It is safe to say that Chan Buddhism has been completely infected by Confucianism thought when looking at how the orthodoxy works in instutionalized Japanese Zen Buddhism: extremely rigid hierarchy, respect to one’s superior above all else, stress put on maintaining the tradition and following rules.

When you read the *Recorded Sayings of Linji* for instance—one of the most important texts in the Rinzai sect of Japanese Zen Buddhism today—you can see Zen masters being challenged, yelled at, and even beaten, by Linji himself. All of this would be completely unthinkable in institutionalized Zen nowadays. This text just shows how iconoclastic and irreverent Chan could be, and, more importantly, how one could, through practice, become free of ego and social conventions, and ultimately how ungovernable one could become—something that should be of great interest to my good anarchists friend I reckon.

#anarchism #zen #buddhism