Chapter 9 Dōgen on the Language of Creative Textual Hermeneutics
Steven Heine
The Oxford Handbook of JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY
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Perhaps the most useful and thought- provoking analysis of Dōgen’s philosophy of language produced in Western scholarship remains one of the earliest essays on the topic, written by Hee- Jin Kim, “The Reason of Words and Letters: Dōgen and Kōan Language.” This article was originally delivered as a lecture in the early 1980s, and it was published a few years later in a conference volume edited by William LaFleur.1 Kim, who was already well known at the time for pioneering the field of Dōgen studies in the West with a monograph comprehensively covering Dōgen’s life and thought released a decade earlier,2 was particularly inspired by a seminal study in Japanese of the Zen master’s method of appropriating passages from Chinese Chan-r ecorded sayings texts in addition to Mahāyāna sutras. Kagamishima Genryū, the leading specialist in research on Dōgen during the post-W orld War II period in Japan, published that work in 1965.3
By carefully examining various examples from Dōgen’s major collection of epistles and sermons dealing with Chan prose and poetic comments on kōans, the Shōbōgenzō (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) that was composed over a twenty-y ear period from the early 1230s when he opened his first temple in Kyoto to the end of his career in the early 1250s when he resided at Eiheiji Temple in the Echizen mountains, Kim demonstrates various ways that Dōgen creatively uses language to disclose the dharma. In his interpretations, written in the vernacular Japanese of Kamakura- era Japan, of kōan cases reflecting the puzzling and paradoxical repartee and philosophical games of one- upmanship evoked by Song- dynasty Chinese masters, Dōgen exhibits a kind of alchemical capacity to alter literature significantly by twisting and even distorting
Kim, 1985.
Kim, 1975.
Kagamishima, 1965.
conventional expressions in order to uncover the underlying theoretical significance embedded in speech acts.
By refashioning words and phrases from Chinese sources through drawing out philosophical puns and wordplay based on Japanese syntax and pronunciations, Dōgen adopts an expansive view of the role of language in the quest for enlightenment. This was quite different from or even opposed to the mainstream approach to Zen meditation in Song China that stressed a minimalist use of words in deference to the powerful significance of silence. Kim suggests that, as “a superb master of language, appreciating it not for its rhetorical use-v alue, but rather for its appeal to reason and rationality” because “the interior and exterior of language were the very fabric of existence,” Dōgen is able to “change word order, shift syntax, indicate alternate meanings, create new expressions, and revive forgotten symbols.”4
I wholeheartedly agree, and I wish to apply and extend the core of Kim’s theory to highlight that Dōgen uses language as coterminous with, instead of as a means— or, contrariwise, an obstacle— to the realization of Zen enlightenment, which represented the more typical approaches to the role of discourse. This method of magnifying the impact of rhetorical eloquence does not at all reflect what Heidegger has referred to as the inauthentic mode of “idle chatter” or speaking a great deal without revealing very much. Nor is the approach a matter of moving rhetorically in arbitrary and chaotic directions without an underlying conceptual plan or pattern.
Rather, by drawing from Chinese literary styles and motifs contained in the first great kōan collection published in 1128, the Biyanlu (Jp. Hekiganroku, Blue Cliff Record 碧巖
錄), Dōgen is in accord with the Chan notion of “live words,” which are compelling and fulfilling in their intricacy, as opposed to “dead words,” which are merely descriptive in a way that leaves little to the imagination. Dōgen’s approach also recalls classic Daoist philosopher’s Zhuangzi’s notion of ever- resourceful “goblet words,” or the words of no- words in that their meaning is not fixed but fluid and flexible. This linguistic function allows one to communicate endlessly and productively without having exhausted the topic through simultaneously constructing and deconstructing multiple perspectives unconstrained by attachment or partiality. As Zhuangzi has said, “I wish to meet someone who has forgotten words, so that I might have a word with that person!”
Contextualizing Dōgen’s Approach to Language
In this chapter, I first discuss the intellectual historical context of Chan/ Zen Buddhist debates regarding the appropriate uses of language in twelfth- and thirteenth- century China and Japan that helped shape the formation of Dōgen’s philosophy. Then, I focus
4 Kim, 1985, 79.
on a case study of Dōgen’s innovative way of dealing with the so- called Mu Kōan, in which master Zhaozhou responds to a query from an anonymous monk about whether a dog possesses the universal spirituality of the Buddha- nature. Although the mainstream approach cites the version of the case in which Zhaozhou simply answers Mu (Ch. Wu 無, literally “No”) to emphasize the truth of absolute nothingness beyond speech and logic, in the “Buddha-n ature” (“Busshō”) fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō, Dōgen cites an alternate version of the kōan in which the answer is both Mu and U (Ch. You 有, literally “Yes”). Each of the responses in this version, also featured in the kōan collection the Congronglu (Jp. Shōyōroku 從容録, Record of Serenity) of 1224, has a quixotic follow- up dialogue between Zhaozhou and the perplexed novice. This is done to emphasize a relativist view of reality characterized by the interplay of truth and untruth that innovatively explores various meanings of Mu in relation to absence, nihility, and denial by displaying the contingency of nonbeing and being or negation and affirmation.
