In a way I am surprised by the expansion of Soto Zen in the West and not surprised. First of all, I am surprised by Dogen’s popularity and those Zennists who spend their time reading his interpretation of Buddhism which I dare say falls into the typical way Japanese people think which according to Hajime Nakamura is phenomenalism.
[T]he Japanese are willing to accept the phenomenal world as Absolute because of their disposition to lay a greater emphasis upon intuitive sensible concrete events, rather than upon universals. This way of thinking with emphasis upon the fluid, arresting character of observed events regards the phenomenal world itself as Absolute and rejects the recognition of anything existing over and above the phenomenal world (Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, p. 350).
On the other hand, I am not surprised, because in the West we have been brainwashed to take the world that we live in to be the true world. There is none higher for us. In this regard we are like the Japanese. Likewise, our westernized Zen doesn’t want to pull back the veil of illusion. The illusion is fine—we’ll get used to it.
Of course, many Japanese Zen masters didn’t think the way Dogen did. It fact, I would place Dogen in the minority—maybe even a minority of one. Japanese masters like Bassui 抜隊 were the equal of the greatest Chinese masters some of whom Dogen had contempt for.
For Bassui there was an absolute. It can only be found by penetrating through the phenomenal veil to its fundamental non-phenomenal essence which is unconditioned.
Having been part of the Soto tradition that paid hardly any attention to Dogen, I sometimes think that Soto ignored Dogen or maybe even rejected him. Keep in mind that Dogen's Shobogenzo was not published until the nineteenth century. Prior to that it was kept in some dark Soto library and not necessarily studied. It is only recently that his Shobogenzo has been popularized in the West.
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