acute concentration, and the second  is that eager spirit  of
inquiry which typifies the outstanding philosopher.  His work
constantly demontrates the interrelation of these two forces,
and the chief  target  of both  is the  discovery,.experience
and, so far as this  is possible, the discussion  of what  he
sometimes calls the "Unborn," or, in more familiar Mahaayaana
terminology, the  dharmakaaya  or 'sunyataa, or one  of their
synonyms.
  Let us begin, then, by briefly specifying whatever can be
specified  about  this  Unborn  which  he.seeks,and which  he
presents as his basic metaphysical and ethical concept.
  In another  part of the Shooboogenzoo--the  section  called
Busshoo--Doogen says, "all being is the Buddha-nature. A part
of all being we call 'sentient  beings.'  Within  and without
these  sentient  beings  there  is  the-sole   being  of  the
Buddhanature."And  this  Buddha-nature  is,  to  use  Western
terms, the Absolute  Reality which persists  behind the mists
of  our  deluded  egotism  and  of  the  ephemeral  world  of
transient and particular realities. When all that is illusion
is gone; this is what remains; when all that can die is dead,
this is what survives;  when all false meanings are dispelled
this  is  the  Truth.   A  later  Japanese   Zennist,  Bankei
(1622-1693), using  the  phrase  "Buddha-mind"  where  Doogen
might have used "Buddha-nature," echoes lucidly the sentiment
of Doogen when he says: "What everyone  of you received  from
your parents  is none  other  than  the Buddha-mind, and this
mind has never been born and is in a most decided manner full
of wisdom  and  illumination.  As it is never  born, it never
dies....  The  Buddha-mind  is  unborn, and  by  this  unborn
Buddha-mind all things are perfectly well managed."(2)
  This Absolute, call it what you will, is clearly  immortal.
But  for  Doogen, it  is  not  its  failure  to die  that  is
decisive, but its failure to be born, for birth and death are
really inseparable, and when birth has occurred not only

1 Passages  quoted herein from Doogen are taken from a rather
tentative  translation  designed  as a basis  for  discussion
rather than for publication. The edition of the Skooboogenzoo
on which they are based is the Iwanami-bunko edition of 1939,
edited by Professor  Sokuo Etoo of Komazawa  University.  The
chapter   under  discussion,  Shoakumakusa,  occupies   pages
147-157 in this text.
2 D. T. Suzuki, Sayings of Bankei (Tokyo, 1941),p.33.  p.33.

p.35

is death  inevitable, but  birth  is always  birth  into  the
illusion  of  separate  identity,  of  egotism, of  erroneous
discrimination.  So our only refuge  from the Angst  which is
the inescapable  consequence  of false  discrimination  is to
find a Truth which is itself beyond even birth.
  The  Ultimate  Truth, the  ground  of  our  being, is  that
Reality  or Absolute  which  we may call  by many  names, but
which Doogen often likes to call simply the Unborn.
  Here, then, is Doogen's  basic  metaphysical  principle  or
entity.  It must  be recognized  that  this  Unborn  is not a
static "something" unmoved and unmoving.  It is dynamic. That
which is born is, in some sense, the self-expression  of that
which is not. Yet this is, perhaps, a somewhat misleading way
of putting  the  matter  because  to speak  of things  as the
self-expression  or  the  manifestation  of  the  Unborn  may
suggest that we are referring  to some tangible substance  or
essence which crops up in various  shapes.  Rather, the truth
is that particularity really exists,and has existed from time
immemorial, even though all particular  things are transient.
All  such  particular, transitory  existence  is finally  not
other than the dharmakaaya  or Absorute, yet the Absolute  is
not divided. We have, however this fractures logic, to affirm
at once both that particularity  exists and that nevertheless
one thing alone is real-the Uriborn Absolute.
  In any case, the Unborn is the ground not only of being but