Meta: Zen v/s Dogen Buddhism's Obsession with Meditation... via Carl Bielefeldt!

It turns out that there is no link between Zen and FukanZazenGi, or between Dogen and any Zen Master, including Rujing.

1. Dogen based his meditation manual, FukanZazenGi, on a meditation manual that has no link to Zen; Zen Masters never produced a meditation manual.

   Bielefeldt: "Yet there remains a sense in which we have not fully come to grips with the historical character and the religious problematic of the meditation tradition in which they occur. We are often told, for example, that Zen Buddhism takes its name from the Sanskrit dhyana... and that the school has specialised in the practice[of meditation], but we are rarely told just how this specialization is related to the many striking disclaimers, found throughout the writings of Chan and Zen... to the effect that the religion has nothing to do with [meditation]."

2. Dogen claimed that he studied Zen with Rujing, a Zen Master, however, Dogen doesn't seem to know anything about Rujing:

   We do have, however, a collection of [Rujing's] recorded sayings, compiled by his Chinese students and preserved in Japan; yet the Rujing of this text bears scam resemblance to the man Dogen recalls as his former master..."

   .

   "It would be easier to dismiss our doubts about Dégcn’s claims for his master [Rujing] and to accept the traditional account of the origins of his claims were it not for the fact that these claims do not appear in his writings until quite late in [Dogen's] life.

So if Dogen's bible isn't related to Zen at all, and Dogen never studied Zen, then how can Dogen's religion have anything to do with Zen?

Dogen's followers try to get around the historical facts by trying to link any mention of sitting to religious meditation.

Submitted June 02, 2019 at 05:36AM by ewk http://bit.ly/2QDjoTo