However, I suggest a modification of Kim’s analysis that stresses the role of “reason,” by which he refers to the term dōri (道理, literally, “logic of the way”). According to Kim, “Dōgen reveals himself to be exceedingly conscious of language, and in this respect, astonishingly modern. And yet, despite the evidence of a deliberate rhetorical component in his writing, his foremost concern is ultimately rational rather than rhetorical; he believes that reason, not eloquence, is paramount for the attainment of the way.” In forcing Dōgen into the mold of modernization while apparently seeking to contradict the view of D. T. Suzuki, who famously argued that Zen discourse is fundamentally irrational, Kim seems to skew the point that Dōgen is first and foremost an inventive transmitter/ interpreter of Chan texts, including kōan, recorded sayings, and transmission of the lamp collections compiled during the Song dynasty.
In the vernacular writings of the Shōbōgenzō and the Sino-J apanese (kanbun 漢文) writings of the Eihei kōroku (Dōgen’s Extensive Record), Dōgen’s approach, I maintain, is not necessarily rational. Instead, it is preferable to see Dōgen performing the creative hermeneutic function of offering the interconnected elements of exegesis, in transmitting and explicating Chinese sources for a Japanese audience, and eisogesis, by incorporating his distinctive vision of the inner meaning of these passages. Through integrating the objective and impersonal component of exegesis with the subjective and personal component of eisogesis, while operating at the intellectual historical crossroads of Song Chinese and Kamakura Japanese forms of expressiveness, Dōgen further takes license to intrude upon and imaginatively change and transform the original words so as to capture multiple rhetorical elements that disclose the source passage’s implications and significance.
Dōgen’s Expansivist Outlook
When Dōgen arrived in China in 1223, at the beginning of a pilgrimage that would last four years before he returned to spread the dharma of the Sōtō (Ch. Caodong) sect to his native land, he encountered two main, very much opposed philosophical outlooks regarding the role of language. One was the expansionist approach found in the Biyanlu, produced by master Yuanwu and based on the notion that language consists of entangled vines or kattō (Ch. geteng 葛藤), which reveal reality through the process of unraveling and disentangling their inner complexity. The other was the reductionist approach endorsed by Yuanwu’s foremost but contentious disciple Dahui (who was said to have burned the xylographs of his mentor’s kōan collection) and based on the notion that language should be reduced to minimal catchphrases or watō (Ch. huatou 話頭) that convey absolute nothingness and silence. The term Mu in the case about the dog’s Buddha- nature was the primary example of the catchphrase outlook.
The kattō outlook was refined and transformed by Dōgen, who injected into his commentaries on kōans innovative rhetorical styles, including extended textual hermeneutics based on explicating Japanese elocutions of Chinese terms. Dōgen strongly disagrees with Dahui by stressing in the “Entangling Vines” (“Kattō) fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō that language should be continually explored as a process of “disentangling vines through the intricate play of entangled vines.”7 Rather than stressing the response of “No” as supreme, in a Eihei kōroku sermon he argues, “Whether you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ either one is slander. If the person were to ask ‘What?,’ at the very moment of his speaking he would be hit with my stick.”8
Dōgen’s approach is based on the view that each and every aspect of the universe in its daily activity preaches the dharma verbally or nonverbally, and, in the “Mountains and Rivers Sutras” (“Sansuikyō”) fascicle he maintains, “mountains and rivers themselves are the sound of the sutras.” His interpretative stance is a deliberately meandering scenic- route that seems to be striving for a middle way between sacramentalism and iconoclasm, metaphor and criticism, or mythos and logos. Dōgen maintains the necessity of perpetually “expressing the Way” (dōtoku 道得) through “disclosing mind/ disclosing nature” (sesshin sesshō 説心説性), and he consistently affirms rather than denies the efficacy of all forms of discourse, including anecdotes, parables, metaphors, and logical analysis, as essential means of revealing the experience of enlightenment. In “Explaining a Dream Within a Dream” (“Muchūsetsumu”), he suggests that metaphorical words are
Dōgen is known for his scathing critique of Dahui in the “Self-F ulfilling Samadhi” (“Jishō zammai”) fascicle, where he goes so far as to question Dahui’s enlightenment, and elsewhere, especially “Disclosing Mind, Disclosing Nature” (“Sesshin sesshō”); but he also occasionally praises the Chinese master for his dedication and perseverance and apparently borrows the title of Shōbōgenzō (Ch. Zhengfayanzang) from one of his kōan collections of 661 cases.
