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>>13279356
Dogen and Soto Zen
The leading Western historian of Zen, Heinrich Dumoulin, has called Dogen “the strongest and most original thinker that Japan has so far produced.” Probably more than any other traditional Japanese intellectual, Dogen would be entitled to take his place as a world-class philosopher. Yet he did not seek fame, nor did he receive much in his own lifetime. All he wanted was to find enlightenment by living a completely natural and ordinary life as a monk.
Dogen (1200-1253) was, like Eisai, of aristocratic background. He was the illegitimate son of a Fujiwara mother and a princely father, nurtured and educated amid the elegance of the Old Court. However, his parents both died while he was a child. Thus made acquainted with the dark as well as the sunny side of life, he desired to become a monk. After some difficulty he entered a Tendai center at Mount Hiei.
But like Honen, Nichiren, and others of his age he was troubled by apparent unanswered paradoxes in conventional teaching – in his case the question of why, if a person is born with the Buddha-nature within, does he nonetheless have to seek enlightenment? In this quest, Dogen first worked with a disciple of Eisai, Myozen, in Eisai’s old Rinzai temple, Kennin-ji. But though he always spoke of Eisai with great respect, little by little the younger disciple, Dogen, was becoming dissatisfied with Rinzai Zen. To him, the koans in which Rinzai put such stock were too much directed towards inducing particular mental and emotional experiences, rather than ultimate unconditioned liberation.
In 1223 Dogen sailed for China with Myozen, desiring to visit Buddhist centers. He found his way to Caodong (Soto) monasteries, where he appreciated the way they emphasized quiet sitting and living Zen in the context of all one’s life, including ordinary labor, more than koans and intense breakthrough experiences.
Later, Dogen was to write a whole book on working in the kitchen as Zen practice, though he also insisted on much zazen. Dogen also declared that not only cooks, but “Even a little girl of seven can become the teacher of the four classes of Buddhism and the compassionate mother of all beings; for [in Buddhism] men and women are completely equal. This is one of the highest principles of the Way”
This was not, however, a principle widely recognized in practice in traditional Buddhism. In this, as in so many other things, Dogen was far in advance of his times, and often ours.

japanese

>>12041383
>meticulously take in and synthesize Chinese writers, along with earlier Indian masters, to painstakingly reclaim the lineage of the masters while giving them all the credit throughout
>LOL PLAGARISIM MAN LMAAO
you truly are aware of vacuity

just read dogen and sit quietly, my dude

This is no soul
this is no lack of soul
neither is their nirvana
no its lack
nirvana is samsara, and samsara is no more than nirvana
brainlets

>>11756394
there is no mind, only Mind