This dissertation is grounded in scholarship on the dynamics of tradition formation, invention, and maintenance and the role of cultural memory in tradition. I examine how cultural memory, socially constructed and shaped through a selective process of remembrance, forgetting, and invention, works to create a religious community. I conside hoe the understanding ("memory") of Zen mater Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769) has been heavily crafted in teh development of contemporary Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism, heavily dependent on an elite and Orientalist tradition.