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
Tag Archives: Dōgen
Review: Readings of Dōgen’s Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
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
Dōgen’s Primer on the Nonmoral Virtues of the Good Person
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.
Review: Purifying Zen
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
Human Rights Founded on Buddha-Nature
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.
Review: Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans
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
Aquinas and Dōgen on Poverty and the Religious Life
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.
Review: Dōgen, Mystical Realist
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
Review: The Zen Poetry Of Dōgen
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