Dogen the phenomenalist

When, for example, Dogen says, "What we call Buddha Mind is synonymous with the three temporal worlds of past, present, and future, Dogen doesn't understand that Buddha Mind doesn't behold a temporal world existing in its own independent right. Buddha Mind is the absolute awakening to itself which means the temporal world doesn't actually exist. The temporal world is an illusion or my.

To suggest that the temporal world is in anyway real, thus putting it on a par with Buddha Mind, is like saying that Fa-tsang's lion, in his work, Essay on the Golden Lion, possesses real substance apart from the goldwell, it doesn't. There is only gold which has been shaped and named lion; which is fundamentally empty of lions, etc.

In addition, Dogen doesn't seem to comprehend, as he should, that a Bodhisattva does not train in any thing or settle down in any thing or dharma according to the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra (The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, trans. Conze). This is because things do not fundamentally exist. This includes the human body and even the act of doing the ritual (J., gyji) of zazeneven Dogens jaw of a donkey and the muzzle of a horse lacks true existence which he equates with Buddha-nature.

This leads me to wonder how much Dogen has read of the Buddhas teachings. He seems off course in many of his observations. Echoing Hajime Nakamura, I think Dogen looks for the absolute in the phenomenal which is a phenomenalist way of thinking (cp. Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, p. 351).


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