"Immortalist" <Reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:OrmdnS4j785SAY7fRVn-qw@adelphia.com...
The Gene-Culture Coevolution Theory
and Dogen's Dharma Transmission:
lineage is parampara, which does not mean lineage in the western sense
because lineage/parampara can include deceased masters who have continued
the lineage/parampara on a higher plane than this material world - there was
also an early dispute that some monks claimed that buddha allowed them to
drink toddy and carry salt in a horn to season their alms food - so nothing
is new in buddhism, not even in japan
An Investigation Into
the Evolution of
Soto Culture
The concept of an evolutionary process by which certain aspects of a
given
culture are not only transmitted but revised by subsequent generations
can
be seen not only with Eihei Dogen's transmission of the dharma from
China to
Japan but with the further innovations and developments made within the
construct of his tradition, known today as Soto Zen Buddhism. A prime
example of cultural evolution to be found when considering these two
factors, as the notion of dharma transmission in itself has aspects that
have changed and adapted drastically over the centuries. When analyzing
the
specific development of the school based on Dogen's thought, a
conclusion
can be therefore drawn that Soto Zen has indeed defined itself as an
evolution based on a unique structure of inheritance whose continuous
selection is maintained by its own fluid nature.
Curiously enough, dharma transmission as the prime essence of the
Buddha's
teachings was not defined until 30 years after the Buddha actually died.
On
his deathbed, the Buddha insisted that the only teacher or master anyone
should need would consist of the teachings and the discipline that the
Buddha advocated; there was no need to look to another priest and call
him
"Master" (Stryk 44). Yet the prime justification and sense of identity
that
Zen Buddhism lays claim to is an unbroken lineage of masters beginning
with
the Buddha himself (Faure 198). This "mind-to-mind" transmission, while
bearing no direct mention of genetics, still serves as a trait that
bears a
striking resemblance to E.O. Wilson's theory of gene-culture evolution
(Wilson 138).
In the context of Dogen, the ironies continue. While simultaneously
claiming to hold the only true Buddhist lineage of dharma transmission
and
viewing all other forms of Buddhism as inauthentic, he refused to talk
of
identifying this true lineage as anything but the "Buddha-dharma," or
the
"practice of Buddha" (Abe 17). Yet, his own realization that he
attained in
Sung China under the guidance of Zen master Ju-ching (1163-1228) ended
up
serving as the foundation for a sect known as Soto Zen, one of the two
largest Buddhist organizations in Japan (Dogen 182). Whether the
lineage
that he brought back from China is the only real one is merely a matter
of
individual belief. Nevertheless, his notion of dharma transmission
still
survives as a cultural paradigm more than 800 years after his death. If
Wilson's theories of natural selection in a cultural context are held up
to
this fact, the obvious conclusion is that this tradition must have been
sustained by both applicability and adaptability.
Chan, Zen's Chinese precedent, continually upheld the notion of dharma
transmission through justifying a unique emphasis on practice and
immediate
experience. It was precisely this emphasis that allowed the school to
weather the persecutions of the late Tang and emerge as the sole
surviving
form of Chinese monastic Buddhism (Bielefeldt 1). By the time of the
Sung
Dynasty, Caodong Chan (the school that Dôgen studied under during his
stay
in China) survived at least partly due to this emphasis, while more
esoteric
and theoretical schools such as San Lun (Three Treatise), Niutou
(Ox-head),
and Tientai (Perfect Round Teaching), were all brought to the edge of
extinction (Ferguson 7). It is this tenacity that leads to the
observation
that the Zen tradition itself can be seen as a cultural meme or
epigenetic
rule bearing the stamp of an applicability that was obviously built to
last,
thereby adding evidence for Wilson's cultural theory (Wilson 177). If
it is
true that "culture is the product of the communal mind" (Wilson 138),
then
the subculture of Soto Zen was produced and is sustained by the communal
minds of both the Chinese and Japanese.
An example of the Soto Zen cultural tradition serving as an adaptable,
fluid
trait is revealed with the religious and political upheaval of the 1868
Meiji Restoration in Japan, in which anti-Buddhist violence almost ended
the
tradition altogether (Jaffe 23). The Soto school survived this
persecution
not by the minimalism of its Chan roots, but by allowing both drinking
and
marriage to be permitted for the monks, which thereby made it more fun
to be
a Soto monk than any other Japanese clerical position (Jaffe 33). As
genetic traits and cultural mental units (memes) change and adapt over
time
in order to survive, it seems that the moral imperatives intrinsic to
Buddhist practice in Dogen's time were not as built for survival as the
wider, more adaptable notion of dharma transmission.
So the gene-culture evolution model in the context of Soto Zen dharma
transmission can be shown through the applicability and adaptability of
its
process of change over time. A tradition that Dogen set forth now has
new
cultural connotations, new motivations for its future survival.
However,
similar to Wilson "termite"speech (Wilson 161), this trait justifies
itself
as superior and defines its own values, values that its very founder
would
barely recognize.
Works Cited
Abe, Masao. A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion. Ed. Steven
Heine. Albany: State U of New York P, 1992.
Bielefeldt, Carl. Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation. Berkeley: U of
California P, 1988.
Dogen, Eihei. Eihei Shinji. Trans. Taigen Daniel Leighton and Shohaku
Okumura. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.
Faure, Bernard. Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological
Critique
of the Chan Tradition. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1993.
Ferguson, Andy. Zen's Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their
Teachings.
Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000.
Jaffe, Richard. "Meiji Religious Policy, Soto Zen, and the Clerical
Marriage Problem." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. 25.1 (1998):
1-41.
Stryk, Lucien, ed. World of the Buddha: A Reader-From the Three Baskets
to
Modern Zen. New York: Doubleday, 1968.
Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York:
Random
House,1999.
© Daniel Trent Dillon 2003
http://www.mindground.net/geneculture.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=Gene-Culture+Coevolution
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