Here's a question that came up in the comments to the last post:
One aspect of Zen meditation I could not yet understand is why there is no metta meditation. In the Triratna tradition - and I suppose in most other Tibetan meditation traditions also- amongst other things there is like mindfulness of the breath meditation also the metta bhavana; a practice I have done on some occassions and also found it helpful to develop compassion. Why does the meditation and chanting practice found in the Metta Sutra and Brahmaviharas not form part of the Zen liturgy or canon? It appears in the Vietnamese Zen (Thien) tradition the Metta Bhavana might be practiced?
In the two major schools of Zen, known in Japanese as Soto and Rinzai, there are two kinds of meditation. In the koan contemplation of Rinzai, students work on and resolve hundreds of koans. I would argue that some of those koans amount to something like metta meditation, although you can't tell that by reading them.
For example, consider the famous "One Hand Clapping" koan of Hakuin. I have not worked on this koan myself, but I am told the question in Japanese contains a pun on the name of Avalokiteshvara (Kannon in Japan). Hakuin's commentary on the koan suggests that contemplation of the koan involves perceiving the entire world as Kannon. That sounds a lot like metta meditation to me.
Traditional Soto Zen meditation is pure samatha, and does not involve contemplation of texts or visualizations.
Zen is distinctive in that it plunges the student into sunyata teachings on Day One, instead of leading up to sunyata more gradually. The understanding is that wisdom (insight into sunyata) and compassion arise together; compassion grows naturally out of wisdom, and wisdom arises from compassion. And I think this works most of the time, although it's not unheard of for Zen students to get "stuck" in the sunyata side and miss the compassion side.
My teachers have all emphasized bodhicitta to us students, which is not always something you read in the books about Zen. This is one of the several reasons I harp on working with a teacher if you're going to take up Zen practice. All kinds of things go on in the face-to-face work that you can't get from books.
The emphasis on sunyata is both a strength and a weakness, I think. It's a strength in that Buddhist doctrines are less likely to turn into mere beliefs in Zen. Without an appreciation of sunyata, an intellectual understanding of doctrines turns them into religious dogma like any other religious dogma, believed in without genuine understanding. I've observed this a lot.
The weakness is that Zen students don't always get a good, basic grounding in Buddhism. And while students of other schools sometimes go through an Incredulous Starry-eyed Believer phase, Zen students often go through an Insufferable Dharma Snot phase. A good teacher is essential to getting beyond that.
Regarding texts such as the Metta Sutta -- you really don't bump into much of the Pali Canon in Zen, but I believe this is true of Chinese/Japanese/Korean Mahayana generally. It isn't just a Zen thing. Tibetan Buddhism is unusual in that while it is founded on Mahayana philosophy it seems to retain much of the Indian influence that Chinese Buddhism kicked to the curb early in the first millennium CE.
So, schools that emerged in China and spread to Korea and Japan -- e.g., Zen, Pure Land, Tendai -- each have their own canon of Mahayana sutras and pretty much ignore the Pali Canon. An extreme example of this is the Nichiren School, which emerged in Japan in the 13th century. In Nichiren Buddhism, the only legitimate sutra is the Lotus Sutra. Period, end of story, you can discard everything else. If you've done most of your work in Tibetan Buddhism, you've probably had no exposure to the Lotus Sutra, but it's huge in Japanese Buddhism.
The Chinese/Korean/Japanese schools have deveoped their own unique liturgies also. Zen liturgy includes dharanis and other chants dedicated to the activity of compassion, so while one doesn't usually hear the Metta Sutta chanted in a zendo, there are other chants unique to Zen that invoke loving-kindness and compassion. It's not like we leave metta out with the shoes.
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