Dōgen Zenji

Who was Dōgen Zenji?

Dōgen Zenji, often just Dōgen, lived from 1200 to 1253 and founded the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. He entered the monastery on Mount Hiei as a boy and left it unsatisfied. In 1223, at twenty-four, he sailed to China and trained at Jingde Monastery on Mount Tiantong. Back in Japan he founded Kosho-ji near Kyoto in 1236 and started the Shōbōgenzō, which he kept writing until the year he died. He is not a comfortable read. He is exact about one small thing, how you sit, and then shows you that everything else is already in it.

What is zazen?

Zazen is sitting meditation, and in Dōgen's hands it is stranger than it sounds. Most methods are for getting somewhere. This one is not. You take the posture, you stay awake to the whole body and mind, and you let thoughts arrive and leave without following them or fighting them. The posture is not a warm-up for the mental part. In his teaching the posture is the thing itself, buddha-nature showing up as a person sitting still. Which is how he can say the sitting is already the awakening you were planning to earn. Nothing is missing from it, so nothing has to be added.

• Zazen is not a technique for reaching enlightenment. It is Buddha-nature expressing itself in this moment.
• Correct posture and full body-mind awareness are the whole practice, not preparation for something mental.
• Neither suppressing thoughts nor following them lets experience self-liberate within spacious awareness.

Listen to the story “Just Sitting”

What is the Shōbōgenzō?

The Shōbōgenzō is his main work, a collection of fascicles written between 1231 and 1253. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye is the usual English title. It is not a manual and not a system. Each fascicle takes one thing and turns it until it opens. Time. Buddha-nature. Mountains. The work of a monastery cook. The best known are Genjōkōan, Uji, Busshō and Gyōji. One caution about editions. The 95-fascicle version most people meet was first put together in the 1690s and is not necessarily his own arrangement. Earlier collections of 75 and 12 fascicles were probably arranged by him or by close students.

What did Dōgen Zenji teach?

Dōgen Zenji taught shikantaza, just sitting. You sit upright, you stay awake to the whole body and mind, and you neither chase thoughts nor push them away. That is the practice, and it is not preparation for anything. His central claim is that practice and awakening are one thing, not two stages, so there is no future prize to earn. He also taught that ordinary work counts. Cooking and cleaning done with full presence are the same awakening as sitting. He set it down in the Shōbōgenzō, in fascicles written between 1231 and 1253.

What is shikantaza?

Shikantaza means just sitting. Picture sitting down because there is genuinely nothing else to do. Your back straightens without you deciding it. Your hands settle. The sitting is not asking for anything beyond itself. That complete giving of yourself to this posture and this breath is shikantaza. Attention stays awake, and thoughts are neither followed nor blocked. They come, they go, they let go of themselves. Dōgen has a word for the mode of mind this needs, hishiryō, non-thinking. It is not thinking and not going blank. It is a third thing.