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Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴, the reviver of the Japanese Rinzai school 臨濟宗, introduced Chinese Daoist cosmology and views on the body through the narrative persona of the immortal Hakuyūshi 白幽子 in works such as Yasen Kanna 夜船閑話 (Chats on a Night Boat). He elaborated on specific techniques of Daoist internal alchemy (nèidān 內丹), such as focusing the mind on the dāntián 丹田 (elixir field) and regulating the breath to enter a state of tranquility, as methods to address “Zen sickness” and nurture both body and mind. This approach to self-cultivation exerted a profound influence in Japan. From the late Meiji into the Taishō period (early 20th century), practitioners such as Futaki Kenzo 二木謙三, Fujita Reisai 藤田靈齋, and Okada Torajirō 岡田虎二郎 developed their own health methods based on their respective understandings, forming practices such as the “abdominal breathing method” 腹式呼吸法 and the “method of harmonizing breath and mind” 息心調和法. These contributions promoted the popularization of quiet sitting within Japanese society. Related books were subsequently translated and introduced to China, inspiring modern scholars such as Jiang Weiqiao 蔣維喬 to reinterpret Chinese traditional self-cultivation methods in a new language, leading to the publication of health-preserving works like The Yinshizi’s Method of Quiet Sitting 因是子靜坐法. At the same time, the Chinese self-cultivation community engaged in reflection on and correction of potential drawbacks in the practice of sitting meditation. By tracing this cross-religious and cross-regional process of cultural transmission and transformation, this paper reveals the enduring vitality of Daoist practices during East Asia’s modernization, as well as their universal significance beyond the confines of any single religious tradition. Full article

In this paper, we will present Rinzai practices from Zen Masters Ikkyū Sōjun (一休宗純, 1394–1481) and Hakuin Ekaku (白隠 慧鶴, 1686–1769) as offering a distinctive kind of spiritual exercise: disruptive reorientation to transcendence (enlightenment) through immanence (a return to the world in all its ugly distractions, beauty, and insight). This paper seeks to explore Hadot’s philosophy as a way of life (PWL) through Rinzai Zen’s unique and often bizarre spiritual exercises. In so doing, this paper hopes to explore new grounds for PWL spiritual exercises in the eccentricities of Japanese Rinzai Zen masters whose approaches wander and diverge yet remain distinctively Rinzai in nature. In the first section, we provide some background on treating spiritual exercises in an intercultural context and explore the exemplarily disruptive spiritual exercises that Rinzai Zen offers PWL practice, especially through poetry, kōans, and meditation in the midst of everyday activity. We then turn to particular examples found in the lives and spiritual practices of Ikkyū and Hakuin. We conclude with reflections on how Rinzai Zen and PWL inform one another through the exploration of “spiritual exercise” and disruption not only as scholarly pursuits but also in terms of our own arts of mindful living today. Full article