Dogen Lied: Dogen Invented Zazen Prayer Meditation, not Buddha or Bodhidharma.

From Bielefeldt's Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation

1. Dogen plagiarized the template for Zazen prayer-meditation from Tso-cha'an, a meditation manual written by persons unknown and inserted to a forged rulebook written by Tsung-tse.

   • "Tso-ch'an [meditation manual] was not written as a part of Tsung-tse's monastic code, we cannot be certain of its date, or, indeed, it's authorship." Bielefeldt, p57
   • "Though Tsung-tse claims that his [text] represents a revision of [Baizhang's] rules... it is unlikely that he knew what those rules were... [and] there is little evidence that [Baizhang] actually produced a set of written regulations and still less that they survived to Tsung-tse's time." Bielefeldt, p.59

2. Dogen claimed that Tsung-tse didn't understand the anonymous mediational manual inserted into his text.

   • "In [Dogen's] "Senjutsu yurai," he takes Tsung-tse to task for failing to transmit [Baizhang's] teachings accurately." Bielefeldt, p58

3. Dogen claimed Buddha and Bodhidharma practiced Zazen prayer-meditation.

   • "Even in the case of that old one, Shakyamuni, innately wise though he was, there remains the mark of his six years sitting erect; eve the great master Bodhidharma, though he succeeded to the mind seal, left the trace of his nine years facing the wall." Bielfeldt, p176

I am also astonished that people take Dogen seriously at all; indeed, FukanZazenGi was only the first major fraud of his career, Dogen went on to lie and plagiarize even more during his short life.

Then again, I don't understand why anyone would take Scientology or Mormonism seriously, and lots of people do. Dogen, L. Ron Hubbard, and Joseph Smith belong to a rare club: cult leaders of tremendous popular appeal.

Still, regardless of the act of faith and the moral lobotomy that Dogen's cult requires, it seems unreasonable that any person claiming to be sincere would put forward Dogen teachings as anything related to Zen, any more than Scientology is related to science. Cult teachings come from the minds of disturbed individuals, and those that encourage others to be taken in by cults can't be seen as much different.

Submitted December 12, 2017 at 05:36AM by ewk http://ift.tt/2Bbo4dP