"One of the main common features in the narratives about Marco Polo and Dōgen is that an inexperienced, uninformed foreigner is plucked from obscurity and placed in a position of great respect and responsibility by the mainstream system, whether that is secular/political or religious/monastic, which gives their observations of the Chinese religious and social orders great weight and authority. The respective narratives are driven by the high status of the foreign visitors awarded by China, and this element is what also makes them rather questionable. Could it really have happened in this way? In Dōgen’s case, is it plausible that a young monk from Japan, who was at first not even allowed into the summer retreat program because he lacked the prerequisite precepts, was at the time of his mentor Myõzen’s death, which left him in an even more vulnerable position in terms of the monastic system, invited by the abbot of a Five Mountains temple to come to his private quarters and offered the chance to become the head monk?""
https://www.reddit.com//r/zen/wiki/secular_dogen
This is cheeky right? Foreigners often gain status in institutions.
Submitted December 16, 2019 at 11:37PM by AbjectEntrance https://ift.tt/2RX8Ot6
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