Dōgen zenji zenshū, 3: 214; Dōgen’s Extensive Record, 301.
not merely “figures of speech” (hiyu 比喩), but are also the “true form of reality” (shohō jissō 諸法實相).
Dōgen’s expansionist approach is expressed in Eihei kōroku 2.128, where he cites a story in which Danxia, an important monk in the Caodong lineage, points out that master Deshan, from whom the Yunmen and Fayan lineages were descended, said to his assembly, “There are no words or phrases in my school, and also not a single Dharma to offer to people.” Danxia comments, “He was endowed with only one single eye . . . [but] in my school there are words and phrases (goku) . . . . The mysterious, profound, wondrous meaning is that the jade woman becomes pregnant in the night.” According to Dōgen, this saying did not go far enough because, “Although Danxia spoke in this way . . . (i)n my school there are only words and phrases (yui goku 唯語句) [emphasis added].” He thereby supports the unity of Zen and language that is expressed with a more sustained although partisan argumentation in “Mountains and Rivers Sutras” and elsewhere.
The interpretative approach of the Shōbōgenzō is dependent on but distinct from various kinds of Song Chinese Chan writings. To consider briefly the considerable literary connections, the texts that first appeared in the eleventh century in China—e specially transmission of the lamp histories and recorded sayings—c ontain hagiographical elements borrowed from other kinds of Chinese Buddhist collections treating the lives of eminent monks by focusing on the ineffable truth embodied by the charismatic personality of a great master who carefully initiates a chosen successor. The Biyanlu and other kōan compilations are centered on interpreting a number of traditional cases, which are usually encounter dialogues culled from one of the previously developed genres, to which are added extensive prose and verse commentaries alluding to related anecdotes, parables, and legends. A feature shared by Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō and the major kōan collections is an emphasis on admonishing disciples against the traps and pitfalls of misinterpreting cases through a faulty appropriation of silence, leading either to an overabundance or a paucity of interpretative discourse.
Unlike the multilayered style of Song commentaries that interpret a particular core dialogue surrounded by prose and verse comments, in addition to the hybrid prose- poetic capping phrase (jakugo 著語) remarks, the literary structure of the Shōbōgenzō revolves around doctrinal themes for which various cases and related sayings are summoned as part of the remarks on the main topic. Nearly every fascicle sets up a key Mahāyāna or Zen notion of philosophy or practice and uses various kōan cases and sutra passages, which are generally overlooked by Chan collections that see themselves as outside the scriptures, as sources for elaborating on the meaning and significance of doctrine. Thus, the dialogue that constitutes the core literary unit of a kōan record around which comments revolve is subsidiary in Dōgen’s novel and inventive interpretative standpoint, referred to here as the “hermeneutics of intrusion.” In contrast to the Biyanlu, Dōgen does not use capping phrase comments in “Buddha-n ature” because he developed other innovative ways of commenting on kōan records in the Shōbōgenzō.11
In addition to its highly refined literary quality borrowed, in part, from Japanese rhetorical techniques, Dōgen’s writings reflect some degree of influence from Abhidharma or sastra literature in its use of line-b y-line analysis exploring some of the metaphysical and psychological implications of doctrine. The fluidity and open- endedness of Dōgen’s informal sermons, originally delivered to a small ring of disciples and later edited and published, makes the text less conservative in structure than the major kōan collections in that it allows for or even demands taking license with tradition in accord with the spirit and intention of the Tang- dynasty Chan masters’ original (supposedly) spontaneous and irreverent utterances.
Multiple Citations of the Mu Kōan
Although Dōgen is best known for commenting on the Mu Kōan in the “Buddha- nature” fascicle, in which he examines the notion of universal spirituality in relation to negation and nothingness from nearly every imaginable angle, throughout his collected works, he actually uses a couple of different renditions of the case with various interpretations. These include those favored by Dahui and additional variations. Table 9.1 shows the seven instances of Dōgen’s references to the kōan by listing the text and its date of composition, along with a brief overview of which version and type of comment is included.
Note that Dōgen does cite the Mu- only response on two occasions— the first and sixth—b ut the latter example contains the follow-up dialogue that is found in Zhaozhou’s recorded sayings. When referring to the version with both Mu and U responses, he is somewhat inconsistent regarding the sequence of the positive and negative replies, as well as whether or not the complete or partial version is cited.12
As the longest and most complex fascicle in the Shōbōgenzō and the one with the most sustained and consistent argumentation concerning a single doctrinal topic (although, like most other fascicles, it does not have a systematic sequential organization), “Buddha- nature” offers a vivid demonstration of constructive and deconstructive rhetorical elements. Whereas Dahui further contracts the abbreviated version of the kōan in order to highlight the power of doubt generated by the watō consisting of the single syllable Mu, Dōgen’s kattō- based approach emphasizes the power of disclosure so as to intrude upon and alter the multiple meanings and implications of the relativist version.
