meditate, although techniques and importance varies. They all take the two truths of cause-and-effect and oneness as fundamental to their philosophy, though debate rages on the finer points of that doctrine. So there’s a lot of similarity within the traditions, but also genuine areas of difference.

The fear behind the impulse to ignore the differences is 1) that the different sects will be at each others’ throats and 2) that we’ll pick the wrong one and be doomed to hell or, at best, an ineffective practice. Let’s take these apart one by one.

First, difference can be cause for division, but not necessarily. For most of Japan’s history, the Buddhist schools lived together harmoniously. There were periods of fighting between them, but most of the time they were on friendly terms and exchanged ideas and practices with each other. As one of my teachers, Ajahn Jayasaro, likes to say, “We don’t all need to be the same to be friends.” Same with Zen and other religions. We don’t have to think, speak, and act the same way about everything to get along, just like our own friends in real life. There just has to be enough shared values and respect for the relationship to work.

Second, the fear is that we’ll pick the wrong one. By blending all of the schools together, we rid ourselves of the anxiety of picking the wrong one. Instead, now we have a super tradition that’s beyond reproach. This is confused and arrogant. Do they really think they can just read a few books, try a few practices, and then create a super tradition that surpasses what’s been tried and verified over centuries within a living tradition by generations who’ve spent lifetimes contemplating and practicing it?

So we shouldn’t mix practices or traditions?

No. Eclecticism is the norm. Save for the reformer fundamentalist monks throughout history, 99% of practitioners have been eclectic. Japanese villagers, for example, worshiped in Shinto spirits, prayed to Amitabha Buddha, and learned mantras from their local Shingon priest. The monks were the same, although they usually toed the party line more faithfully than their lay counterparts.

That’s with a big caveat: monks and lay people generally committed to one school. I compare picking a tradition to food. In Asia, rice is the staple and the other items on the menu are additions. Whatever you eat, rice is always there. While you’re free to dabble, come back day-after-day to that one tradition.

When people create a super tradition from picking-and-choosing a number of views and practices, it lacks the depth, focus, and community that established traditions possess. Traditions are cultures of awakening. A culture is a relationship to a teacher, community, and set of views and practices. As with any relationship, intimacy, trust, and understanding develop slowly after years of commitment, not by just by intensely reading a few books and doing a 7-day retreat. The relationship builds when you turn back to it in times of difficulty and crisis, when you sacrifice for it. After passing many trials together, that relationship offers the potential to revolutionize you. The buffet approach lacks that power.

Returning to the differences, though, there are differences between traditions and these have consequences. Some practices are more effective than others. Some views are more accurate than others. Some cultures are more harmful than others. As has happened, you might end up in a toxic environment were people use you for sex or money. In other places, you might soar with a solid bunch of pals dedicated to bettering themselves. Shooing these differences away with comforting stories and fuzzy ideas hurts you in the long-run.

There’s no clear answer on what to do. Every decision is a gamble. There are more educated and less educated gambles, but it's a gamble none-the-less. Life is unpredictable. This applies to who you marry, what kind of computer you buy, what career you start, or when to sell stocks.  We each need to examine ourselves and the traditions then commit to what seems best, then roll the dice.