From the flyleaf of the book:

As a religion concerned with universal liberation, Zen grew out of a Buddhist worldview very different from the currently prevalent scientific materialism. Indeed, says Taigen Dan Leighton, Zen cannot be fully understood outside of a worldview that sees reality itself as a vital, dynamic agent of awareness and healing. In this book, Leighton explicates that worldview through the writings of the Zen master Eihei Dōgen (1200-1253), considered the founder of the Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition, which currently enjoys increasing popularity in the West.

The Lotus Sutra, arguably the most important Buddhist scripture in East Asia, contains a famous story about bodhisattvas (enlightening beings) who emerge from under the earth to preserve and expound the Lotus teaching in the distant future. The story reveals that the Buddha only appears to pass away, but actually has been practicing, and will continue to do so, over an inconceivably long life span.

Leighton traces commentaries on the Lotus Sutra from a range of key East Asian Buddhist thinkers, including Daosheng, Zhiyi, Zhanran, Saigyo, Myōe, Nichiren, Hakuin, and Ryōkan. But his main focus is Eihei Dōgen, the 13th century Japanese Sōtō Zen founder who imported Zen from China, and whose profuse, provocative, and poetic writings are important to the modern expansion of Buddhism to the West.

Dōgen’s use of this sutra expresses the critical role of Mahayana vision and imagination as the context of Zen teaching, and his interpretations of this story furthermore reveal his dynamic worldview of the earth, space, and time themselves as vital agents of spiritual awakening.

Leighton argues that Dōgen uses the images and metaphors in this story to express his own religious worldview, in which earth, space, and time are lively agents in the bodhisattva project. Broader awareness of Dōgen’s worldview and its implications, says Leighton, can illuminate the possibilities for contemporary approaches to primary Mahayana concepts and practices.

As Taigen Dan Leighton explains:

Dōgen quotes the Lotus Sutra more by far than any other sutra, and with unsurpassed veneration. In the Shōbōgenzō (True Dharma Eye Treasury) essay “Taking Refuge in the Three Treasures” (“Kie Buppōsō-hō”), he quotes a passage from the closing verse of chapter 16 about how beings who are beset by their evil karma do not ever hear the name of the three treasures (buddha, Dharma, and sangha), whereas those who are virtuous, gentle, and upright see the Buddha’s enduring presence on Vulture Peak. Immediately after quoting from chapter 16 about the Buddha’s enduring life span, Dōgen says that this Lotus Sutra is itself the single great cause for the appearance of buddha tathāgatas, substituting the sutra itself for the intention to awaken all beings cited as the single great cause for buddhas in chapter 2 of the sutra. Then he declares that the Lotus Sutra “may be said to be the great king and the great master of all the various sutras that the Buddha Śākyamuni taught. Compared with this sutra, all the other sutras are merely its servants, its relatives, for it alone expounds the Truth.”

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p67

As a Nichiren follower, I find Dōgen’s view of the Lotus Sutra very “Zen”:

In the essay in Shōbōgenzō that most directly and fully focuses on the Lotus Sutra, called “The Dharma Flower Turns the Dharma Flower” (“Hokke-Ten-Hokke”) from 1241, Dōgen celebrates the value of sutras while explicitly responding to the Zen axiom about sutra study that privileges direct mind-to-mind teaching above study of words and letters. The essay centers on a dialogue from the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Ancestor, Dajian Huineng (638-713; Daikan Enō in Japanese), who tells a monk who has memorized the Lotus Sutra that he does not understand the sutra. Huineng tells the monk, “When the mind is in delusion, the Flower of Dharma turns. When the mind is in realization [enlightenment], we turn the Flower of Dharma.” Dōgen clarifies how this story implies the necessity for an awakened hermeneutical approach to the active, practical applications of sutra study, rather than being caught by reified scriptural formulations.

