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Aum Shinrikyō Discussion Group; Sixth Meeting

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For the sixth gathering of the Aum Shinrikyō Discussion Group we invited Hirata Seikō Roshi, chief abbot of Tenryū-ji and former director of the Institute for Zen Studies, to speak to the members as a representative of the Zen hierarchy and to offer his frank opinion on the issues raised by the Aum Affair. Hirata Roshi comments centered on the following two points.
          First, the Aum Affair was not a random, spontaneous event—there were several historical factors that contributed to its occurrence. One factor has been the rapid development of science and technology, in reaction to which numerous occult spiritual movements similar to Aum Shinrikyō have arisen, a phenomenon already identified by Oswald Spengler in his The Decline of the West (1923). Hirata Roshi himself, during his studies in Europe during the 1960s, noticed the existence of a number of occult new religions.
          The French anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once commented that both science and the occult share the same root: the attempt to explain the nature of existence. When the scientific principle of cause and effect fails to provide an explanation for a problem, people often turn to other explanations, such as demonic possession. Conversely, cosmic phenomena clarified by science are sometimes interpreted according to entirely different cosmologies, such the New Science which bases its hypotheses on Tibetan Buddhist mandalas. Taking account of such developments can help us come to an understanding of the Aum Affair.
          Second, our standpoint regarding the Aum Affair must be based on our sense of what it means to be a Zen monk. Having such a sense, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that there is something special about us. It simply means doing our best to live as Zen monks even in the midst of uncertainty. It cannot be denied that the makeup of the Zen clergy is changing, with most monks nowadays being second- and third-generation descendants of temple families and not, as before, highly trained veterans of monastic practice. How to deal with this new situation is the issue, of course, but in any event our response as Zen priests must have its foundations in the lifestyle of the training monastery, which is the archetype of the Zen way of life. There are limits to how closely the average danka-temple priest can follow this lifestyle, of course, so how to practically apply the principles of the monastic lifestyle to ordinary temple living is an issue that all of us must give our attention to.
          Among the points that emerged in the subsequent discussion was the necessity not only of reassessing religion in light of modern society but also of reassessing modern society in light of religion, and how these two points of view might best interact. Other points that came up were the deficiencies of the Zen tradition with regard to social action (such as the lack of Zen-sponsored volunteer work during the aftermath of the Hanshin Earthquake of 1995) and the effects of the postwar neglect of religious education in the public schools.