Scholarship Corner: Dogen in Heine's book on Zen from China to Japan

 Verdict: Not worth the money 

https://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Chan-Japanese-Zen-Transformation/dp/0190637501

Heine doesn't seem ready to address the controversy surrounding Dogen.

Heine repeats that Dogen studied with Rujing, ignoring the scholarship of the last thirty years from Bielefeldt, which culminated in Sharf's admission that non-sectarian scholars now admit Dogen invented Zazen:

The [Dogenism] school holds that shikantaza [Zazen] originated in China and was transmitted to the founder of [Dogenism], Dōgen Kigen 道元希玄 (1200–1253), by his Chinese teacher Tiantong Rujing 天童如淨 (1163–1228). However, the term shikantaza does not appear in surviving Chinese documents, and most nonsectarian scholars now approach [Zazen] “simply sitting” as a Japanese innovation... (Sharf, Mindfulness and Mindlessness in Early Chan, 2014)

The problem that scholars who abandon Heine's apologetics (and the money that comes with it) are going to have to face a new problem after admitting Dogen did, in fact, invent Zazen prayer-meditation: Lying.

Dogen clearly lied about Zazen in FukanZazenGi, claiming it was from Buddha and Bodhidharma. Lying breaks the Precepts. Lying betrays a desire to manipulate people rather than allow them to decide for themselves.

Lying is what cult leaders do.

So Dogen's having lied about Zazen, which the non-sectarian community now agrees on, is only the first problem in understanding what Dogen's religion is really all about. The breaking of precepts for the purpose of gaining authority defines Zazen until somebody has the courage to stand up to Dogen from within his church. Much like Dogen's sex predators from hundreds of years later, we have to ask if religious figures who get caught lying can claim to be the authority on anything.

Submitted September 01, 2022 at 11:21AM by ewk https://ift.tt/2MESaIF