Dōgen

Richard Watson maintains that deep ecology suffers from an internal contradiction and should therefore be rejected. Watson contends that deep ecology claims to be non-anthropocentric while at the same time is committed to setting humans apart from nature, which is inherently anthropocentric. I argue that Watson’s objection arises out of a fundamental misunderstanding of how deep ecologist’s conceive of the ‘Self.’ Drawing on resources from Buddhism, I offer an understanding of the ‘Self’ that is fully consistent with deep ecology, and (...) does not lead to the anthropocentric contradiction that Watson identifies. The paper will proceed as follows: First, I articulate Watson’s objection, and briefly discuss the traditional deep ecology position. Next, I turn to a discussion of the ‘Self’ and show that there are conceptions of human nature that are not separate from ‘Nature.’ It will thus be shown that deep ecology is not inconsistent and need not be rejected. (shrink)

The doctrine of emptiness presents a problem for Buddhist metaethics, in that it seems to restrict the range of admissible entities in a way that excludes moral facts. In the absence of such entities, what foundation can we give to moral practice? I suggest that Dōgen (1200-1253), the Japanese Zen philosopher/monk, solves the problem by going anti-realist, and that his solution can inform the broader discussion of Buddhist metaethics.

This introductory chapter on concepts of Japanese philosophy and the concomitant approaches to this subject contains 1) a brief critical overview of the term's history and its impact on the definition of the field and 2) a short presentation of the ensuing chapters, which create a sustained dialogue on how to understand Japanese philosophy and how to delineate its his history.

In recent decades, the concept of religion, and specifically its application to non-Western historic cultural formations has come unter critical scrutiny. This paper applies the analysis of semantic fields to three works by the medieval Japanese Buddhist monk Dōgen (1200–1253), who came to be revered as founder of the still extant Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism. By putting his notion of the ‘Buddha Way’ (butsudō) into strong relief, it provides a basis for comparison with modern concepts of religion. The conclusion (...) is that Dōgen’s ideas conform to a surprisingly large extent with modern ideas. This may be one reason for his popularity in modern times. But Dōgen should not be taken to represent the general world-view of medieval Japan. Further comparative analyses of other corpora remain necessary to gauge the applicability of‘religion’ as a category for the analysis of medieval Japanese culture. (shrink)

This contribution argues that it is misleading to consider Dōgen (1200-1253) a philosopher, in spite of a strong reception of his thought in Japanese and Comparative philosophy since the early 20th century. Dōgen himself gives a decidedly parochial description of his own agenda, and that he considered non-Buddhist views and teachings unworthy of any consideration whatsoever. There are substantial differences between Dōgen's concept of the Buddha Way and philosophy as an open-ended and reasoned discourse on matters of fundamental human concern. (...) Philosophical reception of Dōgen needs to take these differences into account to fully appreciate the challenges posited by his thought. (shrink)

In this essay I hope to make some new contributions to the philosophical opening occasioned by John Sallis’ articulation of an “elementology” more broadly and by his turn to Guo Xi’s exquisite Song Dynasty shan-shui scroll painting, Early Spring more particularly. I do so by bringing the remarkable writings by the American poet and thinker Gary Snyder, especially in relationship to his reading of the great Kamakura Zen Master Eihei Dōgen, directly into the fray of contemporary Continental discourses on the (...) elemental and the ecological. At the heart of this project is Snyder’s development of Dōgen’s elemental discourse of “mountains, rivers, and the great earth.” Like Sallis’ own efforts to recast language into a more elemental discourse, this essay will also focus on the manners of speaking specific to the philosophical and poetic self-presentation of the elements, including the relationship between the philosophical and the artistic as such. (shrink)

In the present work, I constructively engage the thought of the American pragmatist John Dewey and the Zen Buddhist Dōmgen on moral cultivation. I argue that Dewey presents a useful notion of moral development and growth with a focus on attentiveness to one's situation, but I also note that he leaves out extended analysis of how one is to foster such an orientation. Turning to the writings of Dōmgen, I argue that Deweyan moral theory can be supplemented by the methods (...) that Zen Buddhism prescribes to bring attentiveness back to one's experience of activity. This analysis is placed in the context of my overall project of orientational meliorism, or the alteration of one's orientation toward self, world, and activity with the goal of improving the quality of one's future experience. (shrink)

