Chapter 8 The Philosophy of Zen Master Dōgen Egoless Perspectivism
Bret W. Davis
The Oxford Handbook of JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY
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Carrying the self forward to verify- in- practice the myriad things is delu-
sion; for the myriad things to come forth and verify-i n- practice the self is enlightenment. . . .
. . . When a person verifies-i n- practice the Buddha Way, attaining one thing he or she becomes thoroughly familiar with that one thing; encountering one activity he or she [sincerely] practices that one activity. Since this is where the place [of the presencing of truth] is and the Way achieves its circulation, the reason that the limits of what is knowable are not known is that this knowing arises and proceeds together with the exhaustive fathoming of the Buddha Dharma.1
Dōgen Kigen (1200– 1253), founder of the Japanese Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism, is undoubtedly one of the most philosophically original and profound thinkers in Japanese history.2 The focus of this chapter will be on Dōgen’s Genjōkōan, which can be translated
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 54, 59; Davis 2009, 256, 258; compare Dōgen 2002, 40, 44. Most of my primary references will be to Dōgen 1990a, a reliable and readily available Japanese edition of the Shōbōgenzō in four volumes. Although all translations of quoted passages from Dōgen’s texts will be my own, for the reader’s convenience I will cross-r eference available English translations in addition to citing the original Japanese texts.
An earlier version of this chapter was published in The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy, edited by Jay Garfield and William Edelglass (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 348–3 60.
as “The Presencing of Truth.”3 This key text for understanding Dōgen’s thought is the core fascicle of his major work, Shōbōgenzō (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye). It is the “treasury of the true Dharma eye” that Śākyamuni Buddha (ca. 500 b.c.e.) is said to have transmitted to his successor, Mahākāshyapa, by silently holding up a flower. This event is held to mark the beginning of the Zen tradition, which is believed to have been characterized by Bodhidharma (ca. 500 c.e.) as “a special transmission outside all doctrines; not depending on any texts; directly pointing to the human mind; seeing into one’s true nature and becoming a Buddha.” Like Bodhidharma, who is said to have sat in meditation for nine years after bringing Zen (Ch. Chan) from India to China, Dōgen, too, placed great emphasis on the silent practice of “just sitting” (shikantaza 只管打坐).4
Yet Dōgen’s writings are not just expedient means to practice and enlightenment, fingers pointing at the moon; they are also literary and philosophical masterpieces in their own right. Indeed, Dōgen is considered by many to be the greatest “philosopher” in the tradition of Zen Buddhism.5 Rather than merely insist on the limits of language and reason, he poetically and philosophically manifests their expressive potential. The “entangled vines” (kattō 葛藤) of language are not treated simply as impediments to be cut through with the sword of silent meditation and ineffable insight. Instead, they are understood to have the potential to become “expressive attainments of the Way” (dōtoku 道得) that manifest perspectival aspects of the dynamic Buddha- nature of reality.6
Dōgen accepts the delimited and delimiting nature of language and of thought in general. And yet he does not think that the perspectival limits of all perception, feeling, understanding, and expression are as such antithetical to enlightenment. Rather than an
For a full translation of this text, together with an explanation of the title, see Davis 2009, 254–2 59.
Other translations of Genjōkoan include “Manifesting Suchness” (Waddell and Abe 2002), “Manifesting Absolute Reality” (Cook 1989), “The Realized Universe” (Nishijima and Cross 2007–2 008), “Actualizing the Fundamental Point” (Tanahashi 2012), and “Offenbarmachen des vollen Erscheinens” (Ōhashi and Elberfeld 2006).
For an explication of Dōgen’s instructions for and understanding of meditation, see Davis 2016.
Dōgen was first treated as a “philosopher” in Japan in the early twentieth century, most notably by Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1 960) (Watsuji 2011) and by Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) ( Tanabe 1963). Prior to that, the study of his texts had been confined to Sōtō sectarian exegesis, starting with Dōgen’s own disciple Senne together with his follower Kyōgō and culminating in a detailed and influential commentary first published by Nishiari Bokusan (1821–1 910), published posthumously in 1930 (Nishiari 1965 and 2011). Recent commentaries by Zen masters include those by Shunryu Suzuki (in Nishiari et al.
