Meditation in Ch'an Buddhism

Meditation in Ch'an Buddhism:
Is Ch'an meditation ritual?
by Bhikshu Tenzin Sherab
(a.k.a. Br. Sean Hillman)
University of Toronto
East Asian Studies
March 2007

The misconceptions surrounding meditation are great in number and arise in part from our colloquial appropriation of the term based on a loose interpretation, or outright misunderstanding, of its meaning and practise. It has become synonymous with Buddhism. Just as there is more to the practise and doctrine of Buddhism than mere meditation, there is more to meditation than sitting and breathing. Further, views such as thinking and meditation being mutually exclusive lends great enthusiasm towards clarifying what meditation is and the place it holds in Buddhism. In particular, if we look at whether meditation is a ritual in Ch’an Buddhism, the dynamism that it is disallows a one-sided answer. Arya Nagarjuna might say, “it is both and neither.” Meditation in Ch’an can be engulfed in ritual, as in the rigour of the monastic setting or in the Zen arts, but it need not be.
A ritual is defined as an “established or prescribed religious procedure” and to this it may be added that they are not spontaneous, are common to a group but may or may not be practised together and in the Zen context, are supervised with discipline. The two forms of meditation, concentration and analysis, both have a long-standing tradition of being ritualised. “In order to maintain an atmosphere of…meditative concentration…all sangha hall procedures were regulated by detailed rules of deportment and etiquette.” (Foulk, p. 186) In addition to what could perhaps be Zen or community-specific, there are ritual elements of concentration meditation that are not uniquely Zen but rather are shared pan-traditionally and trace back to the Buddha’s own community with such Vinaya recommendations as posture, meditation as group activity and the number and times of daily sessions. (Foulk, p.185-186) I take the liberty of specifying these as pertaining to concentration meditation in particular from Vinaya sources which refer to the Pratimoksha’s main purpose being the achievement of samatha. Thus, concentration meditation is often highly ritualised in Buddhism in general, and Ch’an in particular. Next, in the case of analytical meditation, it is perhaps due to my background in ritualised scriptural debate in the Nalanda tradition that I include the study of texts under this umbrella. This is beyond the typical presentation of vipasyana as a formalised practise of mental analysis while seated in meditation posture. Examples of ritualised analysis are the study of the texts by way of lecture and debate, (Foulk p.176), the use of a designated study area, regulating deportment, and the ceremonial demarcation of the beginning of study sessions. (Foulk p. 187) An even more unorthodox approach to proving analytical meditation as ritualistic in Ch’an would be to include other ceremonies in its fold, such as: 1) devotional offerings (Foulk p. 171), 2) patriarch veneration (Foulk p. 172), 3) offerings to hungry ghosts and freeing fishes (Foulk p. 187) based on their being not only mere acts of merit accumulation, but also catalysts to provoke “contemplation of seminal Buddhist doctrine” (Sharf p. 106) such as, respectively, 1) the perfection of generosity, 2) the kindness and importance of the teacher and 3) the suffering of the lower realms. All of the fore mentioned activities can also serve to stimulate the contemplation of the workings of karma. As in the case of concentration, analytical meditation can be ritualised in Ch’an.
On the other hand, the practise of meditation need not be ritualised. Although the Zen arts (Sharf p.101) themselves are highly ritualised and can be argued to serve as a support to both concentration and analytical meditation, by extension the use of activities in daily life as practise (Foulk p.193) such as the innumerable examples in Zen literature of mindfulness of kitchen and cleaning duties causing realisations, and even the case where the Buddha Himself admonished a monk to use sweeping to contemplate the mind’s stains, show that meditation in action can defy all of the defining qualities of ritual by having spontaneity, and being unique and individualistic. That the use of ordinary activities to provoke absorption is even found outside of the religious context entirely, as in the case of athletes and musicians claiming to have experiences that resemble the ‘Five Joys’ of samatha, (Gethin p.183) lends even more support to the position that meditation need not be ritualistic.