Dogen is the founder of the Soto (C: Ts’ao-tung) school of Zen Buddhism in Japan, and is by common consent one of the finest philosophers his country has produced. His many writings cover all aspects of Zen, from its metaphysical bases to practical regulations for the organization of monastic communities, together with suggestions for the correct practice of zazen (seated meditation) which he regarded as essential to Zen. His major work, the Shobogenzo (Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma), consisting of ninety-three fascicles or essays in its standard edition, is regarded as one of the greatest of Japanese philosophical texts. In it, he takes the ideas of the Chinese Zen masters and develops them with rigour and originality.
The facts of Dogen’s life have been overlaid by generations of Soto hagiography, and the historicity of some of the stories concerning him is disputed. A number of basic items, however, are generally agreed on. He was born in 1200 into a branch of the wealthy Minamoto family. He lost both his parents during childhood, and this is said to have awakened in him, very early in life, a sense of what he would later call the ‘dew-like’ impermanence of human existence.1 He is said to have run away from home at the age of 12 to a Tendai2 monastery near Mount Hiei where his uncle Ryokan Hogen was in charge. Dogen became dissatisfied with the teaching at this monastery, and for six years or so he moved between teachers, finally settling down in 1217 with Myozen (1184–1225).
Dogen’s dissatisfaction with his early teachers was caused by what he called his ‘great doubt’, a problem these masters could not resolve: if all sentient beings everywhere possess the Buddha-nature (this term is explained below), and in consequence are capable of enlightenment, why then are special ascetic practices held to be necessary to pursue buddhahood? The need to resolve this difficulty was one of the chief motives for Dogen’s visit to China, to which he travelled with Myozen in 1223, and where he stayed for four years. What he did for most of the first two years is not clear: what is clear is that his life was changed by the accession to the abbacy of the monastery on Mount T’ien-t’ung of the Zen master Ts’ao-t’ung Ju-ching (J: Tendo Nyojo, 1163–1228), whom Dogen met in 1225, and with whom he studied for two years. One of the works attributed to Dogen, the Hokyo-ki (C: Pao-ch’ing chi) or Record of the Pao-ch’ing Era, is a diary of this meeting and of Ju-ching’s teaching, though how much of this text is historically reliable is very difficult to say.
Ju-ching’s views on Zen method made a great impact on Dogen, and through him on the whole history of Soto Zen in Japan. Though he used some koans, Ju-ching was in general critical of the practices of the Lin-chi (J: Rinzai) school of Zen, in which the koan exercise is central. By contrast, he insisted that the essential Zen practice is seated meditation (J: zazen), and that nothing else is needed.3 Proper meditation is ‘single-minded intense sitting without burning incense, worshipping, reciting [Amithaba’s name], practising repentance, nor reading sutras’. 4 This insight resolved Dogen’s great doubt and it was during a zazen session in the summer of 1225 that Dogen achieved enlightenment, and was agreed by Ju-ching to have done so.
Dogen stayed with Ju-ching until 1227, when he decided to return to Japan. Ju-ching gave him a written seal of approval, i.e. a document stating that Dogen was the recipient of direct transmission of the dharma in the line unbroken from the Buddha to himself.5 This seal was all Dogen took back with him to Japan: he took neither sutras nor holy relics, since such things are irrelevant to Zen. He devoted the rest of his life to establishing Soto Zen in his native country, setting up the first independent Soto Zen temple in Japan, Koshohorinji, in 1236. There he stayed until the envy of the Buddhist community on Mount Hiei became a threat, and he removed to the province of Echizen in 1243. Two years later, his last monastery, Eiheiji (Eternal Peace), was completed, and here Dogen spent the remaining years of his life. Throughout this post-Chinese phase of his life, he wrote prolifically, his output ranging from formal treatises in kanbun (i.e. Chinese) to Japanese verse. At its best, his work ranks with the finest of Buddhist literature.
