Buddhism Zen Buddhism is divided into two main schools: Rinzai (臨済宗) and Sōtō (曹洞宗), the former greatly favouring the use in meditation on the koan (公案, a meditative riddle or puzzle) as a device for spiritual break-through, and the latter (while certainly employing koans) focusing more on "shikantaza" or "just sitting". Zen Buddhism is primarily found in Japan, with some presence in South Korea and Vietnam. The scholars of Japanese Soto Zen tradition in recent times have critiqued the mainstream Japanese Buddhism for "dhatu-vada", that is assuming things have substantiality, a view they assert to be non-Buddhist and "out of tune
Buddhism in the West this period (this is known as the "Zen Boom"). Influential literary figures include the American writers Jack Kerouac ("The Dharma Bums" and "The Scripture of the Golden Eternity") and Gary Snyder as well as the British writer Alan Watts ("The Way of Zen"). The steady influx of refugees from Tibet in the 1960s and from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in the 1970s led to renewed interest in Buddhism, and the countercultural movements of the 1960s proved fertile ground for its Westward diffusion. Buddhism supposedly promised a more methodical path to happiness than Christianity and a way out of the perceived