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WorkDōgen

Treasury of the True Dharma Eye

Nearly a hundred essays Dōgen wrote in Japanese over twenty-two years; his own school once tried to stop them being printed.

by Dōgen1,507 passages held

  • Japanese, the original language
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Original title
正法眼藏
Original language
Japanese

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Overview

In 1722 the Sōtō school, the school that traces itself to Dōgen, moved to stop this book being printed, and the edition that made it generally available came only in 1815, when Eihei-ji, the monastery he founded, issued it from woodblocks. Dōgen wrote its fascicles — essays and talks for his monks — between 1231 and his death in 1253, and he wrote them in Japanese at a time when Zen writing in Japan was done in classical Chinese. He grouped them into collections himself but never fixed one order for all of them. Two early collections survive, of seventy-five fascicles and of twelve; the arrangement of some ninety-five fascicles goes back to Hangyō Kōzen, an abbot of Eihei-ji in the late seventeenth century, and to the printed edition built on his work. The argument running through it is that practice and awakening are one: sitting in meditation does not lead to enlightenment as a means leads to an end, it is enlightenment being carried out. Dōgen presses the claim through the classic texts and bends their grammar to do it. Where the Nirvana Sutra says that all living beings have Buddha-nature, he reads it as saying that all beings are Buddha-nature. In "Uji", being-time, he argues that time is not a container things pass through but the being of each thing. In late fascicles he turns on monks who say that the awakened stand outside cause and effect, and insists on karma. For centuries the work mattered mostly inside the Sōtō school. In 1926 the philosopher Watsuji Tetsurō published "Shamon Dōgen", The Monk Dōgen, an essay that claimed it for the history of Japanese thought; Nishida Kitarō and Tanabe Hajime of the Kyoto school took it up, and scholars abroad have since read it beside Heidegger.

Key concepts

What does Dōgen mean by the oneness of practice and realisation?

Shushō ittō, the oneness of practice and realisation, is the claim that sitting in meditation is not a means to awakening but awakening carried out. Practice happens on the ground of realisation, so even a beginner's effort is the whole of it. Dōgen calls the opposite view, practice first and realisation later, the view of outsiders to the Buddha's teaching.

What is dropping off body and mind?

Shinjin datsuraku, dropping off body and mind, is Dōgen's phrase for what happens in true sitting: the sense of a self that owns a body and a mind falls away, and with it the gap between the sitter and everything else. It is not losing consciousness. In the essay on the realised kōan it is the last step of forgetting the self and being confirmed by all things.

What is genjōkōan, the realised kōan?

Genjōkōan, the title of one of the best-known essays, means the kōan that is present and realised: reality itself as the case to be resolved, here and now, rather than an old story set by a teacher. Its examples are everyday ones: a fish swims and finds no end to the water, a bird flies and finds no end to the sky.

What is uji, being-time?

Uji, being-time, is Dōgen's reading of a common phrase meaning 'at a certain time' as 'being is time'. Things do not sit in a stream of time that flows past them; each thing, the pine, the bamboo, a person at a given moment, is a time of its own. Time therefore does not only fly away: each moment is complete in its own place.

What is the difference between not falling into and not being blind to cause and effect?

The two phrases come from the old story of the fox. A monk said the awakened do not fall into cause and effect and was reborn as a fox; a later master answered that they are not blind to it, and the fox was freed. Dōgen insists the two answers are not equal: the first denies karma, the second accepts it with open eyes.

What is face-to-face transmission?

Menju, face-to-face transmission, is Dōgen's term for the way the teaching passes: from a living master to a student in person, not through texts alone. He holds that this chain runs unbroken from the Buddha to his own teacher in China, and that a succession document records it but does not replace it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Practice Is Awakening

Most religious paths treat practice as the road and awakening as the destination. What changes if the sitting is already the arrival, and a beginner's first effort is the whole of realisation, is the claim the essays press from every side.