However abstract his thought may appear, Dogen’s root purpose in all his writings is the same, to assist the aspirant on the road to enlightenment, and enlightenment is direct apprehension of being-as-is. He follows the parent Mahayana tradition in adopting as his bedrock metaphysical position the assertion that being-as-is or reality is non-dual. That is, beingas-is is not the ordinary world of individuals in space and time, but an undifferentiated oneness to which no concepts apply, since concepts imply divisibility or duality. Dogen has many ways of putting this point. Thus, for example, he quotes with approval the saying of the ninth-century master Gensha (C: Hsuan-sha, 831–908) that the universe (i.e. what there is) is ‘one bright jewel’:
The essential message is that the whole universe is not vast, not small, not round or square, not balanced and correct, not lively and active, not standing way out. Because furthermore it is not birth and death, coming and going, it is birth and death, coming and going. Being thus, having in the past gone from here, it now comes from here.6
That is, since reality is nondual, none of the above concepts, which presuppose division, can apply to it.
The consequences of this metaphysics are profound and far-reaching, and Dogen draws them out with great thoroughness. The major epistemological consequence is that all conceptual thinking, and all perception which involves awareness under conceptual descriptions, is false to the nature of being-as-is, and hinders apprehension of it. The world as it is experienced via conceptual thought is a world of individual things in time and space, standing in causal relations to one another. This entire structure is illusory, or as Dogen puts it, using a classic Buddhist image, ‘flowers in the sky’.7 This belief also shapes Dogen’s style, which as can be seen from the foregoing typical quotation concerning the one bright jewel, is paradoxical and deliberately made difficult to follow (even more so in the original text of the Shobogenzo where Chinese and Japanese alternate within single sentences). Dogen’s aim in writing in this way is to disrupt the flow of conceptual thought, which must be halted before being-as-is can be experienced directly. Again, since being-as-is is nondual, it follows that our ordinary consciousness of time, one of the most fundamental elements of our experience, involving awareness of discrete moments and events, must be delusory. Being-as-is and time must be identical, since what there is is a oneness and if time is anything, it is therefore being: ‘Socalled time of being means time is already being; all being is time.’8
Further, since all awareness of division is delusory, it follows that our assumption that there is a valid distinction to be drawn between the self and the rest of the universe is false, and we must seek to break free of this distinction. Dogen quotes with approval a saying of the Third Patriarch of Zen, Seng-ts’an (J: So-san, d. 606 CE):
‘To achieve the Way is not difficult; just reject discrimination.’ If you cast aside the mind that discriminates, then at once you gain awakening. To abandon the discriminating mind means to break free from the Self.9
Our ordinary conception of the self is entirely false:
To seek to know the self is invariably the wish of living beings. However, those who see the true self are rare. Only buddhas know the true self. People outside the way regard what is not the self as the self. But what buddhas call the self is the entire universe.10
This at first sight startling conclusion follows from Zen metaphysics, and is paralleled in other mystical traditions, Islamic, Hindu and Christian. There is a distinction to be drawn between the surface ego or phenomenal self and the true self, in Zen terms the ‘original face’. The former is a delusion, one of the false conceptual constructs which hides reality from us. When by suitable practices conceptual thinking is halted, reality is revealed. The true self, original face or Buddhanature, is this reality. Since reality is unitary, it is all there is and so, as Dogen puts it, the true self is the entire universe.
Moreover, since the Buddha-nature or beingas-is is one and indivisible, it is present everywhere, and so present in everyone. From this it follows that everyone can become a Buddha, i.e. can attain enlightenment. What is needed is a way of freeing us from the delusions of conceptual thought, thereby allowing us to realize the Buddha-nature within us. Dogen has much to say about Zen technique and its relation to enlightenment.
