The zen of Dōgen

The Silent Flower

One day, among the assembly of his disciples, Buddha, silent and smiling, looked at them while spinning a flower between his fingers. Meeting his gaze, Kāshyapa's eyes and face lit up with a smile. The Buddha said, “I have the treasure of the eye of true Dharma [the knowledge of profound reality]. I entrust it to Kāshyapa.”

This episode is described in the Lankāvatāra Sūtra, and represents in Zen the founding gesture of silent, mind-to-mind transmission (i shi den shin). Since then, it has never been interrupted.

The Indian monk Bodhidharma, who is said to have brought the Lankāvatāra Sūtra to China, taught this silent vision in China in the 6th century. This practice of sitting without thought would become chan and then zen in Japan.

Directly touching the mind...

Dōgen Zenji (1200-1253) is one of the great continuators of the experience and thought of the Buddha and the great chan masters of China. From the age of 27, he founded sōtō zen in Japan. His practice, his thought, and his work remain unequalled today, and are still studied and commented on. Zazen and study are like the two wings of a bird.

Dōgen's practice radically goes through the body to understand the teachings – through the intimate experience that directly touches the mind: zazen.

Only the ancestral master Bodhidharma, doing zazen facing the wall, transmitted the true vein of the Buddhadharma [the experience and teaching of the Buddha].

Dōgen, Eihei Kōroku.

...and seeing beyond the apparent...

To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off.

Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō Genjōkoan.

In this great stripping away, there is no longer any distinction between beings. Perceiving the world as one body, the slightest suffering of beings, animate or inanimate, must be addressed to prevent its spread, as if it were one’s own human body.

...and caring for the world

By practicing zazen and studying, taking care of all beings, whether human or not, animate or inanimate, becomes a daily attention and practice. This is what is meant by following the precepts or a code of ethics: at a minimum, do no harm, and at best, act for the common good.

For Dōgen, zazen and the precepts (zen-kai) are one.

The precepts are safeguards, not prohibitions, but protections. Etymologically, the ideogram kai might resemble a halberd held with two hands (律): a warning, a safeguard, a protection.

In zazen, which precept are you not protecting?

Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki.