SÅtÅ Zen Buddhism
SÅtÅ Zen Buddhism, or the SÅtÅ school (曹洞宗 SotoshÅ«) is, with Rinzai and ÅŒbaku, one of the three most popular sects of Zen Buddhism within Japanese Buddhism.
The SÅtÅ Zen sect was first established as the Caodong sect during the Tang Dynasty in China by Dongshan Liangjie in the 9th century. DÅgen Zenji then brought it to Japan in the 13th century. DÅgen is remembered today as the co-patriarch of SÅtÅ Zen in Japan along with Keizan JÅkin. One of the signature features of this school is found in its practice of Shikantaza, a particular approach to zazen which is sometimes referred to as "just sitting" or "silent illumination and enlightenment".
Historically speaking, SÅtÅ Zen was often given the derogatory term "farmer Zen" because of its mass appeal, though some teachers of Zen would say that the reason why it was called "farmer Zen" was because of it's down to earth happy approach to life. While the Rinzai school was often called "Samurai Zen" because of the larger Samurai following. The latter term for the Rinzai can be somewhat misleading, however, as the SÅtÅ Zen school also had a large Samurai membership among its followers.
The two head temples, or Honzan (本山?) of the SÅtÅ Zen sect are Eiheiji and SÅji-ji. While Eiheiji owes its existence to DÅgen, throughout history this head temple has had significantly less sub-temple affiliates than the SÅji-ji. During the Tokugawa period, Eiheiji had approximately 1,300 affiliate temples compared to SÅji-ji's 16,200. Furthermore, out of the more than 14,000 temples of the SÅtÅ Zen sect today - 13,850 of those identify themselves as affiliates of SÅji-ji. Additionally, most of the some 148 temples that are affiliates of Eiheiji today are only minor temples located in Hokkaido - founded during a period of colonization during the Meiji period. Therefore, it is often said that Eiheiji is a head temple only in the sense that it is "head of all SÅtÅ Zen Dharma lineages.