The essential Zen Buddhist practice, in Dogen’s view, is zazen (seated meditation) and it is with zazen that his name, and that of the Soto school, is always linked. Throughout his ministry, Dogen insisted on the need for rigorous practice of zazen:
reverse the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing after talk; take the backward step of turning the light and shining it back. Of themselves body and mind will drop away, and your original face will appear. If you want such [a state], urgently work at zazen.11
Conceptual thought is delusory: hence we must cease to ‘chase after talk’, since language embodies conceptual structures. The path to reality is a journey inward, and so it is necessary to ‘shine the light back’ or ‘to turn the light around’, a Zen expression meaning to attempt to shift attention (‘the light’) away from ordinary experience of objects in the phenomenal world and turn it inward, to the original, innate essence of the mind itself, i.e. its inherent Buddha-nature. 12 If this is achieved, ‘body and mind drop away’, i.e. all divisions and attachments are transcended, including attachment to the illusory self of mundane experience, and the ‘original face’ or Buddha-nature will appear.
A number of comments on this passage are appropriate. First, it is difficult to find in Dogen’s writings – which were, of course, only one aspect of his teaching – a precise statement as to how one is to ‘turn the light around’, i.e. what meditational techniques can be used in order to free us from the grip of conceptual thought. Thus, Dogen gives instructions on how to sit properly for zazen, how to breathe and how to arrange one’s clothing, and then comments: ‘Whenever a thought occurs, be aware of it; as soon as you are aware of it, it will vanish. If you remain for a long period forgetful of objects, you will naturally become unified.’13 If this practice is followed properly, we arrive eventually at the state of ‘nonthinking’, by which Dogen means the state other Zen masters term ‘no-mind’, the state in which conceptual thinking is suspended. Yet this appears to be hardly more than a restatement of the view that ‘nonthinking’, or non-conceptual awareness of being-as-is, is enlightenment. No doubt in his monastic practice, Dogen would have used a number of meditational techniques, including koan study. (The denigration of koan study by later members of the Soto sect is not shared by Dogen, who uses them in his writings when he sees fit.)
Second, the direct awareness of reality in which enlightenment consists is strictly speaking indescribable, since no concepts can apply to it: ‘The realm of all buddhas is inconceivable. It cannot be reached by consciousness’ (i.e. by conceptual thought).14 Again, it cannot be conceived of in advance, since it cannot be conceived of at all: ‘Realization is not like your conception of it. Accordingly, realization cannot take place as previously conceived . . . Realization does not depend on thoughts, but comes forth far beyond them.’15 Moreover, since direct awareness of being-as-is is unconnected with any skill in conceptual thinking, all forms of intelligence or cleverness which manifest themselves in conceptual thinking are irrelevant to the pursuit of the true dharma and indeed are generally a hindrance to this end, since we are proud of and attached to our intellectual attainments: ‘Because study [of the Way] has no use for wide learning and high intelligence, even those with inferior capacities can participate.’16 More important are a true wish to follow the Buddha way, and obedience to a good Master.
Third, it must be stressed that for Dogen the practice of zazen and enlightenment are not related as means and end, but are identical, a point on which he insists repeatedly. Thus when a questioner asks: ‘What of those who have already understood the Buddha’s correct teaching? What do they expect from zazen?’, Dogen replies:
To suppose that practice and realization are not one is nothing but a heretical view; in buddha-dharma they are inseparable . . . Therefore, when we give instructions for practising, we say you should not have any expectation of realization outside of practice, since this is the immediate original realization.17
It is important to be clear how strong a claim this is: for Dogen, zazen is not merely a meditational technique for the practice of dhyana, however powerful. It is itself complete realization: it is itself nirvana: ‘Zazen is not the practice of dhyana: it is just the dharma gate of ease and joy. It is the practice and verification of ultimate bodhi.’18 It would be difficult to find a more thoroughgoing expression of the value of zazen than this.
