“To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.”
Dōgen · Sōtō Zen
selfmindknowledge
Paraphrase or translation
Philosopher
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Dōgen
1200–1253 · Sōtō Zen · Medieval
Dōgen Kigen founded the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan after studying in China under Rujing. His Shōbōgenzō, written in Japanese rather than classical Chinese, is one of the most demanding works of Japanese thought. He taught that practice and enlightenment are one: seated meditation (zazen, ‘just sitting’) is not a means to a later awakening but its expression.
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He wrote that impermanence itself is Buddha-nature and that being is time, so a pine or a person is a passing of time, not a thing standing in it. His prose plays with grammar to stop the reader settling into a fixed view.
One card from Genjōkōan, a passage translators render closely alike.
Start here
Genjōkōan in Aitken and Tanahashi’s translation, in Moon in a Dewdrop.
Two pages that hold most of his themes.
Quotations
Key ideas
Practice is enlightenment
You do not sit to get somewhere else. The sitting is the realisation.
Being-time (uji)
Things do not exist in time. Each being is a time.
Forgetting the self
Studying the self ends in letting go of the self as a fixed centre.
Major works
Shōbōgenzō (1231–1253)
Essays incl. Genjōkōan and Uji.
Fukan zazengi (1227)
Short manual on zazen.
Influences
Influenced
Common misreadings
- ‘Forget the self’ is not a call to stop thinking. It is a description of where honest self-study leads.
- Just sitting is not doing nothing. It is a strict practice.
Famous lines Dōgen never said
None of the lines this library files for Dōgen is marked Questionable or Misattributed. That is only a fact about these cards. It is not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
FAQ
What is the best book to start with?
Genjōkōan in Aitken and Tanahashi’s translation, in Moon in a Dewdrop. Two pages that hold most of his themes.
What is the most famous quote?
This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Dōgen that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.” (Shōbōgenzō, Genjōkōan, tr. Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi (in Moon in a Dewdrop, ed. Tanahashi), Paraphrase or translation).
What is the most misquoted line?
None of the lines this library files for Dōgen is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.
What is one key idea, in a sentence?
Practice is enlightenment: You do not sit to get somewhere else. The sitting is the realisation.