There’s a false claim repeated here that “there are no Japanese Zen lineages.” This lie is used as part of a disinformation campaign and is contingent on conclusions drawn from the misrepresented content of a single book. It relies on the fallacious assumption that the entirety of Japanese Zen hinges on the lineage of one man, Dogen Zenji. These interpretations are historically inaccurate and have no factual basis. The book that's referenced to justify the falsehood is called Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation, in which the author, Carl Bielefeldt, raises questions about the accuracy of accepted accounts of Dogen’s residency at Qingde temple with Rujing(Ju-ching). Bielefeldt goes out of his way throughout his text to stress that there isn’t sufficient evidence to draw any conclusions one way or another from the discrepancies he points out. For example:
The fact that Dogen's "former master, the old Buddha" fails to appear in Ju-ching's collected sayings does not, of course, necessarily mean that the Japanese disciple made him up; Ju-ching's Chinese editors must have had their own principles of selection and interpretation around which they developed their text.
Open-ended speculation like this is consistent throughout his work. Even so, the propagators of this lie presumptuously draw their own conclusions from Bielefeldt's research and state them as objective fact with no evidence to support them and no scholarly backing whatsoever. They go so far as to accuse Dogen of being a liar, a fraud, and even a racist…despite the fact that no claims warranting any of those labels are mentioned anywhere in the text. Bielefeldt actually draws very few concrete conclusions, but one of the few that he does assert directly contradicts these accusations. From the chapter aptly named Conclusion:
Dogen was justified in his selection of zazen as the ultimate expression of enlightened practice by - above all else - the historical fact that each generation of the tradition - from the Seven Buddhas to his own master, Ju-ching - had practiced seated meditation.
I’m confident that Dr Bielefeldt would take issue with the gross misrepresentation of his name and work fabricated by these ideologues. Regardless, I'm not writing this post to argue the validity of Dogen's claims. I'm writing it to illustrate that it doesn't matter. Dogen was far from the only Zen master to spread lineage in Japan. In fact, he was one of the more inconsequential. Many Japanese monks traveled to China to study Chan in the Song dynasty, and Chinese masters were also emigrating to Japan; as illustrated by Steven Heine in his book From Chinese Chan to Japanese Zen:
To give an idea of the remarkable range of diversity among what might seem like a relative handful of newcomers, Heinrich Dumoulin notes that a total of sixteen Chinese missionaries arrived on the islands, while the number of Japanese monks visiting the continent was fifteen during the Southern Song dynasty until 1279, with another fifteen over the next century. “From these Chinese and Japanese masters,” Dumoulin points out, “a total of forty-six different lines of Japanese Rinzai Zen originated.” Another scholar charts even higher numbers of maritime voyagers: “No fewer than 112 Japanese monks traveled to China in the Southern Song dynasty, while in the fourteenth century, between 1300–1350, this number rose to 200.
At least forty-six separate lineages from China are known to have emerged in Japan in the Song, but that number is likely much higher. According to Heine, the Chan transmission to Japan began in the seventh century:
Probably the very first instance of the transmission of Zen to Japan as an autonomous school occurred when the monk Dōshō traveled to China in 653 to study under the eminent Buddhist translator and exegete Xuanzang.
Dōshō was exposed to the Chan school, as cited in his valuable report that served as a precedent influencing the founding of the Japanese Zen sect centuries later. He practiced meditation with a disciple of the second Chan patriarch, Huike, and also met the fourth patriarch, Daoxin. Back in Japan, he opened the first Zen meditation hall in Nara while serving commoners by digging wells, building bridges, and setting up ferry crossings in addition to introducing the custom of cremation, since there was at the time no clear method for providing funerals in Japan.
There was also the eighth century Chinese monk Daoxuan, the first Chan master to emigrate to Japan where he taught Gyohyo, who in turn taught Saicho, the founder of what became the powerful Tendai school. The formal transmission of Chan to Japan didn't really take off until the Song dynasty, however, beginning with a monk named Kakua. He traveled to China in 1171 and received transmission from Huiyuan of Linchi's lineage. He returned to Japan in 1175 and was called upon by the emperor to explain the Zen teaching, where he famously responded by only playing a single note on his flute.
