Smrti (mindfulness)
Smrti, or mindfulness, has a number of interpretations in Buddhist literature. Today perhaps the most important is mindfulness meditation.
Smrti literally means "being aware of all processes and phenomena, mental or physical." In the Buddhist Abhidharma/Abhidhamma literature, smrti is one of many mental functions. Smrti is a type of mental constituent (samskara). Samskara in turn is one of the five Skandhas, or aggregates, that collectively merge in the individual.
The Sarvastivada (Sarvastivadin) school writers listed 10 types of functions, the mahabhu-mika, which included smrti as well as such states as desire (canda) and concentration (samadhi). According to Sarvastivadin writings smrti is also a key element in religious practice; it is one of the five roots of emancipation, an aspect of practice without which one cannot make progress on the Buddhist path.
Developing mindfulness is a key goal of Theravada as well as Mahayana Buddhism. The smrti upasthana, or "four awakenings," are meditations that help one develop mindfulness of body, feelings, mind, and mental objects. This practice is detailed in the Satipatthana-sutta in the Pali canon. This meditation is usually subsumed under the title of vipassana meditation. In fact vipassana, or insight, refers to a cognitive apprehension of reality. Mindfulness is necessary for the development of such insight.
Snyder, Gary
(1930- ) Zen poet and social activist
Gary Snyder, an American poet who identified with the Beat Zen movement of the 1950s and then transcended it, was born in San Francisco but raised in Washington and oregon. When he attended Reed College, he had developed an interest in Buddhism and Japan. After college (1951) he moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area to study Asian languages at the University of California in Berkeley (1953-56). In Berkeley he attended meetings of the Young Buddhist Association, which met near where he resided. He also associated with Beat writers such as Allen Gins-burg (1926-97) and Jack Kerouac.
He finally traveled to Japan in 1956 and remained there for eight years. He studied Rinzai Zen and worked on translating texts. In 1962 he took a trip to India, where he met the Dalai Lama. His first book of poems, Riprap (1959), was published while he was in Japan, though the poems reflected his experiences in the early 1950s. This topic was a significant step in establishing him as a major American poet. The clarity of description attributed to his Zen Buddhism meditation would appear in his later works such as Cold Mountain Poems (1965).
Upon his return to the united States in the mid-1960s he became a peace activist and then in 1969 purchased a farm in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada, from which he became one of the early voices of the deep ecology and environmentalism movement. At the farm he established a lay Zen center and ecology center. His social activism was expressed in his work to found the San Juan Ridge Tax Payers Association, the Ridge Study Group, and the Yuba Watershed institute.
Meanwhile, Snyder continued to write and publish his poems, which earned him numerous awards and honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1968 and the Pulitzer Prize in 1975. In 1985 he became a professor in the English Department at the University of California at Davis. He is now a professor emeritus. In 1988 he received the Buddhism Transmission Award from the Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, the first American so honored.
Soen, Nakagawa
(1907-1984) Japanese Zen master who trained many Western Buddhists
Nakagawa Soen Roshi was for many years the abbot of the Ryutaku-ji Monastery in Mishima, Japan, one of the leading Rinzai Zen monastic centers in the country. Nakagawa Soen was unusual among Japanese teachers in the mid 20th-century in accepting Western students. Among the first of his American students was Robert Baker Aitken, who in 1959 was given permission to conduct a sitting group in his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, the seed of the Diamond Sangha, founded in part as a vehicle for bring Nakagawa to the United States. Through both his acceptance of American students and his many trips to and talks in America, he helped shape the Zen environment of the later 20th century.
The extent of his influence is seen in the number of students who have assumed leadership positions. As early as 1955, he accepted Ruth Strout McCandless, the first Western woman to stay at a Zen monastery, as a student. Dan Welch practiced as a layman at Ryutaku-ji under Soen Nakagawa-roshi from 1962 to 1964. He later worked at the San Francisco Zen Center and is now the assistant abbot at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center. Eido Tai Shi-mano, a Japanese monk who in 1972 received Dharma transmission from Nakagawa, is now the leader of the Zen Studies Society (New York City) and its several affiliated centers including Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. His assistant, John Mortensen, a Dane, began his study under Nakagawa at Ryutaku-ji in 1971.
