Dōgen (1200–1253)

Eihei Dōgen, transmitter of the Soto Zen tradition to Japan, is widely regarded as one of the most profound and original of Japanese philosophers.

Born of aristocratic parents, Dōgen was orphaned young and entered the great Buddhist monastery of Mt. Hiei near Kyoto. He was, however, disturbed by doubts, especially concerning the common Mahayana doctrine of “original enlightenment,” asking why, if we have an inner enlightened Buddha nature from birth, we then need to strive for enlightenment. Traveling to China to study, he eventually attained Zen enlightenment at a Soto monastery in 1225. On his return to his homeland, Dōgen founded the Eiheiji temple in the Soto tradition. That lineage emphasizes enlightenment in the context of quiet sitting and everyday work.

The value of everyday experience is really the background of Dōgen's greatest intellectual achievement—the uji, or the “being-time” argument—as explained in his most famous work, the Shobogenzo (which could be loosely translated as “collection on true dharma seeing”). The exposition is difficult but seems to mean that every moment of time, and the world as it is in that moment, is a distinct here-and-now reality, linked to the past and future only by unreliable mental constructs, memory, and imagination. Dōgen's thought has been compared with Einstein's relativity and modern existentialism, though his point was to validate enlightenment as one with “just sitting” and daily-life activities such as working in the kitchen rather than as something to be attained outside one's present self.

Dōgen was also far ahead of his time in his equal evaluation of the religious experience of women and men. He died in obscurity, however, and it was only later that the importance of his teaching was realized. By the late 18th century, his writings had become normative for Soto Zen. In postwar Japan, the “Critical Buddhism” school, seeking to determine what had gone wrong in Japanese Buddhism that allowed it to be so easily coopted by Japan's medieval samurai and modern militarists, saw the flaw to be in the “original enlightenment” concept Dōgen had questioned. They alleged that, according to it, because we have an enlightened Buddha nature within us from birth, whatever we do with “no-mind” sincerity, including swordsmanship or dying for the emperor, is legitimate. Dōgen emphasized enlightenment as not something attained but as consciousness that must be realized moment by moment.

Many of the Western Zen centers are in Dōgen's Soto tradition, and his philosophical influence is widely felt throughout the world.