To think practice and realisation are two, Dōgen writes, is the view of outsiders; in the Buddha's teaching they are one, so even a beginner's practice is the whole of original realisation. Studying the Buddha way is studying the self, studying the self is forgetting the self, and forgetting the self is being confirmed by all things. Awakening is like the moon in water: the moon does not get wet, the water is not broken. He tells his monks simply to sit and let body and mind drop away.

  • practice
  • realization
  • awakening
  • buddhist practice
  • meditation
  • zazen
  • embodiment

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Being-Time and Buddha-Nature

Dōgen bends the grammar of the sutras until familiar sentences say something new. What time, change and Buddha-nature become when they are read that way is the most daring part of the book.

Where the Nirvana Sutra says all living beings have Buddha-nature, Dōgen reads: all that exists is Buddha-nature. In 'Uji', being-time, time is not a container things pass through but the being of each thing: the pine is time, the bamboo is time, and time should not be understood only as flying away. Firewood becomes ash and does not turn back into firewood; birth is one position in time and death another, like winter and spring. The mountains, quoting an old master, are always walking, and a painted rice cake is not simply useless.

  • time
  • buddha-nature
  • buddhahood
  • perception
  • nonduality
  • language
  • interpretation
  • impermanence
  • mind

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No Escape From Cause and Effect

Does an awakened person still fall under the law of karma? Dōgen's late essays answer against those who said the enlightened stand outside cause and effect, and his rules for daily monastic life follow from the answer.

The old story of the monk reborn five hundred times as a fox for saying the awakened do not fall into cause and effect is Dōgen's test case. Earlier readers treated the corrected answer, that they are not blind to cause and effect, as equal to the first; in 'Deep Faith in Cause and Effect' he refuses: denying karma is the wrong view that ruins practice. The same seriousness runs through his essays on washing the face, cleaning the body, chewing the tooth-stick and wearing the robe, where ordinary acts are the practice itself.

  • karma
  • monastic discipline
  • renunciation
  • ritual
  • ritual practice
  • liberation
  • compassion

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Handed On Face to Face

Dōgen claims the true teaching has passed from the Buddha in an unbroken line, person to person. What that line guarantees, and whom it lets teach, is argued in essays on succession documents, the robe and bowing to whoever has attained the way.

The teaching, for Dōgen, is not found in books alone but received face to face from a master who received it the same way, and he describes the succession documents he saw in China. Yet transmission does not follow rank, age or sex. In 'Bowing and Getting the Marrow' he cites Zhaozhou: if a child of seven is wiser than I am, I will ask the child; if a man of a hundred is less wise, I will teach him. Whoever has the way, man or woman, is to be bowed to as a teacher.

  • transmission
  • lineage
  • dharma transmission
  • teacher-student relationship
  • religious authority
  • teaching
  • scripture

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Within this work

passages held
1,507
distinct concepts
841
by passages held, corpus-wide
#39

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “awakening” and “practice”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 27 pairings. 80 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
awakeningpractice47
buddhahoodpractice40
nondualitypractice40
nondualityperception35
buddhahoodnonduality34
practicetransmission33
buddha-naturenonduality28
awakeningtransmission25
buddha-naturepractice25
awakeningnonduality24
buddha-natureperception22
awakeningperception19
perceptionpractice19
buddhahoodtransmission17
awakeningbuddhahood16
awakeningbuddha-nature15
nondualitytransmission15
awakeningbuddhist practice12
buddhahoodperception12
buddhahoodbuddhist practice11
buddhist practicenonduality9
buddhist practicetransmission9
buddha-naturetransmission7
buddha-naturebuddhahood6
perceptiontransmission6
buddha-naturebuddhist practice5
buddhist practiceperception5

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Guidelines for Studying the Way (學道用心集)

    Plain counsel for beginners in ten sections, written at Kōshōji, the temple he had opened at Fukakusa the year before.

     JA
  2. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (正法眼藏) you are here JA
  3. Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen (普勸坐禪儀)

    His first writing after coming home from China in 1227, and one he kept revising for at least fifteen years.

     JA
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