In fact, this interpretative style is limited in Dōgen’s corpus to just a small handful of the Sino- Japanese (kanbun) sermons in the Eihei kōroku.
See Kagamishima Genryū, et. al., ed., Dōgen no in’yō goroku no kenkyū [Studies of Dōgen’s Citations of Recorded Sayings] (Tokyo: Sōtōshū shūgaku kenkyūsho, 1995), 282–2 84; this work is a revised and expanded version of sections of Kagamishima, 1965.
Table 9.1. Dōgen’s Citations of the Mu Kōan
Text by Year How Case Is Cited
1. Gakudōyōjinshū (1234) Mu response only, which “cannot be grasped”
2. Mana Shōbōgenzō (1235) Mu and U full dialogues, basis for “Busshō” version
3. Eihei Kōroku 9.73 (1236) U and Mu full dialogues, with two verse comments
4. Shōbōgenzō “Busshō” (1241) Mu and U full dialogues, with interlinear commentary
5. Eihei Kōroku 3.226 (1247) U and Mu abbreviated, with brief prose comment
6. Eihei Kōroku 4.330 (1249) Mu only and dialogue, with brief prose comment
7. Eihei Kōroku 6.429 (1251) Mu and U alluded, with verse comment
Dōgen rethinks and rewrites the case along with other anecdotes and dialogues through a dazzling display of inventive reversals, ingenious puns, and dialectical formulas, which thereby disallows a reader from being trapped or limited to a fixed position. In the end, there is no distinction between right and wrong, winner and loser; or, rather, everyone who scores a triumph also suffers defeat and vice- versa.
While emphasizing the parity of affirmation and negation, Dōgen does not overlook the critical and subversive aspect of language whose foundation is the insubstantiality of nothingness or no-B uddha- nature (mu- busshō 無佛性), a notion he prefers to the denial of Buddha- nature (busshō- mu 佛性無) or the termination of discussion in regard to the implications of doctrine. Yet, each time Dōgen speaks of the merits of Mu, he quickly reverses himself and relativizes this standpoint through an emphasis on U. Therefore, by the time he deals with the Mu Kōan in the thirteenth (or penultimate) section of the “Buddha- nature” fascicle, he has already extensively commented upon and defused various misconceptions, an effort that serves as a crucial basis for his way of interpreting the Zhaozhou dialogue. Viewing the case record as part of a rich textual tradition is diametrically opposed to Dahui, who insists on extricating Mu from any sort of conceptual context that might represent a deadly distraction.
It is clear that Dōgen enjoyed a special relationship with Zhaozhou’s works, including several dialogues that are not included in the canonical version of the Tang master’s recorded sayings and that Dōgen cites several dozen times: the Sanbyakusoku Shōbōgenzō (300- Case Treasury of the True Dharma- Eye) has nearly two dozen examples of citations, the Shōbōgenzō features Zhaozhou’s dialogues in at least fourteen fascicles, and the Eihei kōroku also contains numerous references throughout the collection. The last section of “Entangling Vines” evokes Zhaozhou as a precursor for embracing the notion of literary embellishment. Of a famous dialogue in which Bodhidharma tries to choose a successor by requesting that each of his four main disciples demonstrate his or her (one was a nun) knowledge of Zen enlightenment, the typical view is that the monk who remains silent, Huike, has the deepest understanding because he is anointed the second ancestor. Like Dōgen, however, Zhaozhou finds truth as well as untruth embedded in every one of the four responses without an evaluative ladder being presumed. Instead of seeing a hierarchy leading from the use of metaphor reflecting skin as the most superficial element through the flesh and bones of indirect communication as somewhat deeper, and ultimately to the marrow of reticence, which is profoundly true and ultimately real, the Tang Chinese and Kamakura Japanese masters agree that trainees must realize that if they “do not get the skin” they will also not get the marrow, but, at the same time, getting the marrow requires not abandoning the skin.14
Dōgen’s Hermeneutics of Intrusion in “Buddha- Nature”
The groundwork is thus laid for Dōgen’s hermeneutics of intrusion, which represents a transgressive discourse aimed at transcending stale interpretations by transmitting the essential ingredients underlying diverse standpoints through employing the following interpretative elements: understanding the comprehensive scope of citations; atomizing key passages; introducing multiperspectival standpoints; creating inversions of ordinary meaning; and developing imaginative ways of encroaching on the conceptual space of source dialogues. After offering a sweep of Mahāyāna Buddhist and Zen approaches regarding the topic of Buddha- nature, along with a detailed investigation of particular phrasings coupled with a variety of views of negation that foster discursive reversals, Dōgen takes license to rework the exchanges themselves. He modifies the core conversations by making suggestions and countersuggestions in the spirit of a Tang- dynasty Chan master’s irreverent creativity, aimed at enhancing the contemporaneous significance of the case for disciples who were at the time in training under his tutelage.15
33 “Expressing the Way” (“Dōtoku”); 38 “Entangling Vines” (“Kattō”); 40 “Cypress Tree” (“Hakujushi”);
41 “Triple World Is Mind-O nly” (“Sangai yuishin”); 56 “Seeing Buddha” (“Kenbutsu”); 59 “Everyday
Life” (“Kajō”); 60 “Thirty-s even Methods of Realization” (“Sanjūshichihon bodai bunpō”); 73 “Reading Other’s Minds” (“Tajintsū”); and 74 “A King Requests Saindhava” (“Ōsaku sendaba”). Other masters frequently cited by Dōgen include Bodhidharma, Dongshan, Huike, Huineng, Linji, Mazu, Nanyue, and Yuanwu, in addition to Sakyamuni and Mahakasyapa, as well as predecessors Hongzhi and Rujing, who receives by far the greatest number of citations.