Other 1970s students of Nakagawa’s include Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi (Zen master), who in 1981 founded the Soho Zen Buddhist Society in New York City, and John Daido Loori, who in 1980 founded the Zen Arts Center in Mount Tremper, New York.
Soka Gakkai International
Soka Gakkai International (SGI) was formed in 1975 in recognition of the global development of Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Society for the Education in the Creation of Value). As the 21st century began, SGI reported 12 million members scattered in 180 countries.
Formed in 1937 by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944), it was originally established to reform education so to assist people to live lives that in turn created beauty, benefit, and goodness. An adherent of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, Maki-guchi saw value creation in line with the teachings and practices articulated by Nichiren (1222-82). Neither Makiguchi’s Buddhist perspective nor Soka Gakkai’s program fit well with the emphasis of the Japanese government in the 1930s—its focus on a nationalist mobilization that religious groups were expected to support fully. Eventually he and a number of Soka Gakkai’s leaders were arrested as World War II heated up. Makiguchi died in prison, but his colleague Josei Toda (1900-58), who succeeded him as president, revived the organization after the war.
Under Toda, Soka Gakkai took its place as a lay arm of Nichiren Shoshu and focused upon the spreading of Nichiren’s teachings and the conversion of the nation and the world. An early goal of winning 750,000 new adherents was met in the 1950s, before he turned over the leadership to Daisaku Ikeda, who subsequently built it into an expansive international organization. In 1975, when Soka Gakkai International was formed, Ikeda was named its first president.
Soka Gakkai perpetuated the teachings of Nichiren concerning the primacy of the Lotus Sutra and the chanting of its title in Japanese, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, before the Gohonzon, the object of worship, originally designed by Nichi-ren. Most SGI members have a replica of the Gohonzon on an altar in their home.
In the 1960s, Soka Gakkai became the most controversial of the many "new religions" that emerged in postwar Japan. The focus of controversy was their aggressive recruitment practice, shakabuku, which, it was charged, used intimidation and even physical force to persuade people to join. At the same time, Soka Gakkai had formed a political party, the Komeito, which, with the growth of the organization, began to have an impact on national elections in Japan. The controversy spilled over into the international scene, especially in North America and Europe, where in the 1970s a vigorous anticult movement, which included Soka Gakkai on its list of destructive cults, had developed. in spite of the controversy, Soka Gakkai grew and became the largest Buddhist organization in most of the countries it entered.
The controversy over Soka Gakkai intensified in the 1990s. In 1991, ongoing tension between the organization and the parent Nichiren Shoshu came to a head when the Nichiren Shoshu excommunicated Ikeda and the Soka Gakkai leadership and broke all attachments to it. This action created one immediate problem, as the priests of the Nichiren Shoshu had supplied the Gohonzon replicas that SGi members received.
However, the break with Nichiren Shoshu was mild in relation to the fallout experienced by the organization after the gassing of the Tokyo subway station in 1995 by the Aum Shinrikyo. Aum Shin-rikyo had no relation to SGi apart from envying the role it had assumed in Japan. However, after the gassing event, a wave of anticult sentiment swept Japan, and legislation was introduced to prevent similar occurrences. Much of that legislation was aimed at Soka Gakkai.
Then just as suddenly as the controversy peaked, it came to a sudden end in 1999. After the Japanese election, the ruling party fell short of a majority and needed the Komeito to continue in power. Suddenly, government pressure was taken off Soka Gakkai and criticism dropped dramatically, though the larger Buddhist community has not moved to embrace the organization. The change in Japan has been reflected around the world, as criticism suddenly dropped to minuscule levels.
Son Buddhism
Son Buddhism, the Korean form of Chan Buddhism, which is centered upon the practice of meditation, traces its origin to Pomnang (seventh century), who studied in China with Tai Xin (Tai-hsin) (580-651), the fourth Chan patriarch. Pomnang’s lineage died out and Chan had to be reintroduced to Korea, as it was on several occasions by students of the Chinese Chan master Mazu (709-788). The growth of Son Buddhism initially led to a perception that it was incompatible with the other forms of Buddhism that centered on the study of the sutras. By the 10th century, Son was focused on nine prominent monasteries/temples and became generally referred to as the Nine Mountains tradition.