What is the state of mind of those who have attained enlightenment? Dogen gives a hint as to what it is like to have arrived at this pitch of development in the Shobogenzo essay ‘Ocean seal concentration’ (J: Kai-in zammai). The title is taken from a work originating in the Kegon (C: Hua-yen: ‘Flower Garland’) school of Buddhism, Return to the Source Contemplation. Here the enlightened mind is compared, in an ancient Buddhist image, to a calm ocean: ‘if the wind stops (i.e. delusion ceases) the ocean water is calm and clear, and all images can reflect in it . . . The “ocean seal” is the awareness of true thusness.’19 Reflecting on this passage, Dogen comments: ‘Prior moment, succeeding moment – each successive moment does not wait for the next: prior element, succeeding element – the elements do not await each other. This is called the ocean seal concentration.’20 That is: the enlightened consciousness is aware of the nondual nature of being-as-is; however, the sage or enlightened person must continue to function in the world, and so conceptual discriminations must continue to be made. What is different is the attitude of the sage to the latter: after enlightenment, there is awareness of division and succession but entirely without the desire to cling to or arrest anything or any time. Since the surface ego is seen to be an illusion, so there are no further wants or desires, only the boundless compassion of the enlightened for those still caught in the samsara. The flow of events is simply reflected in the consciousness of the sage, with absolute clarity and impartiality, just as it is. This is release or eternal life, which is neither a future state nor another place, but is experienced here and now by the enlightened.
It is interesting to reflect that this powerful and well-articulated philosophy was unknown outside the Soto school for centuries after Dogen’s lifetime: the Shobogenzo was not published in any form by the Soto school until 1816, and only in this century has Dogen’s stature come to be widely recognized. In the intervening period, Soto Zen had little official recognition or cultural influence. Thus from the Kamakura (1185–1333) to the Muromachi periods of Japanese history (1393–1573 CE), the ascendancy was gained by the rival Rinzai sect of Zen, which exercised a major influence on the forms of Japanese culture best known in the West: noh drama, the tea ceremony, etc. Later generations of Soto and Rinzai adherents sharpened the doctrinal differences between the sects in ways with which their founders would not always have sympathized. For example, under the fourth Soto patriarch, Keizan Jokin (1268–1325 CE), the koan was officially completely discarded as an aid to enlightenment in favour of silent sitting.21 (In practice, koans have continued in use in Soto training, if without the emphasis given to them by the Rinzai sect.) By contrast, Dogen preferred to stress that Buddhism is unified. A classic Zen image pictures the five schools of Zen as five petals of a flower. Dogen changes the emphasis, stressing that all the petals belong to the same plant: ‘the opening of five petals is one flower.’22 That is, the divisions within Buddhism are less important than the dharma or truth which is common to them all.
Dogen’s philosophy involves all the classic difficulties of nondualism, notably why the one should have manifested itself at all as the many, and why this manifestation (i.e. the universe we live in) should involve so much suffering and evil. Dogen’s reply would be that to be concerned with such issues is to be trapped in the web of conceptual thought: if we practise zazen and turn the light around, these problems evaporate, together with all the painful illusions of the samsara.
References to the Shobogenzo are given in the form: S + name of fascicle.
1 cf. Shobogenzo zuimonki (Things Overheard at the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma); see R. Masunaga, A Primer of Soto Zen, London, Routledge, 1972, pp. 66–67. Note: despite the similarity of their titles, this work, a very basic introduction to Zen discipline, is distinct from Dogen’s masterpiece, the Shobogenzo.
2 For an outline of the beliefs of the Tendai school of Buddhism, see the essay on Nichiren in this book, pp. 167–175. Mount Hiei was the centre of the Buddhist ‘establishment’ in Japan.
3 For more detail, cf. I. Miura and R.F. Sasaki, Zen Dust, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1966, pp. 18–19; on Rinzai Zen, see the essays on Hakuin and Suzuki in this book, pp. 181–187 and 193–198.