Dōgen zenji zenshū, 1: 420.
Some of this argument is included in Like Cats and Dogs: Contesting the Mu Kōan in Zen Buddhism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Comprehensive Scope
The comprehensive scope of the “Buddha- nature” fascicle refers to the abundance of citations, references, and allusions developed from the Chan Buddhist canon filtered through Dōgen’s own reflections and speculation. Dōgen functions as a textual historian or a one- man fountain of knowledge who disseminates Chan literature, which is turned upside down and pulled inside out by the remaining hermeneutic elements. Dōgen examines more than a dozen dialogues concerning causality, temporality, language, life- and- death, illusion, and practice in regard to the notion of universal spirituality. Beginning with the famous opening passage in which he twists on its head the Nirvāna Sutra passage implying that Buddha- nature is a possession that one “has” (U) by showing that the kanji 有, like 無, has a double meaning and can also suggest that one “is” or, more holistically, indicates “being- Buddha- nature,” Dōgen refutes numerous fallacies. He repudiates views that hypostatize Buddha-n ature either as an objectifiable entity or supramundane perfection, a teleological goal or a prior possession, a phenomenon evolving in time or a realm that is beginningless and eternal, and a reality beyond illusion or an idealistic projection.
These delusions tend to either identify truth with the ordinary world or presuppose a realm beyond concrete existence, thereby violating the middle path. Dōgen seeks to subvert and surpass delusions that are based on a false sense of duality with positive notions encompassing a unity of opposites. These notions include shitsuu (“whole- being” 悉有), which overcomes the conflict between anthropocentrism and otherworldliness by integrating all entities, whether human or nonhuman, sentient or insentient into a unified reality; shingen (“manifesting body” 真現), which overcomes the opposition of cosmology and substantiality by suggesting that the truth is ever manifest through concrete particularities that are fundamentally contingent and variable yet disclosive of the whole; and gyō (“activity” 行), which surpasses teleology versus potentiality by eliminating the sense of past and future or, rather, by fusing the three tenses of time into the dynamic present moment of one’s everyday effort to practice the spiritual path that links background or intentions with goals or purpose.
Additional philosophically innovative notions used by Dōgen to upend delusions derived from polarities include setsu (“symbolic disclosure” 説), which overcomes ineffability versus reason by highlighting the ways that each and every form of verbal and nonverbal expression, whether or not it reflects a fully enlightened state, conveys at least partially the diverse perspectives and meanings of Buddha- nature; mujō (“impermanence” 無常), which surpasses time versus eternity by indicating that evanescent temporality is not lacking but, in its fleeting manifestations, captures the fullness of reality or “eternal now” encompassing anticipation and arrival; i (“dependence” 衣), which overcomes causation versus liberation by suggesting that all interconnected beings are able to attain freedom by virtue of the web of mutual conditioning that makes them inseparable; and gabyō (“painted rice- cake” 画餅), which surpasses the conflict between reality and illusion by asserting that ideas and impressions generated by the imagination are, when appropriately understood, just as viable and powerful as seemingly actual things that in their own way may well be illusory or less than real.
Atomization
Through the atomization of words and phrases made in his interlinear comments, Dōgen also serves as a linguist/g rammarian/ philologist and poet who zeroes in on particular passages with a rhetorical flair and razor- sharp analytic precision that reflects his crucial role at the historical juncture of transforming Song Chan texts through the incorporation of Kamakura Japanese pronunciations as well as indigenous literary devices and related forms of expression. The primary theme that emerges underlying various repudiations and revisions is the fundamental issue of the nothingness of Buddha- nature. Of the fourteen sections in the fascicle, more than half deal directly with this topic, including the commentary on the Mu Kōan. In laying the basis for examining the dog dialogue, Dōgen develops a detailed focus on diverse meanings of Mu, embracing while sublating the notions of denial, negation, nonexistence, nihility, and emptiness in terms of the direct and immediate yet continuing experience of no- Buddha-n ature.
