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:
關鍵詞
Social Movements; Zen Buddhism; Seminars
摘要
‘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.
目次
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