Much of the essay involves intricate wordplay and discussion concerning the polarity of turning the Dharma flower, or else being turned by it, which Dōgen eventually resolves in characteristically nondualistic fashion. In the conclusion he says that now that we have heard about this turning or being turned and “experienced the meeting of the ancient buddha with ancient buddhas, how could this not be a land of ancient buddhas? We should rejoice that the Dharma flower is turning from age to age, and the Dharma flower is turning from day to night, as the Dharma flower turns the ages and turns the days and nights.” For Dōgen, the reality of the Dharma flower and of the Buddha’s enduring life span transforms the very earth and time itself. He ends the lengthy essay by proclaiming, “The reality that exists as it is … is profound, great, and everlasting [referencing the Buddha’s life span], is mind in delusion, the Flower of Dharma turning, and is mind in realization, turning the Flower of Dharma, which is really just the Flower of Dharma turning the Flower of Dharma. … If perfect realization can be like this, the Flower of Dharma turns the Flower of Dharma. When we serve offerings to it, venerate, honor, and praise it like this, the Flower of Dharma is the Flower of Dharma.”

In Dōgen’s reality, ultimately the Lotus turning the practitioner, as well as the practitioner turning the Lotus, are both simply instances of the Lotus Dharma turning the Lotus Dharma. The Dharma of the Lotus Sutra is simply nondual and wondrous.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p68-69

Consider the dreams of Dōgen:

In another of the numerous examples in Shōbōgenzo of Dōgen using wordplay to invert conventional thinking, in “Within a Dream Expressing the Dream” (“Muchū Setsumu”), written in 1242, he extensively elaborates on his statement “All buddhas express the dream within a dream.” He thereby denies the supposedly lesser reality of the “dreams” of the transient phenomenal world and negates a Platonic exaltation of the absolute, which LaFleur describes as the antithesis of Lotus Sutra teaching. Instead, Dōgen proclaims the dream world of phenomena as exactly the realm of buddhas’ activity: “Every dewdrop manifested in every realm is a dream. This dream is the glowing clarity of the hundred grasses. … Do not mistake them as merely dreamy.” The liberative awakening of buddhas is itself described as a dream: “Without expressing dreams, there are no buddhas. Without being within a dream, buddhas do not emerge and turn the wondrous dharma wheel. This dharma wheel is no other than a buddha together with a buddha, and a dream expressed within a dream. Simply expressing the dream within a dream is itself the buddhas and ancestors, the assembly of unsurpassable enlightenment.”

Dōgen is not frivolously indulging in mere paradox here, but follows the logic of the dream as necessarily the locus of awakening. As he says in his celebrated 1233 Shōbōgenzō essay, “Actualizing the Fundamental Point” (“Genjōkōan”), “Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas.”

What is worthy of study is not delusions or fantasies about enlightenment, but the reality of the causes and conditions of the realms of delusion and suffering. A similar logic is expressed in the Lotus Sutra dictum that buddhas manifest only due to the presence of suffering beings.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p32-33

Or this example:

In his Enlightenment Day jōdō, number 88, in 1241, Dōgen says:

“Two thousand years later, we are the descendants [of Śākyamuni]. Two thousand years ago, he was our ancestral father. He is muddy and wet from following and chasing after the waves. It can be described like this, but also there is the principle of the Way [that we must] make one mistake after another. What is this like? Whether Buddha is present or not present, I trust he is right under our feet. Face after face is Buddha’s face; fulfillment after fulfillment is Buddha’s fulfillment.

“Last night, this mountain monk [Dōgen] unintentionally stepped on a dried turd and it jumped up and covered heaven and earth. This mountain monk unintentionally stepped on it again, and it introduced itself, saying, “My name is Śākyamuni.” Then, this mountain monk unintentionally stepped on his chest, and immediately he went and sat on the vajra seat, saw the morning star, bit through the traps and snares of conditioned birth, and cast away his old nest from the past. Without waiting for anyone to peck at his shell from outside, he received the thirty-two characteristics common to all buddhas, and together with this mountain monk, composed the following four-line verse:

Stumbling I stepped on his chest and his backbone snapped,
Mountains and rivers swirling around, the dawn wind blew.
Penetrating seven and accomplishing eight, bone piercing the heavens,
His face attained a sheet of golden skin.

