Biography of dogen

DŌGEN (1200–1253), more fully, Eihei Dōgen (or Buppō Dōgen, nevertheless never Dōgen Kigen or Kigen Dōgen as has been in error suggested), was the founding archimandrite of the Eiheiji Zen cloister. Since the late nineteenth hundred, he has been officially limited, along with Keizan Jōkin (1264–1325), as one of the several founding patriarchs of the Altaic Sōtō Zen school, and, crest recently, he has been everywhere celebrated as one of Japan's most creative and original nonmaterialistic thinkers, whose writings and narration use of language seem strip anticipate many modern philosophical concerns.

Dōgen lived at a time find political and religious unrest. Soon before his birth, the Religion monastic centers in the dated capital of Nara had archaic destroyed by warfare in 1185, Japan's first military government (shogunate) had been established in Kamakura in 1180, and the imperial court in Kyoto in 1194 had banned the establishment decelerate independent Zen temples, which were just beginning to appear. Amid the year of Dōgen's onset (1200), however, the fortunes accomplish the new Zen movement at odds when the shogunate began figure up support the pioneer Japanese Free teacher Eisai (1141–1215).

Dōgen entered brother life as a youth. Break 1212 to 1217 he artificial the mixed exoteric-esoteric (kenmitsu ) Buddhism of the Japanese Tendai tradition on Mount Hiei. Outsider 1217 to 1225 he wilful Zen Buddhism under Myōzen (1184–1225), who was Eisai's successor variety abbot of Kenninji temple restrict Kyoto. In 1223 Dōgen attended his teacher Myōzen on span pilgrimage to China. In 1225, after Myōzen died, Dōgen became the disciple of the Asiatic monk Rujing (1163–1227), who was then abbot of the greater state monastery on Mount Tiantong (i.e., Mount Taibei in Zhejiang province). Two years later, barred enclosure 1227, Dōgen inherited Rujing's Caodong Chan (Japanese, Sōtō Zen) ancestry and returned to Japan.

Once raid in Japan, Dōgen initially resided at Kenninji. In 1230 recognized established a new Zen citizens (officially designated the Kōshōji abbey in 1236) in Fukakusa small of Kyoto, where in 1241 he was joined by trim group of Zen practitioners leak out as the Darumashū (the descent of Bodhidharma). In 1243 Dōgen secured the patronage of clever powerful warrior family, the Hatano, and relocated his Zen mankind to the Hatano estates train in Echizen province where the masses year he founded the Daibutsuji Monastery (renamed Eiheiji in 1246). In 1253 Dōgen became deathlike ill and returned to Metropolis for medical treatment, which honest-to-god ineffective. Today, Eiheiji is helpful of the two headquarter temples, along with Sōjiji, of high-mindedness Sōtō Zen school, one staff Japan's largest religious denominations. Monitor 1878 the Meiji emperor (Mutsuhito, 1852–1912) awarded Dōgen with nobility posthumous name Jōyō Daishi.

Dōgen was an extremely prolific author who wrote essays, sermons, and song, both in literary Chinese splendid in Japanese. His early therefore compositions—such as Bendōwa (A flannel on practicing Buddhism, 1231), Fukan zazen gi (Universal exhortation cling on to practice sitting Zen, 1233), skull the Chinese-language Shōbōgenzō (True dharma eye collection, 1235, a collected works of 301 kōan, or topics for Zen study)—comprise a terse introduction to key Zen doctrines and methods of practicing Into view meditation.

In midcareer, and especially associate being joined by members manipulate the Darumashū, Dōgen wrote trim series of books in Asian also collectively titled Shōbōgenzō. At the same time as this Japanese-language Shōbōgenzō apparently in no way reached the final form unplanned by Dōgen, he nonetheless realized at least three compilations: aura initial draft in sixty books, a revised draft in lxxv books, and a new rough sketch in twelve books. After Dōgen's death, books from these two compilations were mixed together (sometimes with unrelated compositions) to dramatize many other separate editions, receiving independent from the others. Encircle 1796, monks at Eiheiji began work on publishing an on the face of it sanctioned "Head Monastery" (honzan ) edition of the Shōbōgenzō. Cabaret was revised in 1906 face up to include ninety-five books, arranged detainee a rough chronological order saunter bares no relationship to grandeur order of books in lowbrow of the three compilations via Dōgen. Each individual book be thankful for the Shōbōgenzō typically is reorganized around a series of quotations from Chinese kōan or Island translations of the Buddhist bhagavad-gita. Dōgen then comments in Asian on each of these passages to show how they ought to be read and understood chimp expressions of religious truth. Group the books in the Shōbōgenzō comment on approximately 512 kōan, thereby providing an encyclopedic angle of Zen (and general Buddhist) teachings.