Mu is one of the multiple ways of expressing the notion of no-B uddha-nature, which must not be absolutized in the sense of becoming one more reified metaphysical notion or an abstraction that is static and fixed; instead, it is to be perpetually explored through considering alternative perspectives and associated views of negation that, Dōgen says, cause a “reverberating echo circulating through Zhaozhou.” Citing several early Chan leaders, he argues, “The words, ‘no [or: nothingness] Buddha nature (mu busshō),’ are discussed far beyond the ancestral chamber of the Fourth Ancestor. They originated in Huangmei, circulated to Zhaozhou, and were taken up in Dayi [Guishan]. You must unfailingly concentrate on the words ‘no Buddha nature’ ”
In his analysis of several dialogues that took place between the fourth and fifth Chan patriarchs, Dōgen maintains that the nothingness of no- Buddha-n ature is the primary concern pervading Zhaozhou’s Mu, which is not a matter of denial, in that emptiness is the foundation of expressing no. On the other hand, no- Buddha-n ature does not merely represent an ironic confirmation because the categories of affirmation and negation must be subverted and broken through. In hearing mention of the doctrine of universal spirituality, Dōgen maintains, the average person fails to consider what it truly means and remains preoccupied with “such things as the existence or non- existence of Buddha- nature.” He stresses that to comprehend the truth of no-B uddha-nature, “one must not think of it in terms of the nothingness of being and nothingness, and ask instead, ‘What is the very Buddha- nature?’ ”
The same is true for an atomized focus on U that Dōgen shows literally means
“having” but philosophically implies “being” in a sense that is beyond the dichotomies
of possession and absence or acquisition and loss. In highlighting Zhaozhou’s affirmative response, Dōgen argues that the doctrine of being- Buddha-n ature (u- busshō 有佛性) is not a possession or an inherent potentiality that exists in contrast to no- Buddha- nature. Of Zhaozhou’s U, he writes, “it is not the ‘has’ posited by the Sarvastivadans [an early Buddhist school of ‘realism’] . . . The being of Buddha is the being of Zhaozhou. The being of Zhaozhou is the being of the dog. The being of the dog is being- Buddha- nature.”
Multiperspectivism
Dōgen also demonstrates agility with putting forth multiple perspectives through exploring dissimilar or even conflicting and contradictory readings of various cases. This outlook embodies a Nietzschean theoretical facility, which was in turn influenced by various strains of Mahāyāna Buddhist thought, of never acquiescing to a particular standpoint without considering complementary and competitive points of view. The initial query of the Mu Kōan, “Does the dog have Buddha- nature or not?,” is generally seen as an unfortunate, idle, speculative question, begging to be rebuffed or dismissed, about whether a being that lacks self-r eflective consciousness possesses the potential to be enlightened.
Dōgen comments, “The meaning of this question must be clarified. It neither asks whether the dog has or does not have Buddha-n ature. It is a question of whether an iron [enlightened] man continues to practice the Way.” As Robert Aitken puts it in his modern commentary, “The monk sitting before Zhaozhou cannot acknowledge his own Tathagata. At a deep level he is asking, ‘Do I really have Buddha-n ature as they say?’ ” Dōgen further remarks that this question is so disturbing and penetrating that Zhaozhou is taken aback; he at first feels threatened and blunders his way into poisonous territory, an image that could also be interpreted to refer to the way the master outsmarts the naïve inquirer who is trapped in the complication of words.
When the query is somewhat stubbornly restated by the novice as, “All sentient beings have Buddha- nature, so why not the dog?,” Dōgen argues, “The real meaning of this is, if all sentient beings are nothingness (mu), then Buddha-n ature must be nothingness, and the dog must be nothingness as well. The real meaning is such, the dog and Buddha- nature manifest nothingness as such[ness].” That is, Dōgen rereads the question, “Why does not the dog have it?,” as the statement, “the dog is such nothingness,” or “the dog is no[- Buddha- nature].” By elevating rhetoric beyond the conventional distinctions of truth and error, the supposedly deluded question is coterminous with the master’s enlightened response in disclosing a wellspring of nothingness- as- suchness from which all expressions derive.
This approach to interpretation can also be referred to as “hermeneutics beyond slander” in that all views, whether representing truth or untruth, are allowed to stand conterminously, without judgment or preference. Dōgen disputes Baizhang, who suggests that freedom from extreme views is gained through the denial of each standpoint by saying that “to preach sentient beings have . . . or do not have the Buddha- nature slanders Buddha.” In contrast, Dōgen argues, “Despite such disparagement, you cannot avoid explaining something . . . Although it slanders, is the Buddha- nature disclosed, or not? If the Buddha- nature is disclosed, it is penetrated by the teacher and at the same time it is heard by the listener.” This view of affirming the need for discourse ironically complements the seemingly opposite notion that whether one says “Yes” or “No” to the question about the dog slanders the dharma. There is no set position regarding the use and/ or abandonment of words and phrases to express the meanings of Buddha- nature, which can and should be analyzed from every possible perspective.
