Abstract
Philosophers interested in mining the Buddhist tradition for insights have long been drawn to Dōgen, and in particular to his Shōbōgenzō. I defend the practice of reading Dōgen as a philosophical figure, arguing that Dōgen’s mystical and paradoxical language can generally be cut through, yielding straightforward assertions of determinate philosophical views. As a proof of concept, I offer philosophical readings of Dōgen on two issues. First, I argue that Dōgen’s intervention in the Japanese Buddhist discourse on ‘Buddha nature’ (busshō 佛性) expresses an overarching metaphysical position that unifies the Shōbōgenzō. I then argue that Dōgen recognises and attempts to solve a metaethical problem raised by his understanding of Buddha nature. Along the way, I show how careful attention to Dōgen’s position in the intellectual history of the Buddhist tradition can illuminate how he builds on the philosophical legwork of his forebears.
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Notes
- 1.
I am grateful to Nic Bommarito, Tanya Kostochka, Natalie Nitsch, George Wrisley, and Brook Ziporyn for helpful feedback, as well as to the online audience at the workshop that generated this volume, and to Ralf Müller for the invitation to participate.
- 2.
Raji C. Steineck, “A Zen Philosopher?—Notes on the Philosophical Reading of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō,” in Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic World, vol. 1, ed. Raji C. Steineck, Ralph Weber, Robert Gassmann, and Elena Lange (Leiden: Brill, 2018a). See also his paper in this volume.
- 3.
Ibid., 582.
- 4.
Ibid. 585.
- 5.
Chung-Ying Cheng, “On Zen (Ch’an) Language and Zen Paradoxes,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 1 (1973); John Spackman, “The Tiantai Roots of Dōgen’s Philosophy of Language and Thought,” Philosophy East and West 56, no. 3 (2006); Laura Specker Sullivan, “Dōgen and Wittgenstein: Transcending Language Through Ethical Practice,” Asian Philosophy 23, no. 3 (2013): 223–4.
- 6.
Hee-jin Kim, “‘The Reason of Words and Letters’: Dōgen and Kōan Language,” in Dōgen Studies, ed. William LaFleur (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1985), 56–60; David R. Loy, “Language Against Its Own Mystifications: Deconstruction in Nāgārjuna and Dōgen.” Philosophy East and West 49, no. 3 (1999); Steven Heine, “Dōgen on the Language of Creative Textual Hermeneutics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, ed. Bret W. Davis, (Oxford University Press, 2015).
- 7.
At the same time, it is important not to take this point too broadly, for Dōgen does offer arguments for positions. For instance, at Bukkyō 佛教 107b20–c9, Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō: The True Dharma-Eye Treasury, 4 vols., trans. Gudo Wafu Nishijima and Chodo Cross Moraga (CA: BDK America, 2007–8), Dōgen offers an argument (acknowledged by Raji Steineck, “‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen,” Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 72, no. 1 (2018b): 195–6) against the then-ascendant notion of Chan as a “separate transmission outside the teachings” (教外別伝), better calibrated than scriptural transmission for the attainment of “the one mind” or “Buddha-mind” (一心, 佛心, i.e., Buddha-nature). Since the Buddhist teachings are themselves identical to Buddha-nature, Dōgen points out, there can be no “separate transmission outside the teachings” except one that leads away from Buddha-nature (if the notion is even coherent at all). On the origins of 教外別伝, see Griffith T. Foulk, “Sung Controversies Concerning the ‘Separate Transmission’ of Ch’an,” n Buddhism in the Sung, eds. Peter N. Gregory and Daniel A. Getz, Jr. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999). On its reception among Dōgen’s Japanese contemporaries, see Stephan Kigensan Licha, “Separate Teaching and Separate Transmission: Kokan Shiren’s Zen Polemics,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 45, no.1 (2018). Still, I acknowledge that Dōgen’s core metaphysical position, as I explain it in §2, is not defended by means of argument in this way.
- 8.
Steineck, “‘Religion’,” 188–92, 196–201.
- 9.
Some of the material in this section is drawn from my “Emptiness And Metaethics: Dōgen’s Anti-Realist Solution,” Philosophy East and West 70, no. 4 (2020): 958–962.
- 10.
Kevin Schilbrack, “Metaphysics in Dōgen,” Philosophy East and West 50, no. 1 (2000).
- 11.
Translations are either my own, with reference to Nishijima and Cross’ translation in Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, vol. 2, 3–42, or are modifications of Nishijima and Cross. I cite from the Taisho edition of the Shōbōgenzō, T 82, no. 2582.
