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Zen meets New Thought: The Erhard Seminars Training and Changing Ideas About Zen |
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| Author |
Laycock, Joseph
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| Source |
Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal
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| Volume | v.15 n.2 |
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| Date | 2014.11 |
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| Pages | 332 - 355 |
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| Publisher | Routledge |
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| Publisher Url |
https://www.routledge.com/
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| Location | Abingdon, UK [阿賓登, 英國] |
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| Content type | 期刊論文=Journal Article |
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| Language | 英文=English |
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| Note | Joseph Laycock is an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State University. His forthcoming books include The Seer of Bayside: Veronica Lueken and the Struggle for Catholicism (Oxford UP, 2014) and Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Religion, Play, and Imagined Worlds (U of California P, 2015). Address: Texas State University, Department of Philosophy, 601 University Drive, DERR HALL 105, San Marcos, Texas, 78666, USA. Email: |
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| Keyword | Social Movements; Zen Buddhism; Seminars |
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| Abstract | ‘Est’ was a human potential movement founded by Werner Erhard in San Francisco. At the height of the movement in the mid-1970s, thousands of trainees in the United States and Japan participated in gruelling 60-hour seminars intended to shock the participant into a more direct experience of reality. Est and derivative seminars became popular in North American business culture and several corporations have required employees to undergo the training. This article locates the est seminars within the context of an going dialogue between Japan and the West. Erhard combined New Thought with Zen ideas about satori and sesshin. This adaptation intensified a movement, already begun by thinkers such as D. T. Suzuki and Yasutani Hakuun, that presented Zen as a ‘technology’ for achieving a particular experience of reality. Est was then successfully exported back to Japan. Examination of the historical relationship of est and Zen explains many of the most controversial aspects of est. It also reveals an important channel through which ‘Zen’ ideas were disseminated into American culture. Finally, the reciprocal exchange of ideas between Japan and the West raises important questions about such categories as ‘traditional’ Zen and ‘Americanized’ Zen. |
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| Table of contents | A review of the literature 334
The founder of est 335
Est 336
The Zen of est 340
The rise of ‘new Buddhism’ in Japan 342
Est as modified Zen practice 344
‘Getting it’ 344
Ritual precision 345
Authoritarianism 346
Assaults on discursive reasoning 347
Est and the diffusion of ‘Zen’ ideas 349
Cultural flows: East, West, and est 350
Notes 352
References 353
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| ISSN | 14639947 (P); 14767953 (E) |
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| DOI | 10.1080/14639947.2014.932490 |
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| Hits | 71 |
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| Created date | 2015.11.11 |
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| Modified date | 2017.07.17 |
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