Dogen is associated with Tendai Buddhism. Certain Buddhologists or scholars have come to the theory of Dogen not being a Zen Master at all nor that he presented himself as such. According to them, Dogen never presented himself as a Zen master but as a “general” Dharma master. This also explains his later criticism of the other four Zen schools, which, like Shikantaza or his concepts of Nirvana , could not have originated from his supposed Chinese master. Dogen read the Hinayana texts and espoused values foreign to Zen, such as the notion that monasticism was superior to lay life, just as Zazen was necessary for or synonymous with enlightenment. Even in the Vimalakirti Sutra , Shariputra is reprimanded for his erroneous understanding that meditation was synonymous with sitting. Following Linji’s logic, “we do not practice seated meditation, we do not read scriptures.”
Further inconsistencies arise in buddhological history, where Dogen demonstrably reinterpreted events to fit his own views.
Carl Bielefeldt delves into the life and teachings of Dogen, raising critical questions regarding the origins of his beliefs and the changes they underwent. The reader is asked not to blindly accept Dogen as a Zen master and founder of the Soto school but instead to reevaluate conceptions of Dogen to determine his true place and importance in Zen history.
Dogen is one of the more obscure Zen masters due to the small size of the Soto school in Medieval Japan and the lack of focus on him by modern scholars. The conventional hagiography (sacred biography) of Dogen contends that as a novice, Dogen was concerned with “the question of how to understand Buddhist practice, given the Mahayana doctrine of inherent enlightenment” (25). To answer this, he embarked on a religious search that led him to China where he met the master Ju-ching who imparted to him the shobo genzo , or the true Buddhism that has been preserved from the time of Sakyamuni himself (26). From Ju-ching, Dogen also found the answer to his question on enlightenment - the meditation of just sitting . In this practice, one “abandons his conscious efforts to acquire Buddhahood, sloughs [drops] off body and mind, and abides in his inherent enlightenment” (26). It is in this practice that Dogen’s teachings differ from other Zen schools. Dogen brought these ideas back to Japan and founded the Soto school.
However, upon deeper inspection, there is little historical evidence to prove that Dogen actually learned from Ju-ching or that Ju-ching was an important Zen figure at all. And in his early writings, Dogen hardly cites his Chinese master or holds him up as a special figure. In fact, he places equal emphasis on the importance of all five houses of Zen, including that of Lin-chi, a supposed rival of Ju-ching (whom Dogen later criticizes greatly). Yet, Dogen’s ideas change markedly over the course of his ministry, and Ju-ching is praised later on, held up as the only transmitter of the true dharma. It was over a decade after his return to Japan that Dogen changed his beliefs and began pitting his school against the Lin-chi tradition.
One explanation for this change asserts that Dogen was merely becoming more enlightened the more he practiced; thus, his understanding of Zen developed and his teachings reflected that (39). Another idea asserts that a copy of Ju-ching’s sayings arrived in Japan at this time, and Dogen was so upset with the lack of understanding of his master’s principles shown in document form that he realized he was the only preserver of the true dharma, and it was up to him alone to share it with others (39).
Dogen also changed his notions on laymen and Buddhism. In his later writings, he asserts that the laity cannot be saved because there are too many obstacles and distractions in the lay life. This change may have come about due to the narrowing scope of his audience over time. Dogen chose to move to a smaller community, taking a band of outcast Rinzai (the more popular form of Zen at the time) monks with him, several from the Daruma school; thus, he no longer had to appeal to a lay audience.
These changes in Dogen’s beliefs and his seeming distance from his master’s ideals raise significant questions about the ideology of the shobo genzo . If he received the true dharma, then why did his teachings change? And because Dogen’s followers didn’t adhere to all that he taught (they were influenced by the rival Rinzai tradition), Dogen didn’t do an adequate job of passing the shobo genzo along. Thus, Dogen must be carefully scrutinized before he can be labeled as a leading Zen master.
Dogen was a little-known Zen master who only experienced a resurgence in popularity around 1700. This is roughly the same time when the last authentic Chinese masters disappeared. Inconsistencies in Dogen’s Writings - David Putney:
(11) “Ippyakuhachi homyo-mon” (One Hundred and Eight Ways to Enlightenment)(61) is a compendium of 108 types of practice or ways to enlightenment both Early Buddhist and Mahaayaana.(62) (12) “Hachi dainingaku” (Eight Key Elements of Buddhist Practice) is the last writing of Dogen,(63) and consists of eight Buddhist virtues to be cultivated by the practitioner.(64) These, he says, are the “storehouse of wisdom of the True Dharma” (65) (shobogenzo). These two fascicles seem to confirm that Dogen saw himself as teaching the Buddha Dharma and not any particular sect of Buddhism. Both of these fascicles, and indeed all of the twelve fascicles, lack any reference to the typical Kamakura appeal to one single practice, including Dogen’s own shikan taza.(66) It seems clear that from Dogen’s middle period onward, shikan taza was one among a complex of practices, especially in the context of the monastic life, which Dogen emphasized.
Dogen may have understood something about emptiness , but nothing about using it in everyday life.
These days, you have to be careful about your sources.
Charles Luk draws attention to the spread of inauthentic Mahayana and Zen texts, which obscure the picture and are probably significantly involved in the confusion surrounding the Buddha’s highest path.
