Theology

Dogen

1200 to 1253 CE, Kyoto and Eiheiji, Japan

The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye - that practice is itself realization, that body and mind drop away, that the mountains are always walking, and that all beings are Buddha-nature.

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Lessons

The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye

Dōgen’s journey to China, his return ‘empty-handed,’ his founding of Sōtō Zen and the great monastery Eiheiji, and the Shōbōgenzō - the ‘Treasury of the True Dharma Eye,’ a vast body of teaching written in Japanese, nam…

Practice Is Realization

Dōgen’s doctrine of shushō-ittō : enlightenment is not a prize won after long practice, but is fully present within practice itself. To sit is not a means to become a buddha later; it is the buddha’s own realization, en…

Dropping Off Body and Mind

Dōgen’s phrase shinjin datsuraku - ‘body and mind dropped away’ - the words from his awakening under Rujing, and what it means for the whole grasping self, the very division of body from mind, to fall off like a shed sk…

The Mountains Are Always Walking

Dōgen’s Sansuikyō , the ‘Mountains and Waters Sūtra’: the claim that nature itself is scripture, that ‘the green mountains are always walking,’ and that self and world are not two - the landscape is the living body of t…

All Beings Are Buddha-Nature

Dōgen’s radical rereading of a line from the Nirvāṇa Sūtra: not that beings have Buddha-nature as a hidden possession, but that all beings, all existence itself, are Buddha-nature - and that impermanence, not some etern…

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