BUDDHISM IN JAPAN 25110.5.1 Zen
Overcoming strong opposition from Mount Hiei, Myoan Eisai (1141-1215)
established the first Zen (in Chinese, Ch'an) temple in Kyoto in 1202, after
having received the seal of transmission from a Lin-chi master in China in
- Eisai himself, however, was essentially a Tendai man. Ofhis extant writ-
ings, only one piece deals with Zen-recommending it as a tool for unifYing
the nation-whereas his remaining writings focus on restoring Tendai to its
earlier stature. Dissatisfaction with the eclecticism of Eisai's Zen led a number
of monks in the following generation to travel to China on their own to re-
ceive transmission of a less adulterated teaching to bring back to Japan.
The first to do so was Dogen Kigen (1200-53). Born into an aristocratic
family but then orphaned at age 7, Dogen was ordained a monk at age 14 at
Mount Hiei. An extremely precocious child, he quickly mastered Tendai doc-
trine and became puzzled by what he viewed as its central inconsistency, one
common to all Dharmakaya thought: If all human beings already have
Dharma-nature, why is there any need to practice so as to gain Awakening?
Leaving the monastery, he traveled from master to master to gain an answer to
his question, but found none to satisfY him. In 1223 he left for China, where
he eventually began intensive practice under the Ch'an master Ju-ching
(1163-1228) and had an Awakening experience that he called "the dropping
away of body and mind." In 1227 he returned to Japan to spread his vision of
the true Buddhist teaching to counteract what he viewed as the gross misun-
derstandings of Buddhism rampant there. Although he first settled near Kyoto,
ecclesiastical politics forced him to retreat to the mountains far to the north-
east of the city, where he founded Eihei-ji, which after his death became the
principal temple of the Soto (in Chinese, T'sao-tung) Zen sect.
Dagen's major life work was a collection of talks and essays entitled
Shobogenzo, or the Treasury of the True Dharma-eye. This was the first philo-
sophical work to be written in Japanese and is today widely regarded as one of
the most difficult and profound. Dagen's presentation is subtle and complex,
often pushing language to the breaking point, and in fact his extreme manipu-
lation oflanguage lies at the essence of his message. The Shobogenzo is primar-
ily an answer to the question that took him to China, although his answer
indicates that he had originally formulated the question in the wrong terms.
Instead of treating Awakening as a static state that lies at the end of practice,
he rephrases the question so as to deal with the relationship of cultivation to
authentication. According to him, the authentication of Dharma-nature is to
be found in the very process of cultivating Zen, and is in no way distinct from
it. Zen, he says, is essentially "dethinking thinking." With what means is de-
thinking to be thought? "Beyond thinking" (Shobogenzo: "Zazengi"). Beyond
thinking is the Dharma-nature that lies at the heart of dethinking thinking.
This can be explained by what Dogen calls genjo koan, or the practice of
regarding the immediate present as one's object of meditation, taking apart all
one's most subtle thoughts and attitudes about what is happening in the here