Kyōshin’s Zen Notes

Notes and musings relating to my study of Zen …

• Dōgen / Zen Study (#1)

 

Dōgen / Zen Study (#1)

When I first became interested in Buddhism I gravitated fairly quickly to the Sōtō Zen tradition. This was partly because of the usual superficial and false preconceptions that Zen is without trappings and dogma, but was primarily due to my being intrigued by writings such as Shih-t’ou Hsi-ch’ien’s poem “The Harmony of Difference and Sameness”, Tung-shan Liang-chieh’s “The Song of the Jewel Mirror Awareness” and Dōgen’s “Shobogenzo”. Sadly however the Sōtō lineage which I joined provided little support to lay-people, and the lay-members themselves seemed disinterested in studying the above texts anyway . Later, for various reasons, I left the school I was practicing with and took up the Jōdo Shinshū nembutsu way.

Now settled in the nembutsu path, and in Dharma faith, I have felt able to take up study of the broader Buddhist tradition once again and have recently been revisiting the writings of Dōgen. As before, apart from certain more pellucid passages, they are at once fascinatingly beautiful and yet difficult and opaque. Struggling to get to grips with them I came across an essay by Gudo Nishijima called (.pdf) ‘Understanding the Shobogenzo’ in which he argues that Dōgen’s writings are best understood when one recognises the underlying structure which is based upon the subjective, objective, action and real perspectives (’SOAR’).

I haven’t had time to deeply assess Nishijima’s theory yet but my initial impressions are that he seems to be roughly on the right track in highlighting Dōgen’s Nāgārjunan jumping between disparate perspectives or filters. At the same time however he seems to try too hard to apply his SOAR analysis at every possible level such that his categories become rather fuzzy, unclear and sometimes useless.

Fortunately I need not worry too much about this as the basic notion of looking at Dōgen’s writings as a ‘dance between different perspectives’ reminded me of the the Kegon (Avatamsaka) teaching of interpenetration, Tozan Ryokai’s ‘Five Ranks’, the Four Processes of Liberation from Subjectivity and Objectivity (ssu liao chien), and so on. In short, leaving aside Nishijima’s idiosyncratic theories, there are plenty of tools within the tradition for understanding Dōgen’s writings already; and they are tools he himself would have used. Ironically, though my former Zen sangha neglected to point this out, I have subsequently learnt something of the Kegon teachings from my Jōdo Shinshū teacher!

Anyway now I feel more equipped to go forwards in my re-encounter with Dōgen and the Sōtō tradition. Namuamidabutsu …

 

When all is done by the Buddha

“Just set aside your body and mind, forget about them, and throw them into the house of Buddha; then all is done by Buddha.” - from Shoji, by Dōgen Zenji

I came across this essay by someone called Dylan who has just returned from Japan where he has been on an exchange programme to study Buddhism. Interestingly he says:

Before coming to Japan, since I had mainly engaged in Sōtō Zen practice in America, my attitude towards Jōdo Shin-shū was similar to that of other Western Buddhists. Having originally looked to Buddhism as an alternative to America’s Judeo-Christian religious orientation, Jōdo Shin-shū seemed like a “return” to the superstitious Christian model of being saved after death by a mythical God. Yet, this perception began to change when I went to visit Eiheiji, Sōtō-shū’s head training temple. A priest at the temple remarked that after reading Shinran’s writings, he felt better equipped to understand Dōgen’s ideas. Though initially skeptical, I read some of Shinran’s works, and was surprised to find deep resonance between the two religious thinkers’ ideas.”

As someone who came to Shin through Dōgen’s Zen it is refreshing for me to see another person recognizing the resonances between the traditions, and sharing with others a deeper perspective on the, usually superficially understood, self versus other power teaching.