Ritual and Dogma
You’ve got to practice meditation when you walk, stand, lie down, sit, and work, while washing your hands, washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, drinking tea, talking to friends, or whatever you are doing
Thích Nhất Hạnh (1974)
At last I made stumbling attempt to express the ineffable to him. I said, finally, “We can’t talk about this.” And he said, “You have to say something...”
Dainin Katagari (1998)
Two components often distinguish mere group activities from organised religions: dogma and ritual. These two require: assenting to certain beliefs and conducting certain actions. Catholics may seem high on both; conversely Mahayana Buddhists, exemplified by Thích Nhất Hạnh, have apparently minimal requirements for ritual, just very subtle changes in
attention
A page on the evolution of the word, and where it take us.
to our normal actions. Maybe even more extreme, within that tradition, were the Chan monks of the Tang Dynasty who devoted themselves to sitting - and only
sitting.
Subtle and slight the the outward changes may be, but they are hard.
And dogma, for many branches of Buddhism, reduces to a fostering of questioning. Curiously this surface simplicity, with an apparent stress on reducing words and actions, seems to result in its converse; in Tang times tens of thousands of books appeared explaining the
silence
There is so much to be said about silence - here is some more.
of Chan; and at that time great monasteries were built. Today, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s simple early works were followed by voluminous outpourings, and Dainin
Katagiri
On expressing the in-expressible.
went on to say much about silence. It’s interesting how words beget so generously.
The Thích Nhất Hạnh quote comes from a letter to a friend in 1974, which was published by the Buddhist Publication Society as the Miracle of Being Awake, it was then published as The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation by Beacon Press, and also in UK by Random House. Katgiri Roshi’s book You have to Say Something: manifesting Zen Insight was published by Shambhala, the quote is from page ix.
The photograph is of a nineteenth century bronze Amida Buddha, it is from Japan, and sits in the Chambers Street Museum in Edinburgh.
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Saturday 19th July 2025
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