2011, 95– 125), Kosho Uchiyama (in Nishiari et al. 2011, 149–2 23), Yasutani Hakuun (1996), and Shohaku
Okumura (2010). Philosophical studies of Dōgen in the West include Abe 1992; Heine 1985 and 2012;
Kim 2004 and 2007; Kasulis 1981; Kopf 2002; Steineck 2002; and Wirth, Schroeder, and Davis 2016. Kim 2007 and Heine 2012 are especially pertinent to the content of the present chapter. The latter contains an excellent commentary and response to recent Japanese reinterpretations of the Genjōkōan’s line, “When verifying one side, the other side is obscured,” which stress the finitude of enlightened as well as delusory perception (Kurebayashi 1992; Yoshizu 1993; Ishii 1997; Matsumoto 2000). Although the original version of the present chapter appeared earlier, in general, I find myself in agreement with Heine’s attempt to split the difference between the traditional interpretation and these recent reinterpretations.
See Chapter 9 in this volume; Dōgen 1999, 163–1 72, 179–184 ; Heine 1994, 243–2 49; Cook 1989, 101– 106; and Davis 2019.
overcoming of perspectivism, enlightenment for Dōgen entails a radical reorientation and qualitative transformation of the process of perspectival delimitation. Nietzsche once wrote “Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings.”7 Dōgen would say that “egoistic perspectivism” well describes a state of delusion. Enlightenment, on the other hand, is precisely a matter of shedding the egoistic will to posit oneself as the fixed center of the world. Nevertheless, according to Dōgen, enlightenment does not supplant perspectival knowing with an omniscient “view from nowhere.” Rather, it involves an ongoing nondual engagement in a process of letting the innumerable perspectival aspects of reality illuminate themselves. Enlightenment thus entails an egoless and nondual perspectivism.
Dōgen would agree with Heidegger that any manifestation of truth always involves both a revealing and a concealing.8 As Dōgen puts it, “When verifying one side, the other side is obscured [ippō o shō suru toki wa ippō wa kurashi 一方を証するときは一方はくらし]”9 This epistemological principle is one of the central themes of his thought, and it can be found at work already in the famous opening section of the Genjōkōan. Since the programmatic yet laconic first four sentences of this text are often thought to contain the kernel of Dōgen’s philosophy of Zen, let us begin by quoting and explicating them. As we shall see, these few lines can be read as a compact history of the unfolding of Buddhist thought from its foundational teachings through Mahāyāna philosophies to Dōgen’s Zen.
Through Buddhism to Zen
When the various things [dharmas] are [seen according to] the Buddha’s teaching [Buddha Dharma], there are delusion and enlightenment; there is (transformative) practice; there is birth/ life; there is death; there are ordinary sentient beings; and there are Buddhas.
When the myriad things are each [seen as] without self [i.e., as without independent substantiality], there is neither delusion nor enlightenment; there are neither Buddhas nor ordinary sentient beings; and there is neither birth/ life nor death.
Since the Buddha Way originally leaps beyond both plenitude and poverty, there are arising and perishing; there are delusion and enlightenment; and there are ordinary sentient beings and Buddhas.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books,
1974), p. 199 (§162); see also Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), p. 340 (§637). On Nietzsche’s ambivalently egocentric perspectivism, see Davis 2018, 124–1 26.
See Martin Heidegger, “The Essence of Truth,” in Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 136–1 54. On Heidegger’s thought in relation to Zen’s nonegocentric perspectivism, see Davis forthcoming.
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 54; compare Davis 2009, 256, and Dōgen 2002, 41.
And yet, although this is how we can say that it is, it is just that flowers fall amid our attachment and regret, and weeds flourish amid our rejecting and loathing.
