Quotes About Soto

I thought the rule was that all monks were shaved.' 'Oh, Soto says he is bald under the hair,'said Lu Tze. 'He says the hair is a separate creature that just happens to live on him.

the differences between the Soto and the Rinzai sects seem to be due to differences between two major types of human beings,

When viewed in terms of its discipline, Rinzai Zen is distinguished from Soto Zen by its requirement of the realization of the True Self that transcends this five-foot body and fifty-year life span through integration with koan. For instance, there is the koan of mu which derives from Master Joshu's question about the Buddha nature of a dog.

In Master Shibayama Zenkei's Rinzai Zen no Seikaku,72 the styles of the Soto sect and the Rinzai sect are respectively described as honkaku (original awakening) and shikaku (primal awakening). He writes, "It may be said that, as similar as they are, they are different. Rinzai Zen principally stresses discipline for enlightenment, whereas Soto Zen is principally concerned with discipline for descent from the height of enlightenment.