words finally brought Dogen to a deep awakening. When it was time for the monks to attend dokusan, individual meetings with the teacher, Dogen strode into the room confidently and lit a stick of incense, an act reserved for rituals or significant celebrations.
“What is the point of this incense?” Nyogo demanded.
“I have discarded body and mind,” Dogen said.
“You have discarded body and mind. Body and mind have indeed been discarded.”
“Don’t confirm me so easily,” Dogen protested. “It may be no more than a temporary delusion.”
“I’m not confirming you so easily,” Nyojo said.
“Then show me you aren’t.”
“This is body and mind discarded,” Nyojo said, demonstrating what he meant.
Dogen bowed.
“And that is discarding discarded,” Nyojo remarked.
“The great matter of my life has been resolved,” Dogen declared.
“It is no small thing for a barbarian (a foreigner) to come to such a great awakening,” Nyojo told him.
Nyojo was so impressed with the depth of Dogen’s awakening that he acknowledged the younger man as his Dharma Heir. Dogen stayed at the monastery for a while longer, deepening his understanding, and providing a model for future Japanese Soto and Rinzai masters who would remain in training long after their initial awakening.
Nyojo invited him to remain at Tientong as his assistant. Dogen was honored by the offer but declined it.
In 1227, he decided it was time to return to Japan and did so—as he put it—“with empty hands.” Whereas previous visitors, like the monk Saicho, had returned from the Land of Song with copies of sutras and Buddhist artifacts, Dogen brought back only a portrait of Nyojo, the documents of succession which traced his teaching lineage back to Bodhidharma and beyond to the Buddha himself, and the ashes of Ryonen Myozen.
When asked what he had learned during his time in China, his self-deprecating reply was:
—that the eyes are horizontal and the nose is vertical; thus I am unable to be deceived by others. There is not even a hair of Buddhism in me. Now I pass the time naturally. The sun rises in the east every morning, and every night the moon sets in the west. When the clouds clear, the outline of the mountains appears, and as the rain passes away, the surrounding mountains bend down. What is it after all? (5)
When he returned to Kenninji in Kyoto in order to bury Myozen’s ashes, he was discouraged by what he found there. Living conditions, for example, were much more luxurious than the Spartan accommodations he had been familiar with in China. However, he did start to introduce others to the Zen teachings he had acquired, and it was here that he wrote a short work called Fukanzazengi (Universal Recommendations for the Practice of Zazen).
The Fukanzazengi is a primer on Zen practice. Dogen felt he was introducing Japanese students to true zazen practice for the first time, so the instructions he provided were very exact. One must, he wrote, follow the examples of the Buddha and Bodhidharma who both committed themselves to prolonged meditation practice.
—you must suspend your attempts to understand by means of scrutinizing words, reverse the activity of the mind that seeks externally, and illuminate your own true nature. Mind and body will fall off spontaneously, and your original face will be revealed. . . .
For zazen, you will need a quiet room. Eat and drink in moderation. Forget about the concerns of the day and leave such matters alone. Do not judge things as good or evil, and cease such distinctions as “is” and “is not.” Halt the flow of the mind, and cease conceptualizing, thinking, and observing. Don’t sit in order to become a Buddha, because becoming a Buddha has nothing to do with such things as sitting or lying down. (6)
He describes in detail the instructions for placing a cushion on a mat and sitting upon it in either the traditional full lotus posture (with legs crossed and both feet resting on the thighs of the opposite legs) or half-lotus posture (with only one foot resting on the opposite thigh). He describes the proper alignment of the body, how to hold the hands in the lap (thumb tips touching), and stresses the importance of keeping the eyes open. Finally one is to regulate the breath (taking long deep breaths, following a natural rhythm), and, sitting “firmly and resolutely,” one thinks “about the unthinkable. How do you think about the unthinkable? Non-thinking. These are the essentials of zazen.” (7)
As Dogen began to attract students, he also attracted the enmity of other schools of Buddhism; the Tendai even attempted to have their rivals suppressed by government intervention. Dogen chose to avoid confrontation and left Kyoto for a small community south of the city. There he found an abandoned hermitage, Anyoin, where he was free to gather disciples. As their number increased, a larger temple—dedicated to Kannon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion—was built to accommodate them. Soon Dogen was overseeing a growing monastic community. His chief disciple and head monk was Koun Ejo.
Later, at the invitation of a supporter, he relocated a third time to Fukui Prefecture north of Kyoto where he established Eiheiji. Although the original buildings have since been destroyed, Eiheiji remains, along with Sojiji, one of the two primary temples of the Soto Sect in Japan.
It was at Kannondori and Eiheiji that Dogen composed most of the essays that would later be brought together in his literary masterwork, the Shobogenzo. The title means “The True Eye of the Dharma”—the “eye of the Dharma” which, in the apocryphal tale, Gautama Buddha had passed on to the monk Kasyapa thus starting the Zen tradition.
The Sobogenzo is a collection of ninety-two essays on a wide variety of topics. It was written not in Chinese—the preferred ecclesiastical language of Buddhist writings in Japan—but in the vernacular. There are instructions on the proper form of meditation; there is a chapter of instructions to monastic cooks, doubtless inspired by the two tenzos Dogen had met in China; there are essays which express Dogen’s understanding of basic Buddhist teachings.
Throughout the collection, Dogen maintains that practice and enlightenment are one. The Buddha had taught that all beings, just as they are, are whole and perfect, that all beings had “Buddha-nature” even though they were not aware of it. In a similar vein, Dogen asserts that while seated in meditation, enlightenment is present, even if the individual is unaware of it. All one needs to do is to forget the “self” (one’s personality), and the larger Self (Buddha-nature) is present.
The essay entitled Genjokoan, provides an example of Dogen’s style and teaching.
Studying the Buddha Way is studying oneself. Studying oneself is forgetting oneself. Forgetting oneself is being enlightened by all things. Being enlightened by all things is causing the body-mind of oneself and the body-mind of others to be shed. There is ceasing the traces of enlightenment, which causes one to forever leave the traces of enlightenment which is cessation.
When people first seek the Teaching, they are far from the bounds of the Teaching. Once the Teaching is properly conveyed in oneself, already one is the original human being. . . .
People’s attaining enlightenment is like the moon reflected in water. The moon does not get wet, the water isn’t broken. Though it is a vast expansive light, it rests in a little bit of water—even the whole moon, the whole sky, rests in a dewdrop on the grass, rests in even a single droplet of water. . . .
—when one rides a boat out onto the ocean where there are no mountains and looks around, it only appears round, and one can see no other, different characteristics. However, this ocean is not