摘要：Rituals and texts have had different and arbitrary status and roles within the different traditions and discourses of Buddhist teachings. In the open hermeneutics of Mahayana ideology they have both been negated and affirmed as a means of reaching and expressing truth. The aim of this article is, with examples from primarily contemporary Japanese Zen Buddhism, to explain rituals in the performative and institutional contexts. It is argues that power, exchange and meaning are important and related frames of interpretation.
