The Single Most Important Thing to Keep in Mind When Studying Dogen Zenji

Studying the teachings of Dogen can be difficult. Why?

It's really simple – we're very likely not as blissfully awake as he was. Yet difficulty in studying Dogen can be an opportunity to illuminate the limitations of our dharma clarity, especially post-kensho, and continually open the Way of awakening.

For some, much of Dogen's writing, as one student recently pointed out, is really an extended ecstatic song of awakening (think Rumi). Granted, this is not how Dogen is seen in much of contemporary Soto Zen. Nonetheless, I'll be offering bits and pieces of one such song of ecstasy in this post. I'll briefly present how I see one aspect of Dogen's teaching and leave it for you to come to your own conclusions. And I'll wrap it up with a short note on "how to do it," citing another of Dogen's crabbier songs of awakening.

Talk on Negotiating the Way

One of Dogen's most often quoted writings these days is his Talk on Negotiating The Way (Bendowa, 辨道話). Dogen wrote Bendowa when he was 32, just five years after his great awakening. Surprisingly, given Bendowa's depth and power, for reasons unknown, he didn't include it in any compilations of his works (i.e., the various collections of Shobogenzo, The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye). In fact, Bendowa was ignored by almost everyone for most of the first 600 years of Soto Zen in Japan.

However, Bendowa is one of Dogen's most ecstatic songs (and that might be the reason it was downplayed by Dogen and mostly ignored by others until fairly recently, or so speculates Tetsugan Sensei). He really let go in this short piece, particularly in the center section, "The Self-fulfillment Samadhi" (Jijuyu-sanmai, 自受用) now often chanted as a stand-alone text.

Dogen's expression of awakening is so free here that it's easy to misunderstand and think that he's saying that awakening is not important and/or that we're all already awake. Despite what you may have heard, these views are not supported by a careful reading of this text, or by Dogen's views in general.

However, orthodoxies like the Post-Meiji Soto Orthodoxy (PMSO) do not arise from careful study, but from the desire to appeal, appease, and assure a constituency. In fact, the differences between the Japanese Soto and Rinzai schools are much overstated in the West. For example, see this from T. Griffith Foulk, a person who trained in monasteries of both flavors of Zen, from Dogen and Soto Zen:

So rather than believe what you've been told about Dogen, let's look at what he himself wrote. As much as possible, set aside your notions of Dogen that have been conditioned by the PMSO and look directly into his eyes of bliss, his samadhi of enjoying and using the self.

Dogen begins Bendowa straightforwardly

The phrase, "[...] To negotiate the Way," reflects Dogen's persistent interest in how to actually live the buddhadharma (aka, the awake truth). "[...] Discerning all things in view of enlightenment," of course, requires that a person has arrived at some enlightenment. Otherwise, we see things in view of delusion. But the next part is vital too, because when there is a view of enlightenment, we then must put
"[...] such a unitive awareness into practice."

This is the urgently practical side of Zen. By the way, the unitive awareness could also be called "One Mind." Speaking of which, here's a reminder (last I heard, their were spaces still available):

To continue with Dogen's One Mind, without putting the unitive awareness into practice, a cranky Zen teacher might say, "Oh, you've attained the view of enlightenment, all right, just like old Shakyamuni moldering away under the bodhi tree. How nice for you."

In other words, if you've had a taste of awakening and don't put it to work in the details of daily life, you are not practicing with integrity. Now, if you are inclined not to just rest on your enlightened laurels, but instead uphold the vow to liberate all beings, where specifically are you going to put this unitive awareness to use? Where else but "[...] in the midst of the re-valuated world."

In other words, all (and only) awakened dharma practice is "Engaged Buddhism." This view also differs from what is generally promulgated on social media these days, where Engaged Buddhism is mostly about progressive moralism rather than awake-ism. From Dogen's view, to make the claim that you're doing Engaged Buddhism requires that the practitioner have at least a taste of awakening. And then engages the re-valuated world, putting the awakening to use to benefit beings, of course. That might appear as left, right, center, or even neutral (and certainly has in the broad scope of Buddhist history), depending on the circumstances.

Just to be clear, I tend toward the far left and am strongly opposed to the present genocide in Gaza, the killings-by-bombing in Iran, and much of the stupidity that's rampant nowadays.

