Zazen Prayer-meditation was a cult practice invented by Dogen and falsely linked with Zen - Historical Fact

...and since this is establish, unchallenged fact, why would anyone lie about it?

What would be the point to lying about a church's historical facts? Like this guy?

1. Dogen wrote FukanZazenGi, the bible of Zazen prayer-meditation, after returning from what Dogen claimed was a trip to China. (There is no evidence that Dogen actually went... and no evidence that Dogen could speak Chinese.)

2. Dogen mentions only three names in FukanZazenGi (a huge red flag to historians and anybody who knows how cult leaders operate)... Buddha, Bodhidharma, and... Dogen himself. It's a "direct transmission" type situation.

3. 40% of FukanZazenGi was a word for word copy of a meditation manual written 100 years previously, author unknown, that was an insert into a book with no proven connection to Zen at all.

4. Dogen would later say that the author of that book, who may or may not have written the insert (but likely Dogen thought he did) did NOT understand the method himself; Dogen claimed only he, Dogen, was able to master the method.

5. Dogen's Zazen prayer-meditation deviates from the plagiarized meditation manual in one significant way... Dogen claims in his bible that the only gate is Zazen prayer-meditation, and the gate is only passable while in prayer... that is, you aren't enlightened unless you are praying.

6. This interpretation is the basis of Shunryu Suzuki's branch of Dogen Buddhism, and why Shunryu Suzuki said there are no enlightened people, only enlightened actions. Presumably that was before Shunryu claimed he gave dharma transmission to Richard Baker, who then used his position of authority to have sex with students while lying to his congregation which would have been a problem except that Thich Hahn "totally thought he was sorry" for doing that stuff.

Dogen's "creative process" (aka plagiarism) is detailed in a book by Stanford Scholar Carl Bielefeldt, who provides a word by word comparison between the inserted pamphlet and two versions of Dogen's FukanZazenGi.

Submitted May 06, 2020 at 07:07PM by ewk https://ift.tt/3dq1TQP