Dōgen: Textual and Historical Studies is an impressive volume that marks a significant leap forward in the study of Zen Master Eihei Dōgen, founder of the Japanese Sōtō School. Dōgen’s life and thought are closely examined in light of the wider historical and religious contexts of Song dynasty China and the Kamakura era in Japan. This collection offers a careful consideration of Dōgen’s rich literary legacy by examining his significance situated as he was at the historical crossroads between the Chinese (...) Chan tradition and the birth of Japanese Zen. In particular, the volume contemplates the manner in which Dōgen’s historical — perhaps mythological — figure has been endorsed and cultivated by the Sōtō.. (shrink)

Busshō, one of the central fascicles of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, is dedicated to the problematic of Buddha-nature, the understanding of which in Dōgen’s thought is fairly different from previous Buddhist philosophy, but concordant with his views on reality, time and person. The article will present a close reading of several passages of the fascicle with comment in order to argue that Dōgen’s understanding of Buddha-nature is not something that entities have, but a mode of how they are, neither in itself nor (...) for us, but in the total world-process. The relation between totality and particularity is not hierarchical, nor one of opposition, but conceived of a matter of perspective, which, as Dōgen shows, is both mediated and circumscribed by language. As a result, we can see that particularity of being is precisely what makes the totality of being accessible to every existent, not an obstacle to be overcome. (shrink)

In contrast to temporal asymmetry stressed in process philosophy, symmetry prevails in Mahayana Buddhism and East Asian philosophy formed under its influence. The paper clarifies the meaning of symmetry from the perspectives of Kitaro Nishida and Dogen, it explores similar or overlapping ideas in Whitehead’s philosophy oforganism, and it suggests that the differences among them are much smaller than commonly believed.

Although the planet is currently facing an unprecedented array of environmental crises, those who are in a position to do something about them seem to be paralyzed and the general public apathetic. This pathological situation derives in part from a particular concep­tion of the human relationship to nature which is central to anthro­pocentric traditions of thought in the West, and which understands the human being as separate from, and superior to, all other beings in the natural world. Traditional East Asian (...) understandings of this relationship are quite different and remarkably un-anthropocentric, especially as exemplified in the ideas of Chinese Daoism and Japanese Buddhism—even though Western conceptions now predominate in both China and Japan. Nevertheless, these ideas and understandings are experientially accessible to any contemporary person who has full contact with the natural world, regardless of which tradition that per­son stands in.This essay examines the understanding of the human-nature rela­tion that we find in the philosophies of Kūkai and Dōgen, from whom we can learn much that is ben­eficial in the context of our current environmental predicament. The ideas of both thinkers are firmly rooted in practice, and especially bodily or somatic practice, designed to bring about a transformation of experience. The argument is not that we should appropriate their conceptions of nature in order to solve our environmental problems; rather, since they both practice “philosophy as a way of life,” the sug­gestion is that we can learn from the practices they advocate in the light of what they say about natural phenomena and would benefit from emulating their ways of engaging the world ecologically. (shrink)

Thinkers like Slavoj Žižek and Tim Morton have heralded the end of our ideological constructions of nature, warning that popular “ecology” or the “natural” is just the latest opiate of the masses. Attempting to think what I call Nature after Nature, I turn to the Kamakura period Zen master Dōgen Eihei to explore the possibilities of thinking Nature in its non-ideological self-presentation or what Dōgen called “mountains and rivers.” I bring Dōgen into dialogue with his great champion, the American poet (...) Gary Snyder, as well as with thinkers as diverse as Schelling, Kundera, Žižek, Agamben, and Muir. Beyond Nature being any one thing, what Badiou derides as the “cosmological one,” I argue for the reawakening and sobering up to multiple Nature, beyond its appearance as an object to a discerning subject, as the bioregions which give us our interdependent and dynamic being. (shrink)

While there have been numerous claims of a resemblance between the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Zen Buddhism, few studies of the philosophy of Wittgenstein in detailed comparison with specific Zen thinkers have emerged. This paper attempts to fill this gap by considering Wittgenstein’s philosophy in relation to that of Eihei Dōgen, founder of the Sōtō school of Zen. Points of particular confluence are found in both thinkers’ approaches to language, experience, and practice. Through an elucidation of these points, this (...) paper argues that both Dōgen and Wittgenstein can be understood as putting forth a philosophy of transcendent ethics. (shrink)