SO TO ZEN - Shasta Abbey

10 Sōtō Zenis selfless. It is precisely this ideal which underlies Orientalreligion, philosophy, morality, art, etc. However, although muforms the basis of Oriental civilization in general, its manifestationsin India, China and Japan are quite different from eachother owing to differences in geographical conditions andnational characteristics. Because Indian culture, like that of theGreeks, is a product of an Aryan people, its tendencies are bothintellectual and philosophical. Chinese culture is neitherreligious like the Indian nor philosophical like that of theGreeks, and is distinguished by its preoccupation with thepractical. Japanese culture, on the contrary, is neither intellectualnor practical, but essentially emotional. Its sensitivity tobeauty (J. mono-no-aware) is discernible by the way in whichthe Japanese bring man and nature into relationship with eachother and eliminate the distinction between such opposites asÒinsideÓ and Òoutside.Ó A culture heavily charged with emotion(J. j‡ no bunka), which goes directly to the True Nature ofthings, gave the Japanese people such concepts as wabi andsabi (highly developed aesthetic taste which should be ÒfeltÓrather than intellectually defined). The essence of theseconcepts lies in simplicity and profundity. Buddhism haspermeated every Oriental country and, in the process, hasrevealed its own special characteristics after having combinedwith the intellectual culture of India, the practical culture ofChina and the emotional culture of Japan.