Women in Japanese Religion
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The role of women in Japanese religion mirrors the role of women in Japanese society, and generally the women involved in Zen Buddhism follow this same prescription, though there have been a number of shifts in recent years. Traditional Shinto and Buddhism tended either to relegate women to a secondary position or to exclude them from public rituals because of the pollutions ascribed to their sex. This is known as androcentrism and is lacking in the nontraditional religions of Japan. The following is an examination of the role of Japanese women in Zen Buddhism, the sect of Mahayana Buddhism that has flourished in Japan. That role has been marked by a certain duality through history. On the one hand, women have been given greater acceptance as human beings by Zen Buddhism than by other Buddhist sects, but at the same time it remains unusual for women to rise very high in the hierarchy of achievement within the sect. There are some historical reasons for this, but in the end it may merely be a reflection of the lower level accorded women throughout Japanese society. Buddhism takes on a slightly different patina in the different countries of the world where it is practiced, meshing its religious culture with the social culture of the given region. Buddhism is a major religious force in the countries of Southeast Asia. On the Indian subcontinent, Buddhism spread as a reaction to Hindu doctrines and as an effort to reform them. Buddhism originated in north India and Ne
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nd Tokugawa feudalism--a pattern of self-humbling control, obedience exacted by loyalties, and, for most, wearying rounds of work and drudgery at hoe or in the rice fields.
The wife was now protected but confined.
As Buddhism moved into Japan, it took different forms, leading in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to new sectarian movements that would become the largest Buddhist sects of Japan. One of these emphasized the Pure Land, or Western Paradise, of the Buddha Amida. This approach championed for the congregational rather than monastic organization of the church and the marriage of the clergy. Another sect, the Lotus Sutra, was known by the name of its founder, Nichiren. He considered Buddhism in distinctly nationalistic terms and emphasized that Buddhism had declined in India and China and that Japan was not the central and for the religion. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, these sects developed religious congregations that often contended with the feudal warriors for local political power. The warriors in turn preferred a different sort of Buddhism, the form known as Zen, introduced from China in sectarian form in the early Kamakura period. Zen emphasized ideas of meditation, simplicity, and closenes
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Approximate Word count = 2921
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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