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Helen Josephine Baroni (1959-)
Helen J. Baroni is Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has written two important books on the Obaku sect of Japan as well as a reference Encyclopedia of terms commonly used within the Zen schools. She specializes in Japanese religions, particularly Buddhism in the early modern period, new religious movements, and Buddhist practice in the West. She is currently researching the Honolulu Diamond Sangha and it's development of Zen Buddhism in the United States.
PDF: Buddhism in Early Tokugawa Japan: The Case of Obaku Zen and the Monk Tetsugen Dōkō
by Helen Josephine Baroni
Thesis, Columbia University, 1993
PDF: Bottled Anger: Episodes in Obaku Conflict in the Tokugawa Period
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 21, no. 2-3, June-Sept., 1994, pp. 191-210.
PDF: Obaku Zen: The Emergence of a Third Sect of Zen in Tokugawa Japan
Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 2000, 280 p.
This is the first detailed English-language study of the Obaku branch of Japanese Zen. Beginning with the founding of the sect in Japan by Chinese monks in the seventeenth century, the volume describes the conflicts and maneuverings within the Buddhist and secular communities that led to the emergence of Obaku as a distinctive institution during the early Tokugawa period. Throughout, the author explores a wide range of texts and includes excerpts from important primary documents such as the Zenrin shuheishu and the Obaku geki, translated here for the first time. She provides an impressive portrait of the founding Chinese leadership and the first generation of Japanese converts, whose work enabled the fledgling sect to grow and take its place beside existing branches of the closely related Rinzai Zen sect.
Obaku's distinctive Chinese practices and characteristics set it apart from its Japanese counterparts. In an innovative investigation of these differences, the author uses techniques derived from the contemporary study of new religious movements in the West to explain both Obaku's successes and failures in its relations with other Japanese Buddhist sects. She illuminates the role of government support in the initial establishment of the main monastery, Mampuku-ji, and the ongoing involvement of the bakufu and the imperial family in Obaku's early development. Hers is a thorough and well-governed analysis that brings to the fore a religious movement that has been much neglected in Japanese and Western scholarship despite its tremendous influence on modern Japanese Buddhism as a whole.
PDF: Helen J. Baroni: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Zen Buddhism,
New York: Rosen Publishing, 2002
PDF: Iron Eyes: The Life And Teachings of Obaku Zen Master Tetsugen Doko
Albany: SUNY Press, 2006
PDF: A Retrospective Snapshot of American Zen in 1973
Contemporary Buddhism, May 2020
A Forty Year Retrospective of Zen in America, maps the growth and development of Zen communities in the United States from 1973 to 2014.
PDF: Love, Rōshi: Correspondence between Robert Baker Aitken and his Distant Correspondents
by Helen J. Baroni
Albany: SUNY Press, 2012, 216 p.
Robert Baker Aitken's correspondence with Buddhist sympathizers and solo practitioners reveals a significant, little-understood aspect of American Buddhism.
Love, Rōshi explores the relationship between Robert Baker Aitken (1917–2010), American Zen teacher and author, and his distant correspondents, individuals drawn to Zen teachings and practice through books. Aitken, founder of the Honolulu Diamond Sangha, promoted Zen to a wide audience in works such as Taking the Path of Zen and The Mind of Clover. Aitken's twentieth-century American Zen valued social justice and was compatible with work and family life.
Helen J. Baroni makes use of Aitken's extensive correspondence preserved in an archive at the University of Hawai'i to provide a window to view the beliefs and practices of the least-studied—and a difficult to study—segment of the Western Buddhist community, Buddhist sympathizers and solo practitioners. The book looks at the concerns of these correspondents, which included questions on meditation, dealing with isolation as a Buddhist, finding teachers and disillusion with teachers, and being a Buddhist in prison, among a myriad of other matters. The writers' letters reveal much about their notion of Zen and their image of a “Zen master.” Coverage of Aitken's responses provides insight into the accommodation of solo practitioners and into the development of a particular strain of American Buddhism.
