Dōgen (1200-1253) is without doubt one of the most important thinkers in Japanese intellectual history. In 2016, the physicist Adam Frank called him “the greatest philosopher you’ve never heard of” and he may have been right at the time, but meanwhile more and more people have discovered Dōgen, including many of those, who are not engaged in the disciplines of comparative philosophy or Japanese studies at all. Indeed, Dōgen has started to resound not only with people interested in the metaphysics of time and self, but also with those engaged in ecological and post-anthropocentric thought and even management theory. And he has things to say that are relevant for all these areas, and more. At the same time, his ideas continue to be vigorously debated in both academic and Buddhist scholalry circles, since his writings are notoriously difficult and ambiguous. All in all, Dōgen is a major figure in world philosophy who deserves much more attention than he has received up to now.

Dōgen was born at a complicated historical moment and in the epicentre of the Japanese culture of the time, as a son of a politically well-connected aristocrat from a family with poetic traditions. He was something of a prodigy and excelled at both traditional learning and literary arts from a very early age, and his relatives hoped he would embark on a career at the imperial court. Nonetheless, the country was torn by civil wars, as samurai clans were fighting for supremacy, and the future of anyone was very uncertain, high-ranking nobility included. Seeing that the sunset of traditional court culture was at hand, Dōgen’s mother insisted on her deathbed that he take monastic vows, and that he did.

Soon enough, Dōgen discovered, however, that Buddhist learning was in a state of decay not unlike the court. His teachers turned out to be unable to support him in his intellectual quest and directed him to another temple, in which a trendy new Chinese import called Chan (or Zen in Japanese) was taught. From there, Dōgen received the advice to go to study in China, but even on the mainland his search continued for about three years, before he settled down with Rujing (1163-1228), a kind, but austere master of the Caodong (Sōtō) lineage, which emphasized simple seated meditation over the cracking of counterintuitive riddles called “public cases”, or kōan, the main instructional tool in the dominant Linji (Rinzai) monasteries.

After two years of study with Rujing, the master acknowledged Dōgen’s englightenment and soon thereafter he returned to Japan, full of hope. What he found was an intellectual scene in turmoil, with various movements vying for the support of powerful sponsors. Dōgen, too, started to look for backing, but though his fame as an accomplished teacher spread quickly, he was evidently not a master of political intrigue, since most appointments and endowments passed him by, even though his community continued to grow. The years in the Kyōto area, when he had still not given up his hopes of making it in the capital, were probably the most productive ones in Dōgen’s life. He was involved in the construction of his own temple and other practical matters on the one hand, and produced many of his finest essays on the other. Still, to his dismay, the authorities held his rivals in higher esteem. Only in 1243 Dōgen finally accepted the offer of a provincial warrior lord to relocate to the North, to the Echizen province (now a part of Fukui prefecture), where a new splendid temple was built for him. Nonetheless, the writings of Dōgen from his last years gradually start to show a bit of resentment and disappointment, and the philosophical vigour gradually recedes. His health, too, started to decline and in 1253, having returned to Kyōto in search of better medical care, he died soon after his arrival. Among Dōgen’s many works, the central place is held by the Shōbōgenzō, or “The Core Transmission”, written in classical Japanese. The title refers to what Buddha passed on in secret to one of his disciples according to the founding myth of the Chan/Zen school. Many versions exist of this compilation, which contains, in its longest form, 96 essays of varying length, most of which comment on quotes from Buddhist scriptures and sayings by Chinese Chan/Zen masters, from which Dōgen extracts a system of rather extraordinary philosophical insights.

Briefly put, the gist of Dōgen’s teaching consists, on the one hand, in the assertion that there is no gap between (Buddhist) practice and enlightenment, and, on the other, that anything one does can be (Buddhist) practice if done in a proper state of mind. “Buddhist” is in brackets here, because it is a potentially exoticizing label and such labels have no meaning. Practice, in other words, does not consist in the enactment of prescribed rituals, pronouncing of formulae or even adopting correct meditation postures, although the latter can be useful as conduits to the enlightened state of mind, which the practitioner can then transfer to all their other activities as well. Notably, for Dōgen, enlightenment is not a threshold, it is not on the other side of a bridge to be crossed, it is a way of being that is fundamentally ours from the very beginning and only needs to be embraced — some other Buddhist schools are with him up to this point — but it can also be exited, for example, when the tax declaration is due and needs to be seen to. The word Dōgen prefers to use instead of “enlightenment” can be more appropriately translated as “acknowledgment” — it is the state of mind in which we are able to acknowledge the entirety of being as it is, and let ourselves be acknowledged by it in turn, with our egos dissolving in it as a result. Reality as such is non-dual, but the label “non-dual” is itself paradoxical, because in order to point to its meaning, it has to make use of precisely the thing that it denies, the concept of binarity or dualism. But if it is something that can be opposed to dualism, then it becomes a part of a binary opposition pair, which is precisely the kind of thing that needs to be left behind. The system of metaphysics of time, change and process that Dōgen has developed to ground his views is way too complicated to be discussed here in detail, especially as intense discussions are going on regarding its finer points. It doesn’t really help that Dōgen is notoriously subversive in his use of language and treatment of other authors. However, it is certainly fair to say that his thought has anticipated quite a few of the ideas of some late 20th century philosophers, whose names also start with the letter D, and is thus certainly worthy of study, also for contemporary readers, including those who have little or no interest in Zen or Buddhism in general.

My translations from the passages of Dōgen’s texts have been lightly modified here for ease of reading.

Rein Raud