Lee Love on mon 29 oct 07
On 10/29/07, Lili Krakowski wrote:
>
> I am not learned enough to know whether Zen is or is not a religion.
> Because that depends on how religion is defined.
Lili,
A really good person to read to understand the secular
focus of modern tea ceremony is Dr. Sen Genshitsu, the fretired 15th
Grand Master, Urasenke School of Tea. The zen that influences modern
tea does most of it indirectly, like Juedo-christianity is an
undercurrent in modern American secular life. After the war, many
Japanese turned their backs on religion. Most ritual is extremely
secular. They just do it on hoidays because it is what people do.
I saw a very good Nova science program about the forging
of Samurai swords. They explained, that the precision required for
the smelting of the iron and forging of the sword was something that
is only matched by modern technological processes.
They went on to say, not having technological methods to assure
precision, they depended upon ritual to provide the precision,
influenced by a devotional mindset.
For 99.9% human history, art was made with a devotional
inspiration. Because we are primarily inspired by "self expression"
in our making, we lack this devotional motaivator which, as Picasso
said, allows you to make anything the art tells you to.
What we know by the zen inspired arts, crafts, music dance
and martial arts, is that ritual and devotion can easily be secular.
This was much easier to understand in Asia because there was
never a strong split between the intellect and intuition.
--
Lee in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing
is a miracle. The other is
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