Word: zenning
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...Temple of the Golden Pavilion, by Yukio Mishima. A masterly exercise in reason-why literature-in this case, why a demented Buddhist priest, loathing beauty, burns down a magnificent 14th century Zen temple...
With no particular sense of vocation, but simply following in his Zen-priest father's footsteps, young Mizoguchi becomes an acolyte at the Golden Temple. From the 5 a.m. reveille ("opening of the rules") to the evening meal ("medicine") to the 9 p.m. bedtime ("opening of the pillow") the daily ritual is, to Mizoguchi, a crushing bore, though U.S. readers may find it novel and fascinating. He soon discovers that the temple Superior's path of self-enlightenment is strewn with cigarettes, sake and geishas. Mizoguchi's behavior is scarcely more admirable. A diabolical, clubfooted fellow acolyte...
...reason-why literature, in which Japanese writers are still covertly psychoanalyzing the loss of World War II. Mizoguchi is both poor and common, and Temple champions a kind of cultural revolt of the masses, with its rejection of all that is feudal and aristocratic. There is a lot of Zen beatnik in Mishima's hero, and at his worst he is a glorification of the East-West culture bum who has neither the courage nor the talent to remake the world he hates...
...crazed theology student dynamiting Chartres Cathedral would be an approximate Western equivalent of a crime that shocked all Japan in 1950. It was the burning of the 14th century Zen temple of Kinkakuji ("Golden Pavilion") by a Zen Buddhist acolyte. The arsonist intended to die in the blaze, but he lost his nerve. At his trial he said, "I hate myself, my evil, ugly, stammering self." But he had no regrets about burning down the Kinkakuji. He envied the Golden Temple its beauty, and he was possessed with "a strong desire for hurting and destroying anything that was beautiful...
Last week 33 of the company's drivers and five of its female guides returned to work after completing the first course at Kamakura's 13th century Zen temple, Engakuji. For five days they rose at 4:30 a.m., cleaned their own rooms and swept the temple grounds, and meditated. Anyone who found his mind wandering was supposed to unclasp his hands as a signal, whereupon a waiting monk gave him three sharp thwacks with a stick. Twice a day Chief Abbot Sogen Asahina, 59, lectured them. "When you are in your bus, seated at the wheel...