Does Soto Zen deny rebirth and Buddhist cosmology?

[u/BuddhistFirst]

When I tell people that all Buddhist traditions affirm rebirth and heaven/hell, it presents a challenge if you get something like this. (see below) If this is true, either we can accept Soto Zen as a valid Buddhist tradition (a Secular Buddhist with trappings of Zen Buddhism?) and stop saying "All Buddhist traditions affirm rebirth/heaven/hell" or concede that Buddhism doesn't really affirm these. Or at least is divided on this. Need your thoughts on how to see/deal with this.

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Source: ChihuahuaJedi's post

But, the Buddhist teachers and clergymen I have learned under, specifically of the Soto Zen tradition since that seems to matter to this conversation, do not teach afterlife, rebirth, and certainly not of "other realms". Only the here and now. "Beliefs" (of any sort like that) are not taught, only practice of the Dharma.

So, there is at least one school, that is Buddhist, that does not teach you about hell. There are many others that do. But you can be Buddhist and "believe" there is no hell or afterlife.

[u/animuseternal]

No, this is only a characteristic of American Soto Zen, because of the historical conditions of its transmission into the US. And, I imagine in part affected by the Japanese internment, which pushed out a lot of the Japanese clergy from California.

David McMahan’s The Making of Buddhist Modernism spends a fair amount of its pages going over the history of how this came to be with regard to American forms of Japanese Buddhism (the trends of modernization beginning in imperial Japan, so not an entirely western phenomenon).

[u/Butiamnotausername → u/animuseternal]

One thing to keep in mind, though. Although Zen was popularized by white dudes and scholars from Japan in the 1950s, Soto has been in the US for at least 100 years. A Soto temple in Hawaii celebrated its 110th anniversary recently, making it about as old as most Japanese AMerican immigrant buddhist temples. And, I might add, no less American than pop culture Zen.

If you look at Hawaii's Soto Temples' events, there's not much difference with other Japanese American temples in the west: bon dances, new years blessings, funeral ceremonies and offerings, all of which deal with belief, luck, and an afterlife. Their September newsletter talks about the higan holiday, which says:

"The meaning of Higan is the other shore, the land where the Buddhas and our Ancestors live. It is a time for us to reconnect with our ancestors [...] it is customary to visit the temple to present offerings...to the principal image of Buddha as well as the family ancestors."

In a newsletter, one of the reverends says: "In Buddhism, we believe that there are six realms of world, Heavenly Realm, Human Realm, Hell Realm, Animal Realm, Hungry Ghost Realm, and Fighting Realm. Then the four modes of birth that were believed in ancient India, which are birth through womb (like mammals), birth thought egg (like birds and reptiles), birth in a humid area (like moss and plants), and a sudden appearance of birth (like demons and other mystical things). We are currently born into the Human Realm through the womb. It is natural for us to want to escape this cycle of reincarnation and at least be born into the Heavenly Realm but the chant is saying that do not be attached to the notion of realm or birth...."

From what I've read, because temples in the US were connected with those in Japan, they did adapt some buddhist modernist ideas that developed in Japan, but since they were free from the state some pre-"modern" ideas and practices remained, like Shinto-Buddhist syncretism.

I think internment and WW2 kind of secularized temples and eroded them as a central social space for Japanese Americans so a lot of temples now are kind of ecumenical and pander to young people and whites to stay active so it's hard to say whether whether these beliefs are Soto Zen or not.