First, rejecting all existing forms of Buddhism in Japan as unauthentic, he attempted to introduce and establish what he believed to be the genuine Buddhism, based on his own realization which he attained in Sung China under the guidance of the Zen Master Ju-ching (Nyojō, 1163-1228). He called it “the Buddha Dharma directly transmitted from the Buddha and patriarchs.” He emphasized zazen[1](seated meditation) as being “the right entrance to the Buddha Dharma” in the tradition of the Zen schools in China since Bodhidharma, originating from Śākyamuni Buddha. Yet he strictly refused to speak of a “Zen sect,” to say nothing of a “Sōtō sect,” that he was later credited with founding. For Dōgen was concerned solely with the “right Dharma,” and regarded zazen as its “right entrance.” "Who has used the name ‘Zen sect’? No buddha or patriarch spoke of a ‘Zen sect.’ You should realize it is a devil that speaks of ‘Zen sect.’ Those who pronounce a devil’s appellation must be confederates of the devil, not children of the Buddha.",[2]He called himself “the Dharma transmitter Shamon Dōgen who went to China”[3]with strong conviction that he had attained the authentic Dharma that is directly transmitted from buddha to buddha, and that he should transplant it on Japanese soil. Thus he rejected the idea of mappo[4], i.e., the last or degenerate Dharma, an idea with wide acceptance in the Japanese Buddhism of his day. It may not be too much to say of Dōgen that just as Bodhidharma transmitted the Buddha Dharma to China, he intended to transmit it to Japan.
I have to disappoint Dogen here, because most of the masters spoke of the Zen sect. However, he hadn’t understood this, which is why he also had to oppose the other Zen schools and probably didn’t even want to belong to the Soto anymore. Ishii Shudo also says that Dogen, as a Dharma master, didn’t see himself as the founder of a sect, let alone as part of the Zen sect.
As with a TNH, this whole Zen master thing seems to be a later invention of the Sangha , to maintain prestige and reputation in the world.
To quote Hisamatsu:
“Truly immense are the offenses of these false masters! Truly painful is the illusion of their students! They do not even notice that they are sitting together in the error of their false egotism, and that as they strive for their own profit and personal welfare they are doubly mistaken.”
Dogen’s opinions diverged from the moment he admitted the persecuted and marginalized Daruma-Shu “Zen” students into his Sangha, with whom he then retreated to the monastery. Only then did he begin attacking lay practitioners and other Zen schools.
Review - Dogen Studies:
Bielefeldt addresses two major issues with Dogen studies, the first of which is the sectarian bias of the Soto school (and D.T. Suzuki’s lingering influences) as well as those of Dogen himself. This presents itself primarily through liberties taken when interpreting history. The gist of this issue is that oftentimes Soto monks, as well as Dogen, restructured historical events or interpretations to support the legitimacy of a certain aspect of doctrine. This, of course, makes the study of Zen history problematic, to say the very least! One of the most notable cases is that of Dogen’s rendering of the teacher under whom he attained enlightenment, Ju-ching. Dogen’s account of Ju-ching seems to pick up near mythological characteristics as Dogen constructed a telling of the past that would support the supremacy of his doctrine and, more importantly, the future of his doctrine.
The second issue Bielefeldt addresses concerns how Dogen’s ideas and positions changed over his monastic career as he responded to different influences. These changes draw tremendous attention to the challenges faced by Dogen as well as Dogen’s agendas. The theme Bielefeldt really picks up on here is how Dogen grew more and more exclusive later in his career, seemingly becoming less content with being but one path among many. For example, in early Dogen, he is clearly open toward the authentic nature of the five orthodox houses of Zen whereas later in his career, he stresses the supremacy of his own rendering of Zen and labels the other schools as heterodox and grossly inferior. Next, even though Dogen was taught in the tradition of Lin-chi under Myozen and began his Japanese monastic career after his enlightenment at a Lin-chi monastery, Kennin-ji, he began to attack Lin-chi quite openly. Bielefeldt notes that he did so some time after adopting the former followers of Nonin’s Daruma school. Dogen also reversed his position on the possibility of awakening for both monks and the laity. He originally embraced the notion that both could awaken whereas later he adopted the principle that only monks had a shot.
Among others, Pang and Vimalakirti are both considered accomplished lay Buddhists in Zen/Mahayana.
Wikipedia - Daruma-Shu (translated)
The Zen of Daruma-shū was determined by two sources: on the one hand, the Linji-zong lineage transmitted by Zhuoan Deguang, which, like the later Rinzai-shū, was based on kanna-zen (看話禪), i.e., the preferred use of Kōan; and on the other hand, the syncretic meditation doctrine of Tendai-shū, which was based on Saichō’s traditions of Tiantai zong as well as his studies with Xiuran (Chinese 修然, Pinyin Xiūrán, W.-G. Hsiu-jan), a representative of the Ox-Head School[23] or Northern School[22] of Chinese Chan from the years 804/5.
Bodhidharma made it clear very early on that a mixing of traditions was not desirable. Just as the Buddha said, one should only read the Mahayana sutras ; only that is the highest path.
Dogen is not a Zen master, never presented himself as such, and does not agree with any authentic master before him; indeed, he criticizes and rejects them. His teachings resemble those of a Tendai master, a Buddhist tradition to which Dogen belonged and in which he studied. This example illustrates what happens when one mixes things against which the Buddha himself warned, and how the masses perpetuate the lie.
(I wrote this in my mother tongue and ran it through gt, so excuse minor word mistakes)