4 Hokyo-ki, section 16 in T.J. Kodera, Dogen’s Formative Years in China, London, Routledge, 1980, p. 124. ‘Reciting Amitabha’s name’ is a reference to the use of the Nembutsu in the Pure Land school of Buddhism (see the essay on Suzuki).
5 cf, S, fascicles Busso (Buddha Ancestors) and Shisho (Document of Heritage).
6 S, fascicle Ikka myoju (One Bright Jewel), T. Cleary (ed. and tr.), Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1988, p. 59.
7 S, fascicle Kuge (Flowers in the Sky), passim.
8 S, fascicle Uji (Being Time), Cleary, op. cit., p. 104. This doctrine of the identity of being and time has been regarded as one of Dogen’s most original contributions to Zen thought.
9 Shobogenzo zuimonki, in Masunaga, op. cit., p. 92.
10 S, fascicle Yuibusu yobutsu (Only Buddha and Buddha), in K. Tanahashi (ed. and tr.), Moon in a Dewdrop, Shaftesbury, Dorset, Element Books, 1988, p. 164.
11 Fukan zazen gi (Principles of Seated Meditation), Tenpuku manuscript, in C. Bielefeldt, Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988, p. 176.
12 The idea of ‘turning the light around’ is not peculiar to Zen, nor to Oriental thought, but is common to all forms of mysticism which hold that God or reality is within us. Thus the German mystic Jakob Boehme (1575–1624 CE) states that we see God with a ‘reversed eye’ (ungewandtes Auge), a point noted by K. Nishida, Inquiry Into the Good, New Haven, CT, and London, Yale University Press, 1990, p. 81.
13 Fukan zazen gi, Tenpuku manuscript, in Bielefeldt, op. cit., p. 181.
14 S, fascicle Bendo-wa (On the Endeavour of the Way), in Tanahashi, op. cit., p. 148.
15 S, fascicle Yuibusu yobutsu, in Tanahashi, op. cit., p. 161.
16 Shobogenzo zuimonki, in Masunaga, op. cit., p. 38. cf. Padma-Sambhava’s insistence that illiterates can gain enlightenment.
17 S, fascicle Bendo-wa, in Tanahashi, op. cit., p. 151.
18 Fukan zazen gi, Koroku version, in Bielefeldt, op. cit., p. 181.
19 In Cleary, op. cit., p. 76.
20 S, fascicle Kai-in zammai, in Cleary, op. cit., p. 78.
21 cf. Miura and Sasaki, op.cit., p. 19.
22 S, fascicle Kuge, in Cleary, op. cit., p. 66.
Shobogenzo (Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma)
Shobogenzo zuimonki (Things Overheard at the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma)
Hokyo-ki (Record of the Pao-ch’ing Era)
Fukan zazen-gi (Principles of Seated Meditation) Of these the first is much the most important.
the Buddha, Hui-neng, Nichiren, Bankei, Hakuin, Nishida, Suzuki
Bielefeldt, C., Dogen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1988 (includes translations of the various versions of the Fukan zazen gi and related documents)
Cleary, T. (ed. and tr.), Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1988 (thirteen essays from the Shobogenzo)
Kodera, T.J., Dogen’s Formative Years in China, London, Routledge 1980 (contains a translation of the Hokyo-ki, with extensive annotation and commentary)
La Fleur, W.R. (ed.), Dogen Studies, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1985
Masunaga, R., A Primer of Soto Zen, London, Routledge, 1972 (a complete translation of the Shobogenzo zuimonki)
Miura, I. and Sasaki, R.F., Zen Dust, New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1966
Nishiyama, K. and Stevens, S., Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo (The Eye and Treasury of the True Law), 4 vols, Sendai, Japan, 1975–1983
Tanahashi, K. (ed. and tr.), Moon in a Dewdrop, Shaftesbury, Dorset, Element Books, 1988 (twenty essays from the Shobogenzo with some other works by Dogen, including some of his poetry)