While the first sentence speaks from the temporal perspective of “when the various things are [seen according to] the Buddha’s teaching . . . ,” the second sentence speaks from that of “when the myriad things are each [seen as] without self . . . . ” That which is affirmed in the first sentence is strikingly negated in the second. What is Dōgen doing here in this overturning alteration of perspective? While the first sentence sets forth several fundamental distinctions which constitute the basic teachings of Buddhism— such as that between ordinary sentient beings and their delusion on the one hand and Buddhas and their enlightenment on the other— the second sentence, by focusing now on the central teaching of no-s elf (Sk. anātman; Jp. muga 無我), goes on to negate the reification of these oppositional designations. For readers familiar with Mahāyāna Buddhism’s Perfection of Wisdom literature, such self- deconstructive negations in a Buddhist text do not come as too much of a surprise. The Heart Sutra, for example, radicalizes the early Buddhist doctrine of no-s elf into that of the emptiness (Sk. śūnyatā; Jp. kū 空; i.e., the lack of independent substantiality) of all phenomenal elements of existence (Sk. dharmas; Jp. shohō 諸法) and linguistic conventions, even to the point of a systematic negation of (a reified misunderstanding of) traditional Buddhist teachings themselves, including the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Heart Sutra also speaks of no- birth, no- death, and no- attainment, rather than of nirvāna as the attainment of a release from samsāra as the cycle of birth and death.
Furthermore, readers familiar with Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna’s notion of the “emptiness of emptiness” (i.e., the idea that emptiness itself is not an independently substantial entity, but rather is the nature of events of interdependent origination [Skt. pratītya- samutpāda; Jp. engi 縁起]), and with Tiantai (Jp. Tendai) Buddhist philosopher Zhiyi’s development of the doctrine of Two Truths (i.e., the conventional truth of provisional designations and the ultimate truth of emptiness) into the Three Truths of “the provisional, the empty, and the middle,” will be prepared for the third sentence of the Genjōkōan. No longer qualified by a “when . . . ,” the “middle” perspective expressed here resolves the tension between the first two perspectives so as to make possible the reaffirmation of distinctions, but now without reification. In fact, in its teaching of the ontological middle way of interdependent origination, Buddhism has always rejected nihilism and annihilationism along with substantialism and eternalism. The Buddhist account of the interdependent and dynamic nature of reality and the self is not subject to the “all or nothing” dilemma that plagues an ontology of independent and eternal substances. As Dōgen says here, “the Buddha Way originally leaps beyond both plenitude [i.e., substantial being] and poverty [i.e., nihilistic void].” Affirmatively thought, using the language of the Three Truths, the Buddhist middle way embraces the nondual polarity of the provisional “plenitude” of differentiated being and the “poverty” or substantial emptiness of ubiquitous interdependent origination.
It is possible to relate these first three sentences of the Genjōkōan not only to the Three Truths of Tiantai (Tendai) philosophy, but also to Chan Master Weixin’s famous three stages on the way to enlightenment, according to which a mountain is first seen as a mountain (i.e., as a conceptual reification), then not as a mountain (i.e., as empty of independent substantiality and linguistic reification), and finally really as a mountain (i.e., in the suchness of its interdependent origination). The path of the Buddha Way ultimately leads one back to the here and now.
Be that as it may, and although we should bear in mind that Dōgen was first of all trained as a Tendai monk and was intimately familiar with doctrines such as the Three Truths, it is also important to recall that he was from an early age dissatisfied with the then prevalent doctrine of “original enlightenment” (hongaku 本覚). What concerned the young Dōgen was that a premature and blanket affirmation of the self and the world of distinctions as they are tends to deny or at least downplay the importance of transformative practice (shugyō 修行). This dissatisfaction and concern finally induced him to come down from Tendai’s Mt. Hiei on a path that led him to Zen.
The primary and ultimate standpoint of Dōgen’s Zen is most directly expressed in the climactic— and, in a sense, intentionally anticlimactic— fourth sentence of the Genjōkōan. Here, Dōgen calls for a return from the heights of reason (ri 理) to the basis of fact (ji 事), that is, to the non-i dealized here and now of concrete experience, where “flowers fall amid our attachment and regret, and weeds flourish amid our rejecting and loathing.” I would suggest that this crucial sentence, like so many in Dōgen’s often polysemous texts, can be read in at least two ways. On the one hand, as an expression of the concrete experiences of enlightened existence, it signifies that nirvāna is not somewhere beyond the trials and tribulations of samsāra (the realm of desire and suffering). Rather, it is a matter of “awakening in the midst of the deluding passions” (bonnō soku bodai 煩悩即菩提). Zen enlightenment is not an escapist dying to, but rather a wholehearted dying into a liberated and liberating engagement in the human life of emotional entanglements.
