The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2321 page)

t
and Rinzai schools maintain quite similar interpretations of Buddhism. The major areas of difference between them occur in the matter of practice. Whereas Rinzai Zen teaches
kanna zen
(
‘k
an
introspection’), emphasizing ‘seated meditation’ (
zazen
) focused on a k
an in order to achieve a first enlightenment experience (
kensh
), the S
t
school refers to itself as
mokush
zen
, ‘silent illumination Zen’, because of its sparing use of the k
an and its identification of zazen itself with enlightenment (
shikan taza
, ‘zazen only’).
In Japan, the history of S
t
is bound up with the two major monasteries,
Eihei-ji
and
S
jiji
.

 
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Judaism
In the Hebrew scriptures, the soul and the body are not sharply distinguished. The words
ru’a
(‘breath’, ‘wind’),
nefesh
(that which locates the animate as opposed to the dead—as e.g. ‘the waters have come up to my
nefesh’
, i.e. neck), and
nesh
mah
(‘vitality’) have no independent, ontological status: they refer to that which gives life and which, if it is absent, leads to death. The
rabbis
of the
Talmudic
period recognized some separation. The soul was understood as the guest of the body during the body's earthly life (
Lev.R
. 34. 3). Jewish philosophers, such as
Philo
,
Sa‘adiah
Gaon, and Solomon ibn
Gabirol
, were influenced by Platonism in their teachings on the immortality of the soul, while the kabbalists taught that the soul was a divine entity that evolved downwards to enter the body. It has its origins in the divine emanation and its ultimate goal is its return to the world of
sefirot
.
Christianity
The New Testament writers inherited the biblical terminology (though in Greek), together with the undecided contest about the basic human composition and about whether any part of it might continue after death. Roughly,
nephesh
became
psyche
and
rua
became
pneuma
; but both these were transformed by the resurrection of Jesus and by the experience of the
Holy Spirit
in the early Church. Thus early Christianity came to believe that the
psyche
must be surrendered to God with complete commitment and trust, even to the extent of, so to speak, losing it (Matthew 6. 25, 16. 25; Mark 8. 35; Luke 9. 24; John 12. 25) and thus securing it. The soul was then associated with a belief that there will be an embodied resurrection. In the Hellenistic world, an application of the
dualism
of Plato nevertheless seemed spiritually attractive, since the sense of a soul imprisoned in a body (
s
ma s
ma
, ‘the body a tomb’) led to a heroic spirituality in which
ascetic
efforts might be made to ensure the soul's escape and safety.
Islam
See
NAFS
.
Indian Religions
See
TMAN
;
AN
TMAN
;
J
VA
.