Abstract
Dōgen has been described as a social reformer based on his more “enlightened” attitude towards women, inviting women students into his sangha and advocating for more egalitarian views of gender (Eido Frances Carney, Receiving the Marrow: Teachings on Dōgen by Soto Zen Women Priests (2012), p. xi). In this chapter, I describe how contemporary Western Zen women and their allies have understood Dōgen’s texts as a tool of personal and social transformation through examination of work by Zen practitioners such as Greenwood’s Bow First (2018), Carney’s Receiving the Marrow (2012), Schireson’s Zen Women (2009), and Glassman and Fields’ Instructions to the Cook (1996). In particular, I posit that Zen women have expressed the practical nature of Dōgen’s philosophy for contemporary non-monastics, showing how to de-center oneself through full participation in the activity of the world. This is in contrast to self-centered preoccupation with individual enlightenment or spiritual attainment. Paradoxically, it is the fact that women have often been confined to social roles that prevent their separation from the minutiae of everyday life that allows them to embody Dōgen’s dictum to “forget the self and be actualized by myriad things.”
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Notes
- 1.
Gesshin Claire Greenwood, Bow First, Ask Questions Later: Ordination, Love, and Monastic Zen in Japan. Somerville (MA: Wisdom Publications, 2018), 74.
- 2.
Ibid., 75.
- 3.
While I focus on interpretations of Dogen by women in the United States and Europe, this is not to disregard work on Dogen by Japanese women, such as in Paula Arai, Bringing Zen Home: The Healing Heart of Japanese Women’s Rituals (Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawaii Press, 2011) and Paula Arai, Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns (New York, NY: Oxford, 2012), and as referenced in Michiko Yusa, “Dōgen and the Feminine Presence: Taking a Fresh Look into His Sermons and Other Writings,” Religions 9, no. 232 (2018). Rather, my aim is to highlight the intersection of feminism as a Western phenomenon and Zen women practitioners’ interpretations of Dogen.
- 4.
Ann Pirruccello, “Making the World My Body: Simone Weil and Somatic Practice,” Philosophy East and West 52, no. 4 (2002).
- 5.
See Erin McCarthy, Ethics Embodied: Rethinking Selfhood through Continental, Japanese, and Feminist Philosophies (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010) and Erin McCarthy, “Embodying Change: Buddhism and Feminist Philosophy,” In Buddhist Philosophy: A Comparative Approach, ed. Steven Emmanuel. (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018).
- 6.
Ashby Butnor, “Dōgen, Feminism, and the Embodied Practice of Care,” in Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue, ed. Jennifer McWeeny and Ashby Butnor (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
- 7.
See Thomas P. Kasulis, “The Zen Philosopher: A Review Article on Dōgen Scholarship in English,” Philosophy East and West 28, no. 3 (1978).
- 8.
See Dōgen, The Heart of Dōgen’s Shobogenzo, ed. and trans. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), xi-xii. It may come as a surprise that Waddell and Abe characterize the Shobogenzo as “deliberately systematic and rational.” Arguably, this characterization depends on the point of comparison. Waddell and Abe’s reference point is the literature of the Zen tradition, in the context of which Dogen’s work certainly appears systematic and rational. This may not be the case if the reference point is changed to, e.g., Immanuel Kant.
- 9.
See Eido Frances Carney, ed. Receiving the Marrow: Teachings on Dogen by Soto Zen Women Priests (Olympia: Temple Ground Press, 2012), xi.
- 10.
See Joan Stambaugh, Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dōgen’s Understanding of Temporality (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1990).
- 11.
See Laura Specker Sullivan, “Dōgen and Wittgenstein: Transcending Language Through Ethical Practice,” Asian Philosophy 23, no. 3 (2013).
- 12.
See George Wrisley, “The Nietzschean Bodhisattva—Passionately Navigating Indeterminacy,” in The Significance of Indeterminacy: Perspectives from Asian and Continental Philosophy, Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Robert H. Scott and Gregory Moss (New York: Routledge, 2019).
- 13.
See Annette Baier, “Hume: The Women’s Moral Theorist?” in Women and Moral Theory, ed. Eva Feder Kittay and Diana T. Meyers (Rowman and Littlefield, 1987), 45.
- 14.
See Annette Baier “Moral Theory and Reflective Practice,” in Postures of the Mind (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 225.
- 15.