On the other hand, I think that this fourth sentence can also be read— on a less advanced but certainly no less significant level— as an acknowledgment that no amount of rational explanation of the nonduality of samsāra and nirvāna can bring about an actual realization of this truth. In Fukanzazengi, Dōgen writes: “From the beginning the Way circulates everywhere; why the need to verify it in practice? . . . And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, heaven and earth are vastly separated; if the least disorder arises, the heart and mind get lost in confusion.”16 And he tells us in Bendōwa: “Although the truth [Dharma] amply inheres in every person, without practice, it does not presence; if it is not verified, it is not attained.”17 Religious practice is necessary, which, for Dōgen, involves not just the practice of meditative concentration but also the practice of thoughtful discrimination. Hence, after the opening section of the Genjōkōan, he proceeds to concretely describe the conversion from a deluded/ deluding to an enlightened/ enlightening comportment to the world.
Verification: The Practice of Enlightenment
A deluding experience of the world, according to Dōgen, occurs when one “carries the self forward to verify- in- practice (shushō 修証) the myriad things.” On the other hand, “for the myriad things to come forth and verify-i n- practice the self is enlightenment.”18 In order to appreciate this explanation of delusion and enlightenment, we need to first discuss Dōgen’s peculiar notion of shushō. In this term, Dōgen conjoins two characters to convey the inseparable nonduality of “practice” and “enlightenment (verification).”19 This key aspect of Dōgen’s teaching is poignantly addressed in the concluding section of the Genjōkōan, where the action of the Zen master fanning himself (practice) is demonstrated to be one with the truth that the wind (Buddha- nature) circulates everywhere.
As Chan Master Baoche of Mount Mayu was using his fan, a monk came and asked, “It is the wind’s nature to be constantly abiding and there is no place in which it does not circulate. Why then, sir, do you still use a fan?”
The master said, “You only know that it is the nature of the wind to be constantly abiding. You don’t yet know the reason [more literally: the principle of the way] that there is no place it does not reach.”
The monk said, “What is the reason for there being no place in which it does not circulate?”
At which time the master just used his fan.
The monk bowed reverently.
The verifying experience of the Buddha Dharma and the vital path of its true transmission are like this. To say that if it is constantly abiding one shouldn’t use a fan, that even without using a fan one should be able to feel the wind, is to not know [the meaning of] either constantly abiding or the nature of the wind.20
Dōgen 1990b: 171; compare Dōgen 2002, 2–3 .
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 11; compare Dōgen 2002, 8; also see Dōgen 1985, 87.
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 54; Davis 2009, 256; compare Dōgen 2002, 40.
See Dōgen 1990a, 1: 28; Dōgen 2002, 19. On Dōgen’s key teaching of the “oneness of practice and enlightenment,” see Davis 2016, 207–2 15.
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 60; Davis 2009, 259; compare Dōgen 2002, 44–4 5.
Enlightenment, for Dōgen, is found neither in inactive detachment, nor in a passive acceptance of the way things are, but rather in the midst of a holistic participation— an engaged playing of one’s part— in the world.
The character for shō 証, which is Dōgen’s favored term for enlightenment, normally means to verify, prove, attest to, confirm, or authenticate something. As a synonym for enlightenment, shō is a matter of verifying (“showing to be true” and literally “making true”) and hence realizing (awakening to and thus actualizing) the fact that one’s true self (honbunnin 本分人), one’s “original part,” is originally part and parcel of the dynamically ubiquitous Buddha- nature. In the Busshō fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō, Dōgen famously rereads the Mahāparinirvāna Sūtra’s claim that “all sentient beings have the Buddha- nature” to mean that “Buddha- nature is all that is” (shitsu- u wa busshō nari 悉有は仏性なり).21 Enlightenment is a matter of verifying- in- practice this fundamental fact. It is a matter of authentication, of truly becoming what one in truth is: a unique expression of a universally shared Buddha- nature.
