A holistic view of Dōgen's thought is difficult to achieve given the number and complexity of Dōgen's teachings. Yet I believe that the passage above provides a good opportunity to see the moral character of Dōgen's religious vision in action. About this aspect of his thought much more can be explicated. But I think we can readily see that Dōgen's brand of Zen Buddhism is far from being an immoral or amoral one.

 

Notes
1. Reihō Masunaga, A Primer of Sōtō Zen: A Translation of Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawai'i, 1978), pp. 8-9.

 

 

p. 397 Who is Arguing about the Cat? Moral Action and Enlightenment according to Dōgen Philosophy East and West, Vol. 47, No. 3 (July 1997)

2. Katsuki Sekida, Two Zen Classics: Mumonkan and Hekiganroku (New York: Weatherhill, 1977), p. 58.

3. Ibid., p. 31.

4. Ibid., p. 33.

5. Cf. "Daishugyō," trans. in Yūhō Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō (Tokyo: Sankibo Buddhist Bookstore, 1988), pp. 745-756.

6. "Shoakumakusa," in Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō, p. 390.

7. Hee-Jin Kim, Dōgen Kigen -- Mystical Realist(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1975), p. 285.

8. "Zazenshin," in Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō, pp. 133-134. I have substituted Thomas Kasulis' translation of the key terms shiryō ("thinking"), fushiryō ("not-thinking"), and hishiryō ("without-thinking") in this passage; Kasulis is cited in the next note.

9. See especially Thomas Kasulis, Zen Action, Zen Person (Honolulu: University Press of Hawai'i, 1981), pp. 71-77.

10. Kim renders genjōkōan as "kōan realized in life," and indexes the term under the general heading of kooan, which perhaps is a reflection of his own stated support of this view. For an opposing view see Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, "Shōbōgenzō Genjōkōan," The Eastern Buddhist, n.s., 5 (2) (1972): 130.

11. Shōbōgenzō, "Genjōkōan," in Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō, p. 2.

12. Shōbōgenzō, "Sokushin zebutsu," in Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō, p. 78.

13. Ibid., p. 387.

14. Yoshito Hakeda, Kūkai: Major Works (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 225.

15. For a helpful analysis of this point, see Hakeda, Kūkai, pp. 77-78.

16. For a helpful analysis, see Kim, Dōgen Kigen, p. 86.

17. Dōgen's own rendering of this passage, and his subsequent commentary, is found in the "Shoakumakusa" chapter of the Shōbōgenzō. Cf. Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō, pp. 385-394.

18. Dōgen, "Shoakumakusa." I have opted to use the translation offered by Thomas Kasulis, in Zen Action, Zen Person, pp. 94-95, which is taken from Dōgen Kigen, Dōgen Zenji zenshū (Complete works of Zen Master Dōgen), ed. Ōkubo Dōshū, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1969-1970), p. 278. Compare Yokoi, The Shōbōgenzō, pp. 385-386.

19. Ibid., p. 95.

20. Shōbōgenzō Zuimonki, p. 88.