Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women's Rituals

The study of Zen in the home, as revealed by Paula Arai's pioneering research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen, emphasizes healing through sacred rites that women develop and transmit to one another. Everyday objects and materials are used in inventive ways, such as polishing cloths and the arts of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement. This innovative approach to Zen scholarship highlights the creativity and spiritual discipline of domestic Zen, offering a fresh perspective on lay practice. Arai's longitudinal fieldwork over fourteen years cultivated relationships of trust and mutual vulnerability, resulting in an ethnography rich in descriptive and narrative detail and nuanced explorations of the experiential dimensions and effects of rituals.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 278 pages
Publication date: 30 April 2022
Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press

Zen's essence is found in the home, as Paula Arai's groundbreaking research on the ritual lives of Zen Buddhist laywomen reveals. She unveils a vital religious practice that thrives beyond the confines of formal institutions, through sacred rites that women develop and pass down to one another. Everyday objects and ordinary materials are ingeniously repurposed, transforming them into powerful tools. For instance, polishing cloths, infused with prayer and mantra recitation, become potent agents of healing. The art of creating beauty through the disciplines of tea ceremony, calligraphy, poetry, and flower arrangement becomes a healing rite.

Bringing Zen Home offers a novel perspective to Zen scholarship by uncovering a previously unrecognized but nonetheless vibrant strand of lay practice. The creativity of domestic Zen is evident in the ritual activities that women fashion, weaving tradition and innovation to attain a sense of wholeness and balance amidst illness, loss, and anguish. Their rituals encompass chanting, ingesting elixirs and consecrated substances, and contemplative approaches that elevate cleaning, cooking, child-rearing, and caring for the sick and dying into spiritual disciplines. Creating beauty is central to domestic Zen, and Arai's analyses reveal a novel application of the concept of Buddha nature as the women honor deceased loved ones as personal Buddhas.

One of the study's notable features is its longitudinal nature, spanning fourteen years of fieldwork. Arai adopted a second-person, or relational, approach to ethnographic research, inspired by recent trends in psychobiology. This approach allowed her to cultivate deep relationships of trust and mutual vulnerability over many years, enabling her to delve into not only the practices but also their ongoing and evolving roles. The study's rich insights shed light on the profound ways in which women embrace Zen in their daily lives, finding solace, purpose, and healing in the simplest of acts. It underscores the importance of recognizing and valuing the diverse expressions of spirituality within communities, and highlights the transformative power of religious practice in the lives of individuals and communities.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780824894184