In this jōdō Dōgen describes a dreamlike fantasy in which he accidentally steps on a piece of shit, and in accord with Yunmen’s description of Buddha often cited by Dōgen, it jumps up and declares itself to be Śākyamuni. This vision increases the apparent disrespect for Buddha in Yunmen’s utterance, as Dōgen again steps on his chest (albeit again accidentally), even after the dried shit identifies himself as Śākyamuni Buddha. But Dōgen uses this scatological vision not to degrade, but to further celebrate Buddha, by declaring that upon being stepped on, “He went and sat on the vajra seat, saw the morning star, bit through the traps and snares of conditioned birth, and cast away his old nest from the past.”

Here Dōgen skillfully proclaims and celebrates, nonexplicitly, the major revelation of the Lotus Sutra of the Buddha’s life span enduring over inconceivable ages, and that his archetypal story of his home-leaving and awakening is demonstrated simply as a skillful mode. The effect of this dream parable of Dōgen is to reinforce the story in chapter 16 by describing Buddha and his awakening process as still omnipresent, “last night” right at Eiheiji, and even in excrement.

Dōgen’s dream story also echoes the Lotus Sutra, chapter 4, parable of the prodigal son, who can realize his fundamental endowment only after years of shoveling manure in his father’s field. As Dōgen says in the introduction to his parable, even Śākyamuni “is muddy and wet from following and chasing after the waves.” Dōgen’s further introductory statement, “Whether Buddha is present or not present, I trust he is right under our feet,” echoes the Lotus Sutra parable about the ragged beggar unknowingly having the Dharma jewel sewn within his robe. It further suggests the image in chapter 15 of myriad bodhisattvas suddenly springing forth from beneath the ground “under our feet,” which, as we will see, represents for Dōgen the omnipresence of the bodhisattva potential in the ground of concrete particulars.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p37-38

Other parts are less “Zen” and clearer for me. Here are some quotes I’ve set aside from the book:

Liberation and the Lotus Sutra

The purpose of Buddhism is liberation from the karmic cycle of suffering via awakening, and the goal of the Mahāyāna is the awakening of all beings. In chapter 2 the Lotus Sutra states, in the line probably most often cited by Dōgen, that the sole cause for a buddha’s appearing in the world is to help the diverse suffering beings enter into, open up, disclose, and fully realize this awakening. The one great cause for Buddha’s manifesting is also the one great cause for the expounding of Buddhist teachings. So it is a primary hermeneutical principle and criterion of all interpretations of Buddhist texts that they be evaluated based on their effectiveness as liberative instruments.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p15

The Need to Practice

For Dōgen, the ultimate emptiness or impermanence of all things and events does not diminish the need to fully engage in practice the present particulars of the conditioned world. And there is no place or time other than this current, impermanent Dharma position in which to enact this practice. Dōgen often emphasizes ordinary, everyday reality, such as the activities of daily monastic practice, as the locus of awakening and of the sacred and the importance of not seeking liberation outside of the grounding of immediate everyday circumstances.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p70-71

Seeing that the Buddha Is Alive

Dōgen further turns the meaning of the Buddha’s life span in the 1244 Shōbōgenzō essay “Awakening to the Bodhi-Mind” (“Hotsu Bōdaishin”), in which he discusses bodhicitta, the first arousal of the thought of universal awakening, which he considers of utmost importance, mysterious, and in some sense equivalent to the whole of a buddha’s enlightenment. After quoting the Buddha’s statement at the very end of chapter 16, “I have always given thought to how I could cause all creatures to enter the highest supreme Way and quickly become Buddhas,” Dōgen comments, “This [statement] is the Tathāgata’s lifetime itself. Buddhas’ establishment of the mind, training, and experience of the effect are all like this.” For Dōgen the inconceivable life span is exactly this intention to help all beings awaken, which mysteriously creates the ongoing life of the Buddha. As long as this vow and direction to universal awakening persists in the world and has the potential to spring forth in current practitioners, Dōgen sees that the Buddha is alive.

Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, p90

In addition to discussing Dōgen’s view of the Lotus Sutra, Taigen Dan Leighton offers some interesting background on the sutra and the context of Japan’s Kamakura period. For the next eight days I’ll publish quotes concerning Nichiren, Zhiyi and Zhanran.