Son received new life with the career of Chinul (1158-1210). Objecting to what he saw as the degenerating state of Son practice in his own day, he founded the Samadhi and Prajna (Enlightenment and Wisdom) Community. Meanwhile, in each case after his study of a particular sutra, he had three insightful experiences, the result of which was his conclusion that the practice of meditation and study of the sutras were not mutually exclusive activities. on the basis of his new perspective, the community began to grow and with growth, a new center on Songgwang Mountain was erected.
The three texts that had prompted Chinul’s awakening insights—the Platform Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, and the Record of Dahui Zongkao (1089-1163), an innovative Linji Chan practitioner—became the basis of the Chogye Order he founded, still the main school of Korean Buddhism. on the basis of Chinul’s insights, T’aego Pou (1301-82) was able to reconcile the remaining elements of Korean Buddhism, especially the more conservative Son practitioners of the Nine Mountains. Korean Buddhism has since the 14th century been characterized by the tendency to seek reconciliation between practice and study and the drive for unity.
Son Buddhism and the Chogye order have been able to survive the ups and downs of Korea’s checkered political situation (which in the 20th century included the Japanese occupation, World War ii, and the Korean War) and has experienced a notable revival since the end of the Korean War. it has also been successfully exported to the West by individuals such as Seung Sahn Sunim, founder of the Kwan Um school of Zen, and Samu Sunim, founder of the Buddhist Society for Compassionate Wisdom.
Soryu Kagahi
(dates unknown) first Japanese Buddhist missionary to the United States
Soryu Kagahi was sent to Hawaii in 1898. He preceded the first missionaries to the American mainland, Shuye Sonoda and Kakuryo Nishimjima, by one year. Kagahi had been sent by the Honpa Hongwanji headquarters in Kyoto in response to requests from the Japanese workers in Hawaii. Although he only stayed in Hawaii one year, he oversaw the building of the first Japanese temple in Hawaii, in Hilo.
Sosan Taesa (Ch’ongho Hyujeong)
(1520-1604) Korean Zen "warrior monk"
Sosan Taesa was, along with Chinul and Wonhyo, one of the three most important figures in Korean Buddhism. He taught many important students and helped solidify Korean Son Buddhism practice. His Songa kwigam (A guide to Son practice) is studied to this day. Most modern Son lineages are traced back to him and his four disciples Yujeong, Eongi, T’ainung, and Ilseon. His words are often quoted to students, for instance, the following: "In studying Zen, one must have three things: a foundation of great faith, a zealous determination, and a great feeling of doubt. if one is lacking, it is like a tripod with a broken foot."
Along with his fellow monk Samyon Taesa (1543-1610), Sosan Taesa organized and led a guerrilla army to fight against the Japanese invasions under Hideyoshi between 1592 and 1598. He is thus held up as an example of active participation by Buddhist practitioners in war.
Sosurim
(r. 371-384) ruler who introduced Buddhism to Korea
In 371 c.e. Sosurim, whose diplomatic ties with the Chinese emperor led to the establishment of Buddhism in Korea, became king of Goguryeo (Koguryo) (from which the modern word Korea is derived), the northernmost of the three kingdoms then in existence on the Korean Peninsula. Inheriting a somewhat weakened and disorganized land, he immediately initiated a complete restructuring of its governing institutions. He introduced a new legal code and revised the centralized government bureaucracy. He then founded the T’aehak, the National Confucian Academy; Confucianism was the moral philosophy dominating governmental organization.
Sosurim also initiated diplomatic ties with the Chinese emperor Fujian (r. 357-384) and imported a number of elements of Chinese culture and technology. In 272, Fujian sent to Sosurim a Buddhist monk, Sundo (or Shun Dao). Sundo was able to establish Buddhism in Sosurim’s court, and Sosurim promoted the ideal of an unified land under this new system of belief and practice. The form of Buddhism Sundo advocated supported a strong centralized imperial governance of a unified land.
