Sōtō Zen: sitting, temples and transmission

Sōtō Zen is a Japanese Buddhist school centred on zazen, seated meditation. It honours Shakyamuni Buddha and two founders: Dōgen, called Kōso, and Keizan Jōkin, called Taiso. Together they are the “two ancestors.” The school includes head temples, training monasteries, local temples and an administrative organisation.

For floor sitting, a round cushion raises the hips above a square mat; the knees rest on the mat. The back is upright and shoulders relaxed. The left hand rests palm-up on the right palm, with the thumb tips lightly touching. Eyes remain slightly open and the gaze falls downward. The official guide also describes chair sitting and a kneeling bench, allowing different ways to support an upright body.

Daily activity belongs within practice. The tenzo is the temple cook, whose work includes preparing the community’s meals. Ōryōki is a set of eating bowls used with a prescribed etiquette. Kinhin, slow walking between periods of sitting, carries an upright posture into movement. Cooking, eating, sitting and walking therefore occupy different parts of monastic life.

The school’s guide to monastic ōryōki meals begins with unwrapping and setting the nested bowls on a cloth. Servers bring the food; recipients bow, lift a bowl and signal with the right hand when enough has been served. After eating, water goes into the main bowl for cleaning, then passes to the nested bowls as utensils and bowls are washed, dried and stacked in sequence. Rinse water awaits collection rather than being thrown beneath the platform. Care for one’s own bowls thus fits into the serving and timing of a communal meal.

Dōgen (1200–1253) studied in Song China under Tiantong Rujing and returned to Japan in 1227. He wrote instructions for zazen and taught a community at Kōshōji in Kyoto. In Echizen he founded Daibutsuji in 1244, renaming it Eiheiji in 1246. The surviving autograph of Fukan zazengi held by Eiheiji dates to 1233, six years after his return.

The teaching passed through Koun Ejō and Tettsū Gikai to Keizan. He developed centres including Daijōji, Yōkōji and Sōjiji, the last established by converting a temple in Noto in 1321. Disciples such as Meihō Sotetsu and Gasan Jōseki, followed by their own students, extended Sōtō communities across regional Japan during the medieval period.

A study published in the school’s journal in 2025 explains the network through Yōkōji. Keizan’s 1319 provisions required continued good relations between monks and patrons after an abbot changed, with successors chosen from disciples who had received his Dharma transmission. The researcher explains the problem: support attached to an individual monk could disappear when that monk left. The provisions sought continuity of support and lineage. Related temples also had differing roles, including training and nuns’ religious life; students could study with different teachers, and vacancies were filled within the same lineage network.

The Tokugawa temple-parishioner system tied temples to lay households and brought them under more systematic control. Reformers including Manzan Dōhaku argued for direct transmission between teacher and disciple. Menzan Zuihō and others studied, edited and published Dōgen’s writings. Sōtō’s textual tradition was thus shaped through later research and institutional reform as well as its medieval beginnings.

One target of reform was a custom in which a priest moving to another temple changed to that temple’s lineage and received transmission again. A substitute might also transmit on behalf of a deceased priest. The school’s scholarly explanation of menju describes Manzan Dōhaku and Baihō Jikushin’s criticism of these practices. Reform established transmission from one master, with teacher and disciple meeting face to face. The issue concerned recognition of the teaching relationship: succession to a temple post could not simply stand in for transmission between teacher and disciple.

Buddhist institutions faced disruption from the separation of Shinto and Buddhism and anti-Buddhist attacks in the early Meiji period. Ōuchi Seiran compiled a precursor to Shushōgi, later revised by the two head temples’ abbots for teaching lay followers. Following a fire in 1898, Sōjiji moved from Noto to Tsurumi in Yokohama in 1911; its former site was rebuilt as Sōjiji Soin.

Early overseas missions served Japanese immigrant communities. The North America office traces its work to Hōsen Isobe in 1922 and its establishment at Los Angeles’s Zenshuji in 1937. Participation widened after the war. Shunryū Suzuki arrived in San Francisco in 1959; the community that developed around him opened Tassajara in 1967, creating a residential setting where men and women practised together.

Sōtō’s modern history also includes participation in Japan’s aggression and colonial rule. On 20 November 1992 the school issued a statement of repentance, acknowledging its promotion of war and harm to people in other countries. Its official peace page places its commitment against war in the context of that institutional responsibility.

Eiheiji in Fukui and Sōjiji in Yokohama are the school’s two head temples. Local temples offer connections through meditation meetings, recitation, funerals and memorial services. A visitors’ zazen session differs from extended monastic training in its schedule and entry arrangements. The school’s directory provides filters for zazen, sutra copying and foreign-language reception.

The official memorial guide explains the rite as dedicating the merit of good actions to ancestors and the deceased. In its account of a service at home, the host consults the family temple about the date and prepares the altar. An opening greeting and joined palms welcome the officiating priest. Participants follow the priest’s bows, listen to recitation and offer incense in turn when invited; the rite concludes after recitation and a Dharma talk. The household organises and makes offerings, the priest leads, and relatives participate through the shared actions.