This dissertation examines the early religious history of the Japanese Soto Zen school during the medieval period when the Soto school acquired both its wide-spread networks of rural monasteries and many of the religious tendencies that still characterize it today.
During this formative medieval period, the Soto school rapidly expanded from a single, small, exclusive monastic community to several extended networks of temples spread throughout the rural areas of nearly every Japanese province. To these areas Soto monks brought a level of religious expertise that formerly had been unavailable. They introduced new rituals for worldly benefit and for personal salvation that have little connection with the teachings of Dogen (1200-1253), the founder of Japanese Soto, or with Zen as it has been described previously by Westerners.
This dissertation, based on original sources and on reexaminations of interpretations advanced by previous scholars, comprises two main sections: (a) a history of the growth of the medieval Soto school, followed by (b) an analysis of several significant medieval Soto practices. The first section describes patterns of regional growth and popularization, the activities of Keizan Jokin (1264-1325), the development of temple networks, and the roles of Eiheiji and Sojiji monasteries. The second section analyzes the development of new techniques for instruction in Zen koan, the popularization of ordinations for laymen, and the soteriological roles of Zen funerals. These practices still remain important issues in modern Japanese Soto Zen.
In explicating these topics, this dissertation not only introduces previously unexplored areas of Japanese religious life, but also reveals the patterns of development by which the medieval Soto school integrated monastic Zen training with Japanese traditions to function as a religion for laymen who themselves had not practiced Zen.