As the court accepted the new religion, Sos-urim moved to make Buddhism the state religion of his kingdom and supported the building of the first Buddhist temple. He did not, however, move to spread Buddhism among the masses. The faith would, during the remaining years of his reign, be confined largely to the country’s elite. It would be limited to those who participated in court life for a number of decades and only slowly move out among the masses. After his death in 384, Sosurim was succeeded by King Gogugyang (384-391).
Soto Zen
Soto Zen is the Japanese form of the Chinese Caodong (Ts’ao-tung) meditational school of Buddhism. Along with Rinzai Zen, Soto is one of the two major Zen sects in Japan. In 1214 Dogen (1200-53), a Tendai monk, learned about Caodong in China. He studied zazen (sitting meditation) for two years, then returned to Japan to teach. Dogen opted for a more gradual approach to enlightenment and did not use the koans so much a part of Rinzai practice. Dogen eventually settled in Echizen Province and there in 1245 built Eihei-ji (Enduring Peace Temple), which would become the center of the Soto movement in the country.
Dogen was succeeded by his disciple Ejo (1198-1280). As abbot at Eihei-ji, he would complete the compilation of Dogen’s major work, the Shobogenzo. After Ejo’s death, the Soto movement found itself in an era of rapid spread and of controversy over new tendencies. Several factions emerged, a conservative, monk-oriented one at Eihei-ji and a more popular lay-oriented branch that developed around Keizan Jokin (1268-1325), a rather charismatic leader based in Noto Province north of Echizen. In the 15 th century, representatives of the Kei-zan school took over Eihei-ji and became the dominant force in the movement. over the next century they united the various Soto factions and received imperial recognition as the rightful heirs of Dogen. Eihei-ji was given official imperial patronage. over the next century, the Tokugawa shogunate also threw its support behind Eihei-ji and Keizan’s temple, Soto-ji, and designated them the main temples of the movement and honored their abbots.
Unlike the Rinzai movement, which exists in a number of factions, the Soto movement has remained largely united, with more than 14,500 temples under its authorities at the beginning of the 21st century. It operates out of its two main temples, Eihei-ji and Soto-ji, which was moved to Yokahama in 1911.
In the 20th century, Soto Zen began to spread across the Pacific, first to Hawaii, then to the mainland United States. Although at first most u.S. Soto adherents were of Japanese descent, in the decades after World War ii, the California temples would begin to attract non-Japanese who wished to learn Zen. In 1959, after the arrival of Shunryu Suzuki (1904-71) to head the San Francisco temple, an English-speaking group began to emerge. There are now several influential Soto Zen groups in North America.
South America, Buddhism in
Buddhism in South America remains concentrated among residents of Japanese ancestry living in two countries, Brazil and Peru. And the vast number of Buddhists belong to groups with roots in Japanese Buddhism.
Buddhism was introduced to South America in 1899 when the ship Sakura Maru arrived at Callao, Peru, with 790 people from Japan. Additional ships would follow over the next decade; the first group arrived in 1908 at Santos, in Sao Paulo State, Brazil. Later immigrants spread out to Argentina and Bolivia.
The Japanese traveled to South America in search of jobs on plantations and assumed that as Japan’s economy recovered and they accumulated money, they would return home. Not particularly religious as a group, they found that their religious sentiments began to emerge as their stays lengthened. The fact that initially Japanese authorities had prohibited Buddhist (and Shinto) religious functionaries from joining the immigrants opened the community to religious proselytization. Many turned to Christianity. Meanwhile, over the first generation, the community proved upwardly mobile and most escaped the plantation life to move into business and professional jobs. The majority dropped the Japanese language and any Japanese faith. Then, after Japan’s defeat in World War ii, they dropped any surviving plans to return to their homeland.
When Japanese religion did emerge among the immigrants, State Shinto with its veneration of the emperor took the lead. Buddhism, however, had an early start, as several Buddhist priests evaded the law and traveled to South America. The first, a Nichiren Shoshu priest who accompanied the original group to Brazil in 1908, seems to have established the first Buddhist temple in Bauru, in Sao Paulo State. A short time later a Shingon priest arrived. The first Jodo Shinshu priest did not arrive until 1925. He would erect the first Jodo temple in Cafelandia, also in Sao Paulo State.