- 12.
Cf. Ralf Müller, “Philosophy and the Practice of Reflexivity: On Dōgen’s Discourse about Buddha-Nature” in Concepts of Philosophy in Asia and the Islamic World, vol. 1, ed. Raji C. Steineck, Ralph Weber, Robert Gassmann, and Elena Lange (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 545.
- 13.
Steineck, “A Zen Philosopher?” passim.
- 14.
cf. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, vol. 2, 4.
- 15.
cf. Ibid., 21.
- 16.
cf. ibid., 30. 91c16–21: 世尊道の一切衆生悉有佛性は、その宗旨いかん... すなはち悉有は佛性なり. 93a26–7: 山河をみりは、佛性をみるなり. 97c16–8: 草木國土これ心なり... 日月星辰これ心なり (cf. Bukkyo 佛教 107b20–29 and Kobusshin 古佛心 173b18–19). 101a14–5: 佛性を道取すれに... 牆壁瓦礫なり (cf. Shin fukatoku (ka) 心不可得 (下) 81b9–10).
- 17.
See, for instance, Sangai yuishin 三界唯心 and Shohō jissō 諸法實相, as well as the passage in Tsuki 月 discussing the “true Dharma body” (眞法身) of the Buddha (starting at 168a15).
- 18.
Steineck, “A Zen Philosopher?” 589; Ralf Müller, “Philosophy and the Practice of Reflexivity,” 577–8.
- 19.
See also Kūge 空華 170b19–20, where Dōgen equates various trappings of spiritual accomplishment (nirvāṇa, enlightenment, etc.) with “flowers in space” (kūge), a canonical symbol of things empty of independent existence. Later in the fascicle, Dōgen endorses the expansion of the extension of ‘empty’ to include all entities or phenomena: “Those who study [according to the idea] that flowers in space are not real, whereas other flowers are real, are people who have not seen or heard the Buddha’s teaching” (空華は實にあらす、餘華はこれ實なりと學すれは、佛教を見聞せさるものなり, 171b19–22; cf. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, vol. 3, 18).
- 20.
無常は者、即ち佛性なり也。有常は者、即ち善惡一切諸法分別の心なり也 (95a7–8). cf. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, vol. 2, 14.
- 21.
95a25–b4: すなはち佛性なり。人物身心の無常なるこれ佛性なり。國土山河の無常なる。これ佛性なるによりてなり。阿耨多羅三藐三菩提、これ佛性なるかゆゑに無常なり。大般涅槃これ無常なるかゆゑに佛性なり。もろもろの二乘ノ小見、およひ經論師の三藏等は、これ六祖の道を驚疑怖畏すへし。もし驚疑せんことは、魔外の類なり。
- 22.
cf. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, vol. 2, 4.
- 23.
cf. ibid., 4–5.
- 24.
Śreṇika or Senika, and his eponymous doctrinal error, appears in the Saṃyuktāgama 雜阿含經, juan 卷 5, no. 105 (T 99, 31–2), the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra 大般涅槃經, juan 卷 39 (T 374, 594–7), and the Da zhidu lun 大智度論, juan 卷 42 (T 1509, 368–9). See Robert E. Buswell, Jr. and David S. Lopez, Jr., eds. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), s.v. “Śreṇika heresy,” as well as Bernard Faure, A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 59–65. Dōgen offers his own more extensive account of, and reply to, the Senika heresy in the Sokushin zebutsu 即心是佛 fascicle.
- 25.
cf. ibid., 13.
- 26.
Much more should be said about the role of the Sarvāstivāda school of Buddhist Abhidharma, which flourished in North India between the third century BCE and the sixth century CE or later, in Chinese and Japanese Tiantai/Tendai and Chan/Zen thinkers’ conceptions of their own place in the doctrinal history and development of Buddhism. For now, it should suffice to note that ‘Sarvāstivāda’ here seems to function as a stand-in for the whole sweep of Buddhist philosophy that seeks to identify which entities exist in an ontologically fundamental way, which Dōgen would identify using terms like ‘self’ (我) or ‘permanence’ (常). The predominance of Sarvāstivāda texts among the translated sources of Abhidharma thought available to the Chinese, and Kumārajīva’s education therein, are undoubtedly part of the story of how the term ‘Sarvāstivāda’ came to function in this way. See Erik Zürcher, “Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Foreign Input,” Sino-Platonic Papers 222 (2012): 16–17.
- 27.
