Sōtō Zen Buddhism

A reference point for our faith, Sōtō Zen Buddhism, is share thoughts and wisdom with no fear of judgement, wisely with the practice of Zazen.

Sōtō Zen Buddhism, or the Sōtō school (曹洞宗 Sotoshū) is, with Rinzai and Ōbaku, one of the three most popular sects of Zen Buddhism within Japanese Buddhism.

The Sōtō Zen sect was first established as the Caodong sect during the Tang Dynasty in China by Dongshan Liangjie in the 9th century. Dōgen Zenji then brought it to Japan in the 13th century. Dōgen is remembered today as the co-patriarch of Sōtō Zen in Japan along with Keizan Jōkin. One of the signature features of this school is found in its practice of Shikantaza, a particular approach to zazen which is sometimes referred to as "just sitting" or "silent illumination and enlightenment".

Historically speaking, Sōtō Zen was often given the derogatory term "farmer Zen" because of its mass appeal, though some teachers of Zen would say that the reason why it was called "farmer Zen" was because of it's down to earth happy approach to life. While the Rinzai school was often called "Samurai Zen" because of the larger Samurai following. The latter term for the Rinzai can be somewhat misleading, however, as the Sōtō Zen school also had a large Samurai membership among its followers.

The two head temples, or Honzan (本山?) of the Sōtō Zen sect are Eiheiji and Sōji-ji. While Eiheiji owes its existence to Dōgen, throughout history this head temple has had significantly less sub-temple affiliates than the Sōji-ji. During the Tokugawa period, Eiheiji had approximately 1, 300 affiliate temples compared to Sōji-ji's 16, 200. Furthermore, out of the more than 14, 000 temples of the Sōtō Zen sect today - 13, 850 of those identify themselves as affiliates of Sōji-ji. Additionally, most of the some 148 temples that are affiliates of Eiheiji today are only minor temples located in Hokkaido - founded during a period of colonization during the Meiji period. Therefore, it is often said that Eiheiji is a head temple only in the sense that it is "head of all Sōtō Zen Dharma lineages.