ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 31, 2024
“The Shadow of the Whip:” Memento Mori in Dōgen’s 12 Fascicles Collection (十二卷本集)
Steven Heine
Florida International University
This paper offers a reexamination and reevaluation of the philosophical meaning and significance of Dōgen’s 道元 (1200-1253) last text that was left unfinished shortly before he died and was lost for centuries after that. The main message of the work concerns the inviolability of karmic causality (inga 因果) and the need to offer sincere repentance (zange 懺悔) for offenses committed. For various reasons, I refer to the final text as the 12 Fascicles Collection (Jūnikanbon-shū 十二卷本集) instead of using the customary moniker of the “12-fascicle Shōbōgenzō” (Jūnikanbon Shōbōgenzō 十二卷本正法眼蔵), which implies it is one of several versions of Dōgen’s masterwork. The title of this paper, drawn from a passage in the “Shime (Four Horses)” fascicle of the Collection, highlights that a true Buddhist practitioner learns to respond to an awareness of the imminence of finitude and mortality like a proverbial splendid horse that spontaneously “races off upon seeing the shadow of the whip” (mi ben’ei nigyō 見鞭影而行). This image suggests the steed does not suffer the rider’s reprimands, or to put it another way, a true aspirant need not be prodded to obey the law of causality because he knows how to conduct himself in a principled way in every circumstance. The 12-Fascicles Collection should also be seen as the result of Dōgen’s effort to curate the legacy of his general instructional outlook by rewriting or recasting some of his earlier essays and themes while crafting a timeless primer of basic Buddhist tenets. Its memento mori approach has a resonance with Kamakura-period deathbed practices and morality tales (setsuwa bungaku 説話文学). Read article
ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 30, 2023
Indian Traditionalism in Eihei Dōgen’s Shoaku makusa
Victor Forte
Albright College
Eihei Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō fascicle Shoaku makusa (“Not Producing Evil”), was presented during the early period of his career, while leading a small group of monastic and lay followers at the Kōshōji temple in Kyoto. Derived from the early Buddhist universal precept and inspired by the Indian ideal of bodhisattvic moral freedom within the dharmadhātu, this work primarily served as a corrective for antinomian inherent awakening doctrine. The ethical implications of this corrective are best understood in the context of Indian Mahāyāna philosophy, an often-overlooked influence on Dōgen’s thought. Not only are such influences to be found in the Shoaku makusa fascicle, but throughout Dōgen’s career, in earlier works like the Shōbōgenzō zuimonki, and later fascicles like Sanjūshichihon bodaibunpō, “The Thirty-seven Factors of Awakening,” and Hotsu bodaishin, “Raising the Mind of Enlightenment,” which were also concerned with the meaning of moral practice from an Indian Buddhist standpoint.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 29, 2022
Dogen: Japan’s Original Zen Teacher. By Steven Heine. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 2021, 360 pages, ISBN 978-1-61180-980-0 (paperback), $29.95.
Reviewed by Zuzana Kubovčáková
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 28, 2021
Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. By Steven Heine. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020, 312 pp., ISBN 978-0-231-18229-4 (paperback), $35.00.
Reviewed by Zuzana Kubovčáková
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 21, 2014
Dōgen’s Primer on the Nonmoral Virtues of the Good Person
Douglas K. Mikkelson
University of Hawai’i at Hilo
The Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki provides a good introduction to Dōgen’s ideas about the virtues possessed by “the good person.” His depiction includes, but extends beyond, the conception of a “morally good” human being. This is evident by the number of “nonmoral” virtues that are manifest in the text. Edmund Pincoffs presents a schematization of numerous virtues based on his conception of virtues and vices as dispositional properties that provide ground for preference or avoidance of persons. This schematization seems especially well suited for an exploration and description of the nonmoral virtues that appear in the Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 20, 2013
Purifying Zen: Watsuji Tetsurō’s Shamon Dōgen. Watsuji Tetsurō, translated by Steve Bein. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011, 174 pages; ISBN 978-0824835569 (Paperback), $24.00.
Reviewed by Anton Luis Sevilla
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 17, 2010
Founding Human Rights within Buddhism: Exploring Buddha-Nature as an Ethical Foundation
Anton Luis Sevilla
Ateneo de Manila University
In this article, I hope to suggest (1) a fertile ground for human rights and social ethics within Japanese intellectual history and (2) a possible angle for connecting Dōgen’s ethical views with his views on private religious practice. I begin with a review of the attempts to found the notion of rights within Buddhism. I focus on two well-argued attempts: Damien Keown’s foundation of rights on the Four Noble Truths and individual soteriology and Jay Garfield’s foundation of rights on the compassionate drive to liberate others. I then fuse these two approaches in a single concept: Buddha-nature. I analyze Dōgen’s own view on the practice-realization of Buddha-nature, and the equation of Buddha-nature with being, time, emptiness, and impermanence. I end with tentative suggestions concerning how Dōgen’s particular view on Buddha-nature might affect any social ethics or view of rights that is founded on it.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 14, 2007
The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans. Commentary and Verse by John Daido Loori. Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori. Boston: Shambhala, 2005. 472 pages. ISBN 590302427 (cloth).
Reviewed by Gregory Miller
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SSN 1076-9005
Volume 13, 2006
Aquinas and Dōgen on Poverty and the Religious Life
Douglas K. Mikkelson
University of Hawaii at Hilo
Recent efforts to articulate Buddhist ethics have increasingly focused on “Western” ethical systems that possess a “family resemblance” sufficient to serve as a bridge. One promising avenue is the employment of Aristotelian-Thomistic thinking in seeking to understand certain manifestations of Buddhism. More specifically, we can explore how the thinking of Thomas Aquinas may serve to illuminate the moral vision of the Zen Master Dōgen on specific topics, such as that of “poverty and the religious life.” Two texts seem particularly conducive as foci for this approach, namely IIaIIae 186.3 of the Summa Theologiae and the Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki. This modus operandi reveals how Dōgen’s views on poverty and the religious life are significantly similar to, and yet in certain respects distinctively different from, those of Aquinas.
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 13, 2006
Eihei Dōgen – Mystical Realist. Revised, 3rd edition. By Hee-jin Kim. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004. 320 pages. Paperback. ISBN 0861713761.
Reviewed by M. T. Jarvis
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ISSN 1076-9005
Volume 5 1998
The Zen Poetry Of Dōgen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace. By Steven Heine. Boston: Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc., 1997, viii + 183 pages, ISBN: 0-8048-3107-6, US $14.95.
Reviewed by Taigen Dan Leighton
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