Zen Culture
Book Excerpt
The No Theater
Part III: The Rise of Popular Zen Culture: 1573 to the Present
Bourgeois Society and Later Zen
The Tea Ceremony
Zen Ceramic Art
Zen and Haiku
Private Zen: Flowers and Food
The Lessons of Zen Culture
References
Bibliography
Glossary
Part I
THE BEGINNINGS: PREHISTORY TO 1333
CHAPTER ONE
Zen Culture and the Counter Mind
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
Matthew 6:28
Pre-Buddhist clay figure (haniwa)
The Zen tradition extends back some fifteen hundred years to a wandering Indian teacher of meditation named Bodhidharma. As Indian gurus are fond of doing, Bodhidharma left his homeland and journeyed abroad, following what was in those days a well-beaten trail to China. Upon reaching Nanking, he paused to visit the Chinese Emperor Wu, a man known to be a particularly devout