ABSTRACT
We now have a wide knowledge of Rinzai Zen Buddhism, but of Soto Zen, which as a school is of equal age, and claims today a larger number of followers in Japan, we still know comparatively little. One reason is, of course, that the late Dr D. T. Suzuki, who gained his enlightenment in the Rinzai Zen school, wrote of it almost exclusively, and the literature of Zen in Europe is still largely Rinzai Zen. There is, on the other hand, a paucity of literature on the subject of Soto Zen, and Professor Masunaga's The Soto Approach to Zen, translating part of the most famous of the writings of Dogen, the founder of the school in Japan, remains the standard source of information for the West. Yet Dogen (1200 to 1253) was a very great man, the greatest mind which has appeared in Japanese Buddhism until modern times. True, his writings stand at a very high level of awareness, comparable with the greatest minds which created the literature of the Prajna-paramita, 'the Wisdom which has gone Beyond', but one would expect more Western students to be striving for that awareness. As the Soto Zen school developed in Japan it seems to have been influenced by the parallel development of the Shin or Pure Land school, associated with the names of Honen and Shinran Shonin. Certainly there seem to be affinities between the two, and they resemble each other noticeably when found in countries outside Japan. It is therefore surprising that Western students of Zen who have found the Rinzai school too violent should still be indifferent to the Soto school, which stands between the two extremes of Zen and Shin.
