that he was given the Buddhist name Dogen, which means “Foundation of the Way.” The young novice hoped that as a monk he would find answers to the questions he had been dwelling upon since his mother’s funeral.
The normal training for Tendai novices focused on the study of Buddhist sutras. Dogen was well versed in the Chinese language and took to the study easily. But although he found wisdom in those scriptures, he still felt they were abstract and far removed from the actual world in which people were born, lived, suffered, and died.
The sutras asserted that all sentient beings had Buddha-nature, but this was accepted as a tenet of faith and was not understood as something one had to aspire to realize for oneself. For Dogen, however, that teaching posed a problem. If all beings had Buddha-nature and thus—as the Buddha himself declared at the time of his enlightenment—all beings were inherently perfect, then why had it been necessary for the Buddha to strive to attain awakening, and why had the old Indian, Bodhidharma, spent nine years gazing at a wall at Shaolin Monastery in China? If one were already a Buddha, why did the masters of old have to make such efforts to become aware of their Buddha-nature?
This problem obsessed Dogen; his biographers have described it as a natural koan that preoccupied him day and night. He presented his concern to a former Tendai monk, Koin. Koin had also come to the decision that enlightenment could not be attained through academic study and had dedicated himself to the path of Pure Land Buddhism, spending his time in the devout repetition of the nembutsu. Koin was unable to answer the younger man’s questions, but he advised him to seek the counsel of Myoan Eisai, who had recently returned from China with teachings from the Zen school.
Dogen traveled to Kenninji and sought an audience with Eisai. He posed his question to the master, “If, as the scriptures assert, all of us already have the Buddha-nature, why is it that the masters of old had to struggle to attain awareness of it?”
Eisai told him, “No Buddha is conscious of having Buddha-nature, only the shallow are aware of it.”
Dogen sensed something profound in that answer, and he asked to be admitted to the monastery. Eisai accepted him as a student. Within a year, however, Eisai died, and Dogen continued studying under Eisai’s successor, Ryonen Myozen.
The Buddhism being taught in Kenninji was an amalgam of Tendai and Shingon with a little Chinese Zen mixed in. Dogen, who was drawn neither to the scholasticism of Tendai nor the ritualism of Shingon, hoped to have his doubts resolved through Zen teachings and practice. Although he had not yet come to Realization, his fervor was such that Myozen acknowledged him as one of his Dharma Heirs. When Myozen determined to follow the example of his master, Eisai, and travel to the Land of Song (as China was then called) in order to study with the Zen masters there, Dogen accompanied him.
They left for the Asian mainland in 1223. It was a rough crossing, and in his journal Dogen chronicled his seasickness and bouts of diarrhea. Once they landed at the port of Mingzhou, only Myozen was allowed to proceed. Dogen was confined to the ship and the dock for three months, perhaps because his papers were not in order or perhaps in medical quarantine. Although he was unable to move about, there was enough traffic at the docks that he learned a great deal about what was happening in the city and country. He was disappointed by what he learned of the apparent state of Buddhism in China. If Japanese Buddhism was still immature and caught up in ritualism and magical rites, the Buddhism of the Land of Song had grown stale and decrepit. Dogen worried that he might not find what he was looking for here.
Then in April, while still living on board the ship, Dogen met a cook (tenzo) from one of the Zen monasteries. The cook had come there hoping to purchase dried Japanese shiitake mushrooms from the ship’s galley. Dogen was struck by the tenzo’s deportment and wanted to quiz the monk about Zen practice. He invited the monk to remain on board that night as his guest. The tenzo declined, explaining that he was the head cook of his monastery and had to return to his duties.
“But would not spending your days in meditation be more profitable than cooking?” Dogen asked.
The tenzo gently suggested that the young Japanese visitor still did not know very much about Zen, and took his leave. Dogen was impressed by the tenzo’s manner and felt more confident that there might yet remain a few pockets of pure Buddhism in China.
Once Dogen was allowed to leave the docks, he followed Myozen to the monastery at Tientong. There he was received by Master Musai Ryoha (Wuji Liaopai) of the Soto School, who introduced him to the practice referred to as “silent illumination” or shikan taza.
Dogen remained at Tientong after Myozen died in 1225. He admired the strict discipline that the monks adhered to, but he was angered that according to their regulations he—as a foreigner—was considered subordinate to native-born novices much younger than he. It was a particularly galling situation for one who had been raised as an aristocrat. He protested that he was Myozen’s heir and that his rank should not be dependent upon his nationality. His protests were not well received and may have made his position at the monastery more difficult than it needed to have been.
When his situation failed to improve, Dogen left Tientong and embarked on a tour of other monasteries, still seeking the awakening or enlightenment experience that he only knew of from his reading. He also familiarized himself with the lineage charts of the various monasteries he visited and became well versed in the history of Chinese Zen. He would bring this respect for accurate records of transmission and succession back to Japan.
In the course of his travels, he had a second encounter with a tenzo. He found an elderly monk working in the heat of the day preparing food. The tenzo was hatless in the sun and walked barefoot over tiles which must have burned, but he showed no sign of discomfort. Dogen asked the monk how old he was, and the monk replied that he was approaching his seventieth year.
“Are there no younger monks who could assist you?” Dogen asked.
“Others are not me,” the tenzo answered. “These are my duties, how can someone else fulfill them?”
“But surely there’s no need to carry them out during the hottest period of the day,” Dogen persisted.
“If not now, when?” the monk asked.
“I can see that you are a man of the way (Dao),” Dogen said. “Please tell me, what is the true Way?”
“The universe has never concealed it,” the cook said and turned back to his work.
The conversation struck Dogen profoundly, and the memory of it would stay with him long after he returned to Japan.
Dogen came back to Tientong despite his displeasure over his status at the monastery. A new abbot had been installed, Tendo Nyojo (Tientong Rujing), and Dogen was greatly impressed by him. Here, he felt, was the “authentic” teacher for whom he had been searching. In later years, he would refer to Nyojo as the “Old Buddha.” Nyojo was a voluble critic of the koan study current in the Chinese Rinzai School that had replaced all other forms of meditation and practice. Dogen would come to share this point of view. Nyojo stressed that formless seated meditation—shikan taza—was the preeminent Buddhist activity. For three years, Dogen stayed with him, dedicating himself to zazen and shikan taza.
Nyojo’s sitting schedule was strenuous. Monks sat from early in the morning until late at night. When they showed signs of resistance, Nyojo upbraided them for the shallowness of their efforts, reminding them of the difficulties of the lives of those who lived outside the monastery, the long hours of labor demanded of farmers and other workers, the dangers associated with the life of a soldier.
The regular sitting schedule was even more onerous during the retreat periods known in Japanese as sesshin. During one such summer retreat, the monks were sitting late into the night, when Nyojo noticed that one had fallen asleep. He roused the monk, then admonished the group: “You