The Gene-Culture Coevolution Theory and Dôgen’s Dharma Transmission:
An Investigation Into the Evolution of Sôtô Culture
The concept of an evolutionary process by which certain aspects of a given culture are not only transmitted but revised by subsequent generations can be seen not only with Eihei Dōgen’s transmission of the dharma from China to Japan but with the further innovations and developments made within the construct of his tradition, known today as Sôtô Zen Buddhism. A prime example of cultural evolution to be found when considering these two factors, as the notion of dharma transmission in itself has aspects that have changed and adapted drastically over the centuries. When analyzing the specific development of the school based on Dôgen’s thought, a conclusion can be therefore drawn that Sôtô Zen has indeed defined itself as an evolution based on a unique structure of inheritance whose continuous selection is maintained by its own fluid nature.
Curiously enough, dharma transmission as the prime essence of the Buddha’s teachings was not defined until 30 years after the Buddha actually died. On his deathbed, the Buddha insisted that the only teacher or master anyone should need would consist of the teachings and the discipline that the Buddha advocated; there was no need to look to another priest and call him “Master” (Stryk 44). Yet the prime justification and sense of identity that Zen Buddhism lays claim to is an unbroken lineage of masters beginning with the Buddha himself (Faure 198). This “mind-to-mind” transmission, while bearing no direct mention of genetics, still serves as a trait that bears a striking resemblance to E.O. Wilson’s theory of gene-culture evolution (Wilson 138).
In the context of Dôgen, the ironies continue. While simultaneously claiming to hold the only true Buddhist lineage of dharma transmission and viewing all other forms of Buddhism as inauthentic, he refused to talk of identifying this true lineage as anything but the “Buddha-dharma,” or the “practice of Buddha” (Abe 17). Yet, his own realization that he attained in Sung China under the guidance of Zen master Ju-ching (1163-1228) ended up serving as the foundation for a sect known as Sôtô Zen, one of the two largest Buddhist organizations in Japan (Dôgen 182). Whether the lineage that he brought back from China is the only real one is merely a matter of individual belief. Nevertheless, his notion of dharma transmission still survives as a cultural paradigm more than 800 years after his death. If Wilson’s theories of natural selection in a cultural context are held up to this fact, the obvious conclusion is that this tradition must have been sustained by both applicability and adaptability.
Chan, Zen’s Chinese precedent, continually upheld the notion of dharma transmission through justifying a unique emphasis on practice and immediate experience. It was precisely this emphasis that allowed the school to weather the persecutions of the late Tang and emerge as the sole surviving form of Chinese monastic Buddhism (Bielefeldt 1). By the time of the Sung Dynasty, Caodong Chan (the school that Dôgen studied under during his stay in China) survived at least partly due to this emphasis, while more esoteric and theoretical schools such as San Lun (Three Treatise), Niutou (Ox-head), and Tientai (Perfect Round Teaching), were all brought to the edge of extinction (Ferguson 7). It is this tenacity that leads to the observation that the Zen tradition itself can be seen as a cultural meme or epigenetic rule bearing the stamp of an applicability that was obviously built to last, thereby adding evidence for Wilson’s cultural theory (Wilson 177). If it is true that “culture is the product of the communal mind” (Wilson 138), then the subculture of Sôtô Zen was produced and is sustained by the communal minds of both the Chinese and Japanese.
An example of the Sôtô Zen cultural tradition serving as an adaptable, fluid trait is revealed with the religious and political upheaval of the 1868 Meiji Restoration in Japan, in which anti-Buddhist violence almost ended the tradition altogether (Jaffe 23). The Sôtô school survived this persecution not by the minimalism of its Chan roots, but by allowing both drinking and marriage to be permitted for the monks, which thereby made it more fun to be a Sôtô monk than any other Japanese clerical position (Jaffe 33). As genetic traits and cultural mental units (memes) change and adapt over time in order to survive, it seems that the moral imperatives intrinsic to Buddhist practice in Dôgen’s time were not as built for survival as the wider, more adaptable notion of dharma transmission.
So the gene-culture evolution model in the context of Sôtô Zen dharma transmission can be shown through the applicability and adaptability of its process of change over time. A tradition that Dôgen set forth now has new cultural connotations, new motivations for its future survival. However, similar to Wilson “termite”speech (Wilson 161), this trait justifies itself as superior and defines its own values, values that its very founder would barely recognize.
Works Cited
Abe, Masao. A Study of Dôgen: His Philosophy and Religion. Ed. Steven Heine. Albany: State U of New York P, 1992.
Bielefeldt, Carl. Dôgen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.
Dôgen, Eihei. Eihei Shinji. Trans. Taigen Daniel Leighton and Shohaku Okumura. Albany: State U of New York P, 1996.
Faure, Bernard. Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1993.
Ferguson, Andy. Zen’s Chinese Heritage: The Masters and Their Teachings. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000.
Jaffe, Richard. “Meiji Religious Policy, Sôtô Zen, and the Clerical Marriage Problem.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. 25.1 (1998): 1-41.
Stryk, Lucien, ed. World of the Buddha: A Reader-From the Three Baskets to Modern Zen. New York: Doubleday, 1968.
Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Random House,1999.
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