A characteristic of institutional religions, east and west, is consolidation of scripture and doctrine into ritual.
This is especially conspicuous for Westerners seeing the evolution of Christianity into a set of founding narratives followed by evolution of doctrine and rote ritual, primary institutions of church and monasteries, and the providence of bishops, priests, abbots, and monks. In the same way, eastern instances show that the chief institution is the monastery, and the presentation and condification of scripture, doctrine, and ritual comes to dominate.
The institutions in either Buddhism or Christianity present a dilemma for the historical hermit who arises out of either tradition. In the Zen tradition of Japan, the dilemma is expressed by contrasting the eremitic tendency, which concentrates on self-awareness and methods such as meditation, with the monastic tendency concentrating on successfully handling koans promoting instant enlightenment. In Japan, Rinzai Zen masters dominated the monastic institutions and drilled their novice monks with koans. Whether the monastery was large or small, the methodology came to dominate, as did the authoritarianism of the masters, who saw violence in word and action as legitimate tools of instruction or fostering of cirrect answers.
Dissent from this approach harkened back to the Japanese master Dōgen (1200-1253), the founder of Soto Zen. An example of these contemporary tensions is found in the life of Zen master Bassui (1327-1387).
Bassui was born questioning the customs and beliefs of his time; as a four-year-old child at his father’s funeral, seeing the food offerings presented, he wondered how his father would eat the food. Told that his father’s soul would receive the offerings, young Bassui asked what is the soul. And when Bawsui became a monk at twenty, he refused to wear monk’s robes because — he said — he became a monk to understand the great issues of life and death, not to wear robes. Later, after an enlightenment experience, confirmed by multiple masters, Bassui built a hermitage in the mountains, the first of many for the next seventeen years!
As Bassui translator Arthur Braverman has noted: “Bassui was very critical of the Rinzai practice of studying koans, perhaps because they were becoming more and more formalized, hence losing their original spirit. He seems to have been attracted to the Soto sect for its stress on being attentive to all one’s everyday activities.”
And in a famous letter written toward the end of his life, Bassui writes: “The gurgle of the stream and the sigh of the wind are the voices of the master. The green of the pine, the white of the snow, these are the colors of the master, the very one who lifts the hands, moves the legs, sees, hears. One who grasps this directly without recourse to reason or intellection can be said to have some degree of inner enlightenment. But this is not yet full enlightenment.”
It is not full enlightenment, concludes Bassui, but may be sufficient to end rebirth in one’s successive lifetime (thus addressing a representative doctrine). But when one does attain this point, one will see “that all the sermons of the Buddhas are nothing more than metaphors that point to the minds of ordinary people.”
Bassui’s emphasis on the ordinariness of mind, of self-disipline, of insight, refreshingly transformed Zen into the tool it became for art, expression, simplicity, appreciation of nature, and enlightenment. His apprroach was the fruit of eremitism combined with the inspiration of the great master Dōgen.
URL: https://www.hermitary.com/articles/bassui.html