The heaven soaring imagination of Dōgen

There is in Dōgen’s understanding of Zen an air of indifference to the singleminded quest for enlightenment (J., kenshō); to see what Siddhartha realized under the Bodhi tree. 

Dōgen’s emphasis is, instead, placed on faith rather than gnosis, but not faith as we think we understand it in which, eventually, faith turns into reality.  Dōgen’s faith is, instead, faith that enlightenment is already attained, which takes the form of passive zazen; which if we look deeper, has been impeded by Dōgen’s own imagination, an imagination unconsciously raised above Siddhartha’s actual awakening through the four dhyānas (contemplations).

Turning to the typical Sōtō 曹洞 practitioner, the raising of one’s imagination above Siddhartha’s awakening is not difficult to do.  In fact, it is very easy if one believes as Dōgen believed, that enlightenment is in the phenomenal world which includes the temporal body and not beyond it as a matter of transcendence which is the teaching of Indian Buddhism.

Thus, the impermanence of grass, trees, and forest for Dōgen is buddhata, that is, the state of being Buddha.  This includes the impermanence of our physical body and mental activity.  Here is where imagination over actual enlightenment or kenshō kicks in.  Once the practitioner drops anchor here there is no chance of them leaving the safe harbor to sail to the shore of nirvana. 

Sōtō Zen is a kind of half-way house for those still caught up in materialism who imagine they have found the elegant solution to their problem which is, just sit in zazen which they believe is an affirmation of buddhata.  But this is an inversion of Buddhism, itself, which teaches the transcendence of all conditioned reality, including even the physical body of birth and death and the phenomenal world it depends upon to survive.

This kind of Zen which goes no further than faith in the practice of zazen is not engaged with the Buddha’s teaching but only ends up undermining it.  There is still that looming, almost unconscious indifference to enlightenment—satori—that cannot be reconciled.