Then came Myoan Eisai, who traveled to China twice, the first time being 50 years before Dogen. On his second visit he received transmission from Xuan Huaichang, "under whom he studied both meditation and the vinaya." He returned to Japan in 1191, and in 1202 became the abbot of the first Japanese Zen monastery, Kennin-ji. (Dogen resided at Kennin-ji for 6 years before he travelled to China.) Eisai is also credited with introducing tea to Japan upon his return. He wrote a book called Propagation of Zen for the Protection of the State which began the explosion of Zen in Japan. Here's a quote:
The Great Hero Shākyamuni's having conveyed this Mind Dharma to his disciple the golden ascetic Mahā Kāshyapa is known as the special transmission outside the scriptures. From their facing one another on Vulture Peak to Mahā Kāshyapa's smile in Cockleg Cave, the raised flower produced thousands of shoots; from this one fountainhead sprang ten thousand streams. In India the proper succession was maintained. In China the dharma generations were tightly linked. Thus has the true dharma as propagated by the Buddhas of old been handed down along with the dharma robe. Thus have the correct ritual forms of Buddhist ascetic training been made manifest. The substance of the dharma is kept whole through master-disciple relationships, and confusion over correct and incorrect monastic decorum is eliminated. In fact, after Bodhidharma, the great master who came from the West, sailed across the South Seas and planted his staff on the banks of the East River in China, the Dharma-eye Zen lineage of Fayan Wenyi was transmitted to Korea and the Ox-head Zen lineage of Niudou Farong was brought to Japan. Studying Zen, one rides all vehicles of Buddhism; practicing Zen, one attains awakening in a single lifetime. Outwardly promoting the moral discipline of the Nirvāna Scripture while inwardly embodying the wisdom and compassion of the Great Perfection of Wisdom Scripture is the essence of Zen.
Following Eisai was his student, Enni Benen, who traveled to China in 1235 to study with Wuzhun Shifan of Yuanwu's lineage, from whom he received transmission in 1241. He then returned to Japan, established several monasteries and birthed an extensive lineage. Here he explains his Zen:
In the school of the ancestral teachers we point directly to the human mind; verbal explanations and illustrative devices actually miss the point. Not falling into seeing and hearing, not following sound or form, acting freely in the phenomenal world, sitting and lying in the heap of myriad forms, not involved with phenomena in breathing out, not bound to the clusters and elements of existence in breathing in, the whole world is the gate of liberation, all worlds are true reality. A universal master knows what it comes to the moment it is raised; how will beginners and latecomers come to grips with it? If you don't get it yet, for the time being we open up a pathway in the gateway of the secondary truth, speak out where there is nothing to say, manifest form in the midst of formlessness.
There was also Shinchi Kakushin, who traveled to China in 1249 and studied with Wumen:
Under Mumon’s direction, Kakushin was introduced to koan practice. He achieved awakening after only six months in China, and won the admiration of his teacher. When it was time for him to return to Japan, Mumon presented him with a hand-written copy of the Mumonkan. It was the first copy to come to Japan. Back in his homeland, Kakushin served at various temples where he trained students using the koans in Mumon’s collection. He also gave public lectures on the first koan in the series—Joshu’s Mu. He was invited to speak on Buddhism to both the reigning and the retired emperors. When the Emperor Go-Uta asked about Zen, Kakushin told him: “A Buddha is one who understands mind. The ordinary fellow does not understand mind. You cannot achieve this by depending upon others. To attain Buddhahood you must look into your own mind.”
He wrote a book of meditation instruction and his lineage produced the great Bassui Tokusho. He was posthumously named National Teacher by Emperor Go-Daigo.
Shortly after Kakushin's journey, a monk named Nanpo Jomyo made the trek to China where he was accepted into the monastery of Xutang Zhiyu, another descendent of Yuanwu. Xutang would go on to teach and certify several other Japanese monks. Nanpo, more famously known in Japan as Daio, received transmission in 1265 and went on to produce the most robust and enduring lineage in Japan, which included Hakuin and Bankei. Nanpo's On Zen:
There is a reality even prior to heaven and earth; Indeed, it has no form, much less a name; Eyes fail to see it; It has no voice for ears to detect; To call it Mind or Buddha violates its nature, For it then becomes like a visionary flower in the air; It is not Mind, nor Buddha; Absolutely quiet, and yet illuminating in a mysterious way, It allows itself to be perceived only by the clear-eyed. It is Dharma truly beyond form and sound; It is Tao having nothing to do with words. Wishing to entice the blind, The Buddha has playfully let words escape his golden mouth; Heaven and earth are ever since filled with entangling briars. O my good worthy friends gathered here, If you desire to listen to the thunderous voice of the Dharma, Exhaust your words, empty your thoughts, For then you may come to recognize this One Essence. Says Hui the Brother, "The Buddha's Dharma Is not to be given up to mere human sentiments.
Then there were the many Chinese masters who emigrated to Japan to teach, all of whom spawned their own lineages. The most notable of these were Lanxi Daolong (1213-1278), Wuan Puning (1197-1276), Daxiu Zheng-nian (1214-1288), and Wuxue Zuyuan (1226-1286).
Here's Lanxi, also from the lineage of Yuanwu, on zazen:
Sitting straight means sitting cross-legged as the Buddhas do; contemplating reality means sitting meditation-forming the symbol of absorption in the cosmos, body and mind unmoving, eyes half-open, watching over the tip of the nose, you should see all compounded things as like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows; don't get hung up in thought about them.