91c24–6: しるへしいま佛性に悉有せらるる有は、有無の有にあらす。92a13–4: 遍界我有は、外道の邪見なり。92a22–3: 佛性の言をききて、學者多く先尼外道の我のことく邪計せり。94c21–4: いまの人も、佛性とききぬれは、さらにいかなるかこれ佛性と問取せす。佛性も有無等の義をいふかことし。これ倉卒なり。100a2–4: 趙州いはく、有。これ有の樣子は、教家の論師等の有にあらす。有部の論有にあらさるなり。101a12–3: 癡人多く識神を認して、佛性とせり。本來人とせり。笑殺人なり。
- 28.
一切衆生即佛性といはす、一切衆生有佛性といふと參學すへし。有佛性の有、まさに脱落すへし (97c27–98a1). cf. ibid., 21.
- 29.
説くも衆生に有佛性と、亦謗するなり佛法僧を。説くも衆生に無佛性と、亦謗するなり佛法僧を (98b14–5). cf. ibid., 23.
- 30.
There is broad consensus among interpreters on this point. See Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy, 192; David R. Loy, “The Path of No-Path: Śankara and Dōgen on the Paradox of Practice,” Philosophy East and West 38, no. 2 (1988): 128; Joan Stambaugh, Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature: Dо̄gen’s Understanding of Temporality (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990), ch. 2.
- 31.
Schilbrack, “Metaphysics in Dōgen.”
- 32.
cf. Jacqueline I. Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 50.
- 33.
On the notions of fundamentality, grounding, and levels, see Kit Fine, “The Question of Realism,” Philosophers’ Imprint 1, no. 2 (2001); Gideon Rosen, “Metaphysical Dependence: Grounding and Reduction,” in Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology, ed. Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffman (Oxford University Press, 2010); Jonathan Schaffer, “On What Grounds What” in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, ed. David J. Chalmers, David Manley, and Ryan Wasserman (Oxford University Press, 2009). For an application of these conceptual resources in an Indian Buddhist context, see Allison Aitken, “No Unity, No Problem: Madhyamaka Metaphysical Indefinitism,” Philosophers’ Imprint 21, no. 31 (2021).
- 34.
Jikido Takasaki, A Study on the Ratnagotravibhaga (Uttaratantra): Being a Treatise on the Tathagatagarbha Theory of Mahayana Buddhism (Rome: Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East, 1966), 56, 218ff.
- 35.
Ibid., 54–7. Takasaki 2014c, pp. 302–7.
- 36.
- 37.
On the Mahāparinirvāṇa, see Ming-Wood Liu, “The Doctrine of the Buddha-Nature in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa-Sūtra,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 5, no. 2 (1982). On the Laṅkāvatāra, see Florin Giripescu Sutton, Existence and Enlightenment in the Laṅkāvatāra-sūtra: A Study in the Ontology and the Epistemology of the Yogācāra School of Mahāyāna Buddhism (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991), 51–78. On the Foxing lun, see Sallie B. King, Buddha Nature (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1991). It should be noted, however, that the Laṅkāvatāra—despite its heavier emphasis on emptiness—also describes the tathāgatagarbha as pure, eternal, undestroyed, and so on. The text was received and initially transmitted along with the Ratnagotra in China. See Jikido Takasaki, “Sources of the Laṅkāvatāra and Its Position in Mahāyāna Buddhism,” in Collected Papers on Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2014b).
- 38.
Paul L Swanson, “T’ien-t’ai Chih-i’s Concept of Threefold Buddha Nature—A Synergy of Reality, Wisdom, and Practice,” in Buddha Nature: A Festschrift in Honor of Minoru Kiyota, eds. Paul J. Griffiths and John P. Keenan (Reno, NV: Buddhist Books International, 1990); Brook Ziporyn, “Tiantai Buddhist Conceptions of ‘The Nature’ (Xing) and its Relation to the Mind,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37, no. 3 (2010).
- 39.
See also The Nirvana Sutra (Mahāparinirvāṇa-Sūtra): Volume I, ed. and trans. Mark Blum (Moraga, CA: BDK America, 2013), xix. Kūkai was probably responsible for the introduction of tathāgatagarbha thought to Japanese Buddhist thought in general, and to Tendai in particular. His works describe an eternal, substantial Buddha-nature very much in line with that attacked by Dōgen. See Jikido Takasaki, “Kōbō Daishi (Kūkai) and Tathāgatagarbha Thought,” in Collected Papers on Tathāgatagarbha Doctrine (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2014a).
- 40.
Some of the material in this section is drawn from my “Emptiness And Metaethics,” 962–70.
