The Cosmic Maps that Unlock Japanese Buddhism

A Guide for the Perplexed

One of the things that first attracted me about Japan was the simplicity of Zen. I was a fan of philosophy at school but the people we studied always seemed better at taking down their opponents’ ideas than building up their own. On and on it went, from the ancient Greeks through to Bertrand Russell. Histories of philosophy started to read like murder mysteries where the story ends before anything has been discovered or resolved.

Imagine my excitement, then, at hearing about a way of looking at the world that began from the place where I had ended up: convinced that ideas and concepts are ultimately not enough in getting at life’s big questions.

Zen Buddhism didn’t just claim this. It could show it to be true, by introducing you to silence and the magic therein. As the title of one of my favourite books of the time put it: Sit Down and Shut Up.

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Only later did I learn that this image of Zen is wrong - or, at least, it’s a modern twist on a very old tradition. For most of the past eight centuries, Zen Buddhists in Japan have, alongside their periods of meditation, spent plenty of time studying Buddhist scriptures and engaging in all kinds of rituals.

I was confused when I heard this. And things only got worse when I started visiting Japan. If Buddhism is basically atheistic, more a set of psychological insights than a religion - a popular view in the West, still now - then who were all these deities playing starring roles in Japanese temples and art? You might conceivably put a few images of your founder, the historical Buddha, in your place of worship. But this seemed to go far beyond that.

I found that the best way to clear away my misunderstandings and grasp what was actually going on was via a form of art known as a mandala. If you appreciate, even at an introductory level, what they’re about then you have a much better chance of understanding what’s going on in a Japanese temple - and in Buddhism more broadly.