Inversion
The inversion of conventional readings of the source record is accomplished whereby Dōgen becomes a kind of postmodern Dadaist who makes use of the alchemy of words, to cite a Rimbaud phrase, in order to flip back and forth by diverting and discontinuing or cutting off or extending the path of any given discourse. Dōgen suggests that the Mu response to the question of the dog’s Buddha-n ature is perplexing and subject to diverse interpretations. Mu has various negative implications, including, but not limited to, “What a foolish question, for the Buddha- nature is not a possession and a dog cannot be enlightened,” and from a very different angle that is similar to watō, a diamond- cutting or lion’s roaring silence that puts an end to all manner of speculation. Mu can also paradoxically indicate an affirmation in that there is no Buddha-n ature apart from concrete existence, as symbolized by the dog, and, from the standpoint of emptiness, the dog as well as each and every phenomenon in the universe manifests Buddha- nature.
According to Dōgen, Zhaozhou answered both Mu and U because these terms are interchangeable yet distinct ways of expressing no-B uddha-nature. This approach stands in contrast to the watō- based interpretation. In addition, Dōgen interprets in positive terms Zhaozhou’s ironic reply, “This is because it has awareness of karma.” Therefore, he contends that the watō method fosters subtle yet devastating dichotomies between means and end, practice and realization, and illusion and truth. Because causality is inseparable from noncausality and vice versa, affirming the dog’s awareness of karma and its consequences indicates that the problem of the dog’s Buddha-n ature is oriented in terms of “the nothingness of the dog and the nothingness of Buddha- nature.” The phrase kushi- mu busshō- mu nari 狗子無佛性無なり can also be read as “no- dog and no- Buddha- nature,” “dog- nothingness and Buddha-n ature- nothingness,” or “dog- mu and Buddha- nature- mu.”
Intrusion
These rhetorical elements reveal Dōgen surveying different approaches to Buddha- nature so that he can isolate and analyze examples of Zhaozhou’s response in a way that captures multiple meanings and encompasses paradoxes and conceptual reversals. Disruptive discursive techniques contribute to and converge in the hermeneutics of intrusion that delve further into and alter the source dialogue itself as Dōgen transmutes any and all words and phrases through modifying, sometimes overtly and in other instances with a beneath- the- surface subtlety of expression, the original wording but not the intention of the kōan case record. This approach is demonstrated by the way Dōgen transforms a seemingly innocent phrase, “Since it already has,” in the monk’s retort to Zhaozhou’s positive response: “Since it already has [Buddha- nature], why does it enter into this skin- bag?” According to Dōgen’s distinctive interpretation, this phrase, “since it already has,” deliberately implies both the implications of “given that” and “from the time that.” This is the same “since,” used here as an affirmation, that is evoked in some of Dahui’s watō- based passages in order to highlight, ironically enough, what he considers to be a recognized truth that there is no Buddha-n ature since the phrasing is understood in a negative sense.
Dahui suggests, “Since it [the dog] has (Ch. jiyou; Jp. kiu 既有) no [or: does not have] Buddha- nature, as Zhaozhou has stated,” disciples should “simply pick up this statement of ‘No’ as in ‘the dog has no Buddha- nature,’ ” because “it is necessary to use only the one character Mu [in training],” as “this functions as a sword that extricates from the path of life and death so that when illusions arise you only need the word Mu to cut through them.” Note that in this sequence of remarks there is an avoidance of the implications found in the Mu– U version of the case, which includes as part of one of the subdialogues the phrase, “Since it has . . . ,” rather than “does not have,” the Buddha- nature. The significance of this deviation from the double- response rendition, as Dōgen brings out in his interlinear commentary, is that it loses sight of Zhaozhou’s style of expression, which indicates ontological rather than physical time. There is an original condition that precedes and is thus unfettered by the contradiction of neither strictly having nor not having a primordial spiritual endowment.
Dōgen’s interpretation of the full “Yes” subdialogue indicates, “This monk asks whether Zhaozhou’s response refers to what is currently existing, previously existing, or already existing.” Dōgen suggests that “since it has” or “since it is” must be broken down to distinguish it from other temporal indicators, that is, from the ordinary sense of past as opposed to present or of present in contrast to future. Here, he endorses a view of primordial temporality that is discussed in numerous other fascicles, especially “Being- Time” (“Uji”), by making a claim that, “already existing might seem to indicate one of several forms of existence, but in fact already existing shines alone.” Thus, “since”- cum- already-e xisting now refers to a foundational level of being surpassing divisions. Therefore, Zhaozhou’s phrasing is not a mere pointer to but rather is synonymous with the truth of Buddha- nature.