- 41.
Christine M. Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 7–18.
- 42.
Uji, 46b18–22: たとひ半究盡の有時も、半有時の究盡なり。たとひ蹉過すとみゆる形段も、有なり。Shōaku makusa, 42b7–9: 善惡は時なり。時は善惡にあらす。善惡は法なり。法は善惡にあらす。Hokke-ten-hokke, 73b13–26: いはゆる法華轉といふは、心迷なり。心迷はすなはち法華轉なり。しかあれはすなはち心迷は、法華に轉せらるるなり。その宗趣は、心迷たとひ萬象なりとも。如是相は法華に轉せらるるなり。[...] しかあれは心迷をうらむることなかれ。汝等か所行、是れ菩薩道なり。
- 43.
Similar statements can occasionally be found in the Shōbōgenzō itself, notably at Bukkyō 107c20–25: “[E]very individual who studies the true reality of the Buddha-dharma, when deciding upon teaching and learning that has come from the past, inevitably investigates it under the Buddhist patriarchs… If we hope to determine whether the teachings we rely upon are right or not, we should determine it under the Buddhist patriarchs.” 佛法の眞實を學する箇箇、ともにみな從來の教學を決擇するには、かならす佛祖に參究するなり。[...] 依教の正不をを決せんとおもはんは、佛祖に決すへきなり。
- 44.
Dōgen, Dōgen zenji zenshū: genbun taishō gendaigoyaku 道元禅師全集:原文対象現代語役, ed. Kagamishima Genryū 鏡島元隆, et al. 17 vols (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 1999): vol. 16, 130: 禅僧は、不修善、不要功德と云って、好悪行きはめて、僻事也。先規、未聞如是好悪行事。
- 45.
Ibid., 217: 戒行持齋を、守護すべければとて、強て宗として是を修行に立て、是によりて得道すべしと思ふも、亦これ非なり。只是れ衲僧の行履、佛子の家風なれば隨ひ行ふなり。是れを能事と云へばとて、必ずしも宗とする事なかれ。然あればとて、破戒放逸なれと云には非ず。若亦かの如く執せば邪見なり、外道なり。只佛家の儀式、叢林の家風なれば、隨順しゆくなり。
- 46.
For extensive discussion of an earlier Tiantai solution to the problem, see Brook Ziporyn, Evil and/or/as the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). David R. Loy, “Evil as the Good? A Reply to Brook Ziporyn,” Philosophy East and West 55, no. 2 (2005) offers a helpful and concise articulation of why that solution may not be of much help in guiding action, much less so in guiding action that turns out according to recognizably Buddhist moral intuitions. Dōgen’s view is much more successful on that score, though of course it brings along what may be thought a high cost: the abandonment of a philosophically deep answer as to why these particular first-order moral claims turn out to be the right ones.
- 47.
Bronwyn Finnigan and Koji Tanaka, “Ethics for Mādhyamikas,” in Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy, ed. the Cowherds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 223.
- 48.
Ibid., 223–4.
- 49.
See, for instance, the first section of the Gakudō yōjinshū 学道用心集, discussed in Steineck, “‘Religion’,” 15.
- 50.
See Young (2015) for an account of the many non-philosophical ways in which Madhyamaka philosophers like Nāgārjuna and Āryadeva were characterized in the Chinese Buddhist imagination.
- 51.
Yoshitaka Nagai 永井賢隆, “Dōgen Zenji to Dai chido ron,”「道元禅師と『大智度論』」, Indogaku Bukkyōgaku Kenkyū 印度学仏教学研究 60, no. 1 (2011).
- 52.
Steineck, “A Zen Philosopher?” 583.
- 53.
Sansuikyō 山水経, 63c21–6: 無理會話なり... 念慮にかかわれす...
- 54.
63c29–64a10: かくのことくいふやから。かつていまた正師をみす。參學眼なし。 いふにたらさる小獃子なり... 外道よりもおろかなり... 禿子かいふ無理會話。なんちのみ無理會なり。Cf. Dōgen, Shōbōgenzō, vol. 1, 220. 佛祖はしかあらす。 Kim, “‘The Reason of Words and Letters’,” 56–7 and Heine, “Dōgen on the Language,” 4, both make the same point about the significance of this passage.
- 55.
Steineck, “A Zen Philosopher?” 582.
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Guilbault, A. (2023). Dōgen as Philosopher, Metaphysician, and Metaethicist. In: Müller, R., Wrisley, G. (eds) Dōgen’s texts. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42246-1_10
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