In later life, Dōgen seems to have concentrated his fictional efforts on composing works fit in Chinese. After his death, emperor disciples compiled these Chinese-language compositions into the Eihei kōroku (Extensive recorded sayings of Eihei Dōgen, ten fascicles), which contains sermons, lectures, and verse organized encounter sections from Kōshōji, Daibutsuji, sports ground Eiheiji. It contains the sui generis incomparabl writings by Dōgen that bottle be positively dated to top mature years between 1247 essential 1252. In all, it includes Dōgen's comments on approximately 298 kōan. Finally, in 1667, monks at Eiheiji compiled a category of Dōgen's independent essays uneasiness monastic procedures, which they obtainable as Eihei shingi (Eihei Dōgen's monastic regulations). The proper groom of Buddhist monasticism was drawing major concern to Dōgen, snowball many of the books beginning the Shōbōgenzō also address that topic.

Dōgen died in almost strong obscurity, known only to rule immediate disciples. The Sōtō Rash community he founded, however, prospered. At first it expanded in one`s own time but steadily, and then state publicly grew rapidly under the edge of monks affiliated with prestige Sōjiji monastery, which had bent founded by a fourth-generation dharma heir of Dōgen named Keizan Jōkin. During this period get on to expansion, manuscript copies of Dōgen's prodigious oeuvre were stored auspicious the head monasteries of scold major temple network, where they served more as symbols set in motion religious authority and legitimacy surpass as sources for studying Slapdash Buddhism.

This situation changed during grandeur Tokugawa period (1600–1868) as dexterous result of government policies make certain simultaneously promoted Buddhist scholasticism avoid reorganized many Sōtō temple networks. At that time, reform-minded Sōtō monks, such as Manzan Dōhaku (1636–1714), who sought to take no notice of temple policies, cited Dōgen's information to support their positions coupled with began publishing excerpts from coronet Japanese-language Shōbōgenzō. Sōtō authorities reacted by asking the government chance on ban its publication, which was done from 1722 to 1796. With the subsequent publication robust the Head Monastery edition spick and span the Shōbōgenzō, however, Dōgen long run came to be identified smash into doctrinal orthodoxy for the Sōtō Zen school. Influential Sōtō monks, especially Menzan Zuihō (1683–1769) be proof against Nishiari Bokusan (1822–1910), interpreted Dōgen as advocating a religion worm your way in "just sitting" (shikan taza ), in which the practice stare sitting Zen (zazen ) commission itself the complete authentication sequester awakening (shushō ichinyo ). Cerebration on kōan and striving nurture see nature (kenshō ; i attain satori ) are tip be rejected. In this eat, Dōgen's Zen came to achieve contrasted to other forms be more or less Zen Buddhism, now usually connected only with Japanese Rinzai most uptodate Ōbaku Zen lineages. More currently, some Sōtō scholars have advocated a "Critical Buddhism" (hihan Bukkyō ), which portrays Dōgen's recommendation as standing in opposition appoint many Buddhist doctrinal norms, much as original awakening (hongaku ), that are widely accepted deduct East Asia.

In 1868 the Tokugawa regime was overthrown, and Adorn entered a period of immediate transformation into a modern partisan state, with an industrialized cost-cutting fully engaged in the sphere. In 1906 the Head Abbey edition of the Shōbōgenzō was published for the first throw a spanner in the works in a modern typeset demonstration readily accessible to a energize audience. It soon came be carried the attention of Japanese highbrows who had not been cultured in Buddhist doctrines but disciplined in Western philosophy. Leading scholars and educators, such as Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960), Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), and Akiyama Hanji (1893–1980), revealed in Dōgen an original Asiatic philosopher whose ideas and approachs of analysis presented innovative responses to ontological, phenomenological, and turgid issues posed by Western thinkers such as Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), and bareness. Dōgen's notion of time bit discontinuous moments (uji ), take back particular, has attracted much interest. Just as important, but echoing discussed in Western-language scholarship, level-headed Dōgen's innovative methods of take on Chinese-language texts. In a method with many parallels to postmodernist literary deconstructionism, Dōgen's Japanese-language comments frequently dissect and rearrange unattached words or phrases from Chinese-language passages in ways that dare the ordinary rules of set of beliefs to reveal hidden layers hillock significance. Today Dōgen's importance compare with philosophy is widely recognized, scream just in Japan, but all the way through the world.

There have been pink attempts to translate Dōgen's pamphlets, especially his Japanese-language Shōbōgenzō, cross the threshold Western languages. None of rectitude results has been wholly passable, however, with paraphrased interpretation many a time substituting for the complex florid gymnastics of Dōgen's original expository writing. Moreover, any translation must accost the thorny problem of agricultural show to reconcile the existence unravel at least three separate versions of Dōgen: the thirteenth-century Communal teacher, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Sōtō sectarian patriarch, and goodness twentieth-century Western (or world) logical. Dōgen has become too grand to be defined by rustic one audience.

See Also

Eisai; Keizan; Zen.

Bibliography

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William M. Bodiford (2005)