Dōgen then questions whether “already existing should be understood as something that enters into or does not enter into [a skin- bag],” since this discrepancy implies a duality of spiritual and physical dimensions, which he considers to be misleading. The very words “entering into,” he suggests, are superfluous because there is no distinction between immanence and transcendence or manifesting and not manifesting in the flesh. In any event, “the act of entering into this skin- bag is not committed erroneously or in vain” and can help lead to an awakening, in that mundane existence is inseparable from nirvāna.
By asserting the unity of spiritual and physical realms, Dōgen maintains, “The treasure concealed in the daily activity of liberation is concealed in self and others.” Alluding to a passage from the Jingde chuandenglu (Jingde Transmission of the Lamp Record) volume 2, he admonishes, “Having referred to [concealment], this is not intended to mean that you are not yet free of ignorance. That would be like someone who puts a donkey in front of a horse!” To foster multiple perspectives that are liberating in that they each touch base with the multiple meanings of Buddha- nature, by alluding to an obscure passage attributed to Yunju from the Liandeng huiyao (Essential Lamps Merged) volume 22, Dōgen asserts, “Even if you have a partial, halfway understanding of the Buddha Dharma that has long been in error for days or even months on end, it still cannot be anything but the dog entering into a skin- bag.”
Furthermore, in his analysis of this part of the U dialogue, Dōgen remarks that knowing better yet willfully choosing transgression is a common colloquial expression that had become known in Chan circles through Zhaozhou’s utterance, but “it is none other than being- Buddha- being.” He then alludes to a saying attributed to Shitou in the Jingde chuandenglu volume 30 by asserting, “If you want to know the Undying Man in his hermitage, you must not leave your own skin- bag!” In addition, Dōgen indicates in typical paradoxical fashion that, “ ‘It knows better yet willfully chooses this transgression’ is not necessarily ‘entering into a skin-b ag,’ and ‘entering into a skin-bag’ is not nec essarily ‘It knows better yet willfully chooses this transgression.’ ”
Dōgen’s textual hermeneutics of intrusion, however compelling and imaginative, could easily be seen as capricious and arbitrary because he willfully alters and distorts the source passages. However, a careful analysis of how he treats the Chinese Chan source passages in his Japanese vernacular appropriations, as undertaken by Hee-J in Kim and Kagamishima Genryū, shows that this criticism is avoided because the creativity of the effort is based on a textual hermeneutical method that enables the unfolding of the tangled webs of words and phrases that at least partially reveal truth; this is inseparable from untruth that, in turn, discloses in an indirect way what is real. Or, it could be said that there is no truth like untruth and that untruth is no truth at all.
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
Abe, Masao. (1994) Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion, edited by Steven Heine. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Bein, Steven. (2011) Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsurō’s Shamon Dogen. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
Bielefeldt, Carl. (1988) Dōgen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bodiford, William M. (1993) Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
Dōgen. (1988– 1993) Dōgen zenji zenshū [Collected Works of Zen Master Dōgen], 7 vols., edited by Kawamura Kōdō, et. al. Tokyo: Shunjūsha.
Dōgen. (1985) Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen, translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press.
Dōgen. (2002) The Heart of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, translated by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Dōgen. (2004) Dōgen’s Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Kōroku, translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura. Boston: Wisdom.
Dōgen. (2012) Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi. Boston: Shambhala.
Dumoulin, Heinrich. (1998) Zen Buddhism: A History. Volume 2: Japan, translated by James Heisig and Paul F. Knitter. New York: Macmillan.
Heine, Steven. (1994) Dōgen and the Kōan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shōbōgenzō Texts. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Heine, Steven, trans. (1997) The Zen Poetry of Dōgen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace. Boston: Tuttle.
Heine, Steven. (2006) Did Dōgen Go to China? What He Wrote and When He Wrote It. New York: Oxford University Press.
Heine, Steven, ed. (2012) Dōgen: Textual and Historical Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kagamishima Genryū. (1965) Dōgen zenji to in’yō kyōten- goroku no kenkyū [Studies of Dōgen’s Citations of Sutras and Recorded Sayings]. Tokyo: Mokujisha.
Kim, Hee-J in. (1975) Dōgen Kigen: Mystical Realist. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Revised edition (2004): Eihei Dōgen: Mystical Realist. Boston: Wisdom.
Kim, Hee- Jin. (1985) “ ‘The Reason of Words and Letters: Dōgen and Kōan Language.” In Dōgen Studies, edited by William R. LaFleur. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 54– 82.
Kim, Hee- Jin. (2007) Dōgen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Kodera, Takashi James. (1980) Dogen’s Formative Years in China. Boulder, CO: Prajna Press.