Not until after World War II would Buddhism spread significantly among the Japanese in South America. By this time, the community had been virtually neglected for half a century, though the fall of State Shinto created a vacuum for a new wave of Buddhist teachers to fill. The Honpa Hongwanji, Higashi Hongwanji, Jodo-Shu, Nichiren Sonshu, and Soto Zenshu all sent missionaries to Brazil in the years after the war. The first Zen temple opened in 1955 in Mogi das Cruzes, outside Sao Paulo City, where the largest concentration of Japanese Brazilians had formed. That same year, the first Buddhist organization of non-Japanese origin, the Buddhist Society of Brazil (Sociedade Budista do Brasil), was founded by Murillo Nunes de Azevedo in Rio de Janeiro. Azevedo, a former Roman Catholic and philosophy professor, later translated Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki’s Introduction to Zen Buddhism into Portuguese. In 1958, all of these Buddhist schools were united in the Federation of the Buddhist Sects of Brazil (Federacao das Seitas Budistas do Brasil). Buddhism has continued to expand and now claims more than 20 percent of Japanese Brazilians as adherents.
In 1988, Tibetan Buddhism began to proselytize in Brazil with the Chagdud Gonpa Foundation taking the lead. The foundation’s founder, Chagdud Rinpoche, moved from the United States to Brazil in the mid-1990s and has built two monasteries and opened a number of centers.
A similar course was followed by Japanese immigrants in Peru, where the second-largest community in South America developed. The relative success of the Japanese Peruvians was demonstrated in 1990 when Alberto Fujimori became the country’s president (1990-2000), the first Japanese politician elected to lead a country other than Japan. The larger Japanese Buddhist groups have also found a home in the Japanese communities in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay.
As in North America, the growth of Buddhism in South America was radically altered by the appearance of Soka Gakkai International, which has opened centers across South America and not limited itself to the Japanese communities. Today, it claims more than 250,000 adherents, making it the largest single Buddhist group on the continent.
While Buddhism has grown, several of the Japanese New Religions have also entered South America. Seicho-No-Ie, a group that was strongly affected by the American new thought movement, has had the most success. However, Tenrikyo, Sekai Kyusei Kyo, and Mahikari Bumei Kyodan now have a very visible presence, and several with primarily Buddhist roots, including Rissho Kosei-kai and Buts-Ryu-Shu, have also established followings.
As of the year 2000, the Brazilian Buddhist community was estimated to be as many as half a million, with an additional 50,000 in Peru. Together, they constitute more than 90 percent of the Buddhist community in South and Central America, though there is some minimal Buddhist presence (at times a single center) in almost all of the Latin American countries.
Sramana
The sramana is a renunciant who abandons conventional society. The term was used widely during the Buddha’s time to refer to heterodox ascetics who did not accept the conventional teachings of Brahmanism. The Buddha himself was called the Mahasramana, the great sramana, and his followers were called sramanas. Many other groups also had communal lifestyles outside traditional society. In addition, some individual sramanas lived in seclusion, shunning society completely.
These two ends of the spectrum—ascetics, who have cut all ties with society, and renouncers, who still have ties with conventional society— form two trends that surface within the earliest Buddhist literature, the Nikayas. The ascetic tradition developed into the forest dwelling tradition. The renouncer tradition led to the sangha as later developed, the key aspect of Buddhist religious society.
Sramanera/sramaneri
A sramanera is a novice monk, while a sramaneri is a novice nun. The sramanera completes a ceremony of initial ordination, the pravrajya, which includes having the head shaved, receiving the three robes and alms bowl of the monk, and reciting the dasasila (10-vows) as well as the statement of refuge.
The novice stage is a type of probation required prior to full ordination. in many countries such as Thailand and Myanmar young boys are required to become a sramanera for a certain time, sometimes as short as three months, sometimes a year or two, after which they return to lay life. in Mahayana Buddhism countries older novices are given the full precepts in the upasampada ceremony (see ordination) only after they complete the sramanera stage.
