The tailless foxes of Zen

In Aesops Fables there is a fable about a fox who lost his tail in a trap. Rather than face the embarrassment and shame of having no tail, the fox tried to convince his fellow foxes to give up their tails which wisely they wouldnt do. As far as Soto Zen is concerned, I would call it tailless fox Zen in which modern day Soto Zen masters are trying to convince the public, just do zazen, thats all there is to Buddhism.

Dogen Zenji, the founder of Japanese Soto Zen, is like the fox who lost his tail who has convinced others to cut off their tails. Being unable to grasp the real meaning of the Buddhas enlightenment he invented a teaching which essentially says that doing zazen is enlightenment, although the Buddha never said this, nor was zazen ever transmitted (in Zen it is Mind that is transmitted, not zazen).

Here are three examples where Dogen Zenjis claims about zazen are patently false insofar as there is no convincing canonical evidence from the Buddhas discourses to back up the importance Dogen ascribes to zazen. (Quotations are from, Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi et al.)

"Zazen itself is satori. Zazen is dropping off body and mind and is the Shbgenz-nehanmyshin [the spiritual wisdom and the true dharma]. Doing zazen is to practice, put into effect, and actualize this satorihere-and-now. Only when we do zazen with this attitude can our practice of zazen be called shikantazajust doing" (Shbgenz: Zanmai Zamai).

"The correctly transmitted dharma from buddha to buddha and from patriarch to patriarch has always been just to sit... This is very clear. Zazen itself is already the ultimate posture of satori. In other words, satori is just doing zazen" (Eihei Kroku, vol. 4).

"When Bodhidharma came to China, he didn't enga! ge himse lf in all sorts of so-called religious practices. Nor did he give lectures on sutras. He simply did zazen at Shrinji for nine years just facing the wall. Doing zazen, is just that, is the way of the Buddha, the shbgenz-nehanmyshin" (Eihei Kroku, vol. 4).

Dogen, in his works, hasnt backed up his claims about zazen with supporting passages from the canon. Where, in what Sutra, did the Buddha say that sitting dhyna (zazen) is sambodhi or enlightenment? Dogen, also, doesnt seem to understand that Bodhidharma never sat in zazen facing a wall. The term used for Bodhidharmas meditation is pi-kuan (biguan) which means, lit., wall-insight, kuan being the Chinese translation of vipashyana which in Sanskrit means insight. As it should be noted, vipashyana isnt dhyna or chan/zen. In fine, Bodhidharma just had insight into the immovable.

For Zen teachers to ask students to sit in zazen, making this the main part of their Buddhist studies, amounts to the fox in Aesops Fables being successful in getting his fellow foxes to cut off their tails. An equivalent example, would be for a Nyingmapa Lama to declare that just doing full prostrations is enlightenmentthe more you do, the more enlightened you are.

While the tailless foxes of contemporary Zen, who are embarrassed by the fact that they don't really understand Buddhism, are working overtime to convince Buddhist practitioners and beginners that just sitting, or zazen, is sufficientit solves all problemsthe importance of actually realizing the Mind of the Buddha is all but ignored. Perish the thought that many followers of the Zen school in China during the Sung denied that their school was a meditation school. Zen, they argued, was a synonym for Buddha Mind.