Learning to Forget the Self
The self is a participant in the dynamically interconnected matrix of the world. Delusion occurs when the self egoistically posits itself as the single fixed center—r ather than existing as one among infinitely many mutually reflective and expressive focal points—o f the whole.22 In delusion, the myriad things are seen, not according to the self-e xpressive aspects through which they show themselves, but rather only as they are forced into the perspectival horizon of the self- fixated and self- assertive ego. To borrow the language of Kant, the deluded and deluding ego willfully projects its own forms of intuition and categories of understanding onto the world. In contrast, through practicing the Buddha Way, one comes to realize the empty (i.e., open and interdependent) nature of the true self.
Dōgen describes the steps of this process of practice and enlightenment in three of the most frequently cited lines of the Genjōkōan:
To learn the Buddha Way is to learn the self.
To learn the self is to forget the self.
To forget the self is to be verified by the myriad things [of the world].23
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 73; compare Dōgen 2002, 61.
As with much of Zen thought, Dōgen’s perspectivism is heavily influenced by Huayan (Jp. Kegon) philosophy, which in turn draws on the Avatamsaka Sūtra’s image of the “jewel net of Indra” wherein each jewel reflects all the others (see Chang 1971; Cook 1977; Davis 2018, 128–1 31).
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 54; Davis 2009, 256; compare Dōgen 2002, 41.
The study of Buddhism, according to Dōgen’s Zen, involves more than a cognitive grasp of the truth of the Buddhist teachings (Buddha Dharma; buppō 仏法). It involves a holistic practice of a way of life (Buddha Way; butsudō 仏道). The central practice of the Buddha Way for Dōgen, and for the Zen tradition in general, is seated meditation (zazen 坐禅) rather than study of scriptures, performance of esoteric rituals, or calling on the grace of a transcendent savior. According to Zen, “what comes through the gate [i.e., from outside of oneself] is not the treasure of the house”; the truth must be discovered within. Dōgen thus speaks of meditation as a practice of taking a radical “step back that turns the light around.”
The light of our unenlightened minds is generally directed outward, shining its objectifying gaze on things and on a projected image of the ego itself. Things and other persons become objects of attachment or aversion, purported possessions or enemies of a reified conception of the self as ego-s ubject. But things and persons change and otherwise refuse to obey one’s will, ever slipping from the grasp of the ego, which is itself constantly subject to mutation and otherwise fails to live up to its self-c onstructed image of itself. Hence, repeatedly disappointed and frustrated, the ego suffers the resistance of the world and, out of greed, hate, and delusion, inflicts suffering on others. Ironically, the Buddha Dharma itself, as with any teaching, can be turned into just another object of dogmatic and even fanatic attachment, diverting us from the root of the problem: namely, a false conception of ourselves and our relation to the world. Therefore, the Buddha Way first of all requires a penetrating examination of the self.
Yet when one turns the light around to reflect on the deepest recesses of the self, what one ultimately finds is— nothing. There is no substantial ego- subject underlying our thoughts, feelings, and desires. But neither is this nothingness— or emptiness—a nihilistic void. Rather, the ungraspable no-t hingness of the self is the very source of the open- minded, open-h earted, and creatively free activity of the true self. The true self is an open engagement with others. A thoroughgoing “learning of the self” thus paradoxically leads to a “forgetting of the self” as an independent and substantial ego- subject.
Dōgen speaks of this “forgetting” most radically in terms of his own enlightenment experience of “dropping off the body- mind” (shinjin- datsuraku 信心脱落). Note that Dōgen does not speak dualistically of freeing the mind from the body. In fact, he explicitly rejects the mind– body dualism of the so- called Senika heresy and speaks of the “oneness of body– mind” (shinjin ichinyo 身心一如) along with the nonduality of the “one mind” with the entire cosmos. Insofar as we have identified ourselves with a dualistic and reified conception of the mind, however, along with the body this, too, must be shed.
Only through a radical experience of letting go of all reifications of and attachments to the mind as well as the body does one become open to the self- presentation of the myriad things of the world.
