Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation
The Earliest Manual and the Origins of Dogen's Zen
According to traditional histories, Japanese Soto Zen began in 1227. On this date the young Dogen, fresh from his enlightenment on Mt. T'ien-t'ung, returned to his native soil. Such was the strength of his new conviction and the urgency of his new mission that, almost immediately upon disembarking, he proclaimed the gospel of Soto Zen and set to work transmitting to his countrymen the teachings of its Chinese Patriarch, his master, Ju-ching. To this end his first act was the composition of a Zen meditation manual, the Fukan zazen gi , in which he enunciated the characteristic Soto doctrine of enlightened practice and described the unique Soto meditation of non-thinking in which that practice is realized.
This tradition that the Fnkan zazen gi directly reflects the religion of Ju-ching and represents its initial statement in Japan is based on the theory that the work was written within months of Dogen's return from the continent, and that, therefore, it should be read as a manifesto of the Buddhism he had brought back from Mt. T'ien-t'ung. Apart from ... read full excerpt from Dogen's Manuals of Zen Meditation ebook