Ibid., 223.
- 16.
See Kōshō Uchiyama, How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Dōgen’s
classic Instructions for the Zen Cook with commentary by Kōshō Uchiyama Rōshi, trans. Thomas Wright (Boston: Shambhala, 2005). I am leaving out the Eihei Koroku, Dōgen’s later work following the Shobogenzo, and the Zuimonki, another of Dōgen’s more practical works, because they are overshadowed by the influence of the Shobogenzo among theorists and the Tenzo Kyōkun among lay practitioners.
- 17.
See Bernie Glassman and Rick Fields, Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master’s Lessons in Living a Life That Matters (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1996).
- 18.
Ibid., 10.
- 19.
See Uchiyama, How to Cook your Life, 52.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Ibid., 53.
- 22.
See Rita Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism, (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), 130.
- 23.
See David Loy, “The Path of No-Path: Sankara and Dogen on the Paradox of Practice,” Philosophy East and West 38, no. 2 (1988).
- 24.
This is not to say Dogen eschews thinking or writing about enlightenment completely: otherwise his prolific authorial output would be quite perplexing.
- 25.
See Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy, 277.
- 26.
Ibid., 278.
- 27.
See Butnor, “Dōgen, Feminism, and the Embodied Practice of Care” and Shigenori Nagatomo, Attunement Through the Body (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992).
- 28.
Ibid., 232.
- 29.
McCarthy, “Embodying Change.”
- 30.
Arai, Bringing Zen Home, and Arai, Women Living Zen.
- 31.
Greenwood, Bow First, Ask Questions Later, 75.
- 32.
Paula Arai, “Soto Women’s Zen Wisdom in Practice,” in The Theory and Practice of Zen Buddhism: A Festschrift in Honor of Steven Heine, ed. Charles S. Prebish and On-Cho Ng (Singapore: Springer Nature, 2022).
- 33.
Yusa, “Dōgen and the Feminine Presence,” 10.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
See Teijo Munnich, “Dancing the Dharma: Bendowa,” in Receiving the Marrow: Teachings on Dogen by Soto Zen Women Priests, ed. Eido Frances Carney (Olympia: Temple Ground Press, 2012), 7.
- 36.
Dōgen, “Receiving the Marrow by Bowing,” in Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, ed. by Kazuaki Tanahashi (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2010), 77.
- 37.
Carney, Receiving the Marrow, xi.
- 38.
Dōgen, “Receiving the Marrow by Bowing,” 74.
- 39.
Sallie Tisdale, Women of the Way: Discovering 2500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2006), 3.
- 40.
Grace Schireson, Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters (Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2009), xii.
- 41.
Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy, 153.
- 42.
Steven Heine, Dōgen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2021), 271.
- 43.
Glassman and Fields, Instructions to the Cook, 9.
- 44.
See Baier, “Hume,” 37.
- 45.
Lucy Allais, “Kant’s Racism.” Philosophical Papers 45, no. 1–2 (2016).
- 46.
Carney, Receiving the Marrow, xi and Yusa, “Dōgen and the Feminine Presence,” 3.
- 47.
Heine, Dōgen, 25.
- 48.
Arai, “Soto Women’s Zen Wisdom in Practice,” 259.
- 49.
Carney, Receiving the Marrow, xi.
- 50.
See Baier, “Hume,” 54.
- 51.
Yusa, “Dōgen and the Feminine Presence,” 7.
- 52.
Ibid., 20.
- 53.
Tisdale, Women of the Way, 14.
- 54.
Sebene Selassie, “Turning Toward Myself,” in Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom., ed. Pamela Ayo Yetunde and Cheryle Giles (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 2020), 75.
- 55.
Selassie, “Turning Toward Myself,” 73–74.
- 56.
Dōgen, “Receiving the Marrow by Bowing,” 73.
- 57.
Yusa, “Dōgen and the Feminine Presence,” 2.
- 58.
See Kasulis in McCarthy, Ethics Embodied, xiv.
- 59.
Ashby Butnor and Jennifer McWeeny, “Feminist Comparative Philosophy: Performing Philosophy Differently,” in Asian and Feminist Philosophies in Dialogue, ed. Jennifer McWeeny and Ashby Butnor (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 12.
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Specker Sullivan, L. (2023). Do Not Lose the Rice: Dōgen Through the Eyes of Contemporary Western Zen Women. 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_7
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