Yet this openness must be realized, and this realization is neither static nor simply passive. When Dōgen says that “things come forth and verify- in- practice the self” (elsewhere he even claims that “original practice inheres in the original face of each and every thing”28), he is countering the willful self-a ssertion of unenlightened human subjectivity by calling attention to the “objective side” of the “total dynamism” or “undivided activity” (zenki 全機) of a nondual experience of reality. He speaks of the nonduality of this experience as follows: “When you ride in a boat, body-a nd- mind, self-a nd- environs, subjectivity- and- objectivity are all together the undivided activity of the boat. The entire earth as well as the entire sky are the undivided activity of the boat.”29 For our part, in order to authentically participate in this nondual event—a nd hence to verify or realize this or that aspect of reality—w e must not only liberate ourselves from a self- assertive fixation on our body– mind by letting it drop off; we must also spontaneously pick up the body–m ind again in an energetic yet egoless “total exertion” (gūjin究尽) of “rousing the [whole] body– mind to perceive forms, rousing the [whole] body– mind to listen to sounds.”30
Let us pause for a moment to review the pivotal paradoxes involved in Dōgen’s path of Zen. (1) Turning to and from ourselves: by way of initially turning the light of the mind away from (a deluded view of) external reality and back toward ourselves, we discover an emptiness at the heart of the self that opens us up to an enlightened experience of the myriad things of the world. (2) Utter detachment and total involvement: This process of enlightenment entails a radical “dropping off the body–m ind” that leads, not to a state of mindless disembodiment, but rather to a holistic integration of the body– mind and its unattached yet wholehearted employment in nondual events of enlightening perception and understanding.
Nondual Perspectivism
The intimately engaged yet egoless perception and understanding that Dōgen speaks of are never shadowless illuminations of all aspects of a thing. The epistemology implied in Dōgen’s understanding of enlightenment is plainly not that of simultaneous
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 18; compare Dōgen 2002, 14.
Dōgen 1990a, 2: 84; compare Dōgen 1999, 174.
Dōgen 1990a, 1: 54; Davis 2009, 256; compare Dōgen 2002, 41. There are contrasting interpretations of this passage. Along with traditional scholars, I have interpreted this “rousing the [whole] body–m ind to perceive and listen” in terms of enlightenment. Some recent scholars, however, have argued for reading it in terms of delusion (Ishii 1997, 235; Ueda 2002, 287–2 91).
omniscience. Enlightenment does not entail the achievement of an instantaneous all- knowing view from nowhere, but rather the realization of being on an endless path of illuminating the innumerable aspects of reality, an ongoing journey of appreciating the “inexhaustible virtues” of things. Enlightenment is not a state of final escape to another world, but rather a never self- satisfied process of enlightening darkness and delusion within this world. Indeed, setting out on this never- ending Way of enlightenment entails awakening to the ineradicable play of knowledge and nescience. And thus, once again paradoxically, Dōgen tells us: “When the Dharma does not yet saturate the body– mind, one thinks that it is sufficient. If the Dharma fills the body– mind, one notices an insufficiency.”32
Dōgen makes this epistemological point most clearly and forcefully in the section of Genjōkōan where he speaks of the inexhaustible aspects and virtues of the ocean.
For example, if one rides in a boat out into the middle of the ocean where there are no mountains [in sight] and looks in the four directions, one will see only a circle without any other aspects in sight. Nevertheless, the great ocean is not circular, and it is not square; the remaining virtues of the ocean are inexhaustible. It is like a palace [for fish]. It is like a jeweled ornament [to gods]. It is just that, as far as my eyes can see, for a while it looks like a circle. It is also like this with the myriad things. Although things within and beyond this dusty world are replete with a variety of aspects, it is only through a cultivated power of vision that one can [intimately] perceive and apprehend them. In order to hear the household customs of the myriad things, you should know that, besides appearing as round or square, there are unlimited other virtues of the ocean and of the mountains, and there are worlds in all four directions. And you should know that it is not only like this over there, but also right here beneath your feet and even in a single drop [of water].
