atever may be happening. Zen is studied ordinarily in semi-monastic communities to which members of the laity are admitted for limited periods. However, the formal Zen monastery is more strictly a training school combining meditation with a considerable amount of manual labor. (It is interesting to note the similarities between this system of religious and moral training with that of medieval Catholic monastic communities, which also linked the careful practice of the manual arts to the path to higher spirituality.)
Students in such monastic schools give special attention to the arts and crafts, notably painting, calligraphy, gardening, architecture, and ceremonial tea drinking; in Japan the arts of fencing, archery, and jujitsu are also pursued (Smith 137-8).
The practice of all of these different art forms (and others are certainly eligible as well) can be seen as aids to (or perhaps elements of) three different aspects of the Noble Eightfold Path of life that the Buddha established. Creating art can be seen as part of having a Right Livelihood, in which those
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