Here Wuxue testifies to his enlightenment after six and a half years of concentrating on the Mu koan:
Thence my joy knew no bounds. I could not quietly sit in the Meditation Hall; I went about with no special purpose in the mountains, walking this way and that. I thought of the sun and moon traversing in a day through a space 4,000,000,000 miles wide. “My present abode is China,” I reflected then, “and they say the district of Yang is the center of the earth. If so, this place must be 2,000,000,000 miles away from where the sun rises; and how is it that as soon as it comes up its rays lose no time in striking my face?” I reflected again, “The rays of my own eye must travel just as instantaneously as those of the sun as it reaches the latter; my eyes, my mind, are they not the Dharmakaya itself?” Thinking thus, I felt all the bounds snapped and broken to pieces that had been tying me for so many ages. How many numberless years had I been sitting in the hole of ants! Today even in every pore of my skin there lie all the Buddha-lands in the ten quarters! I thought within myself, “Even if I have no greater awakening, I am now all-sufficient unto myself.”
These monks also brought Chan monastic regulations and practices. In his Rules of Purity in Japanese Zen,T Griffith Foulk makes this connection:
All of the monks involved in the initial establishment of Zen in Japan were well versed in the Chanyuan ginggui (Rules of Purity for Chan Monasteries),* compiled in 1103 by Changlu Zongze (?-1107?). They were also familiar with the kinds of behavioral guidelines, monastic calendars, ritual manuals, and liturgical texts found in other Song Chinese rulebooks, such as: Riyong ginggui (Rules of Purity for Daily Life); Ruzhong xuzhi (Necessary Information for Entering the Assembly); and Jiaoding qinggui (Revised Rules of Purity), and they used these materials to regulate the new Song-style monasteries they founded in Japan.
The Chanyuan Ginggui cited here as a major text all of these monks were very familiar with was written by the same author and published in conjunction with the Zuochan Yi, which is the "meditation manual" that r/zen sectarians claim Dogen plagiarized for his Fukanzazengi. Not only was this text a staple of Chan monastic study, it was heavily based on Cultivation and Realization According to the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment by Zongmi. Dogen criticized the Zuochan Yi in his writing, but it’s speculated that he used it as a guide to write his treatise on zazen, which according to Bielefeldt, was done "only out of a sense of obligation" after being repeatedly asked to teach people meditation upon his return from China. Meanwhile the Zuochan Yi was being taught in Japan by emigrant Chan masters.
In this context, the question of whether Dogen was a valid dharma heir of the Chan school becomes less and less relevant. The spread of Zen in Japan was already thoroughly underway when he traveled to China, and during his lifetime was being propagated by dozens of his contemporaries. Dogen was a somewhat trivial figure in this regard, and was only elevated to his current status by the Japanese government in modern times, as illustrated by Thomas Cleary in his book Rational Zen:
In nineteenth-century Japan, with the restoration of an imperial Shintō government, suppression of Buddhism intensified to become active repression. Yet, curiously, the imperial Shintō government suddenly decided to award Dōgen the title of “Daishi, or “Great Master,” over six hundred years after his death. This would have been doubly strange had it not been for the fact that Dōgen, as the greatest dialectician ever born in Japan, all at once became important to the Japanese Ministry of Education, as a symbol of nationalistic intellectual pride at a time when it had been hurt by the early encounter with Western rationalism and missionary Christianity. By the early twentieth century, Japanese intellectuals were presenting Dōgen as if he had been a contemporary German academic philosopher, while Japanese religious sectarians were presenting Dōgen as if he had been a contemporary cultist or missionary, whose teaching in either case had little or nothing to do “with the rest of Buddhism, or with the world at large, except the supposed desire to get everyone to follow it.”
Dogen has been molded into the modern standard-bearer for Zen in Japan by government-sanctioned institutions. His emphasis in Zen is a marketing tool, mostly because of the sheer volume of his writings compared to his peers and his mythologized reputation. He’s been presented as the Japanese equivalent to Bodhidharma; the sole transmitter of lineage. It’s due to this overblown status that he’s been the focus of attacks by sectarians. The authenticity of his lineage is something that has been and will continue to be debated ad nauseum with no evidentiary resolution on either side, but it isn’t the linchpin of Japanese Zen that it’s claimed it to be…to the point where country of origin is used as a standard for approval of content permitted to be posted in this subreddit. Not a single Japanese lineage is listed in the sub’s wiki. There are dozens of lineages not related to Dogen that flourished in Japan. To represent them all as invalid and the literature they produced as “not Zen” because of blatant misinformation is plainly a disingenuous lie that hides an agenda which on its face can be construed as Chinese nationalism and contempt toward not only Japanese Zen practitioners, but the Japanese culture as a whole. These ideologues openly foster an “us vs them” mentality which they make efforts to delineate by inventing exclusionary labels like “Dogenist” and “Japanese Buddhist” and they regularly refer to Japanese Zen practitioners with condescending derision and mockery. It’s a bigoted movement that is hell-bent on removing the Japanese from Zen legitimacy in the popular zeitgeist and is not in any way based on historical fact; its theories are not accepted or even recognized by a single academic or scholar. Like the other lies pushed by this sect, it seems entirely fueled by an aversion to both meditation and religion, and a deep misunderstanding of both. When their argument against the validity of Japanese lineage is dismantled, all that’s left is subjective judgment and cognitive bias.
Thanks for reading. Here are some lineage charts for the Zen masters referenced in this post.
