A Life of Dogen by John M Evans. In the Zen Masters Series.

Dogen was born in the year 1200 to an aristocratic family from Kyoto, the capital of Imperial Japan. When his mother died, he was adopted by the Regent. It was certain that he could look forward to a bright future at Court. Consequently, he was given the wide-ranging education necessary for a nobleman, and acquired many of the worldly skills of a high-ranking gentleman.

At the age of thirteen, however, some inner prompting forced him to abandon his political connections and seek the protection of an uncle who was an influential figure in the Buddhist Tendai school. A year later he was ordained and learning the syncretic and socially-aware doctines practised by this school.

That Dogen was not totally convinced by the Tendai teachings is borne out by the fact that within a year he was consulting Eisai, the Zen master who had introduced the Rinzai school into Japan. It is also said that he was pointed in the direction of Zen by a Tendai priest, no doubt spotting an incipient impatience with the school’s more elaborate doctrines and rites.

It says much for the basic unity of the Buddhist schools in Japan at that time that he continued to study Tendai contemplation methods, even after he had become formally associated with Rinzai Zen. In his later teaching phase, however, Dogen was to drop the rituals of esotericism from his own school of Zen. He described his early training and its set-backs in a lecture to an assembly of his student monks:

When I was quite young, the realization of the
transiency of this world stirred the mind towards
seeking the Way. After leaving Mt. Hiel, I visited
many temples during my practice of the Way, but until
I arrived at Kenninji I had yet to meet a real
teacher or a good friend. I was deluded and filled
with erroneous thoughts. The teachers I had seen
had advised me to study until I could be as learned
as those who had preceded me. I was told to make
myself known to the state and to gain fame in the
world…But on opening (books of biographies) and
on learning about the great priests and Buddhists
of China, I could see that their approach differed
from those of my teachers…By even thinking about
fame, I would be disgracing the old men of wisdom
and the men of good will to come, while earning a fine
name among inferior persons of this period. If I
wanted to emulate someone, it should be the former
sages and eminent priests of China and India,
rather than those of Japan…My physical and
mental makeup changed completely.

After Eisai’s death, he continued his connection with the Zen school through Myozen, the master’s successor, and finally became his disciple some three years later, at the age of eighteen. Such was his talent and application that, at twenty-one, Dogen was recognized as Myozen’s successor in the Oryu branch of the Rinzai Zen school.

There followed a visit to China, at that period the land of the Holy Grail, with his master, Myozen. It seems though that they were rather restricted by the political conditions then prevailing and could not travel much outside the Eastern part of the Empire. It is possible that this did not weigh too heavily on Dogen as he soon realized he had nothing to learn from any of the Zen masters there. It was a classic case of the pupil outstripping the teachers. He decided to return to Kyoto.

In the end he was persuaded to see one more master, Nyojo, and found his final teacher, staying on in his monastery for two years. His enlightenment came during this period of study and intensive meditation. Given his early preoccupation with words, it is perhaps not surprising that the trigger for his realisation came in the form of a rebuke by Nyojo to a sleeping monk.

“The study of Zen requires the shedding of body and mind.”

At this Dogen achieved great enlightenment. In his twenty-eighth year he returned to Japan having “completed his life’s study”.

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