When Dōgen speaks of a human being sitting on a boat in the middle of the ocean, looking out in all four directions and seeing only a vast empty circle, he is perhaps also speaking metaphorically of a meditative experience of emptiness. We might refer in this regard to the empty circle or “circular shape” (ensō 円相) that appears as the eighth of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, which is often interpreted as a symbol for the absolute emptiness of the Dharmakāya (the Truth Body of the Buddha), or the Buddha- nature (busshō 仏性) understood—a s Dōgen and other Zen masters sometimes do— in terms of mu- busshō (無仏性, “no- Buddha- nature” or the “Buddha- nature- of- Nothingness”).
In any case, what is crucial is that neither the Ten Oxherding Pictures nor Dōgen’s Zen stops at the empty circle. It may be necessary to pass through an experience of emptiness as a “great negation” of the ego and its reifying attachments, and as the realization of absolute equality and equanimity. But even emptiness must not be grasped as a purportedly “perspectiveless perspective” in which one abides. In the all-e mbracing “one taste” of perfect equality, the differences between singular things are obscured. Here, too, “emptiness must empty itself” and allow for distinctions, such that true nonduality is a matter of “neither one nor two” (fu- ichi fu- ni 不一不二). The universal truth of emptiness is not an overarching perspective that negates, but rather a pervading principle that enables the interplay between unique yet interconnected beings. In its “suchness,” each thing, person, animal, or event is neither an independent substance nor an indistinct portion of an undifferentiated totality: rather, it is a unique perspectival opening within the dynamically interweaving web of the world.
Hence, even though one may perceive the ocean (or world) as a vast empty circle, Dōgen goes on to write: “Nevertheless, the great ocean is not circular, and it is not square; the remaining virtues [or qualities] of the ocean are inexhaustible. It is like a palace [for fish]. It is like a jeweled ornament [to gods]. It is just that, as far as my eyes can see, for a while it looks like a circle.” Dōgen is drawing here on the traditional Buddhist notion that different sentient beings experience the world in different manners, depending on the conditioning of their karma. He is likely alluding specifically to the following commentary on the Mahāyāna- saṃgraha: “The sea itself basically has no disparities, yet owing to the karmic differences of devas, humans, craving spirits, and fish, devas see it as a treasure trove of jewels, humans see it as water, craving spirits see it as an ocean of pus, and fish see it as a palatial dwelling.” Dōgen writes elsewhere that one “should not be limited to human views” and naively think that what you view as water is “what dragons and fish see as water and use as water.”
The epistemology implied in Dōgen’s view of enlightenment as an ongoing practice of enlightening, as an unending path of discovery, is thus what I would call an engaged yet egoless, a pluralistic yet nondual perspectivism. It is a perspectivism insofar as it understands that reality only shows itself one aspect and focal point at a time. But while, on the one hand, in a deluded/d eluding comportment to the world this aspect and focus get determined by the will of a self-f abricating ego that goes out and posits a horizon that delimits, filters, and schematizes how things can reveal themselves (namely, as objects set in front of a subject who represents and manipulates them), in an enlightened/ enlightening comportment to the world, on the other hand, things are allowed to reveal themselves through nondual events in which the self has “forgotten itself” in its pure activity of egoless engagement. This engagement is neither simply passive nor simply active; for, originally, we are not detached ego- subjects who subsequently encounter (either passively or actively) independently subsisting objects. The original force at work in experience is neither “self- power” (jiriki 自力) nor “other-p ower” (tariki 他力). Rather, writes Dōgen, the “continuous practice” (gyōji 行持) one participates in is “pure action that is forced neither by oneself nor by others.”38 At every moment of enlightened/ enlightening experience there is— for the time being— but a single nondual middle-v oiced event of “being-time” ( uji 有時)39 as a self-r evelation of a singular aspect of reality. Enlightenment is a matter of realizing that the world is in truth made up of such nondual self-r evelatory events. And just as these interconnected yet unique events are infinite, so is the path of their verification- in- practice.
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
Abe, Masao. (1992) A Study of Dōgen: His Philosophy and Religion, edited by Steven Heine. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Bein, Steve. (2011) Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsurō’s Shamon Dogen. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press.
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