But the dharma point here is that the turned-around world, including the self, is re-valuated through the experience of awakening. Before kensho, we might have thought that the world was a shit hole, but with awakening we discover that, as Dogen says, "The grass, trees, and earth affected by this functioning radiate great brilliance together and endlessly expound the deep, wondrous dharma." Shit holes, too.

Radiate! Brilliance! Wondrous!

Get the feeling?

So Dogen's Talk on Negotiating The Way is about post-awakening training. He even tells us directly that this is the case:

What he's describing is what all Ancestors and Buddhas do – not just anybody, full of themselves, who wanders into a Zen center and plops down on a zafu. What Ancestors and Buddhas do in the samadhi of receiving and using the self (another way to translate "self-fulfillment") is to open up enlightenment. It makes no sense to say that you can open up that which isn't already the condition of your body-mind. So, again, Dogen is describing post-kensho training.

Why does Dogen, in this early stage of his teaching, skip over kensho and go right to post-kensho training? Well, in this piece of writing, he hides it in beauty and bliss, but doesn't completely skip over it. He says,

The "When" here is important. Dogen doesn't argue that everyone is awake. He reports that [...] "When one displays the Buddha seal with one's whole body and mind...." The Buddha seal is that which is whole, harmonized, perfect and complete lacking nothing. It is realizing Mu.

It might also be helpful to note that for Dogen, the words "sitting" and "zazen" (i.e., sitting zen) are used as rhetorical devices to refer to awakening. In his zazen instructions, he asks, "How could this sit or lie down?" (豈物坐臥乎) If you sit (i.e., awaken) in just one nen (moment of thought), then all space in the universe is awakened. Dogen here is not offering a philosophical or doctrinal position, but reporting from within intimate awakening.

How to do it?

For the past couple months, Tetsugan Sensei has been pressing Vine students who ask "how?" questions to do it instead of hedging by asking about it. That is to receive and actualize it (jikige joto) now.

"It's like standing on the edge of a dock," she says, "and asking how to experience the water below. You simply have to dive in."

Likewise, it is well-known that Dogen taught the oneness of practice and enlightenment (the "how to do it" and the fruit of doing it). However, in the "Self-fulfillment Samadhi," he just says,

Saying that practice and enlightenment are not different as people commonly perceive allows for the possibility that they are also not one as people commonly believe. The relationship is more like two foci, in constant conversation.

Dogen unpacks this further in Talking of Mind, Talking of Nature, (Sesshin Sessho, 説心説性) written 12 years after Bendowa:

In this passage we find Dogen speaking as if practice and enlightenment were different. There is, again, a sense of time with "After we have brought forth...." Dogen's view here is that we first arouse the mind of awakening, then perform difficult practices. It is notable that Dogen uses the phrase "difficult practices" (Japanese, nangyo, 難行), referring to arduous, austere training without regard for physical comfort or enjoyment, and also the renunciation of worldly affairs.

This is not the Dogen of the easy-going way of the PMSO.

After arousing the Way-seeking mind, wholeheartedly doing difficult practice moment after moment, then there is sudden awakening. We "hit it" due to an encounter with a teacher or a sutra (or something else). Dogen recognizes that this one hit is the fruit of receiving the instructions for practice, implementing them, being disrupted by a teacher or a sutra, and finally verifying through awakening.

So practice is a means to an end after all. At least, that's the starting point as Dogen then goes on to riff about numerous possible relationships between practice and awakening.

But let's keep it simple – how to do it? Just wholeheartedly perform difficult practices and don't look around. Just jump into the lake so that "[...] all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment."

You too can be a one-hit wonder.

Mid-year note to subscribers

Thank you for your support so far in 2025!

Vine of Obstacles Zen will be on a mid-year hiatus for a bit, so look for the next post on July 14. Given that I'm into my 70th year, I've been doing some dharma study and more reflection than usual on the topic of death. The next post will share about that theme in a way I've yet to determine.

Meanwhile, you are invited to check out "Shake Out Your Sleeves And Go" on Substack (a wild and crazy plan to bring some non-therapeutic Zen to those environs), with this recent post:

This week at "Shake Out Your Sleeves And Go," I'll be sharing my interview with Meido Moore Roshi, "The Shockingly Direct Path of Zen: A Conversation with Meido Moore Roshi."

The next Vine Sunday practice session, open to paid subscribers, will be on July 20.