Search Results

This chapter discusses the concept of domestic Zen and how it helps Japanese Buddhist women deal with a wide range of challenges, from difficulty in giving birth to problems with child-rearing, caring for the elders, a terminal diagnosis, and death by natural and unnatural causes such as war, suicide, and homicide. Domestic Zen is based on Dōgen’s teaching that “practice is enlightenment.” Ritualized behaviors in Sōtō Zen are practices. Practice is ritualized activity done in accord with wisdom and compassion. This chapter examines the rituals and practices of domestic Zen and how they contribute to the Way of healing paradigm. Drawing on the category of healing ritual, it considers the dynamics that are central to the women who engage in and create domestic Zen.

This book examines the ritualized activities of mature and devoted Japanese Buddhist women and their significance to a Sōtō Zen mode of living. Drawing on interviews with twelve Zen laywomen, the book explores a domestic aspect of Zen that is ripe with wisdom for responding to a host of everyday challenges, difficulties, and fears. It describes the Way of healing, a paradigm of healing rooted in Zen Buddhism and particularly the teachings of Dōgen, and shows that healing rituals are a catalyst for powerful healing experiences among Buddhist women. It considers how Zen Buddhist rituals allow people to cope with various emotional and psychological needs as they respond to the inevitable challenges of human existence such as love, loss, birth and death, and the longing to belong. The book also discusses the healing power of beauty as an integral component of domestic Zen, along with the concept of personal Buddha for dealing with loss and grief.

This book has examined the ways in which healing courses through the lives of contemporary Japanese Zen women and how ritualized activities transform emotionally intense moments—charged with fear, pain, and untamed anger—into healing. By analyzing ritualized activities woven into daily life, the book has illuminated the concept of domestic Zen and the healing power of resourceful and resilient women. The women’s stories and experiences inform, expand, and enrich our understanding of Buddhism, Japan, women, ritual, healing, field methodology, and Zen as they reveal to us their healing practices and wisdom. Engaging in ritualized activities that embody wisdom and compassion are the keys to Zen healing. This concluding chapter describes an “Integrated Model of Healing and Illness,” developed by religion and medical anthropology scholar Linda Barnes, and the Way of healing paradigm based on Japanese Zen Buddhism. It also discusses the art and science of Zen healing.

This chapter discusses the concept of personal Buddhas, focusing on the role of mortuary and ancestral rituals in helping people cope with grief and integrate loss into their lives. The death of a loved one is a distressing event that leads to psychic, emotional, and physiological adjustments. Japanese Buddhist mortuary rituals help a person live with death by helping her experience being interrelated to everything. This chapter first considers the healing power of funerary, memorial, and ancestral rites in the ritual landscape of contemporary Buddhism in Japan before exploring the rhythms and contours of grieving rituals in the context of Japanese Buddhist women’s worldviews and conceptions of self, suffering, and healing. It also examines metaphors associated with death that help guide the Buddhist women as they engage in rituals to help them establish their balance after the loss of a critical relationship. Finally, it analyzes the healing dimension of daily rituals at the family home altar and the centrality of the home altar in domestic Zen.